Sorry, But It's Time For a Draft

It’s hard not to notice that we need a draft.
Bigtime.
Yesterday.
We’ve got two wars going and now a disaster on the Gulf. Again. But there’s nobody to respond to the B.P. mess because we’ve got too wars going.
We need people. We need to defend American soil, this time from polluters. But there’s nobody to do that job. Watch the news shows. The only people standing on the beach as the oil comes in are TV reporters. We need people with shovels.
I take no joy in calling for a draft. I remember being very nervous when I registered for the draft, especially since it was around the time that Ronald Reagan was regarded as a wacky war-monger, at least in my house, and not as the best president ever. That came later. Anyway, it was daunting to sign up with the Selective Service and think about going off to fight a war.
What we have today, though, is a volunteer army. God bless those who serve. They are brave and smart and capable and being asked to do too much. The government sends off too few people to handle too many responsibilities.
I guess what I’m really asking for is some kind of national service. Leave it up to the young people whether they want to wage war in Iraq or Afghanistan or shovel oil out of the sand on the Louisiana coast. But they need to do something, cause this nation is going from crisis to crisis to crisis and pretending it can all be done without any cost outside of a few unlucky volunteers. Make room for the unemployed, too. There are plenty of people who could help right now.
There are times when a federal response is needed. The B.P. crisis is one of those times. It was cute that the Obama Administration wasted a month pretending that the cleanup responsibilities rested alone with a private company. But once the oil hits, Americans begin to wonder why there has not been a speedier and smarter response on the part of the federal government itself.
There are jobs to do and we need people to do them.

Passionate Primaries

Tomorrow’s going to be an awfully interesting day for fans for American politics.
Two incumbent Democratic Senators, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, both face tough primary challenges from the left. I stink at predicting, but I think Specter is toast. And I don’t know enough about politics is Arkansas to understand what will happen there.
Lincoln has tried to survive by being a centrist Democrat, but ours is not a kind world for centrists. Lincoln was against the public option in a health care bill, so liberals in her own party are taking aim at her. She alienated Republicans in Arkansas—something that I suspect is easy to do—by supporting parts of the president’s agenda. All this prompted Lt. Gov. Bill Halter to run against her, but the New York Times has a piece today(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/us/politics/17pennsylvania.html?scp=3&sq=arlen%20specter&st=cse) in the race where John Brummett, a columnist at the Arkansas News, quips of the Democratic primary: “All we’re doing here is picking someone to get beat in November.” The Republicans are likely to win the seat in the fall.
Over in Pennsylvania, the chickens are coming home to roost for Specter, who has always had a constituency of one: Arlen Specter. He was talking a lot last week about his reputation of bringing home the bacon for Pennsylvania. But his history is long…he’s the guy who trashed Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings a couple of political lifetimes ago…and it will not be all that sad to see him go. His challenger is in the Democratic primary, Rep. Joe Sestak, had the guts to run when it looked like he would not be able to beat Specter, who switched to the Democratic Party last year. Now Sestak seems like he would be as strong as Specter as the Democratic nominee.
The results will tell us something, yes, about the much-mentioned anger that’s alive in both parties, the anti-Washington mood. But turnout numbers always tell us something else, something important about the level of engagement of voters. Those numbers tend to be kind of sad, even in years when our papers and cable TV shows tell us that we’re awfully angry about things. The most important thing, in an exciting election or a boring one, is to vote.

Americans Still Not Fond of Fonda; Up Next in the Culture Wars…Elena Kagan

Well, I like Jane Fonda. But apparently Middle America is still as ticked as ever about her anti-war stance during the Vietnam years.
I did a blog item for Rentedspaces.com about Fonda’s Atlanta loft (http://www.rentedspaces.com/2010/05/07/jane-fondas-atlanta-loft-for-sale-or-rent/). I thought it was a pretty straightforward piece and there was nothing controversial about it, but it’s already received more comments than any other blog I’ve done. I’m fascinated that Fonda remains this polarizing a figure.
But these are polarizing times.
Our next culture clash was introduced by the President his morning: a new nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. I like Elena Kagan. So far as I’m concerned, President Obama can keep picking women from New York City for the Supreme Court until there are nine of them serving. But I’m expecting a pretty fierce debate will surround Kagan. The rightists are not going to be happy with Kagan’s commitment to equal treatment under the law for gay people. Heck, some won’t even like her being single. But I think she’s a qualified choice from a president smart enough to know he will have, come next year, even fewer votes in Congress for his picks. He might as well go for what he wants while he still has a chance.
Jane Fonda and Elena Kagan: women worth fighting about.

News: A Carter Comes to Town

Soft-spoken but equipped with a strong message, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter told an audience at Columbia University today that the way Americans treat the mentally ill remains a “moral issue”—and not nearly enough is being done.
After about four decades of advocating for better care for the mentally ill, Carter has a new book just published. In “Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis,” coauthored with Susan K. Goland and Kathryn E. Cade, Carter is cheered by the medical breakthroughs in study of the human brain. Indeed, she told a Columbia crowd yesterday at Miller Theatre that she is “really optimistic” about what can be done for the one in four Americans who will be touched by mental illness.
But she sounded the alarm, too, stressing that the recommendations she helped spark from a presidential commission during the Carter Administration have never really all been instituted. A later commission, ordered up by President George W. Bush, hit many of the same recommendations decades later, Carter said.
“I am frustrated and even angry,” she admitted. “We know what to do and don’t do it. And millions are suffering.”Carter became interested in mental illness during her husband’s first campaign for governor, she said. Handing out leaflets for her husband at 4:30 a.m., she encountered a woman at a cotton mill leaving her shift. She had lint in her hair and clothes. She told Carter about being on her way home to a mentally ill daughter. “It haunted me all day long,” said Carter, who later approached her husband about the importance of the issue. Gov. Jimmy Carter wound up appointing his wife to be among those to address the issue.
Carter remembered how the anthropologist Margaret Mead, visiting the White House, once said that a society can be measured by how it treats the most vulnerable, including the mentally ill. “We are failing to measure up to Margaret Mead’s standard,” Carter said.
The 82-year-old former First Lady gave an address and then was joined in a panel discussion at Columbia, where she said the stigma surrounding mental illness remains the biggest barrier to progress. While some still think of the mentally ill as potentially violent, Carter stressed that they are more likely to be victims of violence than act out themselves. And people who are mentally ill are far more likely than other Americans to be victims themselves, she said. “And that’s inexcusable,” she said.
Pointing to the bright side, Carter said the recent health care reform law signed by President Obama had some good things in it for mental health advocates.
“Look at all the good things that are happening,” she said. “We have treatments now. We know so much about the brain.”