They're going to start normalizing COLA, giving everyone in Germany the same amount. This means that some folks are getting huge cuts in their paychecks, while we in our community will get more. Because we have always had the lowest COLA in Europe. So we're supposed to feel sorry for families in these other areas who are going to get less money and "end up on food stamps or something"? Families in our area make do.

I never understood how they calculated COLA anyway. My brother-in-law lives 20 minutes from Wurzburg. If he lived in Wurzburg, he'd get double the COLA, regardless of the fact that he already does all of his shopping in Wurzburg. I don't understand how that has anything to do with purchasing power. If we had to buy groceries and clothes on the economy, then I might understand, but we have a PX and commissary for that reason. If you choose to buy that 900 Euro DVD player off post, that's your problem; the government shouldn't have to subsidize it for you. Especially since the PX sells them for $39.

Remember that old article about COLA? "Every time the euro rises one euro cent in value against the dollar, the dollar increase in salary and benefits for local-national employees at the Navy Exchanges is $187,000 adjusted annually." COLA is just one of the ways the US government throws money down a hole in Europe. Send us home, where there is no COLA.

MORE TO GROK:

Oh look, more boo-hooing. American military families all over Germany have to pay childcare and phone bills, and people in our community manage just fine with half the COLA you've been getting all along.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:53 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Republicans who call for the troops to be brought home before the mission is complete are obviously just not well versed enough in the Administration's reasons for having trooops in Germany. Just funning ya.

Posted by: Pericles at September 29, 2005 07:05 AM (EpPuP)

2 it's the same old story sarah.what i don't think you understand fully is as everything goes up like gas,food,etc you just suddenly get a paycut because of some bureaucrat?there is no way to damage morale quicker than that.it almost like being asked to do more for less coming home from a war zone.or worse getting a paycut BEFORE you get shipped out to the sand.i make over $70,000 a year as a civilian with a union job and good health benefits.the most i made in the military was &13,500.GO NAVY.HAHAHAHAHA.and i just have a high school diploma.it is a shame that this country is fighting a war and only a small percentage of people are being asked to sacrifice.it is time for you to start looking at who is responsible for this fact sarah.you're a smart lady figure it out.also sorry about the brats in the schools over there.

Posted by: tommy at September 29, 2005 09:03 AM (NMK3S)

3 I'm glad there are people that don't mind serving as civilians overseas...because I sure don't want to go. Every couple of years I'm offered a 3 year tour in Heidelburg to do Operations Research stuff, but I've never felt as home as I do in America. I suppose that if the world were about to end and they needed my big brain over there (just kidding folks...I'm pretty bright, but not Einstein) I'd go. We'd have to have a clause in my deployment agreement about Hefeweizen though! (Love that stuff!) As far as COLAs and grade creep that occurs in some areas...even here in the states the playing field isn't level. In my command, if you work in DC...do the same job I do here in the middle of bumpkinville Texas (according the the DC boys) I'm graded as a GS-12. Were I to take a job in the same command doing about the same job...poof! I'd be a 13 with 14 right around the corner. While I'm exceedingly frustrated with the leadership/management skills (remember, those can be both good or bad) here...I'm still living like a king in a low cost of living area. Best of luck fighting the Euro, the PX/Commissary system, etc. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at October 01, 2005 09:41 AM (tdEnf)

4 we left ramstein about a year and a half ago after 4 1/2yrs of living in germany. the first year there was terrifying 'cause we didn't know what our pay was going to be from month to month, were living on the economy where we had to save some each month to pay for our oil tank, convert dollars to deutshe marks for rent, and figure out the whole bill paying system. we started seeing that we were coming out far better than we ever did in the state-side bases. my husband was an e6, then e7. we have 3 kids and i am a stay at home mom. we did a lot of shopping while in germany...things we'd never have been able to afford had we stayed in the states! you want to know what was shocking? losing that cola when we returned to the states. we moved to eglin, housing here is extremely tight, as it is around a lot of bases based on info i've had from friends who've also moved back. it took a full year to live again on the lower income and it's still a challenge to make ends meet. while i don't have daycare, my kids are now more involved in extracurricular activities...band being the biggest. i know it's difficult making ends meet...we've been doing it his whole career, but it's a dreamworld, and reality comes crashing back when you get back to the states.

Posted by: me at October 02, 2005 08:44 AM (0N9tr)

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The Stars and Stripes got some good quotes from D.C. this weekend:

Jamie Santoro, a 40-year-old editor with a book company in Chicago, rode 18 hours with 40 friends to participate.

“I came because I think war is wrong in every circumstance,” she said. What about in fighting someone such as Hitler? “War is always wrong.”

Arianette Gosnell, 18, a student at Lorain County Community College in Ohio, drove out with her friends.

She was handing out flyers that read “RESIST OR DIE! NO SCHOOL ON NOV. 2!”

Asked what the group hoped to accomplish by not going to class for a day, she said, “Actually, I just got involved today, so I don’t know.”

Heh.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:47 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I swear I could've written this blog entry about the library. I volunteered there as a kid and longed for the day when I had logged enough time to be able to stamp the due date cards. Mostly I just shelved the children's books, but it wasn't a bad gig for a ten year old. And I have asked my husband about the library vs. Napster thing too.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I've been reading through official reports and blog posts about the anti-war ralley in D.C., and I've been getting increasingly grumpy. The google experiment posts really chap my hide. Are reporters really just glossing over Brian Becker's credentials, or saying that Cuddy is a "novice"? Aren't there any internet connections in newsrooms? All it took was ten seconds on google to show these people's true colors.

