Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
I've been saying almost all season that the Tampa Bay Rays have that "Team of Destiny" aura about them. Well, the rains in Philadelphia must have washed it away, because last night the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series four games to one. They beat the Rays 4-3 in a game suspended Monday night at 2-2 in the middle of the 6th inning.
I must admit I am not surprised the Rays lost, but only because the team's performance in the World Series did not reflect how they played for most of the regular season. Seems like they started every game (except the one they won) in the hole. I know they had a lot of come-from-behind victories throughout the year, but who could keep up that pace throughout the playoffs, realistically?
What surprises me most about this, however, is that I was kind of rooting for the Rays to win. And I usually have no use at all for AL teams. What was I thinking?
Then again, I rooted for the Cubs and they got swept in the first round. I rooted for the Dodgers and the Phillies kicked their collective butt. If you see a trend here, you are not alone. Maybe I should start a new career. I could go to Las Vegas and be paid by the house to stand next to people on hot streaks, just to cool them off. The official word is that such "coolers" don't exist, but I don't buy it. The house is going to take advantage of every single advantage it can get. After all, if the house doesn't win much more than it loses, it's not going to stay in business for long, is it?
As I get older [even if not wiser--Ed.], I find that I tolerate willful stupidity less and less. Disagree with me all you want--that's fine. Just have GOOD reasons for doing so. Don't just parrot mindless crap that is idiotic on its face. There's no room for discussion or finding genuine solutions to our problems in that approach.
For example, don't say you support the GOP because its members appoint judges who will "apply" the law, not "create" law (unlike those nasty Democrats). News flash: if all that judges did was apply law, we'd have no need for them. The entire judicial branch of government would serve no purpose and thus would not exist. The fact is, all judges interpret the law. It's what the judicial branch was designed to do. The ONLY time such interpretation becomes impermissible "judicial activism" is when you disagree with the judges' conclusion in a particular case. Say you support the GOP's judicial nominees because you like their brand of "activism," but don't pretend that they aren't activist. They are.
And don't say that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow "un-American." No one party has a monopoly on all the good people or ideas. Demonizing those who disagree with you is not a valid argument. It's a cheap shot, and a lie to boot. It is easier than trying to come up with facts and figures that support your position on any given issue, but this stuff isn't supposed to be easy. The Founders wanted us to use our brains and to make rational decisions about the issues of the day. That's why the Constitution set up our system the way it did.
Don't say that all Democrats want to do is take YOUR money and give it to people who don't deserve it. That is untrue on its face. No one likes taxes, but rational people understand that taxes are a necessary evil if we are to live in a civilized society. Government exists to do the things we cannot do for ourselves, like national defense, building and maintaining infrastructure, and yes, even certain social programs--because without them, the costs to everyone in society would be higher than they are with those programs. Think of it as preventive medicine. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes [no liberal, he--Ed.] so cogently noted, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
Besides, the entire "redistribution of wealth" argument is specious on its face. Under the past eight years of the Dubya administration, we've seen the greatest redistribution of wealth from those who can least afford it TO those who least need it that has ever occurred in all of recorded history. The rich got much richer; the rest of us got screwed. The Democrats just want to return us to some sort of fiscal sanity. Besides, we need to pay down the record-shattering deficits that the Dubya administration has stuck us with. Even John McCain said that we can't keep putting off paying the bills till some future generation. The longer we wait, the more painful it's going to be. For the sake of our progeny and our country, we have to start paying down the deficit now. And if we ask a bit more from those who have the most, so what? They've received greater benefits than the rest of us; fairness dictates that they pay their fair share of the costs.
Remember: government is necessary. When you put people in charge of running the government who do not believe in government, you get lousy government. Hence the FEMA debacle in "responding" to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, amongst other ineptitudes. It's almost as if the Dubya administration deliberately screwed up as many things as possible to make us all give up on government--to force us back into a 19th century, pre-Civil War size federal government. Unfortunately, it's not the 19th century. It's the 21st century. The world has changed, drastically. Going backwards is impossible. You don't like it? Move somewhere else. That's what you tell people who disagree with you to do, isn't it?
