Phil Collins Was Right

OK, so it was Genesis, not Phil Collins alone. But he/they was/were right: it is no fun being an illegal alien.

I confess to being totally in knots over the latest immigration proposals before Congress. As a matter of simple human decency, it's wrong to make felons out of both people who come to America to improve their circumstances and people who help illegal immigrants once they are here. However, if illegal immigrants are given guest worker status, they'll become a permanent economic underclass which business interests can exploit to drive down wages and benefits for citizens, undercut the power of labor unions to protect their members, and generally otherwise wreak havoc on everyone who is a worker bee and not an owner bee.

"Them what has, gets--and the rest of us gets screwed."

On the other other [yes, I meant to repeat that--Ed.] hand, I can also see the country coming apart at the seams, as more and more people come here for better money than they can earn at home, but who have no interest or stake in perpetuating the idea of "America." Is it fear of being discovered as illegal that keeps these immigrant communities so insular? Or is it lack of interest in making even a token effort to learn some American English? Or is it just plain bad manners--the scourge that seems to be afflicting every society on Earth right now?

I just do not know, and I am distressed. I do not like sitting on fences--for one thing, doing so is most uncomfortable--but I dislike the terrain on either side I'd land on if I were to come down. So, my readership, assuming you are out there, help me out. Post comments. Give me some insight, a fresh way of evaluating the situation, so that I can live with the results of getting off the fence. I'm counting on your individual and collective brilliance to show me the way.

Typical Nebraska Weather--Addendum Redux

OK, so it's March in Nebraska. We've had high temperatures in the sunny low 70s, a blizzard, and now we're in the middle of a tornado watch . . . you want 4 seasons of weather? Come to the Cornhusker State. You can get them all in the same week!

Santa's Little Helpers--NOT!

For those of you who had trouble seeing the picture I've added to my profile, here it is in a larger version. That's Linus on your left (higher) and Lucy on your right (lower). They never knocked the tree over, and they didn't break any ornaments--because I put up only non-breakable ones--but the tree was listing quite a bit by the end of the holiday season!

P.Vill.

Back in the day . . . WAY back in the day . . . on the order of a quarter-century ago . . . I spent two summers as an employee of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, Division of Travel and Tourism. I was a Nebraska Vacation Guide. [This is taking on the air of "True Confessions," isn't it?--Ed.]

My job entailed spending my days with at least one other Guide at assorted Interstate 80 rest areas. We gave out maps, directions, and other information about the scenic wonders and destinations of note for visitors to/travelers through the great state of Nebraska. Oh, I can tell you stories about some of the weird questions we were asked! But that's for another day.

One of the most heavily promoted stops (due to its creator's own efforts) was Harold Warp's Pioneer Village, out near Minden. Mr. Warp, who made his millions in plastics if memory serves (and if it doesn't, please correct me), created an homage to his own upbringing in rural Nebraska. For instance, he bought an abandoned one-room schoolhouse and moved it to the Pioneer Village site, displaying it with a plaque noting it was similar to the school he attended as a child.

Pioneer Village had some neat stuff: one of the last working steam-powered carousels in the USA is the first that leaps to mind. But it also had a lot of junk. He had collections of old cars and tractors, knickknacks and other googaws, massed together by type for the visitor to peruse at his/her leisure, with no serious regard for historical significance beyond the fact that Mr. Warp liked them. All too often, the items were rusty and dusty, displayed in a generally decrepit condition that further disguised any larger historical significance they perhaps held.

Mr. Warp also made sure the Vacation Guides had plenty of promotional handouts for tourists, delivered in box after box after box labeled "P.Vill." You can imagine what a budding iconoclast made of that unfortunate abbreviation!

A story in this week's Bellevue Leader has caused me to reassess. While Mr. Warp himself died quite some time ago, Pioneer Village lives on. I doubt that its overall impression has changed; nevertheless, the keepers of Mr. Warp's vision have made a decision that I can but admire and appreciate. By way of explanation, let me tell you a love story . . .

Bill and Rita Cornell grew up together in Indiana. Bill's father thought Rita was the perfect woman for his son . . . and eventually Bill and Rita agreed. After enduring the tribulations of separation during World War II, they married in late 1947.