But what got me the most was this acute statement at Protein Wisdom:

[from the original AP article]

While united against the war, political beliefs varied in the Washington crowd. Paul Rutherford, 60, of Vandalia, Mich., said he is a Republican who supported Bush in the last election and still does except for the war.

“President Bush needs to admit he made a mistake in the war and bring the troops home, and let’s move on,” he said. His wife, Judy, 58, called the removal of Saddam Hussein “a noble mission” but said U.S. troops should have left when claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded.

“We found that there were none and yet we still stay there and innocent people are dying daily,” she said.

Only in a story that is desperately trying to hide its bias would the author find, foreground, and quote, as her initial interviewees, a couple who are surely the least politically representative of all those attending this rally: a pro-Bush Republican tandem so unversed in the Administration’s reasons for being in Iraq that they believe we should pull out before the mission is completed, and are basing that belief on a tired liberal talking point that conveniently ignores all the other reasons the Bushies outlined for the Iraq campaign. So, while Ms Kerr is certainly correct to note that political beliefs among the rallyers varies, her choice to highlight the most unrepresentative of the variants to open the story betrays her own rhetorical agenda—and does so in a way that is so obvious I’d be surprised to learn she thought it might actually fool anyone.

That is just the thing that might slip by an unperceptive reader like me, but Jeff Goldstein is a top-rate grokker. Out of the thousands (maybe) of people at the protest, this reporter handpicks the one middle-aged Republican couple. As if they're even representative of the type of folks there in D.C. Come on, they're thrown in the article with Brian Becker and Cindy Sheehan, for pete's sake. You know this AP reporter had to interview dozens of people before she got this money-shot couple. Oooh, look, they used to support Bush!

God, this reminds me so much of Whittle's fable of Noam Chomsky and the Black Sand:

LetÂ’s say we stand overlooking the ocean along Pacific Coast Highway. From high atop the cliffs, we look down to the waves and the sand below. I ask you what color the beach is. You reply, reasonably enough, that it is sandy white. And you are exactly right.

However, there are people who cannot see the beach for themselves because they are not standing with us on this very spot. This is where Noam earns his liberal sainthood. Noam takes a small pail to the beach and sits down in the sand.

If you’ve ever run sand through your fingers, you know that for all of the thousands upon thousands of white or clear grains, there are a few dark ones here and there, falling through your fingers. With a jewelers loupe and an EXCEEDINGLY fine pair of tweezers, you carefully and methodically pluck all of the dark grains you can find – and only the dark grains – and carefully place them, one by one, into your trusty bucket.

It will take you a long time – it has taken Chomsky decades – to fill this bucket, but with enough sand and enough time, you will eventually do so. And then, when you do, you can make a career touring colleges through the world, giving speeches about the ebony-black beaches of Malibu, and you can pour your black sand onto the lectern and state, without fear of contradiction, that this sand was taken from those very beaches.

And what you say will be accurate, it will be factually based, and you will be lying like the most pernicious son of a bitch that ever lived.

This Republican couple was the black grain of sand at this anti-war ralley, but they're put in the article to create a fake sense of balance. Yeah, sure, the Mall is teeming with patchouli-smelling, underarm-hairy hippies, but hey, there's also a Republican couple from a blue state there! It's completely sneaky and false to claim that "political beliefs varied in the Washington crowd" because you found one couple who wasn't wearing a Rachel Corrie shirt or raving about how it's all the Jooooooos fault.

It all goes back to the premise of The Argument Culture: take every issue and show that it has two sides. But if there were 2000 protesters in D.C., and even 50 of them were former-Republicans, they're a small minority. Don't interview one moonbat and one Republican and then say that the anti-war rally represented a wide spectrum of beliefs. That's completely disingenuous, because the sands of this anti-war protest were not black.

UPDATE:

Nearly everyone in the comments section is missing the point. Yes, I'm aware of the President's approval ratings. I do not deny the fact that some people who voted for him might not support the war. What I said, however -- if you actually listened to my words and didn't infer whatever you wanted so you could rant about approval ratings and WMDs -- was that those people are likely not representative of the folks who attend anti-war rallies. Look at any collection of photos from the rally and you'll see folks waving Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyeh and crap. That's the face of the hardcore anti-war protester, so it's journalistically dishonest to seek out the most mainstream protesters and paint them as the norm.

My post was about the journalist's manipulation; it had nothing to do with President Bush's approval ratings. Please stop taking my writing off into tangents I never intended.

MORE TO GROK:

Here's another example of "lying like the most pernicious son of a bitch that ever lived"...

Posted by: Sarah at 05:40 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 I read that last comment, and I stand amazed that anyone can accuse "the Left" of repeating talking points. Didn't I hear that same screed from Ann Coulter on Fox last week? In the last two elections, the Democrat won a majority of votes in one and came extraordinarily close in the second. So tell me again how liberalism has been "rejected with prejudice," or whatever you said. Actually, this kind of ties into the main point that I wanted to make, which is that this Jeff fellow's analysis of how this reporter was manipulating the story is pretty manipulative in its own right. He calls the couple in question "a pro-Bush Republican tandem so unversed in the AdministrationÂ’s reasons for being in Iraq that they believe we should pull out before the mission is completed." Ah, so everyone who favors a pullout (which I don't---we broke it, we own it) is "unversed" in the reasons Bush gives for why were there. No possibility that someone could be familiar with those reasons and just not accept them? No room for honest disagreement? By the way, look at Bush's declining approval ratings. You think that people who voted for him but now oppose the war are really that rare?