Yes, the last three sentences violated my "make a rational argument" ground rule. But how better to get the point across that not making rational arguments serves no good purpose? My argument preceding those last three sentences was rational, which leads to the next lesson (and which is a riff on the "no one party holds a monopoly on all the good people or ideas"): don't reject something 100% when it's not 100% bad. One example: I know people who have decided that FactCheck.org is totally useless because they disagreed with one posting about one issue. That's a massive over-reaction. FactCheck.org is a non-profit, non-affiliated web site, and it trashes all lies from every side that it is asked to check. It is not a partisan site. So people who reject it out of hand are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion based on their own proclivities and prejudices. They are not addressing the subject rationally.
Riff #2: no matter how much you want to, you are not going to shoehorn the world into looking like something of which you approve. The world is what it is. Most of it couldn't give a rat's ass about what Americans want it to do or how Americans want it to behave. We cannot bully anybody. We can, by restoring America's moral authority, become a voice of reason and persuasion in the world. When we lead by example, the world (by and large) will follow. When we try to bully the world into doing as we say, especially when it's not as we ourselves do, we get precisely nowhere. The past eight years provide ample examples of the folly of trying to bully the world--or worse yet, of interpreting the world through the lenses of our own prejudices. Remember: the only people who were surprised that the Iraqis didn't 100% welcome us as liberators were the members of the Dubya administration and its "true believers" among the vox populi.
And stop calling people who disagree with you about abortion "baby killers." Despite what you would like to think, NO ONE likes abortion. But facts are facts. Abortion existed when it was illegal. Make it illegal again, it will still exist. Rich women will still be able to afford to go where they can have them done safely. But those without such material resources will be forced back into the filth of the back alleys, where the dangers are much higher. The social costs are enormous, and are not just fiscal. As Prohibition proved, you can't legislate morality. Outlawing abortion won't make abortion go away; it will just cause the most damage to those parts of society who can afford it and survive it the least. Far better to make abortion "safe, legal, and RARE." Oh, but that would also require comprehensive contraception education, and you don't want that, either, do you?
The world is often cruel that way. We don't get to choose exactly what we want. We must pick from an imperfect list of incomplete options. Please do not try to twist Sarah Palin's teen-aged daughter's pregnancy into support for your position. Yes, her family and the baby's father are doing the right thing--but they can afford to. The lesson is not that the girl should carry the pregnancy to term in any event. The lesson is that the pregnancy should not have happened. Unlike the "just say "No!" anti-drugs campaign, telling teens to just say "No!" to sex isn't going to work. No one has a biological imperative to do drugs; sex, on the other hand, is an almost overwhelming biological urge as youth mature into child-bearing physical (if not mental) maturity. Therefore, if saying "No!" doesn't work and abortions are unacceptable, contraception education becomes the only available choice. Outlawing abortion is not going to change anything for the better, not in the real world.
Besides, the GOP had innumerable chances to pass legislation overturning Roe v. Wade during the first six years of the Dubya administration, when it controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Note that the GOP did precisely NOTHING. The GOP doesn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade; it wants to keep it to use as a wedge issue to peel off certain Democrats from their own natural party affiliation--many conservative Catholics, for example, who otherwise would stand with Democrats on issues such as civil rights and social justice, have voted Republican in the past 30 years because of the abortion issue. Thank goodness, if the report I heard on NPR this morning is true, that they are finally learning that abortion alone is not the basis of a conscientious vote.
If you make a rational argument in support of your stand on an issue, I'll respect it, and listen to it, and I will consider it. I may even change my mind based on what you tell me. But give me the courtesy of the same care and attention to what I say in support of my stand on any particular issue. THAT's what our system is all about, and that's why the American Constitution is unique in the history of the world. Don't dumb down. Smarten up!
Then again, as the late, great, lamented Jeff MacNelly once noted, "If you're going to put up with freedom of speech, you have to put up with a lot of dumbness of speech." He was a wiser man with a cooler head than mine.
Yesterday, I saw John McCain confidently assert that he's "going to win this thing," meaning the up-coming election, now less than a week away. His confidence (in the face of multiple polling results that show him hopelessly behind Barack Obama) seems utterly misplaced--unless the fix is in, and he knows it.
