Maybe I'm Not Such A Lonely Voice In The Wilderness After All

Do you ever listen to NPR's weekly feature, This I Believe? It is always interesting to learn how other people think and why they believe what they do--and often most enlightening to discover what events got them to where they now are.

This morning, I heard an essay for the feature by Kenneth Weinberg, an attorney who, among other tasks, helped determine the distribution amounts of financial compensation to the family members of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11.

After having accepted for his entire professional life the premise at law that the major method for determining such compensation is to determine the economic impact on the survivors of each victim's death, Weinberg's actual experiences relating to 9/11 changed his mind. He no longer thinks that an attorney who, say, represented (among other clients) Emeril Lagasse should automatically be worth more than a firefighter who lost his life trying to rescue others on that horrible day, just because the attorney had more education and training and thus a higher lifetime earnings potential. Mr. Weinberg now believes that all life should be valued equally.

Hallelujah and Amen! He didn't say it in so many words, but Mr. Weinberg's conclusions directly support several things I've been saying for years. First, that life itself is the most fundamental and important of our unalienable rights. Therefore, under our system of government, the things that directly affect life--like health care--should be made available to everyone, equally. Second, that financial worth is not a proper fundamental social value, for it promotes greed above other, more important social values, such as honesty, integrity, and yes, heroism. Third, that our adversarial system of justice doesn't necessarily provide the best way to learn the truth about any contested/litigated situation. Taking people who already disagree with one another and forcing them to adopt the most extreme version of their respective positions so they can maximize their chances to win a lawsuit is no way to guarantee long-term successful dispute resolution. Much better to have everyone sit down together and act like rational grown-ups and work out a solution with which everyone can live comfortably.

[However, this does not go so far as Dubya and Sen. McCain would have you think and make you into a wimpy "cheek-turner" to terrorists. Self-defense is never wrong. But note the prefix: self-defense. Hence one of my biggest problems with the US invasion of Iraq. That is not what the USA does. Not my USA, anyway. Especially when using Dubya's own reasoning, other targets of invasion would have been better, like, oh, North Korea. Then again, North Korea has no oil. And so the moral, intellectual, and policy bankruptcies of the Dubya administration are revealed.--Ed.]

I was half-asleep when Mr. Weinberg's essay started, but I was wide awake by its end. Now if we can only get the rest of the county to wake up, too.

Regrets? I've Had A Few

Unlike Paul Anka, however, not too few to mention.



Is the singing of My Way still as ubiquitous at high school graduations as it was thirty-some years ago? Why? I think I may have stumbled upon a major cause of America's collective mental instability: we say we praise individuality and initiative, but we stomp down the truly creative and innovative at every turn. We publicly praise the iconoclasts amongst us, yet we collectively don't want anyone to be "too much" smarter than we are. We honor and reward some of the unique members of our society, but we hammer down most of them in small ways every day.

Is it an echo of the herd mentality of our ancestors? Most species which congregate in groups use the survival tactic of letting the group members who don't blend in be the main targets of the group's predators. The survival of the group matters more than the survival of any one individual group member.

Herein, too, lie the roots of Social Darwinism--for the individuals in a group who "stick out," who do not conform, are different in some easily identifiable way: they are old; they are sick; they are weak. Conservatives act like liberals are the bad ones in our society, but the logical end of much conservative thinking is euthanasia.

Which would horrify most conservatives if one brought this to their attention. Unfortunately for all of us, most people, liberal and conservative alike, do not bother themselves with the logical consequences of their expressed "thinking."

Even worse, reading many of the letters to the Editor of the Omaha World-Herald of late suggests that we've time-warped into George Orwell's 1984. Did you know, for example, that Democrats are the ones who don't tolerate anyone who disagrees with them? That Democrats run the media and control the spin on all the news we get, no matter its sources? That our starting the Iraq War was justified and is still a good thing? That tax breaks for the rich are good for all of us?

What's worst of all, many of these letter writers seriously think that "liberal" is a dirty word, and that liberals actively work to destroy the USA . . . not that liberals just have different ideas about what is best for our country.

I may be a lonely voice in the wilderness, but I am not ashamed of my stands on the issues. I came to them by thinking through the problems I see and determining what is the most practical, sensible solution. I did not start from any pre-conceived bias, liberal or conservative. For goodness' sake: I am the child of a true redneck (who was proud of it) and a Kennedy Democrat. Of course I can see things from all sides. It's how I was raised. I am just as angry at the radical left-wing as I am at the radical right-wing. Neither extreme has the best interests of the country in mind--only their own short-term advantage.

Just as the adversarial approach, in my opinion, is not the best way to run a legal system, it is not the best way to run a society. It only exacerbates the worst tendencies in all of us. We have to find a better way, or the future of America will be a bleak one, indeed.

It's All Greek To Me

Rather, maybe I should have been Greek. I find myself of late complaining mightily that "civilization" is going straight to hell. Such kvetching is a time-honored tradition, going back to ancient Greece, if not farther. Every generation thinks the next several are lesser than it in every measure. And every generation is right. Yet the world keeps turning.

I must admit that if things keep going the way I currently perceive them, however, I may not want to stick around to see how everything turns out. If it weren't so sad, the ignorance of those calling Barack Obama "an appeaser" would be laughable. I am glad for Sen. Clinton's sake that she immediately spoke out unequivocally against such accusations. Why is it that she finds the guts to act presidential only when it's much too late for hopes to become this year's Democratic Party's presidential nominee?

I was also glad to see Obama speaking forcefully and rationally against such wrong-headed attacks. I'll give the man this: he is cool under fire, which is a prime presidential character trait.

But for John McCain to claim Obama thinks America has no enemies and that Obama is living in la-la land is beyond ridiculous. McCain's supporters also called Obama's response to the absurd attacks hysterical political maneuvering.

None of these people could make themselves look more ignorant or worse liars/fools if they tried. They are the ones living in la-la land. I increasingly fear that their realization of the total bankruptcy of their "ideas" is going to make Dubya invade Iran before he has to leave office--worse yet (and thanks to my cousin Val for expressing this so concisely), he's amassed so much executive power and cowed so many people into submission that he may even try to declare martial law and suspend the elections just to hold onto power. Part of my brain is telling me I'm being paranoid . . . but the other part of my brain and my heart are palpitating in fear. I didn't think Dubya and his minions would be brazen enough to do some of the stupid things they've actually already done, so . . .

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Things are no brighter on the social front. I saw a commercial for the new season of The Bachelorette yesterday, and it filled me with sadness. The new bachelorette is the one who did not win the bachelor's heart in the just-finished season of The Bachelor. She says she's out to win her happy ending. The bachelors among which she gets to choose are all making "I'm going to win" noises. They don't even know her--nor does she know them. To expect her to find her "one and only" when she claimed to have done just that on The Bachelor, only to be rejected, is ludicrous. It's staged. It cannot be genuine. Everyone's behavior is geared to getting to a conclusion . . . a conclusion that probably wouldn't happen were events allowed to proceed without outside interference or influence.

Since when did love become such a callous and calculated win-or-lose proposition? Since when does one's success in life ride on "winning" in such an artificial, manipulated "game of love"? When it's a game, it can't be genuine. How many times has each of these shows run through its cycle? At least seven of each, if memory serves. And how many of the couples are still together? One, if memory serves.

It's all so coarse and callous. I'd rather be alone than subject myself to such public indignity. But the younger generations don't seem to have any understanding of what self-esteem really means. Nor any sense of shame. Nor any capability for truly deep feelings.

Why does anyone watch this crap?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another reason the unregulated free market isn't such a good idea: if farmers raise their crops based purely on what's going to give them the highest price, we're going to have overages of some crops and shortages of others. Free Marketeers will tell you that this is OK because prices will shift in response and the farmers will then shift in response to that, and things will level out. But food is not something you can let the market control. For one thing, there's lead time--a/k/a growing seasons. It will take a year or two for changing prices to affect changing production. What do you do in the meantime? After all, farm production is also perishable. And what of people's health? What if we discover that some very unpopular crop is vitally necessary to human biological health? If we insist on letting a free market control farming, we could be committing long-term slow collective suicide.

Not to mention that unregulated free markets often dictate that the very best, most productive farming land is too valuable to be used for farming. We're importing food into this country that we could well produce here, but the farm land is worth more when built on for commercial development than it is to grow what sustains us. What's wrong with that picture?

If for no other reason, being dependent on other nations for our very "stuff of life" is no way to improve/enhance national security. I've heard some people say that when we get such global trade entanglements, it's actually good for national security, because (as they've said, in all seriousness) "no countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever gone to war with each other."