Posted by: Pericles at September 25, 2005 09:19 AM (EpPuP)

2 It's unfortunate that anyone who doesn't think that you should be in Iraq is supposedly 'unversed' in US politics. From the outside, the biggest problem I see in US politics and political beliefs is that you guys never allow for the other side to have a point. That at this point it would be foolish and dangerous to remove the troops is damn right, the invasion did fuck up a country beyond repair; however, the country shouldn't have been invaded and just about everyone agrees that the reasons given were false. It follows naturally that some people, republicans and democrats alike, will think it wise to leave, and that others of both sides will think it wise to stay. They are opinions, and as such, neither is wrong. It's too bad you deny offhand anything that disagrees with your stand. I find I learn more from those that don't believe the same things I do, because they make me see sides of things that I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

Posted by: Julie at September 25, 2005 09:55 AM (9oT36)

3 I just find that "the other side" continually charges that the rationale behind the invasion was unjust and that our continued actions in Iraq are immoral, a little on the naive side. Just about everyone in the civilized world believed that Saddam had WMD, the capability to deliver them (be that at the tip of an illegally possessed missile system or in the trunk of a beater automobile), as well as the will to give their employment a try in the 2002-2003 timeframe. It's not as if the period between 1991-2001 had not given Mr. Hussein ample opportunity to open his nation to UN inspectors. He just chose to play a game of deception and obfuscation with them. If he didn't have them...he sure wanted the inspectors to believe that he did. The next item we should note is that there was a period where there weren't ANY inspectors inside Iraq. In that timeframe, isn't it possible that Hussein's regime did a little housecleaning and either hid them exceedingly well or shipped them off to a neighboring ally (cough...cough....Syria)? What opponents to the war seem to want to claim is that our presence in Iraq from 2003 to present has proved a negative...that Saddam didn't possess WMDs. I'm sorry, but I just seem to recall that proving a negative is something that is impossible to do. Be they buried in the remote sands deep underground or they're in some laboratory in Syria, I believe that they did exist...and one day will be found. Back to the anti-war movement. I would hope that those on the "other side" would be smart enough to realize that the die has been cast and we'll be there until the Iraqis can take over for themselves. You can rant and rave, but this president has made the call. Yes, it's like an umpire...but you cannot have the leader of the greatest nation on the planet play wishy washy games with our foreign policy. Can't the "other side" simply sit back and hope for the best? Leaving right now just isn't the best move available for us. We are doing good in the Middle East...if polls (the other side seems to love them when they back up their own ideas) are correct, the US has made a great deal of progress in swaying the Muslim mind. I say we keep up the fight...rebuild a human intelligence capability that will replace the one systematically dismantled by the previous administration and try not to make the same mistake twice. If there are some in this country unwilling to believe that this is "my country right or wrong" then let's be able to throw some definitive proof in their faces. Sorry for the rambling rant...but I thought it was time. See you on the high ground. MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at September 25, 2005 10:29 AM (tdEnf)

4 I'll be honest about it: before the war, I certainly assumed that Saddam still had WMDs. It was a reasonable assumption to make. However, before you invade a country, surely you ought to check your assumptions. It appears now that the intel community had a lot of doubts about the existence of the WMDs, but the administration (especially Cheney's office) didn't want to listen and made sure that intelligence briefs would de-emphasize this side of the story. Our major source for the presence of the WMDs is now in an Iraqi prison on fraud charges! Besides, even if the WMDs were there, there was never a plausible story about why exactly they posed an imminent threat to us. It wasn't like they had just been developed; if they were there, they would have been there for a long time. If Al Queda was going to use them against us, which flies in the face of the relationship between Saddam and Al Queda, why hadn't they done so already? Finally, suppose Major Dad is there and the weapons are now in Syria. Well, then the war didn't accomplish much, did they? The WMDs would still be in the hands of a Baathist dictatorship, only now it would be one with much stronger ties to terorist groups than Iraq ever had. If that is where the WMDs went, why the heck wasn't there a plan in place to prevent it?

Posted by: Pericles at September 25, 2005 12:24 PM (EpPuP)

5 The funny thing about the internet is that it creates these echo chambers where people of some political persuasion can visit and imagine that they are getting the whole story. Anyone who can stomach going to Little Green Footballs/Free Republic/Atrios/Democratic Underground/whatever-extremist-site and imagine that they are getting a fair view of things has a problem. They are all partisan and all carefully present a view of things that fits their limited set of preconceptions. Worse, The right wing sites have a strong habit of making up facts when they can't find any they like, while the left just tends to skew things. With support for the war hanging around 40%, and presidential approval around there too, there must be a fair number of people who changed their minds. Those numbers used to be much higher. So if a story finds a some of those people who changed their minds, it shouldn't be surprising. It's not a grain of black sand in a white beach, it's an example of real world people who fit the other data we have. The fact that you (Sarah) can imagine that it is a bit of black sand suggests that you spend too much time reading extremist views. Oh, and WRT the war, anyone who looks at this objectively will agree that the war was fought on the basis of many lies. The most serious lie that Bush et al. repeated over and over was the suggestion that Iraq was somehow connected to terrorism. Bush always parsed his words carefully (perhaps he learned from Clinton), but Cheney lied flat out. But if you visit LGF/Freep you still see people asserting that Iraq supported terrorism, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. Where do the get these weird views? From extremist echo chambers where they can validate each others false beliefs. The other lie was that Iraq was an immediate threat to the U.S. Nobody bothers with that one anymore, now that we see how weak they were, but still goofy conspiracy theories like the 'smuggled into Syria' meme pop up, which Pericles already took to task. I am saying this not in a spirit of aggression, but out of concern. It is the responsibility of all of us in a Democracy to understand political matters as clearly as possible. While it is more comforting to visit propaganda factories like LGF/Kos that support whatever beliefs we have, it is better to have the courage to be honest and look at these matters critically. Jeff Golstein is the absolute opposite of a grokker - he is a partisan seeking out whatever facts support his beliefs and dropping the rest. Grokking is finding the facts and finding a model that fits all the facts, and if the fact does't fit not ignoring it or glossing it over, but improving the model and dropping beliefs that have been shown to be false.