After traveling the world, they settled in Bellevue in 1982. All this time, Rita had collected dolls: porcelain ones, Barbies, Cabbage Patch, and others. She bought what she liked, often from a second-hand stores. She restored them and displayed them, and they gave her great pleasure.

In 1995, Rita suffered a debilitating stroke. She became frail and lost her ability to speak. Bill couldn't bear to see her in the hospital, so he learned how to care for her and brought her home. He built shelves and shelves in her room, to display her treasured dolls. He took her for walks, pushing her wheelchair up and down the Fontenelle Hills neighborhood that was their home. [This is no mean feat, as anyone who's tried to drive in Fontenelle Hills in good weather, let alone after a snowstorm, can attest.--Ed.] And though she declined steadily over the succeeding 10 years, he cared for her tenderly until her death last September.

Even as she lost touch with things that had once mattered to her, Rita never lost interest in her dolls--or in Bill. He would show her catalogs of dolls, her eyes gleaming when she saw one she especially liked. He would take her shopping and add to her collection. He loved her and cared for her the way any real man would. [Which is unfortunately increasingly rare these days, but that's beside the point.-Ed.]

No one wanted to sell the dolls after she died; nor did Bill and Rita's children want the collection to be split up. Bill is moving into assisted living facilities himself, and cannot keep the collection with him. Neither did anyone want to see the dolls just go into storage and be forgotten.

Once the good people at Pioneer Village learned about this situation, they said they'd be delighted to take the dolls. They have promised to keep the collection intact, and to display the Rita and Bill Cornell Doll Collection in its entirety. It will debut in the coming years. It will be a concrete expression of the love Bill and Rita shared, of their joy in their love for each other until death did them part.

Bravo, people of Pioneer Village! I take back and apologize for every less-than-sterling comment I made and thought I had about your facility. I hang my head in shame while at the same time thanking you for your generosity of spirit and understanding of what truly matters in this life.

Typical Nebraska Weather--Addendum

Lord help me, but I am beginning to sound like everyone's great grandpa. In my original post today, I implied that current snowstorms are pretty wimpy compared to what Nebraska used to get, specifically back in the early to mid-1970s. But we did! It's true. I swear!

Snow was piled up 3 feet deep along streets and in parking lots well into May every year. As one of my closest friends (who shares my love of tongue-in-cheekiness) says, "We had to walk uphill 30 miles each way, every day." No such thing as a snow day for us! [The girls in those days weren't allowed to wear pants to school, either. Jeans in school, on males or females, were entirely unheard of. Nor were girls allowed to wear pants and change once they got to school. Even in the days of maxi-coats and hip-hugger boots, that was a stupid policy.--Ed.]

Seriously: we did walk to school even during the worst of the storms. Nowadays, however, a mere 2 inches of snow seems to call for Winter Storm Warnings, school and business closures, and general wailing and great gnashing of teeth.

My brain tells me this is just the pendulum swinging too far in response to what obviously was an untenable situation 30-plus years ago. My heart tells me we've become a bunch of wimps.

In any event, it provides additional, if anecdotal, evidence supporting global warming. My generation's parents' parents don't recall any winters, even during the Dust Bowl, as relatively mild as what we've experienced over the past decade and a half.

Frankly, I'd rather have the old-time big storms.

Typical Nebraska Weather

So we had two heavy (by current experience) snowstorms back-to-back in early December. Then we spent most of January reveling in the sixty-plus degree sunshine in our short sleeves. February was mercifully brief. I saw my first robins of spring on St. Patrick's Day. And now, on the first full days of spring, we are getting socked by "The Blizzard of Aught Six."

Wazzup with that?

I am not complaining. We need the moisture. And the storm seems to be much less drastic than predictions would have warranted, here in Bellevue anyway. Besides, there's something almost holy about the stillness of the air during a lull in the snow. It's a cathedral-like hush that makes me understand the human need to acknowledge a universal Greater Power.

And the small sting of the cold air on one's face is downright refreshing.

I thought of this earlier today, when I was dragging my trash out to the curb for its weekly pickup. What the heck I was doing up at 5:20 a.m. I do not know. I'm almost never awake at that time of day unless I stay up all night to get there. But something woke me today, and I am glad it did. That enveloping stillness is a wonderful [in its original sense, as in "full of wonder" or "producing wonder."--Ed.] experience.