McDonald's has been around for only 50 years or so. That's not even an eye blink in terms of all of human history. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are no guarantee of world peace. The notion is nonsensical in other ways, too. Anybody who thinks he is on the short end of resource allocation is not going to let anyone else (fellow franchisee or not) take what he perceives to be rightfully his . . . not without a fight, at least.

I don't know what's going to happen. I hope I am wrong about Dubya's intentions. I hope the American electorate wakes up enough to realize what's happening and to do something about it. The historian in me wants to hang around and see how everything turns out . . . but the pragmatic realist in me wants to go hide under a very large rock.

Riddle Me This Redux

OK, so no one took the bait. Too bad. The answer is: They're all Cubs fans, unaware!

Don't blame me if you read this before you read the original "Riddle Me This."

Score One For Me!

I am insufferably pleased to report that Nebraska Democrats overwhelmingly voted yesterday to nominate Scott Kleeb instead of Tony Raimondo to challenge GOP candidate Mike Johanns in November for the Nebraska US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating. Kleeb's margin of victory was something on the order of 70% to 30%, so it's not as if Raimondo lost a squeaker.

As I wrote yesterday, I was sure NE Democrats didn't like the relatively negative tone of Raimondo's campaign, especially when contrasted with Kleeb's much more positive one. I also think NE Dems were quite aware that Raimondo's running in the Democratic primary was pure opportunism as opposed to a real shift in his political ideology.

I can't be too gleeful in my prognosticating triumph, however. I was wrong about how Nebraskans would vote on this year's proposed Amendment 1, which would let governmental entities in the state invest like they were private businesses. I thought fiscally sensible Nebraskans would see through that, but no . . . they didn't. No one campaigned against it, to be sure. Moreover, our other US Senator, Ben Nelson, along with NE Attorney General Jon Bruning, made a frequently-run commercial in favor of it.

But geez! Doesn't anyone remember what happened in Orange County, CA, a few years ago? CA taxing entities had that kind of private investing authority, along with all the bells and whistles that were supposed to go off in the event of problems, so that the taxpayer's "investments" would be protected. None of that mattered. The county went bankrupt after losing literally millions of dollars on investments that were way too speculative to begin with, and which only got worse as the County Clerk tried to recoup his initial losses by making even more risky investments when he started losing money.

Oh, well. I think we get one more shot at it in November, and by then, I hope, cooler heads will prevail. I'm still keeping my bragging rights about Kleeb's victory, though. I don't know anyone else who predicted it.

This Ain't Chicago!

So it's OK to vote early, but not often.

Yes, tomorrow is--at long last--Nebraska's primary election day for 2008. In typical Nebraska fashion, we have choices among an odd list of candidates. In the Democratic Party primary for the US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating, we can choose between Tony Raimondo and Scott Kleeb (pronounced "Klebb"). Raimondo is a Republican-turned-Democrat, most probably to take a clearer path to a nomination. He's also a businessman who dies his hair [which wouldn't matter but it's cheap and badly done, and it looks worse than a bad comb-over, all suggesting that Raimondo has some serious self-delusion problems--Ed.] and who keeps saying we need to elect him "to change Washington." He subtly insults his Democratic Party opponent by calling him "an academic," and the Republican candidate (running unopposed) as a "lifelong politician."

Kleeb is young, and is an academic in that he teaches history courses at one of the state colleges. But the tone of his campaign has been more positive in that he's stressing "it's not a matter of right or left" and "it's what my grandfather taught me--a politics of service, not of self." In a western Nebraska populist way, it's an appeal for the partisans to take off their boxing gloves and work together for everyone's benefit. For my money, it's a much more mature campaign approach than Raimondo's. Then again, Kleeb has a lead foot and has run up a ton of speeding tickets covering western Nebraska's expansive spaces. This will not endear him to the majority of generally law-abiding Nebraskans.

One would almost be sure that the Republican candidate, Mike Johanns, former mayor of Lincoln, former Nebraska governor, former US Secretary of Agriculture, will win automatically come November. After all, Johanns is popular, and his association with Dubya's administration hasn't seemed to hurt him. But Johanns is a Democrat-turned-Republican. There are plenty of people in the western part of this state who will hold that against him even though he switched parties years ago, mostly so that he'd have a clear path to the governorship back when he ran for and won that office. He won it, by the way, by winning the two major population centers of the state: Omaha, because business interests perceived him to be a good choice, and Lincoln, because the university and government-oriented population there knew him and liked him. He got the votes he got in the western part of the state because a lot of people there voted by party affiliation only.

I can hear the program hawkers now: "You can't tell the players without a scorecard! Get your programs here!" Not that party-switching is new around here. Those of you who remember the late Nebraska US Senator Ed Zorinsky and our own current senior US Senator, Ben Nelson, just to name two, know that.

But back to tomorrow: Johanns' ad is more like Kleeb's in tone than Raimondo's, but it's Muzak rendition of Tom Petty's Won't Back Down oddly jarring. Still, it seems like Kleeb and Johanns are on the same page, at least. It would be fun to see their campaigns against each other come fall. Raimondo has made it clear that he'll just attack Johanns as being a Washington insider. Well, I have news for Raimondo: no one is going to "change Washington" all by himself, especially as a first-term junior senator from a relatively low-in-population state. So Raimondo is already falling into a typically Republican pattern of making promises he cannot or will not keep. That won't wash with many of the voters I know, be they Democrats, Republicans, Greens, or independents.

I do love the politics in this state! At some level, there's always unpredictability. Despite Nebraska's well-deserved reputation as one of the reddest of the so-called Red states, the way Nebraskans will vote in any given election can shock you. I wouldn't put it past Kleeb to beat Raimondo in the Democratic primary, for these main reasons: (1) Nebraskans do not like negative campaigning. Despite the relatively mild way Raimondo does it, his tone is more negative than is Kleeb's. (2) Not many of the Democrats in this state are fooled by Raimondo, even though--or maybe even because--he has the Omaha World-Herald's endorsement. Raimondo is the classic DINO ("Democrat In Name Only"). Nebraska runs closed primaries. Only registered Democrats can vote in the Nebraska Democratic Party primary. There may not be many Democrats in Nebraska overall, but we tend to vote in our primaries against those running for Democratic nominations who get the World-Herald's endorsement, just to be ornery.

Besides, Raimondo's call is "to change Washington." If he dislikes it so much, why does he want to become part of it? I, for one, do not trust people who say the system is crummy and the system needs fixing, but who still want to run the system. They tend to be out for their own gain more than anything else. I don't think there's that much seriously wrong with the system--only with the poor choices we've made of people to occupy positions in it. I'm not alone in my belief that someone like Kleeb, who makes it plain that he wants to work together with others to get the system to work better, sends a much more positive message than does someone like Raimondo, who despite his stated desire to change things, is running the same old negative campaign.

So go forth and vote tomorrow, Nebraskans. Just remember: only once! Till November, that is.

Snakes! Why'd It Have To Be Snakes?

"Indiana, he's my man
"He's my hero, I'm his biggest fan . . ."
[try singing it to the tune of the main title theme of the Raiders movies--it works]

I hate to admit it, but I am excited that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about to invade movie theaters nationwide. I've been a fan of Harrison Ford's way back since American Graffiti was in initial release, and of George Lucas's for the same film. Of Steven Spielberg's? Since Jaws. Well, the first half of Jaws, anyway.

However, I was skeptical about this fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series until I heard that (1) Ford was going to play Indy at his own real age--'cause as good as Ford still looks, I don't think any 65-year-old can play 30-something realistically, and (2) Karen Allen would reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We should get answers to some questions that have long plagued us--like did their relationship 10 years before Raiders end because Indy left Marian at the alter, or did he just seduce her and then dump her? And is Shia LaBeouf's character Indy's and Marian's son? (According to what I've heard, the answer to this is "yes.")

But now, I can hardly wait to see it. This is additionally miraculous because I no longer much enjoy seeing movies in theaters. Too much talking, too much cell phone silliness, too much loudness from the speakers--going to the movies hasn't been "going to the movies" for a long, long time.

I'm going to make the exception to see this one, though. From the trailer and the buzz, it looks to be just as good, funny, and exciting as any of the first three. In other words, well worth the time and frustrations of seeing it in a theater.

As part of the pre-release hype, the Omaha World-Herald has been asking readers to submit their favorite moments from the first three films. My all-time favorite moment so far comes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: it's the scene wherein Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery) hugs his son tight once he realizes that Indy didn't go over the cliff with the Nazi tank. The feelings washing over Indy's face at that moment--the sense of relief, of reconciliation, of redemption--are wondrous. He finally is getting the one and only thing he ever wanted from his father--unconditional love. And then, of course, it's right back to business as usual, Saving The World. The breeze blowing Indy's fedora back to him when his father drops him and Indy collapses to his knees, exhausted, is Spielberg's version of the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: it's Fate knocking at the door.