Posted by: VOT at September 25, 2005 06:51 PM (usuh/)

6 The war was to oust Saddam from Kuwait. That war, like the Korean war, had never ended when continuous violations of the cease fire agreement necessitated a resumption and termination of the war. Our victory in that war was overwhelming and unprecedented. The post war is as rough as Bush said it would be, and reconstruction is going as well as can be expected when the enemy is given hope that just a few more bombs and they win.

Posted by: Walter E. Wallis, P.E. at September 25, 2005 09:41 PM (wDJE+)

7 So critics of a war are giving hope to the enemy? Then let's start the trials for these traitors, who gave comfort to the enemy in Bosnia: "You can support the troops but not the president." --Rep Tom Delay (R-TX) "Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." --Joe Scarborough (R-FL) "Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" --Sean Hannity, Fox News, "[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." --Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) "If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy." --Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush "I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." --Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) "I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today" --Rep Tom Delay (R-TX) "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." --Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Posted by: Pericles at September 25, 2005 10:16 PM (EpPuP)

8 great post, Sarah.

Posted by: annika at September 27, 2005 11:43 AM (8aWdz)

9 I agree with annika, Sarah, you have a spot-on post here that makes a very important point.

Posted by: Dave at September 27, 2005 12:33 PM (6GFTi)

10 Oh now come on... I read the "other example" analysis of a photograph, and it is laughable. Suppose that we assume that the woman in a red t-shirt is a member of a Communist group involved in organizing the march---and I haven't researched it enough to know who the organizers were, so I'm only agreeing that they were Communists for the sake of argument. The fact that she is photographed telling these teenagers where they were supposed to stand---and he looks like a teenager herself, by the way---does nothing to suggest that she "recruited" them to attend. The photograph says nothing about why the marchers are there or how they got there. It seems perfectly reasonable that the organizers of any rally or march would have people there to direct traffic and tell thevarious groups taking part where they are to stand and when they should march. That is all I see in the photograph, and I say that anyone who claims to see more is "lying like the most pernicious son of a bitch that ever lived." It isn't that I want to defend people at the march, most of whom I probably wouldn't agree with about a lot of things. It is just that when someone is being criticized for a lack of intellectual honesty, the person doing the criticizing had better hold themselves to a pretty high standard. This page reads to me like the pot calling the kettle black.

Posted by: Pericles at September 28, 2005 11:11 AM (EpPuP)

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Last night my husband and I watched the final episode of From the Earth to the Moon. I must say that after this week's revelation that we might return to the moon, I watched this episode completely differently than I did nine months ago. The finality of it all really hit me the first time I watched it: Cernan would be the last man on the moon for forever, we'll never have another chance to leave hammers, rovers, or golf balls up there again, we've lost the gumption that got us to the moon in under a decade. But this time around I had hope, hope that we'd be back again.

When it ended, my husband turned to me and said, "I wanna go to the moon." I do too, I said.

I was saddened to read much negative commentary online about returning to the moon. I know it costs money and time, but I just want to go back. And to imagine a staging point for a future trip to Mars...well, that's just beyond my comprehension.

Hope is a wonderful feeling.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:26 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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You're not alone, Charles. I too am outraged.
Hamas To Convert Synagogue to Weapons Museum

Posted by: Sarah at 03:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I realized after reading The French Betrayal of America that the divide between the US and France is even worse than I had thought. And these commemorative stamps just sicken me.

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1 But these are Palistinean stamps, not French ones. Suppose that Saddam had issued stamps with the famous picture of him shaking hands with Rumsfeld in 1983, both with big grins. Would that make you sick, and if so who would the object of your disgust be, Iraq or us?

Posted by: Pericles at September 24, 2005 04:06 PM (EpPuP)

2 Um, yes, that too would make me sick. That said, I still think the two situations are a bit different. We backed Iraq over Iran as a lesser of two evils, and I bet anything that Rumsfeld wishes he could make that photo disappear. Can you show me any time that France has shown regret or disgust over supporting Arafat? We admit it sucks that we supported Saddam; Arafat died in the comfort of France.

Posted by: Sarah at September 24, 2005 05:40 PM (mX8Ke)

3 Yes, I certainly agree that Rumsfeld would give anything for that picture not to exist, LOL. Look, I don't have any great love of either the French or of Arafat, so I'm not exactly on the opposite of this from you. But I think the picture with Rummy and Saddam illustrates the fact that in foreign policy we tend to pursue our own perceived interests, even when these conflict with higher principles, and this is certainly no less true under Republican presidents than Democratic ones. We therefore can't get too high up on our high horses when other countries do the same. P.S. Just a reminder: We already had intel indicating that Iraq had used poison gas against Iranians and Kurds when that photo was taken. So when Rumsfeld talks about how it was obvious that we had to invade Iraq in order to take out a leader who would do such things, remember that knowledge of these crimes didn't keep Rummy from making nice-nice with Saddam when he thought there was some short-term benefit for us involved. There were some things to be said in favor of this war that made some kind of sense, even though the case against was stronger in the end. Saddam was a butcher. But how can we take a point like that seriously out of the mouth of a person who was so obviously personally untroubled by it? And if the press is really so liberal, why wasn't this picture on the nightly news every night, instead of just on liberal blogs?