Things are back to mundanity now. The snowplows are rattling up and down the street. The sun is shining. For all I know, the snow may be melting already. But I am still glad I got to treasure that perfect silence this morning. I'm sure, however, that I'll be taking a long nap this afternoon!

Were They Thinking?

Not "what were they thinking"--but "were they thinking" is the question of the day. Government lawyers in the penalty trial of convicted al Quaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui coached some of the FAA witnesses in clear violation of the judge's orders in the case. Worse, the potential witnesses got copies of the emails sent to the others in an implicit attempt to make sure that all the witnesses' testimony agreed, also violating the judge's orders. Still worse, it came out in court yesterday as the judge, Leonie Brinkema, questioned the potential FAA witnesses., that one of the attorneys never told the witnesses that if they were willing, they could talk to the defense attorneys . . . while that same attorney had told Judge Brinkema that the witnesses all refused to speak to the defense attorneys.

The judge made the only feasible ruling she could in the case. She forbade any of those witnesses from testifying in front of the jury. She could have disclared a mistrial--thus spending even more millions of dollars on a case already 4 years old. She could have ruled out the possibility of Moussaoui getting the death penalty--not a particularly politic move in the current emotional climate . . . though my personal belief, as previously expressed in this blog, is that life in prison without parole would be far more punishing to him than would his own death, which would make him a martyr to his "glorious cause."

[I do dearly wish the families of the victims of 9/11 could recognize that. They all seem hell-bent on Moussaoui getting the death penalty, which is exactly what he wants. Moussaoui's death would not well-serve the memories of those who died on 9/11, despite what their relatives say they think.--Ed]

As a matter of fact, however, Judge Brinkema has taken the death penalty off the table, by making it nearly impossible for the prosecution to prove the FAA could have stopped the events of 9/11 if Moussaoui had not lied. If none of the FAA witnesses can testify, none can offer testimony supporting that contention, which is the keystone to the argument for imposing the death penalty in the first place.

Maybe Judge Brinkema thinks as I do about Moussaoui's punishment. Actually, I hope not. The judge shouldn't be thinking about that at all. She should be thinking about how to get this trial to its conclusion with as little additional time and money wasted as possible. And that seems to be a reasonable interpretation of what she's doing.

I can't wait to find out how the government's lawyers screw up next. If they did what they did out of ignorance, the quality of legal education in this country has certainly plummeted. If they did what they did out of a win-at-all-costs mentality, they have no business being prosceutors. If they did what they did out of conviction that Moussaoui shouldn't get the death penalty, then even Machiavelli should tip his hat to them. It's not too many people who are willing to sabotage their own public standing in the service of a greater good (which is having Moussaoui forgotten but not gone).

At Least Someone Is Speaking Out

According to the New York Times, a new Islamic voice is challenging traditional Muslim teachings. Dr. Wafa Sultan is a Syrian-American psychiatrist who lives near Los Angeles. In late February, she gave an interview on al-Jazeera television further publicizing the views she expressed in an essay she earlier had published on the web site Annaqed.

The Times said that she "bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders whom she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 1400 years. She said the world's Muslims . . . have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence."

She compared Muslims unfavorably to Jews. In response to the Holocaust, she said, the Jews "forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. . . . The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or of civilizations. It is a clash between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

Muslim clerics have dismissed her as a heretic who has blasphemed against Islam, the prophet Muhammad and the Koran. She is receiving death threats by telephone and email.

But what she said makes a lot of sense. Now if an influential, respected-in-the-Islamic-community male Muslim would just say the same things. Maybe then we could make some progress in learning to live with one another.

Icky L'Uomo, Or Are You Kidding Me?

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "[t]hey had sex. She got pregnant. She sued for child support. Now, he's suing back, claiming that men have a constitutional right to 'avoid procreation.'"

Matthew Dubay, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, claims he had a discussion with his then-girlfriend wherein he told her he was not ready for the emotional OR financial responsibilities of parenthood. She allegedly responded that she was infertile and using birth control "just in case" anyway. Of course, she got pregnant. She did not want to give up the child. After her little girl was born, she got a court order requiring Dubay to pay $500.00 a month in child support.

He doesn't want to pay, so he is (largely at the behest of the National Center for Men, which has wanted to make this case for over 12 years) suing back, claiming that under the equal protection clause, he has a right "not to be a father." [The National Center for Men more properly should be called the National Center for Boys, as what they really want is to play without paying.--Ed.]