I for one will be very, very relieved when this campaign is over. I am appalled by the amount of slime, smears, and race-baiting coming from the GOP's general direction--all things McCain could stop by taking firm charge of his party and its behavior. But he has the fighter jock mentality. Anything is OK if it helps him win.
I mourn for his dead integrity. I mourn for his lost historical reputation. If we could stop his history back in 2000, he'd get high marks from future historians of all political stripes for his having taken principled stands on contentious issues. He himself was the victim of race-baiting back in 2000. A truly scurrilous robocall claimed he had a black child out of wedlock. The facts? The child was an adoptee, the beneficiary of a truly noble effort on McCain's and his wife's part.
But the slimy robocall worked, and McCain did not get the GOP nomination in 2000. The lesson he apparently took from that result is that winning is the only thing that matters. He is now using the very same company that made the slimy robocalls against him in 2000 to make slimy robocalls against Obama in 2008.
Perhaps he has convinced himself that he can resume his principled stands once he wins office and has some power to do something about what he sees as the nation's problems. But even a grade-schooler can tell him that "if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." He's fooling only himself if he thinks he can win the election and take office free of the mud stains he's inflicted on himself during the campaign. Once again, his judgment is called into question.
As for the GOP, most of the rabid right-wing, which is in fact the whole party at this point, has no love for McCain, but knows if he wins, the GOP keeps power. That's the party's only concern: keeping power. In my more paranoid moments, I even fear that if the GOP loses despite all its voter suppression efforts and vote fraud machinations and court challenges, its leaders simply won't let go and leave. One of the hallmarks of our system is the peaceful transition of power after elections, but I wouldn't put it past this crowd to throw that in the toilet, too--along with all the other civil liberties the Dubya administration has trashed in the name of its version of "America." Remember, this crowd is the group that thinks "real America" is only that part of the United States which agrees with them and walks in lock-step with them. The rest of us, as several GOP members recently have revealed in well-publicized gaffs, are somehow NOT "real Americans," and in fact are "anti-Americans." But wasn't Joe McCarthy totally discredited in the 1950s?
Here's another news flash: the GOP does NOT have a monopoly on patriotism! Seriously. I love my country just as much (if not more) than anyone in the right-wing crowd). Indeed, I love my country more because I understand that compromising what America truly is, even for the sake of "national security," is no different from lying down with dogs. You do get up with fleas.
It's going to be hard enough to endure the flea-dips we'll need if Obama wins and if the transition of power does go the way it's supposed to under our Constitution. But four more years of flea bites would be infinitely worse.
As Weird Al celebrates the 20th anniversary of his 29th birthday, let us all contemplate his unique talents.
OK, that didn't take long, did it?
But seriously: writing parodies of popular songs, parodies which themselves skewer popular culture, is not nearly as easy as it seems. I know whereof I speak. I have the itch to write such parodies, too, and I have to admit that I don't do it nearly as well as does Mr. Yankovic.
Nevertheless, I am offering my latest, in appreciation for a kindred spirit, as my tribute to Al's birthday [I cannot believe I am 2-years-plus older than he is.--Ed.]. Have a happy one, Mister White and Nerdy!
It's The Most Horrible Time Of The Year (to be sung to the tune of the Christmas carol "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year," written in 1963 by Eddie Pola and George Wyle)
It's the most horrible time of the year With the endless campaigning And no one explaining How the heck we got here It's the most horrible time of the year
There'll be speeches for hearing And opponents for smearing and Ads cutting into your favorite shows, There'll be mud-slinging stories and Tales of gory lies spread in campaigns of Long, long ago
It's the most horrible time of the year
The incessant door-belling and Robocalls are compelling me To drink more beer . . .
With the lies and mud-slinging Politicians are bringing Us unending fear . . .
It's the most abhorrent time, It's the most disgusting time, It's the most horrible time of the year!
[copyright 2008, Eclectic Iconoclast all rights reserved]
You wouldn't go to a five-star restaurant and expect to walk out after dining without paying, would you?
You wouldn't go to the grocery store and load up your cart and wheel it out the door without paying, would you?