Posted by: Pericles at September 24, 2005 06:05 PM (EpPuP)

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We all know that the Worry Center in my brain works overtime. Yesterday, when my husband asked me why I had bought batteries and put them in a big flashlight, I told him that when I was lying in bed I realized that we didn't have a working flashlight in the house and that we might need one in case the electricity went out or something. He chuckled and said, "So this is what you think about after I've fallen asleep."

So when the dog gets sick, my worry mode goes to eleven. Charlie has been losing it from both ends, so to speak, and I've become a nervous wreck. I've been watching him and fretting all day, and calling my two best friends constantly to ask their advice, since they both have much more dog experience than I do.

Maybe worrywarts shouldn't be responsible for another living being...

[Charlie's developed a taste for solitude under our bed.]

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Hey, Deskmerc -- did you see this? Did your heart skip a beat like mine did?
Are we really going back to the moon?

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I told my husband that since I'm not working, I wouldn't spend any money on the internet. I've already broken that promise today by purchasing At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, which I found via Knitty. I'll do better starting tomorrow...

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I just think that this German political campaign is in very poor taste (via Oda Mae). I don't even know what else to say about it, other than to point out how inappropriate it is.

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Jack Army is a saint of a blogger. He often points to views that he thinks can enhance grokking, not just stuff he agrees with. And he takes a lot of flak for it, as the extensive comments on another post about females in the military indicate.

I just finished reading the book The Argument Culture. Tannen's premise is that we set everything up as a battle in our society. Shows like Crossfire and Pardon the Interruption are typical examples of how people are pitted against each other to fight on TV for our entertainment. We live in a culture that values debate and naturally frames our issues as two warring sides (e.g. the battle of the sexes).

The argument culture urges us to approach the world--and the people in it -- in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done:the best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as "both sides"; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize.

This book was published in 1998; I'd love to hear Tannen's take on blog comment sections. She talks about the technology that makes email impersonal and incognito, moreso than any other communication that our parents/grandparents had before us. The comment sections on blogs takes this to an all new extreme. Fake names and fake email addresses make it possible for people to hide behind a cloak of anonymity...and to say whatever they want in order to win the argument.

Tim left blogging because of the Death of Civility, a theme I return to often here when the argument culture of blogging gets to be too much for me. When you read the comments section over at Jack Army's blog, you see how women behave in a way they'd never behave if they were face to face. The safety of anonymous comments gives them the guts -- or nerve -- to lash out at fellow human beings. And these are 1) all women who are 2) in or married to the military. They have common ground, yet the insults start flying from the safety of their own keyboards.

And Tannen is sure right that the issue of women in the miltary immediately becomes an "us vs. them" dichotomy. The comments section quickly breaks into two camps fighting against each other; instead of finding ways they could agree about women's role in the military, they focus on ways they disagree. Sadly, it becomes an "I'm all right and you're all wrong" type of fight, when in fact there could be a lot of grey area if they really tried to find it.

Interestingly enough, Tannen would say -- and I agree -- that this fight would probably never happen face to face. In a social setting, these women would find conciliatory ways to discuss the issue without labeling every female soldier as a slut and every military wife as a jealous hag whose husband is probably cheating on her. These women likely wouldn't dream of making that generalization publicly in front of women who belong in the opposite group, but they have no qualms about making those statements in an anonymous comments section.

It's fascinating really, this death of civility. And quite scary as well.

(Important disclaimer: I too am a blogger, and blogging lends itself to disagreeing; I am not an impartial reader pointing fingers at the women at Jack Army's blog. These are things that I just finished reading and need to digest some more and apply to my own writing, though I think I'm already averse to namecalling and flaming. I'm just surprised that I found such a telling example of this argument culture phenomenon a mere two hours after I finished the book.)

Posted by: Sarah at 06:25 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 I'm a big believer in debate, but for it to work everyone in the debate (which may have more than two sides) has to be sincerely interested in finding truth. You can't be in it just to "win"; you have to take seriously what the other people say and constantly ask yourself whether they might have a point.

Posted by: Pericles at September 20, 2005 08:04 AM (EpPuP)

2 Real debate is caring about getting answers to questions. It's about trying to understand. It is easier for some people to go on the offensive rather than argue ideas and facts. Anonimity is a great cloak for cowards and idiots. I take anonymous comments far less seriously than if someone ID's themselves. I don't know that it is so much about the death of civility as it is a failure of personal accountability. Whatever it is, we should never stoop to the level on lowest common demoninator ourselves.

Posted by: Mare at September 20, 2005 10:06 AM (KmNMw)

3 People need to realize that many POVs are right all at once, depending on the experiences of the person providing them. Most people are usually a little bit right and a little bit wrong all at once. Very few debates have an absolute good/wrong answer.

Posted by: Julie at September 20, 2005 02:51 PM (w7n+v)

4 I wonder how much of the rise of the "argument culture" is due to the vast increase in the incidence of litigation in our society.

Posted by: David Foster at September 20, 2005 11:02 PM (7TmYw)

5 Wow, very cool post. It is interesting that so quickly after you read the book you find something that seems to confirm the thesis of the book. I find all of this very fascinating. Good post! Oh, and thanks for linking it.