Arguments favor both sides. As a practical matter, once the woman IS pregnant, if the father does have a constitutional right not to be, would that mean he could compel her to have an abortion? That certainly isn't going to sit well with a lot of people. Or does it mean that he has a right not to support that which he helped create? That, too, is BAD social policy. All it does is pass the financial burden onto the rest of us while letting the man have his cake and eat it, too.

On the other hand, when couples create test-tube embryos but then decide to go their separate ways, courts have ruled that the father can stop the mother from using the embryos to get pregnant.

A simple solution to this conundrum exists, however. It comes down to the facts of the case. If the man relied on the woman's assertion that she used birth control, he accepted the risks--both the risk that she was lying and the risk that she was telling the truth but the birth control failed. In that case, he reaps what he sows, literally. He is responsible.

On the other hand, if he takes the initiative and provides additional birth control, and his partner gets pregnant anyway, he may be able to make the company providing the faulty birth control at least partly financially responsible for the results. [Not that that would ever happen in the current pro-business-profit, anti-business-responsibility environment.--Ed.]

But there's an even easier answer! All you men out there: think with your brains and not your gonads. If you are not willing to accept the consequences of your actions, DON'T DO THE DIRTY DEED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

You don't want the burdens of being a father? Then don't have sex. The ONLY 100% effective method of birth control is abstinence. So grow up, kwityerbitchin, and accept the facts. If you insist on having sex, you have to take responsibility for the consequences. You don't get to dance without paying the piper when the tune is done.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the federal government is cutting back on a USDA nutrition program for low-income families. Two years ago, the program helped 536,196 households; after June 1st of this year, the number will be cut to 477,187. That doesn't seem like a lot, but more than 50,000 households nationwide means over 1,000 per state will lose vital assistance. According to federal regulations, the vast majority of those losing aid will be the elderly, because federal regulations require the assistance go first to women and children.

One measure of a society is how it cares for its members who are least able to care for themselves. By that measure, we collectively are failing miserably. This is inexcusable. It differs only in number, not in kind, from the 19th century British passive genocide against the Irish during the potato famines. Other food was there, but the British exported it and sold it, letting the Irish starve while they made money . . . and gained even more property in Ireland as its native owners died.

The official justification was that the only people who starved were the ones too lazy and shiftless to take care of themselves. Right. And I have a bridge to sell you. Even in the face of credible eyewitness reports of people eating grass in their desperation, the British government refused to assist the Irish.

The British government's stand was utterly reprehensible. And so is our government's stand today. Dubya's projected budget for 2007 is even worse: it will eliminate the program entirely, not just the help for our seniors. We spend and spend and spend for (among other questionable things) the quagmire in Iraq--and I wouldn't even be upset about that if the money were going where it was needed, to wit: to our troops and to their equipment and protection. An awful lot of the money seems to be disappearing, however, most probably into the pockets of those committing contract fraud . . . and more scarily, perhaps even into the hands of those who will use it to do us harm.

What's worse, the money for the war in Iraq isn't even in the regular budget to begin with, so the federal government's spending crisis is even worse than the "official" figures suggest.

Part of the money being cut had paid farmers for their crops, thus putting foodstuffs directly into the hands of the needy. These cutbacks therefore will also hurt an already-reeling agricultural economy. Yet the total amount of money involved is a microscopic pittance of the multitrillion dollar deficits Dubya has run up. "But we have to cut unnecessary spending," she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

Let's face it: the poor, even the elderly poor, are invisible to this administration. When Dubya can have his scripted, audience-pre-selected "public" appearances, during which an elderly white male (well-dressed and obviously well-off) claims that the new Medicare drug "benefit" worked well for him, Dubya does not get an accurate impression of the plight of the elderly in this country. Of course, how would he know anyway? Despite his pseudo-folksy manner, he's a child of privilege. Remember, his father--20 years ago-- didn't even know about UPC scanners in grocery stores.

It shouldn't surprise me that Dubya doesn't want to see what's really going on. He certainly doesn't want us to see what he's really doing, either. He gutted the terms of the release of presidential papers; he instructed the NSA to illegally wiretap Americans; his appointees make their departments ignore the Freedom of Information Act; and the government is classifying a geometrically-increasing percentage of its documents. All this in the name of fighting a war on terror wherein he has not even directly engaged our principal antagonist.