You wouldn't go to your favorite department store, select the clothes and housewares and electronics of your choice and take them to your car without paying, would you?
So why do Sarah Palin and people like her say that it's OK to live in America, taking advantage of all the benefits of being an American, but that paying taxes is "unpatriotic"?
Because they are greedy, that's why.
There's no other explanation [rational or otherwise--Ed.] for their willingness to take advantage of all the benefits of living in American society without contributing their fair share to maintaining that same society.
Remember, in the US Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of the federal income tax, no lesser a light than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
Yes, there are loopholes in the tax structure--most of which allow the very rich to privatize their profits while socializing their risks. That doesn't mean that those who take advantage of the loopholes are less than greedy. After all, most of the loopholes were put into the system at the behest of their lobbyists in the first place. So they get to keep all their profits and they get to take advantage of everything the government does for all of us (including but not limited to things like providing national defense, certifying the safety of the foods we eat, the drugs we take, and the places we work, and maintaining infrastructure), but they don't have to pay their share of the costs of doing these things?
What's wrong with this picture?
Anybody out there ever heard of noblesse oblige? Just in case you haven't, it's a concept not unlike the philosophy given to Spiderman: those to whom much is given are also given great responsibility.
We cannot go on spending billions more than we have while exempting that those who can best afford to help cover the costs from any responsibility to help do the same. That's economic class stratification. It's saying that those with the most money have the least responsibility. It's saying that those with the most money are better than the rest of us. That's what's un-American, not the calls for fiscal responsibility and for everyone to pay his/her fair share of the burden.
[Then again, they probably are hoping that if they spend the government into the ground, the govenrment will stop spending entirely . . . after all, they can afford to pick up the slack. But what about the rest of us, the ones who are actually in the trenches, the ones who fight the wars and do the jobs and who spend what money they have on the goods and services that give the very rich their obscene profit margins? They couldn't care less. This is the twisted end of "rugged individualism," and it ultimately means the end of America. Like it or not, there are times when we all have to put our individual wants on hold for the sake of the nation--just not to the point that the end game is the economic destruction of that very nation.--Ed.]
And they say liberals are the ones whose agenda is to exercise rights without responsibilities!
Yesterday, the Nebraska Cornhuskers managed to hold down the highest-scoring average offense in the nation during a 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini's Huskers have finally arrived.
After the Huskers got their collective clocks cleaned by Missouri last week, I was of a mind that it was going to take Pelini and his staff at least 2 more years to undo the damage to the program that former Athletic Director Steve Pederson and former Head Coach Bill Callahan had done. After yesterday, however, I have changed my mind. This team, as one of the TV announcers noted, "grew up before our eyes today." Husker football is back!
Now, the won-loss record still may not reflect that for another year or so (got to get the best possible personnel in all the key on-field positions), but this was a true Husker team. Texas Tech was in serious danger of losing its homecoming game, and everyone in Lubbock knew it.
I have not always been a fan of Husker football. For one thing, my dad's Air Force career meant that I'd lived in every other state comprising the (then) Big Eight long before he got stationed in Nebraska. So there was some question of prior loyalties. Furthermore, I never cared much for the fact that under legendary head coach Bob Devaney (and to a somewhat lesser extent, coach Tom Osborne), football players who committed criminal acts were protected from the consequences of those acts for the sake of the team--and winning. But Nebraska IS my alma mater, and Nebraska's academic scholarships awarded to me are what allowed me to afford getting a college education in the first place, so . . . it's kind of nice to see positive reporting related to my school in the national news for a change.
I realize that the mass media are under considerable time and space constraints, and that they feel obliged to report the news as succinctly as possible . . . but I don't think that excuses the media from misreporting facts for the sake of communicating quickly.
Case in point: Troopergate. The Alaskan legislative panel's report about Gov. Sarah Palin's involvement in the firing of her erstwhile brother-in-law did NOT say that her firing of his boss (the Alaskan Public Service Commissioner) violated state law, even though every recap of the story I saw, heard, and read claimed that was the report's conclusion. What the report said was that the pressure Palin and her husband and her staff put on the Commissioner violated state ethics laws. The firing was perfectly within her power as chief executive of the state.