My second most favorite moment all-time also comes from The Last Crusade: it's the entire back-story of how Indy became Indy. River Phoenix was brilliant as young Indiana Jones [his death in real life was too tragic for one so young and talented--did you know he'd also played Ford's character's elder son in The Mosquito Coast? For my money, that's Ford's finest role, though it's incredibly painful to watch.--Ed.] Besides, it's screamingly funny and incredibly inventive. And it all makes perfect sense, given the context of what we already know about our intrepid archaeologist.

My favorite "moment" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is actually the mine car roller coaster ride. It's a perfect encapsulation of what Indiana Jones movies are all about: extremely high production values, excitement, danger, humor, and revealing glimpses of the characters' inner selves, all delivered at breakneck speed. It literally careens almost off the tracks, without ever going too far over the edge into irrelevant campiness.

It's much more difficult to pick a favorite moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I watched it again last night, and realized just how much I'd been taking for granted of late. The entire movie is wonderful. It was unique when it was released in 1981; it remains so today. Though if I had to pick only one moment, it would be the one where the scimitar-wielding Arab in black is threatening Indy and with a look of perfect weariness, Indy takes out his pistol and shoots the guy. It gets the biggest and longest laugh of the movie. As I understand it, it was also Harrison Ford's idea. They'd been filming all day, he was suffering from dysentery, and he just wanted to be done. Spielberg and Lucas are to be commended for recognizing the brilliance of the moment and letting it stand, instead of filming the long "whip vs. scimitar" fight sequence in the original script.

No, I'm not objective about any of this. Harrison Ford has been an oddly significant presence in my life in many weird ways. My first date with my now ex-husband was to see Star Wars back when it was first released in 1977. We saw Raiders of the Lost Ark the night we got engaged in 1981. And the night I nearly died from my lung disease and it was finally diagnosed correctly was on Harrison Ford's birthday in 1988.

I wonder, though: at each of those moments, I thought Harrison Ford was my good luck charm. Given the way things have turned out, however, maybe I should hate him instead of being such a fan . . .

Is It What He Said, Or Did The Press Miss The Nuances?

The Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, also known as "the Woodstock of Capitalism," just concluded this year's festivities in Omaha. CEO Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha," presided over events as diverse as a special shopping excursion to Borsheim's Jewelry and Fine Gifts, dinners at Gorat's Steakhouse, private bridge games, and the meeting itself.

Shareholders from all over the world come to Omaha for this event, to bask in Buffett's investing brilliance and to hear him deliver his evaluations on "life, the universe, and everything" [apologies to Douglas Addams--Ed.]. One of Warren's gems this year was to note that "risk is inherent in capitalism" as his reason for not helping bail out individuals trapped in the mortgage lending crisis.

Mr. Buffett is usually very wise and practical--for a maven of capitalism, he lives relatively modestly; he supports Planned Parenthood; he doesn't believe in investing in things he doesn't completely understand (one of the main reasons Berkshire Hathaway did not get caught when the so-called "dot.com" bubble bust). But I must disagree with his take on the mortgage lending crisis.

He did say that people who were misled about the adjustable rate mortgages they took should get some relief, but his implication is that many, many people were not misled and that their present problems are due to their own greed, so they should suffer the consequences and learn from their mistakes. (1) Is that even true? (2) Why doesn't he apply this same logic to the mortgage companies who lent exorbitant sums willy-nilly to people who really shouldn't have received such largesse in the first place?

The root problem is that we don't actually have true capitalism. Those with money and power influence legislation so that they get to reap the benefits of their money and power without taking any of the risks of doing the same. Joe Schmo, individual, is not afforded these same advantages, however. It's upside down. Collective greed, massed in companies to maximize power and influence, gets protected . . . and the majority of the burden is borne by those who can afford it the least. The little guy carries the big guys on his back. No wonder things break down and individuals' lives are thrown into chaos at the same time the biggest companies are reporting record profits. Anybody out there ever hear of noblesse oblige? Apparently not.

It's the same reason we need labor unions but much union-protecting legislation has been eviscerated of late. It's the same reason the US Supreme Court until after FDR's "court-packing scheme" in the 1930s, claimed that corporations, being artificial persons, had equal and identical bargaining power to individual job-seekers. It's the same reason the Fed will bail out Bear-Stearns but won't help individual mortgagors . . . except for the ones who don't really need it. The only individual mortgagors who will get relief under Dubya's plans are the ones who are not behind on their payments and whose credit is otherwise good. But the people who've been struggling along and whose crises are more immediate are hung out to dry. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Them what has, gets. The rest of us gets screwed."

Then again, I'm basing my criticism of Mr. Buffett's remarks on a news report I heard yesterday on the radio. I, in turn, should know better than to accept what any reporter says without checking to make sure he didn't miss any nuances in what he's quoting. Context matters. I'll check further and post any changes to my analysis soon.

On the third hand, Mr. Buffett is also known to have said, "money cannot buy happiness." True enough. I wish, however, he'd indicated some understanding of the concept that the lack of money sure causes a lot of distress, especially when it forces people to choose between such frivolous things as eating or buying needed prescription medicines.

Dumb Animals? No! Dumb People? Yes!

Whenever I can afford to contribute to charity, I always give first to organizations that work for the protection of and betterment of conditions for animals, such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Animals cannot speak directly for themselves--it is vital that caring humans do it for them.

Nonetheless, I do not support groups on or beyond the lunatic fringe, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Such groups do not recognize that their actions often do more to harm their credibility--and thus the credibility of other, more sensible groups--than those actions help the animals they say they are trying to protect.

PETA's latest nuttiness? It has written a letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Association (KHRA) calling for the suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez's license. Saez rode the filly Eight Belles to a magnificent second-place finish in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. After galloping out following the finish, however, the filly collapsed when both her front ankles broke, and she had to be euthanized right then and there. [Thanks to all the networks which had footage of same but which didn't show it directly. It was sad and shocking enough to hear what happened. Seeing it would not have added anything but titillation to the broadcasts.--Ed.]

PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo claims that this suspension is necessary while the horse's death is investigated, because we need to know (1) whether the jockey "felt anything along the way," as the filly "doubtlessly was injured before the finish," and (2) even if not, we must blame the fact that the jockeys are "allowed to whip the horses mercilessly."

Excuse me while I roll my eyes in total disgust. Do PETA's members know anything about horses? Do they even bother to consider reality before they spew forth their idiocy? An animal weighing half a ton, moving at high speed, CANNOT land on a broken front ankle, let alone two broken front ankles, more than once before collapsing in a heap in a great amount of pain. It is physically impossible to do otherwise. I watched the Derby's stretch run, and have watched every replay of same that I could see. Eight Belles shows NO signs of discomfort, let alone pain or serious injury, through the stretch, at the finish line, or well beyond it. As her trainer Larry Jones noted, her ears were up (and I add, her eyes were bright) the whole way--a sign of happiness in a horse. If she were in any pain, her ears would have been flat down against her head and she would have been fighting her jockey, not going forward in a straight line with him.

As for the allegation that the horses are whipped "mercilessly," I wonder whether PETA's members have ever seen a racing crop. It's got two small squares of leather on the business end, attached only at the top--it's designed to make a noise as the leather pieces slap together. Even when applied quickly at full strength, it's more sound then sensation: it's to get the horse's attention and to keep the horse running along the line the jockey wants--s/he taps the left hip if the horse is bearing in to its left, the right hip if the horse is swerving out to the right. It's math in action: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Get the horse to run in a straight line, and you save distance, therefore time. You thus improve the horse's chances to win or finish in the money. You also improve the horse's chances of avoiding collisions with other horses, as the jockey can see things on the track which the horse cannot see, letting the jockey steer clear of trouble.

I am not saying that there are never any abuses of animals in horse racing. I am saying that at this level of horse racing, the likelihood of abuse is so small as to be virtually non-existent. The money spent to race at this level makes it counterproductive financially to hurt the animals. Eight Belles' owner is so devastated by what happened that he's not speaking to anyone.

I don't blame him. I get teary-eyed just thinking about what happened, and I didn't have any stake in the situation at all, except for caring about the horses, the beautiful horses.

A Thing I'd Like To See

I confess to being a bit of a TV commercials junkie. I get a kick out of critiquing the excesses of modern marketing. One thing I've noticed over the years is that really good--i.e., funny--ads never get shown enough, while the nauseating ones run constantly.

I never got tired of the Guinness Stout "Limburger Cheeseheads!" ad, for example. Just thinking about it makes me giggle. [It's probably the Irish inflection on "cheeseheads"--that is truly priceless!--Ed.]