It's beyond shameful. It's inexcusable. Nevertheless, I do not see any hope for improvement unless the Democrats can come up with candidates who can articulate a sensible, coherent vision for the future of America and at the same time not be perceived as being soft on defense.

I'll take your bids on that bridge I'm selling now.

Flash!

Herewith some updates and clarifications on the Bare Bottom Bandit story (and, yes, the pun in the title was intended).

First: he didn't catch his pants on the broken glass; he caught it on the security bars he squeezed through after he broke the glass.

Second: he didn't pull up his pants because he either knew or feared that a motion detector alarm would go off with that much activity on his part. That's also why he crawled on the floor, to stay "below the radar" as it were.

Third: the fact that the Tobacco Hut's advertising slogan for years has been "The Best Butts In Town" had absolutely nothing to do with it. Too bad.

Fourth: he was arrested Thursday, and in an interview on Friday with one of the local TV stations admitted he was drunk out of his mind at the time. He said he'd had an entire liter bottle of rum. He says he drinks like that frequently. He's 21 years old. This moves the story from the silly to the sad. The very, very sad.

Fifth: he will return the money he took. I am sure the judge will further order him to make restitution for the property damage he caused. The total for both is in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 according to the Tobacco Hut's owners.

Finally: Just don't smoke!

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime To The Sad To The Silly

I see that Omaha is getting more national attention for an odd local robbery . . . or more correctly, for the odd local robber. He recently broke into a Tobacco Hut by kicking in the glass. When he crawled through the opening he'd made, his pants must have snagged on some of the shards. Security tapes show him scuttling around the store on his knees with his pants down and his rear assets visible. [I can't help but think of an old "Designing Women" episode, wherein Annie Potts's character talks about plumbers and notes that they give the newspaper headline "America's Crack Problem" a whole new meaning.--Ed.]

He has been nicknamed The Bare-Bottom Bandit. Local TV newscasters are asking anyone who recognizes either end of the bandit to notify Omaha police.

The local NBC affiliate won't air the security tapes, saying they are not fit for broadcast TV. The local ABC affiliate, on the other hand, aired them with strategic pixel distortion. The local CBS affiliate showed the tapes with a fuzzy spot in the critical area. I was too afraid to see what the local Fox affiliate showed.

* * * * * * * * * *

I am still reeling at the news of the deaths of baseball Hall-of-Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett from a stroke and Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve, from lung cancer. Puckett was a geniuinely talented fireplug of a player and a truly nice guy. Dana Reeve had marvelous courage in the face of the crap life threw at her: her husband, paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, used his fame not just to fund spinal cord research but to speak out about the inequities of the US health care system (and she was 100% by his side as he did so); a life-long non-smoker, she contracted lung cancer and knew she was going to die; she knew she would leave behind a teen-aged son . . . and yet her spirit and optimism never wavered. She was an inspiration. Somehow I think her son will be just fine.

Billy Joel was right. Only the good die young.

* * * * * * * * * *

The jury must NOT give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty for his being an adimtted Al Quaida member and alleged co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks. (He claims he was training to fly a plane into the White House on a different day. Like that should give him brownie points.)

All his antics during his trial have been calculated to tick off the jury and get him the death penalty so that he can become a "glorious" martyr for his "cause." He has repeatedly ignored instructions from the judge, repeatedly condemned his own attorneys, and pumped his fist in apparant satisfaction when the horrors of 9/11 were recounted to the jury.

The LAST thing we need to do is make him a martyr for radical Islam. Let's give him life in prison without parole and see how he likes it as his name and deeds and intended deeds fade from the collective American consciousness. Being forgotten but not gone would serve him right.

* * * * * * * * * *

The weekly Bellevue Leader includes a column during the school year called "KIDspeak." Local elementary school students are asked a question, and nine of the best/most typical/most interesting responses are published with the students' names and pictures.

Sometimes the questions and answers are cute. For Valentine's Day, for instance, many of the kids said their mom was their favorite valentine. But this week, the question was "What makes a perfect husband or wife?"

After reading the responses, all I could think of was "it starts early, doesn't it?" The boys all thought that part of being a perfect wife was doing the cleaning and other chores and catering to the needs of the husband. One of them even said that included financially, as she was supposed to have a good job in addition to feeding him and keeping the house and laundry clean.