The reason this locks my jaws is that it provides those who want to whitewash or otherwise downplay what Palin did both a scapegoat and a diversion. Blame the "liberal" media! They are reporting it wrong because they have a political agenda! So the argument will be about the press coverage, the political make-up of the legislative panel (something on the order of 10-4 Republican, but the panel's head was a Democrat who made intemperate comments to the media before the report was released, thus adding more ammo to the GOP attack), whether Palin really did improperly fire the Public Service Commissioner . . . anything except what the real issue is--which is her ethics.
Alaska law makes it plain that no one is to use his/her office for either financial gain or personal advantage. There is no doubt that Palin's pressure on the Public Service Commissioner violated that ethics law. "I'm your boss and I want this guy fired because he's my sister's ex and is fighting with her over their kids' custody." That's the quintessential illustration of using one's office for personal gain. [Do we really want someone with such non-existent ethical standards sitting one heartbeat away from the Presidency? I say not. Our system runs on our mutual faith and trust in the idea that everyone buys into the system, that the system is greater than the powers of any individual person, and that the people we select to run it will do so properly. Hence Dubya's increasingly record-breakingly negative polling numbers, among other things.--Ed.]
But the ethics issue is going to get lost in the shuffle and the noise of all the imprecise news summaries and arguments about that instead of taking the center of the stage the way it ought to be doing.
So, thanks for nothing, "liberal" media! You're not supposed to be part of the story--you're supposed to be reporting the story--but you sure screwed it up in this case.
Late yesterday afternoon, long after he'd have had time to make a change if he really wanted to do so, Sen. John McCain was still running his TV ad suggesting that Barack Obama consorts with terrorists because of his connection to former Weather Underground member William Ayers.
Oh, puh-lease! The "connection" was really a one-time interaction. They were both members on a community advisory board founded and funded by William Annenberg, former ambassador and friend of Ronald Reagan--more than 30 years AFTER Ayers had been involved with the Weather Underground. Obama knew Ayers as an educator; Obama was only 8 years old at the time Ayers was involved with the Weather Underground; Obama inferred, once he learned of Ayers' history--AFTER having served with Ayers on the advisory board--that Ayers had been rehabilitated, or else none of the Republicans connected to the board would have had anything to do with Ayers.
So McCain is still talking out of both sides of his mouth, and I hereby take back every nice thing I said about his finally standing up on Friday to the more extreme fanatics attending his campaign events. McCain is so desperate to attain the presidency that he will say or do anything that he thinks will help him reach his goals. The man has squandered his integrity for the sake of his ambition. That kind of "leadership" America doesn't need!
Does John McCain realize that his own excessively misleading rhetoric is at least partly to blame for the frightening ideas his campaign-appearance crowds seem to have embraced? If he does, his chastising those crowds (to boos, no less) yesterday was not only too little, too late, but hypocritical. So much for the integrity we ought to expect in our leaders. If he does not realize it, he lacks the clear perception and judgment to be president. Either way, he has no business becoming the so-called leader of the free world.
He has boxed himself quite neatly into a no win situation--in his attempts to curry favor with the rabid right wing of the GOP, he's unleashed the truly wild-eyed fringe elements. Even so, he has not succeeded in placating the rabid right wing, talk-radio crowd of his own party.
Worse, he's now damaged what little credibility he might have gained with them by telling them yesterday to rein it in and be respectful, and that not only is Barack Obama no Arab, he IS a good and decent family man, someone who we need not fear occupying the Oval Office.
And he's lost whatever good will might have remained among the more center-to-left voters who'd at least have tolerated his election and tried to work with him should he in fact win the presidency.
I really do welcome his decency in trying to tamp down the more excessive untruths his crowds have embraced--that's the John McCain I remember from 2000. That's the man I could accept in the Oval Office should Obama lose, except for Sarah Palin's then being only one heartbeat away from the presidency. She is not only not ready, she lacks the temperament to get ready. She's another one of those "don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind" people. They are dangerous, as the incomprehensibly stupid "leadership" we've had for the last 8 years has demonstrated. [It's the only thing at which they've excelled.--Ed.] The real world has absolutely NO interest in conforming to our expectations. The sooner the people we have in our highest offices realize that, the sooner we can rehabilitate our standing as the leader of the world community.