For its diametrical opposite, watch the Pedia-Sure ad that's been running for at least a year now. You know the one: the mommy is steering the grocery cart and reading aloud from her list, while her little girl, riding in the cart, objects to everything on the list. "Chicken . . ." "I don't like chicken." The point being that even the most finicky eater likes and will drink Pedia-Sure, and moms everywhere who give their children Pedia-Sure will be doing a good thing. The more subtle message is that moms are here to cater to and be doormats for their selfish, bratty children, not to teach their children any manners or other social skills.

That is a message I do not like, not one bit! I'd rather the mom said to the daughter, "I don't care what you don't like. Until you are working and contributing economically to this family, you're going to eat what is put on the table for you or not eat at all."

But then again, not only would that put the family hierarchy right side up, it wouldn't sell the product.

Nevertheless, I can dream, can't I?

In the meantime, if you give me a brick to throw at the TV, make sure it's a Nerf brick. I can't afford to destroy my TV for real, no matter how irritated I get!

[I smell feet!--Ed.]

Assigning "Fs" All Around

Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey, Jack Diesing (president of CWS, Inc.), and the NCAA have announced they've signed a Memorandum of Agreement that promises to keep the College World Series in Omaha until at least 2030 . . . contingent upon the building of the new downtown stadium, of course.

So Fahey's Folly has reached fruition. I am surprised that the NCAA was willing to commit to a 20-year extension of the CWS contract (the present one expires after the 2010 CWS). I really thought the NCAA wouldn't be willing to commit for such a long time until after it saw how revenues and attendance would play out in the new facility. So I give myself an F on that score.

Still, the way this has developed merely reinforces my contention that Fahey and the NCAA had the deal in hand all along, despite everyone's protestations to the contrary. Fahey claimed he didn't want to give up on Rosenblatt Stadium until after he saw the numbers that made it financially imperative to do so. The NCAA says it had no preset preferences about anything except for need for whatever proposal Omaha presented to have "wide community support." CWS, Inc., through its president Jack Diesing, said it preferred to stay at Rosenblatt and re-re-renovate it until it became obvious that no such thing was going to happen.

But what has come about is exactly what Fahey said Omaha "needed" from the very first day he proposed the idea of building the new stadium. For that reason, I also give Fahey an F. He deserves it for his duplicity in the entire mess.

And while I have resigned myself to the facts of the situation, I will never attend a CWS game again. I have no interest in spoiling my lovely memories of great games in the pleasant summer breezes of Rosenblatt with the tears of good-byes. I have less than no interest in sitting in a concrete sauna in physical misery attending a game in the new facility.

BTW, one of the revenue streams to help pay for the new stadium is "naming rights." I know some corporate sponsor is going to pony up big bucks to get its name on the place, but it will always be "Fahey's Folly" to me.

Monday Equals US Supreme Court Justice Weirdness

Or: What's Wrong With This Picture?


This morning, NPR aired an interview between its chief legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg, and US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. There was a major disconnect during the course of their conversation that I wish Ms. Totenberg had explored with the frequently testy Associate Justice.

Scalia is the poster boy for "strict construction," meaning that in his opinion, if it was good enough for the Founders in 1789, it's good enough for us today. For him, as he says flat out, our Constitution is a "dead document." He did not disagree when Ms. Totenberg asked him if putting people in stocks in the town square would pass Constitutional muster today, for example.

Yet in his own life, he has acknowledged that the tenor of modern times ("the Space Age," as he noted his father would call it) has caused him to alter his judicial reticence to speaking in public, giving interviews, and the like.

Of course, he still won't speak directly about specific cases the Court is considering; he will express his opinion on prior Court rulings and specific Court opinions, by himself or his fellows, whether they agree or disagree.

If the times have changed so much that he has to modify his public behavior as a Justice, why haven't the times also changed so much that how we read the Constitution itself hasn't changed?

Those of you (if there is anyone out there, that is) who know me know that I have a bit of contempt for so-called "strict constructionists." They claim that they oppose only "judicial activism," but in fact, it's only "judicial activism" when they disagree with the results of a particular ruling. All judges and justices interpret documents, all the time. It's inherent in the nature of the job. So those who claim to believe in strict construction are hypocrites.

I hate to see real intellect go to waste, in that way or in any other. Scalia has real intellect--and a wicked wit, for which I confess to having a sneaking admiration. His often blunt opinions are refreshing to read, even when I disagree with him.

You know, when you think about it, I react the same way to religious fundamentalists the same way I do to strict constructionists, and for the same reasons. They all completely ignore Shakespeare's wisdom: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Ernestine Lives!

You remember Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, do you not? She was one of Lily's first major hit characters, way back from (ah, I do so hate showing my age) Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. One of Ernestine's best observations was, "We're the phone company. We don't care. We don't have to."

Despite the truth of that statement, I objected to the court-ordered break-up of the Bell System in the mid-1980s. I abhor trusts, but I also recognize the everyday reality that a telephone is in essence a utility; thus, it should be run as a quasi-monopoly, but for the public good, not for private profit.

Not that my long-standing objections ever mattered, but the FCC of late has by inaction allowed most of the Bell companies to re-merge . . . not for the public good, however and alas, but for private exorbitant profits.

The latest "ferinstance": AT&T has stripped the last vestige of "service" from the concept of "customer service." Should you decide you'd like to pay your AT&T bill in person (maybe you're in the mall and you know the bill is coming due and you decide, spur-of-the-moment, to walk in to the AT&T store to pay, just to have one less thing to do later), AT&T is going to charge you an extra $2.00. Yup. You read that right. You have to pay more for AT&T to take your money from you in person.

As if that weren't bad enough, AT&T defends this extra charge on the grounds that the time of AT&T reps is valuable, thus you should pay more for taking up that time.

I must be old-fashioned. That strikes me as being exactly backwards. AT&T should be giving you a discount for paying in person and early/on time, not discouraging you from providing it with revenues. What do these AT&T reps have to do that's more valuable to AT&T than literally bringing in the money that pays for (among other things) their salaries? I just can't fathom it.

Well, that's not entirely true. I can fathom it just fine. I just do not care at all for what I fathom, which is AT&T is going to ding you for every single thing at every chance it gets, just like every other business in the world, rather than being willing to accept that some things are just part of its expenses of doing business in the first place.

The Irish are correct: there's many a dry eye at a moneylender's funeral.

If You Vote For McCain, You Deserve What You Get

Let me get this straight: Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, says the government will never again fail Americans the way the the Bush administration did after Hurricane Katrina. He also says the government cannot help you, really. The entire point of his "It's Time for Action" tour thus seems to be "it's time for YOU to take action, because I'm not going to." Just more of the same crap that's been spewing from the White House for the past eight years. So where is this change he's claiming he's going to bring to Washington?

Oh, I get it--it's like "compassionate conservatism!" "We really do feel sorry for you while we're screwing you over, but since you brought your troubles on yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself, and it's not our job to help you."

He also says we need to have "a conversation" about whether to rebuild New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward or tear it down . . . where has he been the last 3 years?!?

And then he says he doesn't remember saying that. (1) When you're 71 and running for President, "I don't remember" is NOT a good thing to be saying. (2) If he's saying that just because he doesn't want to admit what he did say, how does he think he can get away with it? Hasn't he heard of things like YouTube? And the nightly news? And Countdown?

I used to think McCain was the best of a bad bunch of candidates for the GOP nomination. Now I'm not so sure. I'll give him this: he knows how to say one thing but do another just as well as does Sen. Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, the press isn't challenging him on his crap any more than they have challenged Sen. Clinton on hers. We are in serious trouble here, people!

I propose we start a "Draft John Edwards" movement at the Democratic Party's National convention.

Riddle Me This

What do the following people and characters have in common?

Capt. James T. Kirk -- "I want answers, Mister!"
"We need more power!"

Scarlett O'Hara -- "After all, tomorrow is another day."

Mick Jagger -- "I can't get no satisfaction."

Freddie Mercury -- "I want it all, and I want it now!"

Hamlet -- "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or by opposing, end them . . ."

The Bud Lite madness guy -- "Dude!"

Igor (from Young Frankenstein) -- "It could be worse. It could be raining."

Indiana Jones -- "It's not the years, kid--it's the mileage."

I'll give you a hint: think diamonds.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Or "Spin, Spin, Spin." Better yet, as Bill Cosby once said (in a completely different context), "You go around in a circle for five minutes, and then puke."