Posted by: JACK ARMY at September 21, 2005 11:42 AM (L20+G)

6 capitalism = competition = argument This is good in capitalism because history, results & measurements can resolve arguments (if it sales it works) --- However when non-capitalism is involved (social values- politics) arguments can never be won (shades of gray) --- When politics infect everything argument becomes toxic (as in newspapers and the greater MSM when they stopped reporting and begain making everything political (win or lose). By reporting the facts and getting politics out of the OPERATION of government it is possible to get back to a less argumentive culture

Posted by: mike at September 21, 2005 04:59 PM (y4Ivx)

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I got a big smile when I heard these evacuees on the radio Friday night. I'm glad Newsbusters got the story online. (And I'm thrilled with Hawkins' Conservative Grapevine, where I often find such gems.):

ABC News producers probably didn't hear what they expected when they sent Dean Reynolds to the Houston Astrodome's parking lot to get reaction to President Bush's speech from black evacuees from New Orleans. Instead of denouncing Bush and blaming him for their plight, they praised Bush and blamed local officials.
[...]
Not one of the six people interviewed on camera had a bad word for Bush -- despite Reynolds' best efforts.

Go read the transcript and see how bamboozled Reynolds was that these evacuees have faith in our president.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:22 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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From Lileks, waiting to be called for jury duty:

We all sign in, which means a long queue of people in various moods from sullen to disengaged to temporarily-not-knitting-but-happy-to-know-that-knitting-will-soon-be-resumed.

Boy, do I know that feeling. I'm back on the wagon (off the wagon? I never remember which way that goes...); I've made a hat or scarf every night this week.

I'm starting to get this panic attacks about moving. My husband was barking at me last night to knock it off, but when you're an Unemployed Obsessive Planner, you have to throw your energies into something. I try to channel it into knitting and dinner, but for some reason I've been starting to freak out about moving.

We don't move for another nine months, you know.

I've started obsessively whittling down our collection of canned foods. Can't buy more than what I need now, because what if we don't use it up? So what if this is on sale, we may not get to it in time. And what to do about that huge bottle of shampoo: the future looked so bright when I had hair to my waist, but now the meniscus has barely moved. And the dog food, oh the dog food. Charlie will be making the switch from puppy to adult around the time we move, so what if we end up with too much puppy food left over? Or we buy some adult food and don't make it through the whole bag? We can't just throw it away.

Or actually we can, my husband says as he stares at me in horror. It costs $7.50, so it's not the end of the world.

Of course, last time we moved, I shoved a whole bunch of foodstuffs into my suitcase because I couldn't bear to throw it all out and buy the exact same thing over again when we got to Germany. I guess it serves me right that I ended up with sesame oil all over my entire wardrobe.

You see why I knit now, right? It occupies my mind. It keeps me from worrying that I've just bought a new bottle of tarragon and there's no way we can get through the whole thing before we move.

I'm just happy to know that knitting will soon be resumed.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:49 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 When we moved here, they actually packed up quite a bit of our "food" stuff - all my spices, plus plastic wrap and even boxed Hamburger Helper. (I don't know if they were supposed to, but they did.) We still had 1 month where we were living in an empty apartment before our PCS, so some of that stuff I bought so that we could eat during that time. I opened the cabinet, and it was gone... magically appearing 2 months later on the other side of the world

Posted by: The Girl at September 16, 2005 08:07 AM (FmIVz)

2 Okay you have me laughing! The movers packed all our canned goods when we made to move from Ft Knox to Germany in 2000. When I moved back to Texas in November, some of the exact some canned goods came back across the ocean! What was I thinking? Some know that I am hooked on sales and finding a bargain. If I have a coupon and it is cheap, I buy it. Why not? They packed everything even the 2DM bottle of crappy wine(it was in DM that tells you how long I had it). Don't worry about all the non food items either. They said they could not pack items with a "pump" unless it locked; lotion, soap etc. Some items did not have a locking pump, so I went back and packed them when they left . . . they made it just fine. It all depends on your movers. Some will pack anything and others will be picky but have food and coffee ready for them and you can probably get them to pack what you want . . . really! So, happy knitting! Need any good yarn? Always looking for something to do! LOL

Posted by: H. Sims at September 16, 2005 09:51 AM (D+Bhc)

3 Ok, calm down. You can always donate the stuff to someone on base right? Happy knitting.

Posted by: Mare at September 16, 2005 10:29 AM (KmNMw)

4 Sarah, You crack me up...but honestly, I do the same exact thing (I think you and I had a similar conversation about this the other day). I worry about ANYTHING that doesn't have to do with today.

Posted by: Erin at September 17, 2005 10:01 AM (nQCjZ)

5 Ah yes, knitting. I find it a wonderful distraction when domesetic goddess duties call. Just one more row is suddenly a sleeve and you have no clean dishes left but hey! You have a sleeve!

Posted by: zib at September 17, 2005 11:24 AM (2uf8Z)

6 Ok, it was good to hear that someone else is exactly like me. I am ready to take all my pictures off the walls and everything. I keep looking at my cupboards and thinking "don't buy anything else, we have to use this stuff up" but then I see a sale at the commissary and buy anyway! We don't move for 8 months and the baby will come in April (right before we move). I am already stressing about what can be household goods and what needs to be unaccompanied baggage. Everyone thinks I am crazy for worrying, but that is what wives do.

Posted by: S.Berndt at September 19, 2005 04:43 AM (MOoZ+)

7 Just think you will be ready to move if hubby comes home with an "Oh by the way we're moving" comment. I did the same thing and you saw a majority of the stuff when you helped me pack the van for the orphanage. And we did not even had orders yet. As you know we ended up extending for another year!

Posted by: Jennifer at September 19, 2005 11:41 AM (xwxoO)

8 "And the dog food, oh the dog food. Charlie will be making the switch from puppy to adult around the time we move, so what if we end up with too much puppy food left over? " Not that you asked for advice, but lol... Having two dogs that we've moved quite a few times, including cross-continent twice lol, I'd keep the baby on the same food until after your move is over and your family is settled in a new home. Sometimes a change in scenery can give them poopy butt. Sometimes a change in food can - and the last thing you need during a big move is a pup with an upset tummy lol. Good luck with your move. I LOVE to move. It always feels like such an adventure learning about a new place and meeting new people. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be moving again, so I'll just follow your blog and enjoy hearing about your experiences if you don't mind .

