Why I Like Barack Obama

His place on a political spectrum notwithstanding, he's at heart a moderate, intellectually, temperamentally.
Here's just one example. It's not so much that I agree with his campaign position against Hillary's vision of health care. I think perhaps scrapping our present system might indeed be the thing to do... but not for the sake of burning down a house just to build something on top of it; only if it's really the smartest way to do it.
In any case, I guess I just like the way the guy's mind works. If anyone equated his conception of "change" with "revolution," they may be disappointed. But on the other hand, they may just see some change.

from Thursday's "town hall" meeting on the economy:

OBAMA: Let me just see a show of hands. How many people here have health insurance through your employer?

OK. So the majority of Americans, partly for a historical accident -- I won't go into -- you know, FDR had imposed wage controls during wartime in World War II.

People were -- companies were trying to figure out how to attract workers, and they said, well, maybe we'll provide health care as a benefit.

And so what evolved in America was an employer-based system. It may not be the best system, if we were designing it from scratch, but that's what everybody's accustomed to. That's what everybody's used to. It works for a lot of Americans.

And so I don't think the best way to fix our health care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to and the vast majority of people already have....

Spike in Military Suicides: Is it reallly still such a mystery?

I've heard this issue discussed enough in congressional hearings; the questions are always asked, but there are never any answers...
Could the repeated (up to four!) deployments have anything to do with it?

From Gen. James Amos, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps: "We have looked at the data to try to find answers that will enable us to address this needless loss of life.... The most likely cause is a failed relationship with a woman."

And I wonder why that's happening... would it possibly be related to the repeated deployments? Is it possible for anyone to deploy three or four times in seven years and not have some form of combat stress that would be extremely destructive if not treated?

And in many cases, it's not being treated, acknowledged, or understood. As for Congress, it seems they need to try a new tack.

Sad Money

I know my blog-rate is petering out here, but I had to comment on the heartbreaking mastery of Jon Stewart's Frost/Nixon job on "Mad Money's" Jim Cramer. I guess everyone who hasn't been living under a rock has seen the show, and those living under rocks have probably seen at least a clip, but if you haven't seen the full interview, it's HERE.
Not surprisingly, the parts that weren't aired were the more amicable moments. I know I shouldn't, but I hope Jim is OK. I'll just keep thinking of all those CNBC viewers who lost their life savings.

Religious Pluralism and the Nonbeliever

I like how Eboo Patel, executive director of something called Interfaith Youth Core, parsed his terms in last Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on engaging Muslim communities -- specifically how those terms didn't exclude nonbelievers or promote unity at their expense.

PATEL: Mr. Chairman, I believe that the question of the 21st century will be the question of the faith line -- that is, how diverse religious communities choose to interact, whether that interaction moves toward conflict or toward cooperation.

The biggest mistake we can make on the question of the faith line is to define it wrong. The wrong definition of the faith line pits Muslims against Christians, or believers against nonbelievers.

If we define the faith line as Muslims against Christians, we are left with a world of 2 billion people at war with a world of 1.3 billion people. That is an eternal war.

I prefer to divide the faith line -- to define the faith line as a line that divides people I call religious pluralists from religious totalitarians.

I have a very simple definition for a religious pluralist. It's somebody who believes in a society where people from diverse backgrounds live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty.

I have a very simple definition of a religious totalitarian. It's somebody who wants their community to dominate and everyone else to suffocate.