As much as I enjoy watching and discussing politics, I am officially sick to my stomach. Not so much with the Pennsylvania primary, but with the political and media spins on same. How can a 10-point win be a "big" win for Hillary Clinton when she very recently held a nearly 30-point lead over Barack Obama in the Keystone State? Looks more like a squeaker that Clinton won largely because rural PA voters were less afraid of a woman running for president than they were of a black man running for president. I extrapolate this by comparing what PA voters told pollsters to the exceedingly vituperative letters to the editor I've read of late in the Omaha World-Herald. The similarities are alarming. They are positively vicious in their expressed hatred of Obama--which they state in terms of the press not adequately chastising Obama for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racially-inflammatory sermons. They claim the media are giving Obama a free ride, which is diametrically opposed to what I see when I examine TV, radio, and printed press coverage.

At least in part, this is America's traditional anti-intellectualism mucking up the voting in a big way. [The Founders expected people to make rational, informed decisions. Of course, they didn't expect the rise of political parties . . . nor did they expect people like me to be voting. Their vision of the electorate was of educated, land-owning, white men.--Ed.] Obama has run into the same problem Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and John Kerrey had--and a problem I still have--which is believing in the basic intelligence of the American voter. They were willing to speak sometimes unpleasant truths about America and then-current events, and they were running against people who in Carter's case, was the genial grandpa reassuring us everything was OK (Reagan), and in Gore's and Kerrey's case was a morally conservative good buddy (Dubya). The typical voter much preferred "sweetness and light" to reality, judging from the actual election returns. [I have previously addressed the issue of Dubya's stealing the 2000 election by fraud in Florida--while I believe that to be true, I also maintain that had Al Gore won his own home state of Tennessee, Florida would have been rendered irrelevant, and what Dubya's minions did there would not have put Dubya in office.--Ed.]

I remember voters actually saying they were voting against Kerrey because he was too brainy and thus they didn't trust him.

UGH!

I'll give Clinton this: when she's on her game, she understands how low a candidate needs to go to win. What really fries me in all this is that I saw part of her interview on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann late last week, and she was rational and sensible, and actually had excellent proposals for dealing with some of the policy issues about which Olbermann asked. But I just don't trust her anymore, and I still think I may have to boycott the election if it's her vs. McCain in November.

I also am still steamed about her illogic in claiming that since Obama can't seem to beat her in the big swing states, Obama wouldn't win them in November, either. That's simply not true. That's apples and oranges. Maybe Obama is a bit less popular than Clinton in those places in the primaries--it's irrelevant to how Obama would do against McCain in the general election were Obama the Democratic Party candidate. Clinton knows better, I'm sure. But "win at any cost or take everyone down in a truly Pyrrhic victory" seems to be her guiding principle at this point.

Furthermore, why isn't the press confronting Clinton with her real problem in terms of electability? I know I am repeating myself, but since no one else is saying this, I am going to continue saying it: McCain can recast himself as a Dubya clone all he wants. Among the really rabid right wing of the GOP(i.e., in places like Nebraska), however, he will never be trusted. Republicans around here would rather not vote at all than have to vote for him--unless Hillary Clinton is running against him. In that case, they will break records just to come out to vote against her. She says she's been in the public eye so long that the GOP can't touch her, as all her baggage is already "out there," but she's ignoring the lightning rod her very self has on those opposed to her politically. Why aren't the media confronting her about that?

OK, I Admit It . . .

Even the most logical and intelligent people can be really dumb at times. Yes, even me. Those of you who have some knowledge of my one marriage are free to say, "Especially [me]!"

A man named William Poundstone has written a book called Gaming The Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair. A key point for Mr. Poundstone is that Abraham Lincoln was one of the biggest beneficiaries of a glitch in our system whereby a spoiler (modern example: Ralph Nader in 2000) gets enough votes to throw victory to someone other than the candidate who actually won the majority of the popular vote.

He's correct . . . but so what? In Lincoln's case, the entire nation ultimately benefited from "the spoiler effect," and I for one don't think it's a shame that Lincoln took office. I doubt the United States would be here at all today if Lincoln had not been "selected" (since Mr. Poundstone asserts he wasn't truly "elected").

Mr. Poundstone cites as his chief support the economist Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which claims that our entire election system is "fundamentally flawed on a mathematical level" (as quoted from the anonymous History Book Club reviewer's synopsis).

What we have here is a failure to communicate (apologies to Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke). What a classic example of not seeing the forest for the trees! Mr. Arrow and Mr. Poundstone may very well be correct, but again, I say, "So what?" Without this "flaw," Lincoln never would have taken office. Yes, with it, you also run the risk of what happened in 2000, but you still have the chance to get another Lincoln. So let the system be. It has in general served us well. Besides, I can't think of anything else that would eliminate the "flaws" in the present system without in turn producing massive flaws of its own. Remember the Law of Unintended Consequences!

I must ask however: if we do tend to get the government we deserve, why did our nineteenth century forebears get Lincoln while we got Dubya? I have a hypothesis about that, too [big surprise--Ed.]. I blame a lot of our current troubles on my fellow Baby Boomers. We did just about everything wrong that we could do wrong.

We raised our kids to be our friends, not our children . . . as they in turn have done with their children, leading to a country populated by a bunch of selfish, narcissistic brats instead of civil and responsible grown-ups.

We got so hung up on having our cake and eating it, too, that we have neglected basic things like our transportation infrastructure in favor of wasting gargantuan sums of money we don't have on stupid adventures like the war in Iraq.

We embraced the concept of individuality and self-empowerment so much that we've lost the art of political compromise and of giving a little to get more. Compromise is the essence of the genius of the American Constitution. Throw that out, and you eviscerate what makes America "America."

We have allowed the pro-religious-fundamentalist, anti-intelligence (note that I did not say "anti-intellectual") crowd to poison our children's minds and pollute our schools with a load of crap about "intelligent design" while at the same time demanding that our schools produce the finest and most-forward-thinking scientists in the world in order to maintain our position as the world leader in everything--without spending money to give our schools the tools they need to accomplish this goal. There's your real Impossibility Theorem!

We have been so consumed by our guilt about the way we treated the draftees who returned from Vietnam that we no longer question our country's use of military force. That's not "America." We don't strike first. Ever. [Except when Dubya says it's OK to do so, that is.--Sarcastic Ed.]

I also blame a lot of it on lawyers--and I can say this because I am one (a truth I don't usually admit in polite company). Why do you think I quit practicing as soon as I could? People file the craziest lawsuits nearly every day, "cases" I'd never consider taking on because they are absurd on their faces. The less ethical amongst us have twisted their ethical obligation to represent their clients "zealously" (as per the Canon of Legal Ethics) into the idea of suing everyone for everything. Economic cost-benefit analysis ensures the ones being sued will pay at least something just to make the suits against them go away. Lawyers call this "nuisance value." I call it abhorrent.

But then again, that's the end-game logic of basing our entire ethos on a free market economy. The only criterion is money. Nothing else matters. For my part, I will never stop speaking out against it. There are much higher and more important social values we can impart to our succeeding generations than the veneration of greed. You know, weird and antique things like fairness, equity, doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do . . .

Or not. I just saw a letter to the editor in the Omaha World-Herald suggesting that we pay organ donors. The writer's motivation is good, it seems--making an apparently practical suggestion to ease the crisis in organ donation, where the need for donated organs is about 100 times greater than the number of organs available for donation. Reading that letter, however, made me want to hurl. Chunks. Paying for organs is wrong on a literally visceral level. The writer didn't even suggest who should do the paying. I daresay no one will accept a government-sponsored payment system. That leaves the private sector. If you shift the system from the basis of filling the direst need first to satisfying the needs of those with the ability to pay the most, you're eventually going to wind up with auctions of people in permanent vegetative states. What was that you were saying about the sanctity of life?

Irony Of Ironies

An audio tape has been released. It plays what her staff has confirmed is Hillary Clinton's voice attacking MoveOn.org during one of her fund-raisers, claiming it is almost solely responsible for how poorly she has shown in the various state caucuses this primary season. As you may know, MoveOn.org was started to support Pres. Bill Clinton when the GOP was impeaching him (its name at that time was CensureAndMoveOn.org).

So Hillary could play King Lear. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

And John McCain today released HIS tax returns last for the last two years, but not his wife's . . . except for their mutual charitable contributions. Well, she does run her family's Budweiser distributorship, and is worth a high seven figures. I wonder if McCain thinks this makes plausible his attacking Barack Obama for being "elitist." It doesn't. We all know McCain comes from privilege and is wealthy in his own right.

I love politics and I love my country, but the tenor and course of this primary season is making me want to puke. Don't know how I'm going to last until November.

Will Shakespeare said it best: "A pox on both your houses!" And to think, I used to LIKE irony.

What's Wrong With McCain's Picture?