The girls, on the other hand, thought the perfect husband would gladly help with the chores and raising the children and generally be kind and caring. One went so far as to say that the perfect husband would also be rich and take her shopping. (No, her name was not Anna Nicole.)

I think they ALL need a reality check.

One Ringy Dingy . . .

Lily Tomlin's Ernestine must be waxing rhapsodic. AT&T has just reached terms to buy out Bell South, reuniting virtually all of the old Ma Bell under one corporate roof--and thus undoing much of the judicial decision in the 80s to break up the Bell monopoly.

I, for one, have been on record for years stating my belief that the Bell system shouldn't have been broken up in the first place. "But don't you believe in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?" you ask. Yes, I do. But I also have always believed that telephones are in fact (though not in name) a utility, not an optional household expense. Try having a medical crisis and getting help without a phone, if you doubt that a telephone is a necessity in the modern world.

Still, I am not sanguine about this merger. I realize the business climate for telephone systems is not the same as it was in the 80s (due largely to the break-up of Ma Bell to begin with) and I know that there are economies of scale that only enormous companies can attain. However, less competition is in general not a good thing. Besides, the tendency lately is for companies to use the cost savings they gain by mergers to improve their bottom line, not decrease costs to their customers.

True, that is not a bad thing from the corporation's viewpoint. The corporation's goal is to maximize return for its shareholders. That's its job. But there are larger societal implications than making the most money possible. There are not-necessarily-tangible gains to be had from running a business with "enlightened self-interest." Maybe the corporation makes a little less money in this fiscal year--but then it also stabilizes its existence and ensures a steady, long-term income stream by maximizing the number of people who hold jobs, and who thus can afford to buy what the corporation sells.

For the same reasons, I have shaken my head in disbelief at (for just two examples) both the proponents of extreme logging and the airline pilots who propose striking Delta right now. Once all the trees are gone and once Delta ceases to exist, none of them are going to have any jobs. What is wrong with giving a little to get a lot more over the long term in return?

Of course, this all goes back to the current political climate. An awful lot of people who hold powerful political positions seem to have forgotten that the genius of the American system is compromise. They all want their own ideas implemented 100% and don't seem to be willing to give an inch. On ANYthing. Which is downright unAmerican, if you ask me.

Have none of you heard of the concept of a pyrrhic victory? What's the point in winning a short-term goal if you all ultimately go down in flames?

How can you tell if a compromise is a good one, anyway? Simple: if everybody is mad, from the farthest right to the far-outest left, you've achieved a workable solution. Not necessarily the best solution, but a workable one. And that historically is what has made America function.

Our collective loss of memory about the viability of compromise threatens our system, our safety, our security, and our whole way of life far more than Al Qaida ever could. We need to relearn why America survived its first two hundred years and get back to implementing what has made America work if we are to survive another two hundred.

Baked Beans Are Off

I hope you have been watching "Monty Python's Personal Best" on PBS. It is a real joy to see humor that has stood the test of time. So far, individual episodes have focused on Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Terry Gilliam. I know many people who watched Monty Python when PBS first aired it in the 1970s and who enjoyed it just because it was silly . . . but there's much more to it than that. Monty Python aired some of the most potent social satire of the day. And while some of the political references may be dated (e.g., "Margaret Thatcher's brain"), the sketches are still funny.

Some of my personal "best of the best" sketches that have already aired include "The Lumberjack Song," "The Philosophy Department at the University of Wallamaloo," "Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge" (Eric Idle); "The Dead Parrot," "The Penguin on the Telly," "Spam" (Graham Chapman) [How can you NOT love a sketch that gave a name to a whole category of unwanted internet emails?--Ed.] ; "Confuse-A-Cat," "The Upper Class Twit of the Year" (John Cleese); and the entire hour of animation, but especially "Conrad Poohs and His Dancing Teeth" (Terry Gilliam).

One oddity: 3 of the 4 episodes aired so far have included "The Fish-Slapping Dance." Don't get me wrong: I adore "The Fish-Slapping Dance." When viewed in the context of other great confrontations, like Bugs Bunny's "The Rabbit of Seville," "The Fish-Slapping Dance" comments succinctly on the futility of arms races. But is it the best Monty Python sketch of all time? It's the only one so far to be included in its entirety in more than one episode. Maybe saying it's "the best" is a bit strong. Perhaps saying it's the "all-time favorite" of the Pythons themselves is better.

