• The urge to purge

    My area of relative academic expertise is psychology. I say “relative” because I haven’t put this expertise to actual use since I graduated from UF. I didn’t go on to earn any advanced degrees, and it seems like it’s been a really, really long freaking time since I graduated.

    Living through my own psychological thriller (of sorts) has given me cause to look back on my psych classes and see them for what they were: a collosal waste of money. Notice I didn’t say my “education” was a waste; it was anything but. I learned so much about life, other cultures, and the world in school that its staggering vaule is impossible to calculate.

    This morning I wasn’t feeling terribly well so I stayed home. At some point while I was sitting in my family room, my eyes wandered over to one of our many bookselves, and I caught sight of one of my old psychology text books. I thought of my mother, sitting in a hospital that I’ve been afraid to visit (lest my surpressed immune system betray me again), and I got angry.

    I scowered the house. I left no shelf undisturbed, no cabinet unopened. I gathered up my books on personality, social psychology, behaviorism, Meyers, Skinner, abnormal pyschology, counseling. I almost tore up my book on the psychology of aging and gerontology. And while I was at it I grabbed my sociology books too. I stacked them all up by our garage door… the one that’s closest to our garbage cans outside… and I gave them a cathartic toss… one at a time. I put them right where they belong: with Adam’s dirty diapers and the rest of yesterday’s trash.

    Tomorrow I may wish I hadn’t, but today I feel a little better.

  • We’ll see you in September Iraqi leader tells Bush: Get Gen Petraeus out – Telegraph

    Iraqi leader tells Bush: Get Gen Petraeus out – Telegraph:

    “Relations between the top United States general in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, the country’s prime minister, are so bad that the Iraqi leader made a direct appeal for his removal to President George W Bush.Although the call was rejected, aides to both men admit that Mr Maliki and Gen David Petraeus engage in frequent stand-up shouting matches, differing particularly over the US general’s moves to arm Sunni tribesmen to fight al-Qa’eda.”

    Over and over and over and over… we’ve heard George (president of the occupation optimists club) Bush tell us politicians weren’t going to make military decisions in Iraq, the generals were. It seems al-Maliki didn’t get the memo.

    When the much bally-hooed September briefing premeires in Congress later this summer, no one better be telling me our working relationship with Iraqi leadership is peaches and cream.

  • Rebranding liberalism

    Talking Points Memo | A ‘progressive’ resurgence?:

    “… Rasmussen Reports had an interesting survey this week, which showed that when ‘liberal’ is replaced with ‘progressive,’ the broader dynamic changes significantly. According to the poll, 35% consider ‘progressive’ a positive description of a candidate, whereas 32% consider ‘conservative’ a positive label…. It stands to reason, then, that conservatives, after having tarnished “liberal,” are going to have to take on the newer, more popular, label for the left.”