Sen. John McCain, putative GOP presidential nominee, says the best way to keep down health care costs is to increasingly privatize health care. I say that is ludicrous on its face, and here's why:

"Privatization" equals "for profit." "For profit" equals "make as much more money as possible than you spend," which in turn equals "sell more, cut costs, or (the usual course) some combination of both."

"Selling more" equals one or a combination of any or all of the following: get more people to buy what you are selling; sell things that no one else sells; create follow-on and/or add-on purchases to increase the amount brought in from each and every sale; reduce the costs of producing or providing what you sell without reducing the price you charge for same; maintaining the costs of producing or providing what you sell while increasing the price you charge for same.

"Cut costs" equals one or a combination of any or all of the following: buy cheaper materials and supplies; reduce the amount of staff while producing the same amount of product or providing the same quantity of service; reduce spending on investments (such as new research equipment); reduce spending on advertising; reduce spending on research; reduce regular repeating expenses (such as telephone bills).

Companies in the health care business have no incentive to cut costs in any way--cheaper materials and supplies mean a less successful image (and to be successful, especially in getting investors to invest, is to look successful); a certain level of staff is required to support research and development of new products (the real source of lucrative profits . . . consider the creation of Viagra, for example); if you want to have the biggest share of the market in the sales of new products, you need the most up-to-date equipment to support your research and development of same; advertising boosts consumer demand for your products, even though consumers cannot buy prescription medications, for example, without a doctor's OK via prescription; spending less on research means losing out in the race to develop new products; regular repeating expenses, like telephone bills, tend to be inflexible and thus not subject to much reduction.

So most companies are going to focus their primary efforts to increase sales on selling more. This in turn increases the need to spend for advertising (people can't get what you're selling if they don't know about it); increases the need to spend for research (so you can corner an entire market by selling things no one else has); requires developing entire lines of related products and and services to increase add-on or follow-up sales (projecting the idea that none of the products will work as well alone as they will in consort); reducing what's in each package as you sell less product/service for the same amount as you did before the reduction. Hey, it happens every day in every area (look at the size of paper towel rolls if you don't believe me).

Thus selling more often increases the pressure NOT to cut costs. Which means the company, to be successful in its goal to maximize the return on investment its owners/shareholders get, must get more money from its customers . . . and that's you and me, Bunky . . . and that is the opposite of keeping our expenses down.

If McCain really wanted to cut health care costs for all Americans, he'd give them the benefit of the same system he gets through his military and legislative service. Why the people who get the most advantage from what is truly socialized medicine want to deny it to the rest of us is beyond me. At least until I remember my mantra: them what has, gets. The rest of us gets screwed.

Split, Splat, Fahey's Takin' The 'Blatt

As I predicted back in 2006 when it first came to light, Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey is pushing hard for the city to abandon Rosenblatt Stadium and build a new facility downtown, to seal his legacy and shore up the monied interests who are at present redeveloping "NoDo" (that's "North Downtown" to you and me) for their own economic benefit.

He is doing this, he says, because the total cost of re-renovating Rosenblatt is nearly identical to that of building new, and that therefore in the long run, building new is a better financial deal. He also claims this will ensure that Omaha can negotiate a 20-year contract to continue to hold the College World Series in Omaha, to the city's long-term financial and economic benefit.

I cannot quarrel with the facts and figures. I can quarrel with some of his assumptions and with some of the things he ignored in making this decision.

I am not opposed to a new ballpark per se. Rosenblatt is a wonderful place, but it does need more than mere renovation can feasibly provide. What I am opposed to is moving the stadium from the Rosenblatt site. Backers of the new stadium say that it will be more attractive and will give a view of Omaha's skyline [such as it is--Ed.] and will create synergy between the downtown hotels, the Qwest Center, and even the Old Market, by putting more entertainment options within walking distance of one another.

(1) Why would anyone prefer a view of Omaha's skyline to the wonderful, expansive, tree-filled vistas (and the Zoo) one sees from Rosenblatt?

(2) Why would anyone prefer to watch a ballgame in the middle of summer from a down-at-river-level concrete sauna to being up on a hill where the wonderful breezes make even the most humid day at the ballpark not just bearable, but enjoyable?

(3) Why would anyone enjoy playing a game in a ballpark where the pitching orientation is turned to show off that Omaha skyline when the players will suffer problems from the afternoon sun they wouldn't have if the field were oriented in the traditional direction?

(4) What's to guarantee that the NCAA won't just say "we don't do long-term contracts anymore--it's nice that you went to all the trouble, but all we're going to give you is another 5-year extension"? Fahey has been promising that a new stadium will guarantee Omaha keeps the College World Series for another 20 years. What's he going to say if and when this turns out not to be true? If I were the NCAA, I wouldn't care how long the CWS has been in Omaha--under current conditions, I wouldn't sign a long-term committment to play in ANY single location.

As I predicted in 2006, it's already a done deal, however, even if all the problems I note materialize. If an entirely new stadium is a "must have," I'd prefer to see Rosenblatt razed and the new stadium erected on the Rosenblatt site. But that's already been taken off the table. The Mayor says we'd lose the CWS for the year or more it would take to do that, and once we lose it, it's never coming back. But he and his study committee didn't show any facts or figures or statements from the NCAA to bolster that. It's just another assumption on the Mayor's part.

And now the Omaha Royals, Triple A farm team of the Kansas City Royals, may not stay--either in an Omaha-abandoned Rosenblatt or in the new stadium. I wonder, especially now that the big league Royals are winning again, if we can afford to lose the Omaha Royals forever for the sake of getting the two-week influx the CWS brings.

Even more, I wonder if the citizens of Omaha will support the CWS in a new stadium they way they always have at Rosenblatt. For the first two or three years, everyone will be enchanted by the new facility, I think. We all like our shiny new toys. Once "Reality" sets in about (1) the humidity with no breeze, (2) the afternoon sun problems due to the field facing the wrong way, and (3) the hassle of the locals having to drive to NoDo and pay $10 (or more) to park per game, however, I suspect that disenchantment with Fahey's Folly will grow . . . and the NCAA may move the CWS elsewhere due to lack of fan support. Indianapolis and Oklahoma City, to name just two, would love that.

In that case, we'd be out something like $140 million, the CWS, and the Omaha Royals. Talk about an economic disaster for the city and the entire metro area!

It's Getting Hot In Here

I heard a story on NPR this morning that gave me fits. One Kristen Byrnes, a 15-year-old, has (with the help of, and probably at the behest of her step-father, Mike Carson) amassed a huge amount of data and published a blog expressing skepticism about global warming. Normally, I am all for skepticism (it is one of my fundamental tools in trade), but in this case methinks it's being misapplied.

After I heard the article, I went to the NPR web site and read the transcript, just to make sure I hadn't misheard anything, forgotten anything, or myself misinterpreted something. As far as I can tell, I haven't.

So what's my issue? Miss Byrnes (and her step-father, and/or the reporter--and if it's the reporter's imprecision that caused my complaint, I apologize to Miss Byrnes and Mr. Carson) made an error in logic. She has framed the argument in terms of whether humans are causing global warming, and has decided due to all the climatological statistics she's accumulated that we are not--that the changes in temperature of late are just part of a normal long-term change in the Earth's climate cycle. She also cites the fact that people who commented on her blog in disagreement eventually gave up, implying that they were overcome by the soundness of her arguments. I, on the other hand, think those people finally realized Mark Twain's wisdom when he advised, "Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Not to say that Miss Byrnes and her step-father are pigs. Far from it. It is to say that they are so invested in their own beliefs that they cannot even entertain the thought that they are the ones in error.

No one with any education about the difference between weather and climate says humans are causing global warming. The issue is whether human behavior since the Industrial Revolution increases the pace and degree of global warming--perhaps to a dangerously irreversible level.

This is not a subtle difference. It's the crux of the entire argument. I don't care how many facts and figures Miss Byrnes has amassed. Nothing in the historical climate record can answer the question definitively, as data demonstrating the impact of human pollution exist for only the past couple of hundred years . . . an eye blink on the climatological scale. It is not illogical, however, to infer from the data showing the volume of pollutants that we have pumped into the atmosphere in the last 200+ years that we are messing with the natural, pre-industrial patterns of climate change, which will have long-term, detrimental effects on the planet.



********************

Yet another bit of spectacularly bad logic also was displayed recently on NPR, this time by Geraldo Rivera. He said people who opposed illegal immigration were wrong, for two reasons: (1) immigrants are assimilating, just as every other immigrant in US history has during past waves of immigration; (2) opposing immigration was racist, as it came down to supporting a wall across the Mexican-US border.

