Author: The Progressive

Garlic bread

I used to cook occasionally and could make a few things that taste pretty good. I was pretty good with a barbecue too. But I never considered myself much better than an average cook.

My brother, Daniel, on the other hand, is probably the best cook I’ve ever encountered. And he does it from raw instinct—he was never formally trained in the culinary arts. But he just seems to have a great intuition for how things will taste when he puts them together, even if the items are things he never put together before.

So here’s a sample of what I mean. Listen to the list of ingredients Daniel includes in his garlic bread:

I hope you took notes. Daniel rarely writes out recipes of what he makes. In fact, he rarely makes anything quite the same way twice. So his recitation of the ingredients is a rare gem.

Yes, it’s a relatively simple food but it’s the only video I have of Daniel cooking. And is simple as it is, you can still imagine the genius he has for flavors in a more complex dish. If you think you could do this, give it a try and post a comment to share with everyone how it went.

Save My Spot

A wheelchair accessible vehicle is meant to provide freedom but that can’t happen if it’s been blocked by careless parking. I want to educate drivers on how to park responsibly around wheelchair accessible spaces. Share this video with your friends and ask that they share it as well to help build awareness about the problem.

Terrorist is the new N-word

Until recently, the provocative media and politicians liked to label a person they disagreed with a “Nazi.” Yes, even President Obama has been accused of acting like a Nazi, as absurd as that is. It didn’t matter if the person they accused of being a Nazi opposes everything the Nazis stood for—it only mattered that the accuser disliked the actions the supposed Nazi was taking. But now there’s a new word that has replaced Nazi: terrorist.

Just like the media and politicians frequently called people who behaved in no way like a Nazi “Nazis,” they have now taken to calling people “terrorists” with no regard to what the word means. Let’s take a closer look at that.

  • terrorist: noun, a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims
  • terrorism: noun, the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

That means a terrorist must act in a manner that strikes fear into the hearts of the people he or she opposes. And the terrorist must intend for their actions to coerce the people to act according to the terrorist’s political aims.

The latest people that have been accused of being terrorists are the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom who recently occupied a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. However, this militia has explicitly stated that “we have no intentions of using force upon anyone…this is about taking the correct stand without harming anybody.” Without any threat of force or harm against the people, the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom lack one critical element to be terrorists: terror.

Robert Lewis Dear, who shot a dozen people in a Planned Parenthood facility, killing three, last November is a terrorist. He intended to coerce Planned Parenthood into ceasing abortions by terrorizing its staff and consumers. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who killed fourteen people at a San Bernardino county holiday party last month, are terrorists. They intended to coerce “infidels” into converting to Islam by terrorizing people who were presumably Christians (or, at least, not Muslims). The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and the Bundy brothers who lead them are not terrorists—they are traitors.

Oregon militants: Patriots or Owl Qaeda?

I was born this way

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m home alone. There is no Christmas tree—or any other Noel decoration, for that matter—in my home. I’m rocking out right now, not listening to Christmas carols. And I don’t even feel bad that I won’t be celebrating Christmas tomorrow.

Some people think that I’m making a choice to not celebrate Christmas every year. But I know I was born this way. It’s nature that leads someone to not celebrate Christmas, not nurture.

I never celebrated Christmas when I was a kid. I was raised on the Jewish holidays, so there never was a Christmas tree in my family’s home. My family never exchanged Christmas gifts.

As an adult, I gave up the Jewish holidays. But I never took on the Christian ones to replace them. It turns out that, if your parents don’t teach and otherwise enculturate you to celebrate Christmas when you’re young, the Yuletide remains unimportant to you as an adult.

So please don’t accuse me of choosing to be a Scrooge. I can’t help it. I was born not celebrating Christmas.

Jihadis are Muslim

Over the years, I’ve taken the position that Jihadis are not representative of Islam because they comprise such a small percentage of all Muslims. While I know little about Islam, I believe that most Muslims are peace-loving and condemn the militant actions of Jihad. It seemed unfair to me that 1.6-billion Muslims who are predominantly moderate should be painted with the brush of the few extremists.

But I had a recent epiphany that has me rethinking that position. Ironically, it came out of conversations I’ve had correcting people who claim that Barack Obama is Muslim. When I mention to a Christian woman I know that he is Christian, she counters that, no, Obama is not Christian. This woman does not believe that Obama is Muslim (as 29% of Americans do) and she knows that he proclaims himself to be Christian. She bases her assertion that he is not Christian on the fact that the Christian doctrine he believes in differs significantly from the doctrine in which her Christian sect believes (she is a Messianic Jew).