Posted by: Shannon at September 19, 2005 07:45 PM (Qs5Bp)

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Those two students who cussed at me? Nothing happened to them. No punishment.
So I found a solution: I'm no longer a sub.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:23 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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This is too touching for words: Iraqi Soldiers Donate to Katrina Victims.
(via Malkin)

And this article on the "bad working conditions" at Wal-Mart reads like a Scrappleface entry. What a joke.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:14 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Annika singled me out as a poetry lover, so I gotta do something for Wednesday. Go read the first page of my favorite book of poems, This Is My Beloved by Walter Benton.

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I went to high school with a girl who had never been in trouble but had always been curious about what went on in the Dean's office. Finally, in her last week as a senior, she asked the English teacher what one would have to do to get sent to the Dean. Cussing brought ten demerits for every letter of the swear word, so this girl giggled and then triumphantly announced the shortest swear word she knew; the teacher sent her down to the Dean to collect her thirty demerits. That's the only instance I can think of in all my years of schooling where someone cussed in class.

So far I've been cussed at twice as a substitute.

If you're reading this and you're a parent, I hope your kids know better than to swear in class, both directly to the teacher or to other students (I heard the m-f word yesterday from across the room.) Or that they know the proper way to ask to use the restroom (hint: it's not "hey, lady, I gotta pee.") Or that they don't start fistfights in the classroom (I broke two of those up today.)

I never would've dreamed of acting this unruly, even with some of our most hated subs. I don't know what the deal is with kids today, but I'm not optimistic about my desire to create one of these beasts.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:35 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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1 WOW.I went to catholic school for 12 years and i never cursed at a teacher publicly.there was no sooner trip to the dean's office than doing that.I don't think you can totally blame kid's parents for their language though.i cuss like a sailor to this day.i also did as a kid.I guess with cable tv and music today cussing seems to be an acceptable form of communication.that's how young people probably look at it.

Posted by: tommy at September 13, 2005 11:54 AM (NMK3S)

2 Sorry to hear that some things never change. I remember the first time I was cursed out in front of a class by a 12 year old! He stood up and told to to F*** Off . . . my mouth must have hit the ground. He was suspended for 3 days but was right back in the classroom . . . it was downhill the rest of the quarter. Eight years later I still remember his name and wonder if he is in jail. It really is sad for me to think kids act this way . . . my parents would have locked me up if I even thought about using those words.

Posted by: H. Sims at September 13, 2005 12:23 PM (iii6W)

3 Depending on the age of the kids, I blame the parents. My daughter is 4 and her dad works in construction. For some reason he uses one swear word fairly regularly. Rather than try to 'fix' my ex we decided on a game : if she catches him swearing, he gives her a quarter. She loves it, and she knows those words are bad. Some parents don't really do much about keeping some sort of authority. They also figure the teachers are going to create a new kid during school hours. A child in and of itself is not a bad creature, it is the parents that fuck them up.

Posted by: Julie at September 13, 2005 01:08 PM (w7n+v)

4 I'm going to have to agree. It is the parents. I use every word in the book on a regular basis, yet I haven't heard a single utterance from my children in years. I had a talk with each of them after they dropped their first curseword. They know what is acceptable and what isn't. My 11 yr old had invited some friends over to play video games last week. He and I were upstairs, when I caught a barely audible "Damn" from the kids downstairs. He immediately went downstairs "to tell those guys to quiet down." He gave them a quick hushed lecture and then said loudly, "Now be quiet." Then he came back upstairs to finish what he was doing. I never said a word. Didn't have to. The kids that curse to teachers know there are no consequences for their actions ultimately. Even if they get suspended, it's just a couple days off from school to them. The parents are obviously not enforcing any kind of discipline at home.

Posted by: Mob at September 13, 2005 01:23 PM (f+cPk)

5 Of course it's the parents fault. When I let a few bad words slip out of my mouth I immediately turn to my daughter and tell her how wrong I was to say such bad words, in fact I had to apologize twice to her and her friend. Once for saying the word dam at school and once for calling the kid lying to me a little shit. Well I didn't call him that until I got into my car, but my daughter heard me say it. Anything goes now on TV. I can't even watch a sitcom anymore. The minute the word bitch is said the TV goes off, or she made to leave the room... Too bad you can't stuff a bar of soap in thier mouth, that might do the trick..

Posted by: Beth at September 13, 2005 01:42 PM (d3xOK)

6 So if someone had said the m__ f__ word in your school, would they have gotten 120 demerits or only 60? After all, the first half isn't really a swear word. Just to get back to politics, I blame it all on Cheney telling Leahy "go f__ yourself" on the Senate floor. The kids are only following his example.