Well. I know Geraldo Rivera is no intellectual heavyweight, and I do appreciate it when he takes idiots like Bill O'Reilly to task, but he's wrong in this case.

(1) Pardon the anachronism I'm about to present, but it's the most efficient way to make my point. In no prior wave of immigration did we ever get phone messages that said "for English, press 1; for Irish, press 2; for German, press 3." If the Hispanic immigrants really are assimilating, and at a similar pace to their chronological (if not ethnic) forebears, why are all telephone voice mails suddenly requiring us to choose English or Spanish?

(2) I do not oppose immigration per se, and I do oppose a wall (mostly because walls don't work in cases like this). What I oppose is illegal immigration. Without some semblance of law and order, society cannot function. When society stops functioning, everyone suffers, no matter how they came to the US. We have to stop illegal immigration. In the meantime, those who want the benefits of living in the USA must also comply with the rules of living in the USA. To quote Robert A. Heinlein: "TANSTAAFL." [That's "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." --Ed.]

Who's Zoomin' Whom?

(with apologies to Aretha Franklin)

My disappointment in and dissatisfaction with Hillary Rodham Clinton increases daily of late. Not only does she misinterpret what Barack Obama said about small-town, blue-collar Americans, by doing so she is demonstrating the very contempt for people's intelligence of which she accuses him.

He was not putting down small-town, blue-collar Americans by saying many were bitter and were holding on to their religion or their guns because they feel powerless and like no one is listening to them or their concerns. He was identifying their concerns and exhibiting a fine understanding of the distressed state of much of America today. If you doubt me, please read What's The Matter With Kansas?. It's an excellent exploration and explanation of why people persist in voting against their own economic best interests and how resentful they feel that no one in power is paying any attention to them or their concerns. It's also a clear indictment of how and why the GOP has twisted "family values" voting to its own advantage while at the same time screwing over the blue-collar base of its support on economic issues.

Anyway, by saying Obama was putting down small-town, blue-collar Americans, Sen. Clinton is (1) giving the GOP's dirty work for it, which serves neither the Democratic Party nor the country well; (2) showing contempt for the basic intelligence of the American people by presuming that they cannot detect her playing fast and loose with the facts. [Not that that's a unique position for her, given what she said about her experiences in Bosnia in the 1990s.--Ed.] What's worse, if she believes what she's spewing about Obama's being out of touch and lacking respect for blue collar Americans, she's not as smart as she thinks she is.

The only way she can win the Democratic Party nomination is to convince enough of the so-called super delegates to vote for her . . . which, if she does so, will smack of party bosses overriding the will of the people. Furthermore, she's wrong when she says only she can beat McCain in November. Just because she beat Obama in several big state primaries doesn't mean Obama, too, couldn't beat McCain in those states in the fall election. Besides, ask any rabid GOP supporters around here [and let's face it--Nebraska is just about the reddest of the red states.--Ed.]. They'd love for Hillary to be the Democratic Party nominee. The support for John McCain amongst the GOP out here is shaky at best--but with Hillary at the head of the Democratic ticket, the Republicans here will vote in record numbers just to vote AGAINST her.

Lest you think this is merely the whining of an aggrieved Obama supporter, let me disabuse you of that notion. I was all for John Edwards and am still in a funk about his run for the candidacy having ended.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's smarmy tactics and outright lies have caused me to consider not voting in November. It would be the first election (primary, special, or general) that I'll have missed. That breaks my heart. Voting is our fundamental civic duty--if for no other reason that that participating is the thing that gives us the right to complain. But I cannot in good conscience vote for her on the Democratic ticket, and I will not vote for McCain. His policy positions are not nearly as centrist as he wants people to think. Among other things, he's perfectly content to spend us into oblivion to keep us in Iraq forever, "if that's what it takes." He also thinks we should bail out the mortgage companies which got themselves into deep doo-doo by lending too much to sub-prime borrowers. But the borrowers have no one to blame but themselves, in his estimation, so they can just suffer foreclosure and the other consequences of their actions. In other words, he'll always vote with monied interests over the interests of individuals.

Also, lest anybody think McCain's military service career gives him insight into the plight of "the common people," think again! He is the son and grandson of Navy Admirals--just about the crustiest of the upper crust in our entire military system. He has no clue about the needs or concerns of the average service grunt. This is not to disparage his service--nor his status as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. It's just to remind everyone that there's more in the picture than one period of time in the late 1960s.

We may not have to worry about November yet, but it's getting late. As a far greater talent than me once noticed, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy flight."

Fly Me To The Moon?

Actually, were I needing to fly via American Airlines, I should be saying "fly me to anywhere."

Last week's days upon days of American Airlines flight cancellations certainly was a debacle. I wonder if American will change its slogan to "We know why you don't fly"--or "We know why you fly--NOT!"

American Airlines, however, is not solely to blame for the mess it created. The Federal Aviation Administration bears most of the responsibility. However, my pointing a finger at the FAA is not for the same reason others want you to do likewise.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the FAA had determined as far back as 2003 that the electrical wiring bundles near the main wheel well of all MD-80s needed to be checked--indeed, the FAA suspected problems as early as 2001. However, no directive to inspect for or correct the potential problem was made till 2006, and even then, the FAA gave the airlines another year-and-a-half to comply!

The rabid free-marketeers will tell you that this shows the stupidity of government regulations, but they are wrong. The real problem here is putting people who do not believe in government in charge of running the government. Such people have NO incentive to make government work. They have EVERY incentive to make government fail, and in the most spectacular ways possible. When people stop believing in government's ability to help them, they'll stop relying on the government, and the government will eventually go away.

At such time, the free-marketeers can run their money-making schemes any way they want, and the rest of us will have no recourse when we are injured by their doing so.

You want another example? How about FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina? Maybe Dubya knew exactly what he was saying when he said, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." Maybe he was praising him for messing up FEMA to the point that FEMA could be made to go away forever. Thus the relatively paltry sums spent on running FEMA could be diverted into the Iraq War effort, or more likely, into the pockets of Dubya's buddies in the construction industry.

Nah. I can't give Dubya credit for that much intelligence. Dick Cheney, however . . .

In any event, the lesson is that if you allow people who don't like government to run the government, you've put the fox in charge of the hen house. So don't be surprised when you run out of eggs, let alone chicken dinners.

So I'm Not Mr. Kotter

Welcome me back anyway!

I wound up in the hospital last summer, shortly after my last posting . . . and my recovery has taken much longer than I ever expected. Then again, I'm already living on borrowed time. When my lung disease was first diagnosed, I was told I'd be dead in 10 years . . . and that would have been July, 1988.

At least, I think I'm still alive. My ex-husband sent me a rather snarky email in February (after 15 months of utter silence, including NOT paying the total correct support amount he was ordered to pay under the court's order in our divorce) noting that I've been at death's door so long people are starting to confuse me with the decorative statuary.

I tried to be civil and reminded him that he had no one to blame but himself, as the crummy way he'd treated me got my Irish up, and thus I was prepared to outlive him if I had to do it on will power and one nerve.

I wish I'd said the first thing that popped into my head, to wit: "After 15 months, that's the best you can come up with? You'd better have an EKG and an EEG, for if your heart and the rest of your brain have atrophied the way your wit has, you're the one who's dead and who doesn't know it."

This is why I'd never be a great trial lawyer. I have the instinct for the killer comment, but I have too much self-editing going on in my head to use said instinct to its best advantage. Oh, well. I should not be unhappy that I am not a shark, now, should I?

Anyway, a lot of other things have happened in the last 10 months. I have many opinions to share, but I'm not going to try to catch up all at once. I just don't have the stamina. But I will make one or two pertinent observations for now, and return (I hope on a more regular basis) with more in-depth comments every day or two.

Pertinent observation the first: I don't care what anyone claims--the fundamental, underlying motivation of anyone touting a real free market economy is greed. Look what happens every time we de-regulate financial institutions. Their only obligation is to maximize the return for their investors (i.e., make as much money as possible for them, which is as good a definition of greed as I've ever seen). So they take more and more risks as regulations get looser and more non-existent . . . and the end result is the current sub-prime lending crisis.

When are we ever really going to learn the lesson of 1929? Regulate or crash. Maybe we never will learn, as those who have the most money can afford to ride out crashes (indeed, they make money off of other people's misery, as they can scoop up property cheaply when others have no choice but to sell), and the rest of us are so desperate to taste even a sliver of the American Dream pie that we buy into things we shouldn't because we really can't afford them.

That's sad. If we regulate and keep regulating, maybe individual profits are not as big as those seeking them want, but everyone gets to participate in relative safety.

