Put Another Nickel In, In The Nickelodeon

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The "Top 10 Favorites" music lists recently submitted [at whose request, I do not remember, I am sorry to say--Ed.] by this year's major party putative presidential candidates surprised me. Senator Obama listed a song or two with which I am not familiar (though I recognized the artists involved), and Senator McCain listed two--count 'em, TWO!--Abba songs.

The only artist they both listed was Frank Sinatra, though they listed different favorite Sinatra songs. That's OK. My own favorite Sinatra song differs from both of theirs. I'd have listed "(One For My Baby, And) One More For The Road." Then again, after listening to Sinatra's cover of "Blues In The Night," I might have to add that to my list. On the other hand, after remembering Bugs Bunny singing "A buzzard is two-faced," I'd better go back to my original choice. Talk about [worrisome--Ed.] things you can't get out of your head!

So I got to thinking about what else I'd put on my own personal "Top 10" list. Without a doubt, I'd choose Nat King Cole's cover of "Stardust." What an extraordinary interpretation! It makes the Hoagy Carmichael song truly sublime. Not even Carmichael's own original comes close . . . though, I must admit, Willy Nelson's cover does. But Nat King Cole's version is the standard by which all other covers must be measured. They all fall short.

If instrumentals are allowed, I'd also include Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing." I've always liked raucous percussion and reeds, and this one has the most raw clarinet and drum parts ever. It's also guaranteed to make you get up and dance in the aisles, just as it did during Goodman's Carnegie Hall premiere in 1937--if memory serves. Not that I was there. But I have seen The Benny Goodman Story several times [as if that mattered!--Ed.], and I have more than one LP and CD which include that performance.

For sheer silliness, I'd include something by Weird Al Yankovic, most probably "Yoda." We all need to laugh out loud several times a day, and the brilliance of Yankovic's parody of "Lola" cannot be overstated. I guffaw with delight every time I hear it. When you know all the lyrics to a parody and find yourself singing the parody's lyrics even when the original song plays, you are far, far gone. That the parody has lodged itself that deeply in my brain proves how brilliant it is.

I must include Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." I know Paul Simon was unhappy with his third verse. He said it has always bothered him that he couldn't repeat perfectly the parallel structure of the lyrics from verses one and two. I don't care. The recording is ethereal--Garfunkel's tenor was at its most soaring and true; Simon's melody and the pair's original performance were--and are--perfect.

Can't add anything to that.

I'd like to include Beethoven's 9th Symphony [the whole thing, not just the 4th movement--Ed.], but it's probably too long and esoteric for most folk. Too bad. Beethoven was truly original, a voice of the people, even though he's considered very, very highbrow today. The sheer power and the hope in his music can lift me out of my deepest darknesses, and I treasure his message: all odds CAN be conquered. He is profound. That he could create and conduct such beauty when he could not hear is astonishing.

Now choices get trickier. I am not listing my preferences in any particular order, but the order in which they occurred to me, thus the order in which I write about them here, accurately indicates my probable preferences. Then again, the only reason I started with the Sinatra song is because he's the only one both Obama and McCain listed, not because he's my personal favorite. The choices from here on get trickier anyway. Limiting myself to just 10 total songs is beyond challenging. It's going to be virtually impossible.

I'd also have to include something by the Beatles, but I'll be hanged if I can limit myself to one Beatles song. I have wrestled with this for the better part of the last two days, and I just can't do it. The melody of "Eleanor Rigby" moves me deeply, though the lyrics are a downer; "All You Need Is Love" is fun, but kind of silly [we all know there's nothing wrong with silly love songs, but really!--Ed.]. "A Day In The Life" is masterful in both composition and lyrics, but it wouldn't be my first choice if I must limit myself to one. "Hey, Jude," "Blackbird," "Let It Be," "Norwegian Wood," "Revolution," and on, and on, and on . . . any or all of them would do. Here's a twist: "In My Life," but the cover by Sean Connery. It works. But it seems like something one would say at a funeral.

I give up. The Beatles. Their entire catalog. It's the only option.

And now for something completely different: Garth Brooks, "Friends In Low Places." It's the fun value. This is a great song just to sing. Perfect party music.

Likewise, Talking Heads' "Burning Down The House." Not only is it a great song, it's the greatest background music for doing the housecleaning I've ever found. A survey of NPR listeners about 19 years ago confirmed it. But I said it first!

Enya's "Caribbean Blue." I love the way her music flows over my soul. "Orinoco Flow" is wonderful, too, but I think "Caribbean Blue" is less over-exposed. Besides, I remember hearing a DJ say once that "Orinoco Flow" reminded him of the soundtrack to an epic Western. I get it. I even agree with it. But I can't get it out of my head, and that song deserves more.