The problem is this: McCain's behavior during this entire campaign has been so erratic and self-contradictory that there are no guarantees that the decent McCain would be the one in charge, should he win the election. I, for one, cannot live with that uncertainty.
I think the vast majority of Americans who take the time to think about things would overwhelmingly vote for Obama . . . except for the "race thing." I heard one of Obama's advisers on NPR earlier this week claiming there was no racial issue or problem at all affecting the campaign, but let's get real. What else could he say? At this point in the campaign, the goal is to persuade the undecided not just to vote, but to vote for "your guy." The minute anyone connected to Obama suggests that race might play an issue in people NOT supporting Obama, all the people who have been hurt enough by the economic meltdown to consider voting for Obama, but who hesitate because of their own racially-related preconceptions, will abandon the idea of voting for Obama. Why? Because even hinting that race is an issue or a problem is tantamount, in those people's minds, to calling them racists. Even if they are, they're going to resent it to the point that no matter how bad the economy gets, Obama will have lost their votes.
This is not unlike those who have already been hurt badly (and for years) by GOP economic policies, but who will never vote for Democrats because those voters are "pro-life," unlike those nasty, baby-killing liberals. They vote against their own best interests because they nobly, although naively, think other issues matter more. The one thing they've not grasped is that for the first 6 years of the Dubya administration, the GOP could have legislated Roe v. Wade out of existence if it had wanted to do so. Doing that, however, would cost the GOP a wedge issue that has proved to be magic in getting them into and thus keeping power. That's what the GOP cares about, not the rights of the unborn. Or else Roe v. Wade would already be legislated out of existence.
One of the worst failures of our educational system is that all too often, it does not teach students HOW to think. No school should be responsible for teaching students WHAT to think--that's the job of parents and churches. Knowing HOW to think, however, is essential to survival in the real world, and that is an ideal task for educators. Alas for us, it's virtually impossible to do that while being overwhelmed by wildfires such as coping with students who come to class not ready to learn.
It's not just our physical infrastructure that's falling apart. Our educational system is coming apart at the seams, our health care system is broken, and a stable (financially and emotionally) middle class, the bulwark of every successful society in history, is being squeezed out of existence. America, as I know, love, and understand her, is disappearing before our eyes. Something has to give . . . and for the sake of both America and the world, I hope that what retreats is all the old and untrue racially-based canards that have infected our country for centuries. We need to vote for hope, not for fear, if we are to reclaim America's position as the real moral authority and voice of freedom for the whole world.
A movie review in Saturday's Omaha World-Herald included a truly astute observation. In the context of reviewing two satires, An American Carol (pro-right-wing) and Religulous (pro-far-left-wing), the reviewer suggested that our worst enemy comprises those people who have no sense of humor.
I think he's right.
I recently forwarded an email I'd received to several friends, of all political stripes. The email asked for clarification about things such as why someone born in Hawaii is "exotic and strange" while someone from Alaska is just a "normal American," and why someone named "Barack" is weird but someone who named one of her children "Twig" is just folksy. And on and on in that vein.
Everybody to whom I sent it thought it was both hilarious and thought-provoking . . . whether they fancy themselves to be left- OR right-wing . . . with one sad, lonely exception. One person asked me to remove her from my mailing list. Which I did, immediately. I don't want to waste my time and energy on someone who has no sense of humor. People like that can suck the life right out of a body. Lord knows, I have enough trouble staying alive without being subjected to that.
Some of my more creative right-wing friends even tried (a bit tongue-in-cheek) to clarify my confusion for me, which I greatly appreciated. I don't agree with them, but I appreciate their efforts. They knew I meant no offense, and took it in the spirit it was offered. And we all got some laughs out of it.
And that's what is great about Americans. We can agree to disagree and still have some fun with each other's political beliefs. But people who are willfully humorless and who take offense at facts expressed in a humorous way (even if it is done to make a point they don't want to hear) need professional help.