Observation the second: Every time I hear more war news out of the Middle East, I am reaffirmed in my hypothesis that ending the Cold War was not necessarily a good idea. (A) While the Cold War was on, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the so-called superpowers kept an uneasy truce which kept our risk of being annihilated relatively low. The USSR, like it or hate it, kept the lid on all the extremist crap coming out of its allied countries in the Middle East, at its own expense, both in terms of money and manpower. (C) Now that the Cold War is over, Russia is reverting to its traditional suspicion and paranoia regarding the West, so we have the beginnings of another Cold War in fact if not in name.

Why, then, did we spend all the money we spent to take down the USSR? After all is said and done, the only thing we accomplished was to ramp up our own debt. Not only is the tension with Russia re-elevated, now we're the ones trying to keep the lid on the terrorists and extremists--at the expense of our own economy and --more importantly--our own young military men and women. This is foolishness. Utter foolishness.

More soon!

It IS A Woman's Prerogative To Change Her Mind

I always used to think, when pondering the question of which president was the worst in US history, that the answer was "Nixon's the One!" After all, his own 1972 campaign buttons said so. I had two major reasons for thinking this: (1) Nixon was a very intelligent man. Spitting on the US Constitution the way he did was unspeakably disgusting, mostly because he knew better. (2) Nixon was a lot more moderate than most people want to remember--he signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, you know. His attempt to cover his own involvement in Watergate (and other such dirty tricks), resulting in his resignation (only because he did so before he could be impeached and convicted) had the long-term effect of destroying the moderate wing of the Republican Party . . . sticking us with the craven crowd we have at the head of the GOP--and,unfortunately, the entire country--now.

After listening to the cogent points Keith Olberman made the other night on Countdown, however, I am exercising my prerogative to change my mind. Dubya is the worst president in all of US history. He is arrogant, stupid, incompetent, and has absolutely no grasp of what our system of government is supposed to be. He thinks he's King George, not Mr. President. He will not listen to the people who hired him--uh, that would be all of us. John Wayne captured the essence of our system when he commented (upon hearing that JFK had beaten Nixon in 1960) that, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my President, and I hope he does a good job."

The good of the nation outweighs the good of one's party. As Keith Olberman noted, even Nixon recognized that when he resigned the presidency. But Dubya has no clue. He seems to believe that the nation and his party are one and the same . . . and that those of us who are not of his beliefs are not really Americans, so our opinions don't count. He feels free to trample on them as he wishes. I wish I could get him to sit down and watch the movie1776. Yes, it was a highly fictionalized and romanticized telling of how the Continental Congress came to pass the Declaration of Independence. But it tells truth about the principles on which our system is based, most notably making the point that dangerous times do not justify even a temporary limitation of our liberties (Pennsylvania delegate Roger Dickinson to the contrary).

Hmm . . . Rudy Guliani ought to watch it, too. Not that ether of them could be bothered to learn anything from it. But every other attempt we collectively have made to get them to listen hasn't worked, so what else can we do?

Can Effervescence Be Eternal?

Belle Silverman, you will be missed. If I wanted to be cheeky, I suppose I'd say that Bubbles has finally burst . . . but I don't want to be cheeky. I just heard that opera soprano Beverly Sills died last night. She was the least diva-like of divas, projecting an openness and a down-to-earthiness that oddly never clashed with her truly ethereal voice.

She retired from singing 27 years ago, when she was 51. Her coloratura was already somewhat in decline by the time she achieved her greatest singing fame and made her best-known recordings in the 20 years before that. I can but imagine The Voice in her prime. But I mourn her passing as deeply as if I'd been alive to hear her sing at the top of her powers in the 1940s.

Ms. Sills was truly an original, the first American opera superstar, and at the same time, just plain folks. I cannot picture her in my mind without seeing her smile--and without seeing that shock of red, red hair. Nor can I think of her without admiring the essense of contradiction her life and legacy personify. C'mon! An opera star, who was born in Brooklyn?!? A rather husky speaking voice which produced the most angelic, delicate songs? "Bubbles," the diva? Her graciousness and class shone through, even when she had to make hard-nosed business decisions while running the City Opera of New York and also holding the reins at the Lincoln Center. And always, that voice--so delicate, but pulsing with strength, sureness, and power.

I do not pretend to have an iota of her gifts, but being a red-head myself, and having had (before my lung disease ruined my instrument) a bit of a talent for singing on key, I can at once revel in the beauty of her voice and sorrow for the pain she suffered in dying of lung cancer . . . especially since she, like me, was a life-long non-smoker. Besides, I am--or, more properly, was--only a mezzo soprano. Even when my voice was at its best, I couldn't dream of singing the things she sang. I could appreciate them, though, and believe me, I do.

I am eternally grateful that such things as film, video tapes, LPs, and remastered CDs of some of her most celebrated performances exist. So Bubbles is effervescent . . . and eternal . . . all at once. As she herself may have commented, "Ain't technology grand?"

School Daze

Did you hear the one about the community college students in the San Francisco area who paid people to change the grades on their transcripts, so that they could get into better 4-year institutions when the time came to complete their undergraduate degrees?

Seriously, did you hear about it? The only thing that shocks me about it is that anyone else is shocked by it. In its own small way, this scandal reveals the true dangers of an unregulated free market economy and the attitudes is creates. The unspoken foundation of the unregulated free market is that everything can be had for the right price. It makes everything into a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, or trashed and replaced as the whim strikes and as the pocketbook permits.

And that is just plain wrong. Humans, as social beings living in societies, have a community of purpose (often spiritual) that in its best manifestations rises above mundane money-grubbing. Societies exist because no person can do everything he needs to survive, let alone to thrive, all by himself. We are all in this together, and if we all give a little bit to help each other, we all are better off in the long run. But the free market teaches "I'll get mine any way I can, and you can go to Hell."

This is why I am still surprised that so many fundamentalist Christians are such fervent supporters of an unregulated free market economy. It seems to contradict the most basic of Christ's teachings. But then again, I was raised Catholic, where being poor and suffering too often is considered a positive good (as long as it's someone else, someone you can help, and not you, yourself who is suffering too much). I simply cannot wrap my head around the Church of Protestant Prosperity.

Geography 101

The only thing worse than saying something when one has nothing to say is being unable to say something when one DOES have something to say. Thank you, Oscar Wilde.

Anyway, I have been trying to get this posted for over a week, so I apologize if it no longer seems to be timely news.

I heard a report on NPR well over a week ago which hasn't attracted any other attention that I have found--which shocks me--and which ought to make us all scratch our heads in collective confusion. The report is that the latest military brilliance from the Dubya administration is to convert the war in Iraq to a situation "akin to that in Korea."

This has to be one of the all-time great "things that make you go wha?!?" The report was all about how many in the highest US military echelons now support the notion that if we draw down US troop levels and deploy them similarly to the way we deploy our troops in South Korea, we can establish and keep the peace.

Has no one at the Pentagon looked at a map lately? The dividing line on the Korean peninsula is nice, neat, fairly straight and short--and is anchored on both ends by large bodies of salt water. How could we deploy a reduced number of troops in Iraq in a similar fashion? Given what has been alleged about Iran supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents, I suppose that would mean a line along the Iran/Iraq border . . . which is much longer and harder to maintain than Korea's . . . and which is much easier than Korea's to circumvent, literally, by going around the ends. (Think Germany going through Belgium to avoid the Maginot Line and invade France.) Besides, I don't think it would win us any friends or influence people in Iraq or Iran.

We could deploy our reduced troop levels in a ring around Baghdad . . . around the parts of Baghdad we want to protect, anyway. But that means allowing ourselves to be surrounded by the enemy. (Think West Berlin during the Cold War.) That could be very exciting. West Berlin, with all its palpable intrigue and danger, was a really cool place to visit when it was behind the Iron Curtain. But the rest of Iraq, along with the rest of the Middle East, is not like western Europe in the 40s-90s. Somehow, I am not sure we could (1) establish and maintain lines of supply; (2) establish and maintain safe access road corridors; (3) establish and maintain stable governments for both Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.

Besides, if we could do that in Iraq, wouldn't we have done it already? Isn't that what we've been trying to do since the mission was allegedly accomplished way back in 2003? What in the world makes us think that by adopting a "Korean model" we suddenly have a solution for the quagmire in which Dubya has stuck us?

This "Korean model" is neither a good nor appropriate one for Iraq. The physical geography of the Middle East alone makes it impossible. Though I can see how Dubya would be attracted to the notion of the parallels between North Korea and Iran, seeing as how those two states were prominent in his "Axis of Evil" State of the Union address. And THEY both have WMDs. Maybe, if we were going to "make the world safe for democracy," we should have invaded one of those places instead of getting revenge on Saddam Hussein, who dissed Dubya's daddy.