The problem with establishing someone’s faith this way is that there could never be universal agreement about a person’s faith. I explained to the woman—who considers herself to be a devout Christian—that Obama might claim that she is not a “true” Christian because she does not celebrate Christmas or Easter (and if Obama wouldn’t contest it, there are millions of other professed Christians who would). Since there is such great potential for disagreement among purported authorities in a faith that a given person is a true believer in the faith, it’s not possible to effectively communicate about a person’s faith based on some “authority’s” determination. The only way you can unambiguously communicate about someone’s faith is by conceding—at least for the sake of that conversation—that the person’s faith is the one he (or she) himself proclaims it to be.

Getting back to Jihadis, I realized that I was doing the same thing that this woman was doing. Even though most Jihadis strongly believe that they are practicing true Islam when making a terrorist attack, I was countering that, no, Jihadis are not “true” Muslims. Well, I can no longer have my cake and eat it too. If a Jihadi professes to be Muslim, I have to concede that they are Muslim. I must accept that the Jihadi is Muslim to fully understand the motivations behind their actions, even if it is to discuss whether or not Jihad is permitted by Islam.

The path of most resistance

Back in September, President Barack Obama called for the USA to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. Since then, there have been cries from all levels of government to not permit this immigration from Syria. Not surprisingly, those cries have increased and gotten louder since ISIS perpetrated the terrorist attack on Paris earlier this month.

I sympathize with most of the people voicing those sentiments. While some criticize the plan simply to oppose the president, most sincerely feel that their security would be threatened by Syrian refugees in the USA. They are concerned for the safety of their loved ones. The problem with this sentiment is that it’s based on faulty logic—it would not help prevent a terrorist attack in the USA.

Yes, as the name Islamic State of Iraq & Syria implies, ISIS occupies portions of Syria. And yes, ISIS uses terrorism to control Syrians and terrorize people like the French and Russian. But if an ISIS terrorist wanted to attack inside the USA, posing as a Syrian refugee would be the last method he would use to enter the USA. Just about any other way in would be more suitable for a terrorist. That’s why the odds of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack are about 1 in more than 3.6-billion, according to a Cato Institute study (PDF).

The process for a Syrian refugee to resettle in the USA is long and arduous, involving numerous federal agencies and intense background checks. It must begin in a refugee camp run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) somewhere outside of but neighboring Syria. After registering with them, not only does the UNHCR decide whether it will resettle the refugee at all, it also decides to which country it refers the refugees who get resettled. Well over 95% of Syrian refugees resettle in five Muslim countries around Syria. Only about 0.05% of the 4.3-million Syrian refugees have arrived in the USA.

For the small number of Syrian refugees the UNHCR refers to the USA, the U. S. Department of State takes over the admissions process. But they do so in the refugee camp—it will be about two years before the refugee makes it to the USA. In the meantime, they undergo the most rigorous screening of any traveler to the USA and only about half of them will be accepted. They have an adjudication interview then, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, they conduct an enhanced security screening on refugees from Syria. If the refugee passes all this, they undergo a health screening and those with a contagious disease, such as tuberculosis, do not enter the USA. A U.S.-based resettlement agency provides a “sponsorship assurance” before those that can clear all these hurdles steps foot on American soil.

It’s far faster and easier for someone to enter the USA as a tourist, a student, or a businessman—and with less scrutiny—than it is as a refugee. Any Syrian wanting to commit an act of terrorism inside the USA would follow the path of least resistance to get here, which would be just about any method other than as a refugee. A terrorist could easily get a counterfeit Syrian passport in just a few days for less than $1,000 in places like Istanbul. The only people who would take all the time and deal with all the difficulties of the refugee process to get to the USA are Syrians desperate to escape the terrorists in their homeland.

Doonesbury comic strip about Jihadis entering the USA as a refugee
Doonesbury

The right way for USA to deal with ISIS aggression

The Islamic State of Iraq & Syria, more commonly known by its acronym ISIS, has recently begun attacking western targets. It bombed a Russian passenger airliner flying over Egypt last month, killing everyone on board, then staged a multi-point attack in Paris, killing well over a hundred civilians last week. How should the USA respond now that ISIS is expanding its attacks outside the territory it currently occupies? It should end all military activity against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

That is neither a retreat nor a defeat. It’s the smart move to stop throwing good money after bad. The USA has been leading a costly aerial bombing campaign against ISIS for over a year but has not significantly impacted the situation on the ground. There’s no evidence that a continued or even a stepped-up air campaign would substantially degrade ISIS’s power but every indication that it would result in the deaths of non-ISIS residents in the region via collateral damage.