Please note two things: (1) my sense of humor is as broad as anyone's (and broader than most); (2) things that pander to racial stereotypes are NOT funny. The "Aunt Obama" pancake mix some GOP idiots were selling at a GOP-related event in August, for example, was NOT funny. It WAS appalling and shameful.
I was certainly ashamed of the perpetrators' claims to be good Americans and to be clueless as to why what they did was offensive. How could they not know? When the subject came up on The View, the entire audience gasped in shock and revulsion upon seeing the box with Obama in a Mammy-style bandanna on the front and in an Arabic headdress on the back. The idiots who created the thing knew exactly what they were doing, and thought they could hide behind pretend "ignorance" to deflect criticism. That was likely their fallback position. They most probably never expected anyone to betray them by revealing their racist crap to that part of the world (i.e., the vast majority of the rest of us) that would shame them for expressing it.
And yes, distinctions can be drawn. If you, for example, wonder why I'm not complaining about Keith Olbermann's "Auntie Sarah's Moose Stew," here's why I'm not: Sarah Palin herself says she cooks and eats moose stew; the picture of Palin on the wrapper is an accurate, even flattering picture, showing her megawatt smile. [I've been on record for years of loving megawatt smiles.--Ed.] I would have been offended and would be complaining about it if she'd been shown with filthy, tangled hair, broken glasses, and blacked out/missing teeth. Demeaning stereotypes of every and any kind are not funny. Period.
Humorless people have another strike against them: they're the ones who foisted "political correctness" onto the rest of us. So you see, humorless people exist on the left as well as the right. Respecting people's preferences (as much as possible) is not wrong--but lecturing others on what is and is not acceptable, when the ones doing the lecturing are NOT in the group being referred to, is arrogant.
Thus humorless people of all stripes are the ones who pose the real threat to America. Their ultimate goal is to make the rest of us conform to their notions of propriety. They suck all the oxygen out of the air. That's anti-American. What is American is to show a little tolerance, to take a live-and-let-live approach to the world, and to give everyone a little breathing--and laughing--room.
If the other shoe drops on your head while you're alone in the forest so that no one can hear you scream, are you still in agony? Oh, yeah.
I cannot believe the Dodgers swept the Cubs in the NLDS. The only explanation I have for it is that despite everything Lou Pinella did to keep the Cubs from feeling the weight of 100 years of Cubs fans' expectations, the Cubs carried that load. There's on other rational reason that Gold Glove-caliber infielders made 4 total errors in Game 2. There's no other rational reason that one of the best power hitting line-ups in the major leagues scored a measly 6 runs in 3 games. There's no other rational reason the pitching staff on the winningest team in the National League this year gave up 20 runs in 3 games.
Either that, or Manny Ramirez is Samson in reverse--the more he trimmed his hair after he got traded to Los Angeles, the more the Dodgers won.
I'd be crying in my beer if I had any.
Somewhere the sun is shining; somewhere children play and shout, But there is no joy in Wrigleyville--the Cubbies have struck out. Again.
I just finished trying to vote (in all the online polls open to nationwide participation) for who won last night's Vice Presidential candidates' debate. I had no trouble casting my vote at MSNBC.com, AOL.com, the WallStreetJournal.com, nor even the Guardian.com poll. I even managed to get my vote recorded at the Drudge Report poll--which is so out-of-touch with reality that it's showing Palin a 72% to 18% winner. Even the other right wing polls are showing at best a statistical tie. The independent polls (and yes, the more liberal-leaning ones, too) are showing Biden with a solid lead.
I met with one glaring exception, however. When I tried to cast my vote at the Fox News poll, I got an error message saying there was a problem "taking my information." So I went to the "internet options" section of my toolbar, erased my temporary internet files, my history of web sites visited, logged off the internet, restarted my computer, logged on again, and tried to vote at Fox News again. Same result. I repeated these procedures several more times. No difference in result. [I never tried voting for Palin because I did not want to be suckered into casting a vote I did not intend to cast.--Ed.]
Fox "News" is the only online poll, out of all the ones I tried, no matter where they can be said to be located along the American political spectrum, that would not let me cast my vote.