I eagerly await "Hell's Grannies," "The Killer Joke," "The Piranha Brothers," "The Spanish Inquisition," and "Election Night Special," among other gems yet to air. Heck, just thinking about them makes me giggle.

"Monty Python's Personal Best" also reminds me that: (1) "Saturday Night Live," notably in its first incarnation with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, among other shows, owes an incalculable debt to the Pythons; and (2) even the Pythons owe a debt to Ernie Kovacs.

Kovacs did it first; Kovacs did it better (just imagine what he'd have been able to accomplish had he lived long enough to use more recent technologies); Kovacs knew whereof he spoke when he said "Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done."

"Monty Python's Personal Best" may be television, but it is rare, and it is very well done indeed. If you haven't been watching, see the additional airings. You won't regret it.

The Debate Is Settled

One of the great questions of the day is whether Dubya and his minions are evil or just stupid. I haven't commented much on Dubya's administration's antics of late, because it seems as though no more can be said, but after what I heard on NPR this morning, I just had to say this:

They definitely are clueless, if not outright stupid. True evil is in general not so bumbling.

What did I hear, you ask? A recounting of Dubya's trip to India, wherein he said in his own words that India is "a great democracy where people of different religions live side by side in peace and harmony."

All I could think of was, "Oh, so that explains Kashmir."

But then again, I tolerate irony better than a lot of people.

Dubya went on to talk about how the outsourcing of US jobs to India is good for trade, thus good for us. I'd like to see him go into an American town and say that to the workers who've lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Or to those of us who have suffered through nearly incomprehensible customer service calls routed to an Indian telephone center. Between bad phone connections and too heavily-accented speech, such calls are not worth the time they take and the frustration they cause. Let's face it: Indians who speak English well and clearly are in professions, such as law or medicine. They are not slaving away at a cubicle in some sweatshop call center.

And don't even get me started on the putative UAE-company-[read "UAE," as the company is owned by the government--Ed.]-managing-the-the-US-ports deal. This is truly delicious for those of us who enjoy the taste of irony. Dubya may very well be right on this one, but he has handled it so-ham-fistedly that he's turned it into yet another strike against the competency of his administration. And for him to be complaining about people judging others based on racial/ethnic/religious stereotypes after some of the things he's said and done is entirely ludicrous.

If I weren't so afraid for my country and its future, I'd be ROFLOL.

I am quite sure that Dubya stopped paying attention to American history after he learned that Calvin Coolidge said that "the business of America is business." Someone needs to remind Dubya that just because a president said it doesn't make it right. Or true.

That same person also ought to remind Dubya that just because a president did it doesn't make it right. I do dearly wish Dubya's defenders would stop pointing to Abraham Lincoln's abuse of civil liberties in the North during the Civil War as justification for Dubya's illegal NSA wiretaps and whatnot. Lincoln is criticized to this day, and rightly so, even though he had much more justification than Dubya could ever muster for his excesses in the name of the "War on 'Terra.'" [Thank you, Molly Ivins. Not only did you capture the essence of the accent, you made a multilingual pun that accurately describes what Dubya and his gang are really doing.--Ed.] After all, Lincoln's governmental capital was located in essentially hostile territory. Not to mention all the other differences others have rightly elucidated.

But Dubya's belief seems to be that all is OK if pursued in the name of Free Trade. Thus his continued insistance on tax cuts for the rich in the face of truly ridiculous budget deficits--run up by him and his minions, to boot. All I can say is that anyone who clears less than $75,000 a year who buys into that is delusional. Don't kid yourselves, folks. The economic class divide in the USA is real, and widening. And if we get more and more "concealed carry" gun laws passed, the economic war may turn into a shooting one . . . on ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves.

That most definitively is NOT what Lincoln was thinking about when he wrote the Gettysburg Address.

Bragging Rights

I see that the University of Nebraska College of Law is trying to get a special program in space law set up/endowed. More power to it--but I must note that back in the Dark Ages (1978, that is), in an undergraduate International Law course, I wrote a term paper on aspects of space law.

Yes, I got an "A," even though everyone in the class, the instructor included, thought I was nuts.

'It's not easy to be a visionary," she said, tongue imbedded firmly in cheek!