Posted by: Pericles at September 13, 2005 09:22 PM (EpPuP)

7 I'm very proud of my son. My oldest can be playing Halo 2 on XBox Live, get fragged and will pull a Yosemite Sam rather than cuss. My youngest won't cuss at all in our presence. I, of course, refrain from cussing around them, though Halo 2 will occasionally pull half a cuss from my lips before I squelch the rest of the word. On the other hand I have always prided myself in my ability to cuss creatively without having to resort to the F-word for most of my cussing. As an aside, moderation in cussing makes actually cussing that much more powerful. When you have something actually worth cussing about, and you cuss everyone you work with stops and pays attention. Kalroy

Posted by: Kalroy at September 13, 2005 09:57 PM (9RG5y)

8 The deal with children today is the parents today. My oldest is eight and isn't allowed to even say "crap." Do I have a tendency to cuss? Oh yeah. I admit that I could embarrass a sailor in a bar given a tirade lol, but my children know what is acceptable and what is not. When they are grown, pay their own bills and live under their own roof, they too can cuss like a biker on a drinking binge when pissed. Until then, my house, my rules. Life's not fair in this house lol and I do not run a democracy. I'm also close to middle age and still RARELY EVER let a curse word slip to my own Mother . It's called respect...something everyone seems to want these days, yet few feel they need to earn. Children today are not taught the basics by their parents, much less anything else. It takes too much time to be consistent, set standards and enforce them. It is much easier to ignore them, put them in front of a TV or let them run the streets. No suprise many children don't have a chance in life - much less know how to behave themselves in school or anywhere else for that matter. Too many parents are failing their children and are too lazy to even care .

Posted by: Shannon at September 13, 2005 10:45 PM (sHJxX)

9 You should be glad that you're not part of the educational reform taking place in an English city where swearing at the teacher is permitted so long as the students don't do it more than five times per class.

Posted by: TangoMan at September 14, 2005 12:30 AM (EPVvR)

10 "Children today are not taught the basics by their parents, much less anything else. It takes too much time to be consistent, set standards and enforce them. It is much easier to ignore them, put them in front of a TV or let them run the streets. No suprise many children don't have a chance in life - much less know how to behave themselves in school or anywhere else for that matter. Too many parents are failing their children and are too lazy to even care ." Yep. And it's more than just swearing. Some of the punk kids in my martial arts class (back when I was taking it) had no sense of decency or respect. If you were older than they were, they treated you like dirt. They had absolutely no idea what it meant to be an adult and what the world will expect of them. And when I say "kids" I'm talking about 18 and 19 year olds. It amazes me how parents don't bother teaching their children how to behave. Most of these kids will eventually learn the hard way (they might even end up doing time). If you want a worst case scenario...well, remember Columbine?

Posted by: CT at September 14, 2005 03:06 PM (KV/Mz)

11 The proper response is to expel the miscreant from the class and to explain to the principal that if the kid comes back you are gone.

Posted by: Walter_E_Wallis at September 14, 2005 04:22 PM (wDJE+)

12 So if someone had said the m__ f__ word in your school, would they have gotten 120 demerits or only 60? After all, the first half isn't really a swear word. Just to get back to politics, I blame it all on Cheney telling Leahy "go f__ yourself" on the Senate floor. The kids are only following his example. Posted by Pericles at September 14, 2005 02:22 AM Pericles...pull your head out of your fourth point of contact. (Sarah, ask your hubby about this one) A loss of civility has been going on for a long time...the "up your nose with a rubber hose" Vinnie Barbarino line from "Welcome Back Kotter" was a start. Rather than point the finger of blame at the Vice President, why don't we look to Hollywood and their buddies on the left for the real source of the problem. Next look to some parents that have forgotten the power of the "soap." See you on the high ground. MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at September 25, 2005 10:54 AM (tdEnf)

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It rained non-stop over the weekend, which is a real pain when you have a dog. I dreaded the moments when he'd go to the door and ask to be let out, because it meant raincoats and shoes and muddy puppy feet.

But that's the worst thing I have to deal with in my life right now.

From The 3rd World View (via LaRochelle via Poretto):

Bangladesh faces this kinds of tragedy [i.e. hurricanes] every year and still it is a developing not a stagnant country. The media do not propagate the courage and efforts many Bangladeshis show each year to start their life all over. If the calamities would not only be the central idiom of the media, the world could have learnt many tips for tackling these kind of calamities.

Daniel Brett writes a striking post "What America can learn from Bangladesh":

"Last year Bangladesh faced a natural disaster which was an altogether larger disaster than Hurricane Katrina and the casualty figures were probably lower than the casualties sustained in the New Orleans disaster. But the disaster was contained due to the survival instincts of the Bangladeshi people, their ingenuity in the face of adversity and their culture of hard work. Rather than shoot and loot, Bangladesh immediately used its modest resources to limit the impact of the floods before international aid arrived.

The fact that the economy was able to recover from the floods so soon is a testament to the ability of Bangladeshis to pick themselves up and go about rebuilding.

The Americans have never really faced such adversity...Bangladeshis place great importance to social and family ties and these have brought them through a multitude of natural and man-made disasters. Bangladesh's experiences show us that, in the face of disaster, money does not make society more cohesive or better organised."

On the whole, Americans know very little about adversity. When the husband and I were talking about this last night, he said that whenever he starts to feel like his life sucks, he remembers the people of Iraq. These are people who faced death threats and drive-bys, people who could be the only surviver in a vehicle attack and still come in to work the next day. These are people who love nothing better than clean bottled water; even folks as high on the food chain as the mayors would gush over a bottle of water, my husband said. He remembers these things when he starts to feel his priorities slipping.

I'm glad we live in a country where death and destruction aren't rampant, where the worst I have to deal with is a smelly wet dog. But perhaps it makes us short on the gumption it takes to overcome real adversity, the gumption our forefathers had to leave everything and come to the New World. That's a bad thing to forget...

Posted by: Sarah at 11:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I guess it will help retention, and the article doesn't spell out which MOSs will be affected, but as a rule I do not support the idea of extending the GI Bill to spouses. I personally think that this is a benefit that the soldier receives in order to better himself, not his spouse. Spouses already are eligible for no-questions-asked military scholarships that cut their tuition in half, which I think is a very valuable benefit. Thus, I personally think the GI Bill belongs to the GI.

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