If anyone who tried to vote at the Fox News poll for Palin had the same problem, I will gladly eat my words. For now, however, I am quite sure that the only reason there was a problem "taking my information" was because my "information" was a vote for Joe Biden--who clearly had a more comfortable and in-depth knowledge of the debate issues raised than did Gov. Palin. Watching her while he was speaking was informative: she didn't listen to him; she pored over her notes . . . and then responded with canned platitudes along the lines of what she was scripted to say instead of engaging in honest debate.
But spinning is the only weapon someone who has no real ideas has. Lord knows, she's learned that quickly at her running mate's behest. On Wednesday, John McCain claimed to be totally unaware of any GOP unease at Palin's candidacy . . . and said if anyone in the GOP was opposed to her, it was only cocktail-swigging people at parties in Georgetown. [I saw the interview tapes, with the editors of the Des Moines Register, myself. I am not putting what he said in quotation marks because I don't remember the quote exactly.--Ed] So much for the people at the National Review--only about the most intellectually credible of the right wing magazines--and the only and obvious object of McCain's oblique slur. Yet McCain still insists he is being 100% truthful and upright in his campaign, that he has nothing to be ashamed of, and that he has no need to regain anyone's trust because he's never done anything to lose it.
I'd like to have some of the happy pills he's taking. Having an unrealistic view of the world is apparently much more pleasant than having a genuine one.
The government is--for once--implementing sensible rules. Medicare has announced that it will no longer pay for a list of 10 "reasonably preventable" conditions that happen to patients who are injured by medical mistakes during their in-patient care. The list includes such errors as giving incompatible blood transfusions, second surgeries to retrieve sponges left behind by the first, serious bed sores, and infections caused by improperly placed urinary catheters. Every one of these errors can be prevented by taking an extra few seconds to double-check whatever is being done at the time it's being done. [One wonders why paying for these things was ever allowed at all.--Ed.]
Nor will the hospitals be allowed to bill patients for the costs of treating those errors. Why should a patient have to pay beyond the obvious pain and suffering caused by such errors in the first place?
It's an excellent idea. Not only will this save taxpayer money (and patient pain), it gives hospitals added incentive to make fewer mistakes. It's less expensive to implement a few additional double-checks than it is to eat the costs of actually making the mistakes. Lower costs and improved patient care. What's not to like?
I have two quibbles. First, as the New York Times report noted, hospitals will not be allowed to bill patients "directly" for the costs generated by their medical errors. They thus have the option of raising the money "indirectly." Hospitals will be able to increase their prices for everything to cover the estimated added costs of their errors. As long as it's a very small, truly across-the-board increase, however, I cannot take too much exception to that. After all, that's just putting the concept of insurance into action--by spreading the costs throughout as large a coverage pool as possible, every individual's actual expenses are held as low as possible. We all make mistakes. As long as we do everything we can to minimize them, it's not wrong to allow for the few that inevitably will still occur.
Second, the government is doing things that make sense. Can "The End" be far off when that starts happening?
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am not, never have been, and never will be a morning person. If left to my own devices, my body would prefer to sleep until the mid-to-late afternoon, crank all night, and go to sleep in the wee hours (usually around 5 a.m.). Where I am in the world makes no difference. I've lived in Europe; I've lived in Southeast Asia; I've lived in all 4 times zones in the continental USA. In each and every place, I am a night owl when left to my own devices.
However, I have taught my body to adapt to the "normal," "9 to 5" world, if for no other reason than to function within it. Even so, there are some adjustments my body simply will not make--the most irritating of which is the adjustment to Daylight Savings Time. Bad enough that we have to have DST at all. Worse, that our powers that be have extended it to cover nearly 10 months of the year. If I have to live and function in the "9 to 5" world, my body insists that it at least coordinate with the changes of season throughout the year.
As of September 21, the first day of fall this year, my body went off DST. My sleeping patterns are now abiding by Central Standard Time, even though DST still has over a month more to run. This is messing seriously with my ability to adjust my routines to the demands of the clock. I am running an hour behind at all times. Changing time zones wouldn't help, either, as my body is merely complying with the signals of the rising and setting sun, no matter what the clock says.
The only good thing about Daylight Savings Time is going off it. I'm just not sure I can cope until the clock and the calendar revert to my circadian rhythms.