ISIS does not pose an impending threat in America, so the USA should definitely not deploy any American troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria. If we learned anything from the Vietnam War, it should be that putting small numbers of special forces on the ground in another country’s civil war is likely to escalate to a large presence. In that case, ISIS could simply blend into the community, requiring the USA to occupy the territory indefinitely to maintain security, just as occurred during the Iraq War. It’s often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

ISIS will only be defeated when people on the ground rise up against them. The people under occupation by ISIS are more likely to rise up if they believe that the USA will not get involved in the conflict. The USA should even leave the air campaign because there are already Muslim nations in the region with sufficient air strike capability to support a ground campaign. The neighboring Muslim countries should also put boots on the ground fighting ISIS.

I’m not confident that ISIS would be more effectively defeated without the USA involved but I don’t think the situation would get substantially worse, either, without the USA in the war. And there’s no indication that ISIS would be defeated if the USA were to continue its air campaign as it has been the past year. Pulling out of the war on ISIS would be neither a victory by nor a defeat of the USA but sometimes a victory is not the best alternative. A victory of the USA over ISIS is well within the capacity of the American military but it would result in substantial negative and costly consequences, including the loss of many American lives and another protracted occupation in the Middle East.

The conflict with ISIS is not the USA’s fight. The USA does not always have to be the world’s police. To be the caliph, Sunni law requires Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi (ISIS’s leader) to have ’amr, or authority. This requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce sharia. However, the first amendment of the constitution prevents the USA from qualifying as a territory of the caliphate. That’s why ISIS is attempting to establish the caliphate among Muslim population and that’s why Muslim people need to be the ones to put a stop to ISIS. If Muslims resist al Zarqawi’s authority, he would not think it would be easier to establish his authority in secular lands.

ISIS explicitly stated that the reason for bombing the airliner and attacking Paris is because Russia and France are currently bombing them in the Middle East. If the USA left the fight, ISIS would not have any more justification or motivation to attack it on American soil, thereby making Americans safer from ISIS.

Senator Dianne Feinstein on Social Security disability income

Motivated by news that the Social Security disability trust fund could run dry soon, I wrote to my federal representatives. President Obama was the first to reply to me but I recently received a reply that more directly addresses my concern from Senator Dianne Feinstein. Here is what she had to say:

Dear David:

Thank you for writing to me about Social Security benefits for people with disabilities.  Your correspondence is important to me, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

I recognize that millions of Americans with disabilities rely upon Social Security benefits to maintain their independence and live heathy, productive lives.  According to the most recent figures, 709,509 disabled workers, 12,586 spouses, and 128,447 children in California received Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) benefits in 2014, and more than 1.3 million Californians received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in 2013.  I hope that Congress will act to ensure the long-term solvency of these important programs.

The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) retirement program and DI programs are funded largely by revenue from a dedicated payroll tax collected from both employers and employees and paid into each program’s respective trust fund to earn compounding interest.  The 2015 annual report by the Social Security Board of Trustees projects that DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by late 2016.  In the absence of Congressional action, this reserve depletion would force the Social Security Administration (SSA) to implement an across-the-board reduction in payments to DI beneficiaries by an estimated 20 percent.  This would mean that the average monthly DI benefit for July 2015 would be reduced from $1,022.16 to $817.73 per month.

In the past, Congress has routinely reallocated payroll tax revenue between the OASI trust fund that supports retirees and the much smaller DI trust fund, which supports people with disabilities and their families.  Congress has reallocated payroll revenue between the trust funds a total of 11 times since 1968.  In five instances Congress transferred payroll tax revenue from the DI trust fund to the OASI trust fund.  According to a recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a reallocation of payroll tax revenue to put the two trust funds on an even footing would expedite the OASI trust fund’s projected reserve depletion by one year (from 2034 to 2033) while extending the solvency of the DI trust fund by an estimated 17 years (from 2016 to 2033).

You may be interested to know that I am an original cosponsor of the “Social Security Earned Benefits Payment Act of 2015” (S.2090), which was introduced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on September 28, 2015.  This legislation would reallocate a part of payroll taxes to the Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund to ensure full benefits are paid through the early 2030s.  S.2090 currently awaits action by the Committee on Finance, of which I am not a member.

As you may know, the SSI program provides monthly cash assistance to low-income people who are disabled, blind, or elderly with no real financial assets to help those individuals achieve a basic standard of living.  Unlike OASI and DI, the SSI program is funded by general tax revenues from the U.S. Treasury and not Social Security payroll taxes.  As such, each year Congress authorizes taxpayer funds that are used to pay eligible SSI recipients.  Many SSI recipients who have worked long enough and paid payroll taxes are also eligible to receive Social Security benefits.

Please know that I will continue working with my Senate colleagues to preserve Social Security programs for the millions of Americans with disabilities and their families who count on these vital programs.

Again, thank you for your letter.  If you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov.  Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein

I commend Senator Feinstein for co-sponsoring S.2090. Let’s hope the senate Finance Committee advances the bill to the floor.