NPR had a story this morning about an Iraqi woman who married an American soldier and moved to the Ozarks. If you heard it, you know why I’m linking to it now.
Category: Politics, Religion & Money
Joe the Plumber Speaks!
Stop being so eloquent!
Two comments about the final debate. I think it was McCain’s best of the three, but it’s ridiculous to argue, as McCain did, that because somebody is eloquent they should be doubted.
Those Nazi Bastards
This past 3-day weekend I watched two movies. Both are about WWII — the fictional tragic romance Atonement, and The Counterfeiters, based on a true story. In this scene, the forger Salomon Sorowitsch uses his artistic talents to curry favor and improve his condition in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/OCT/Counterfeiters.flv 448 252]
In this regard Sorowitsch paralleled Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, who survived Auschwitz by painting portraits for the Nazis, most notably the infamous Josef Mengele. Babbitt was later an artist at the Disney studio. Babbitt is still alive, and she’s trying to regain ownership of her Auschwitz paintings. In that effort she is being helped by two comic book artists — Neal Adams and Joe Kubert.
I knew an artist who escaped the Nazis. He was my drawing teacher in college. His name was Arno Maris.
Arno had been a champion gymnast in his native Holland. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was powerfully built. As I recall Arno telling me the story, after the Nazis had occupied the Netherlands, he took a row boat and, in the darkness of night, headed out into the open ocean, with no idea what would become of him. As luck would have it, he was picked up by a Merchant Marine ship, and he lived to tell the tale.
“Those Nazi bastards,” Arno would say, with great emphasis. In my mind right now I can still hear Arno talking to me, in that unmistakable Dutch accent of his, calling me “Dock-less.” Arno Maris was an excellent art instructor, and a wonderful man.
Profiles in determination
I don’t know how anybody can be undecided between Obama and McCain, but for those who are, Frontline on PBS will be showing profiles of the candidates, both on TV and online. Do undecided voters watch PBS, or do they assume the network is biased?
Krugman wins Nobel for Economics
What a welcome bit of news. Princeton economist Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize. Krugman is one of the most pointed critics of the George W. Bush administration, and I read both his NYTimes column and blog regularly.
With this award comes, I hope, a move away from the ideas of Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel in 1976. That recognition quickly led to the development of the “trickle down” policies that were implemented by Ronald Reagan starting in 1981. The worldwide economic mess we’re in right now is proof that Friedman was wrong about laissez-faire economic policies in the 1920’s not being one of the causes of the Great Depression.