I'd also have to include two songs by Johnny Cash, believe it or not. His cover of "Hurt," made a year or so before he died, proves that the man was a genuine artist. It's an amazing performance. My other Cash tune? "Ring Of Fire." Talk about "portrait of the artist as a young man"--this is it. The orchestration, with the Mariachi horns and no drums, was a first. I didn't appreciate how unique this song was when I was younger. I've grown in my understanding.

I think I've already chosen more than 10. I haven't even gotten to Duke Ellington, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow (jazz-oriented only, thank you), Lyle Lovett, or Beck! Let alone Prince, The Police, and God only knows how many other artists. My CD collection is embarrassingly large. I lost count at 500, and I have broad collections in just about every genre.

OK, just one or two more so that I can assuage my ethnic pride. Tommy Makem's "Rocky Road To Dublin," and De Daanan's "Hibernian Rhapsody." The former because it's a rousing good rebellion song; the latter, because hearing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" arranged for traditional Irish instruments is simply delightfully offbeat. Even though the music is perfectly on the beat.

I shudder to think what I've left out. I'd love to know your choices. I guess my inability to limit myself just proves I don't have the self-discipline to be president. Or that I know too much about too many things.

Pssst! Wanna Buy A Bridge?

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I can get it for you wholesale.

Let me see if I understand this. In the past several years, Senator John McCain has voted against every single piece of proposed legislation to help the military and military veterans . . . on the grounds that the money needed "would break the budget." When he could be bothered to show up and vote, that is. He never even bothered to attend to cast a vote on a Senate resolution to honor our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. A resolution that would add precisely NOTHING to the national budget deficit because it would cost exactly NOTHING.

And he's the pro-veterans candidate?!?

He says Senator Barack Obama changes his position on issues because of Obama's "overwhelming ambition to be president." McCain has no ambition to become president? Or he's being coerced somehow into running as the GOP candidate?

When asked about Obama Nation, a pack of lies and smears if there ever was one, McCain said only, "You gotta keep your sense of humor." I wonder how charitable McCain would be about a book belittling him and his time as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton.

Well, if you vote for McCain, you're either totally gullible or a bigot. In either case, I want to sell you a bridge--in Brooklyn--very solid brick and steel construction. Cash only, up front. I'll take your best offer.

Let me know how much you'd like to spend.

Justice May Or May Not Be Blind, But Sometimes She Is Deaf And Dumb

Two area criminal trials recently concluded, with vastly different and unfair results. In the first, a young man who took a baseball bat to an older man's head was convicted only of misdemeanor assault. It didn't seem to matter to the jury that the young man took the bat and several of his buddies to the older man's house (in the small community of Plattsmouth, south of Bellevue), rang the doorbell intending to confront the older man, and hit the man so severely that his face is still disfigured (after at least one surgery), and that the older man faces several more surgeries and over $600,000 in medical bills.

According to several jurors, some on the panel even wanted to acquit the young man at first. This is mind-boggling to me. Those jurors apparently believed the young man's claim that he was afraid, that he swung the bat only in self-defense, and that he was aiming only at the older man's stomach. Right. After HE picked up a bat, went to the man's house, and initiated the confrontation. One does not have to be a major league baseball player to know that a level swing aimed at someone's stomach is not going to hit that person in the face, either.

I get the feeling from what the jurors who spoke up said was that the misdemeanor conviction was the best they could get, and they decided do accept that verdict rather than insist on the more serious felony assault charge and wind up with no conviction at all due to a hung jury.

Omaha World-Herald editorial cartoonist Jeff Koterba got this one just right: he depicted Lady Justice down on the ground, bleeding from her head, a bloody baseball bat tossed on the ground beside her.

Sometimes, however, the system works just right. In Omaha this afternoon, a now 15-year-old man was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of a 6-year-old girl back in 2006. He had been arguing with the girl's caregivers on and off all day (apparently about some drug deal gone wrong), and finally got a gun and shot at them while they were in a car. Of course the innocent 6-year-old was the one who was hit, fatally. And she didn't die immediately. Her last words were, "It burns." [Talk about heart-wrenching!--Ed.] The jurors in this case have been deliberating since late last week, so this was no hasty, predetermined verdict, despite what the shooter's grandmother claims.

No, the young man had no intent to kill a 6-year-old, but by shooting at the car when he could see the people he'd been fighting with sitting in it, he intended to kill. That's the only intent required for second-degree murder.

He was tried as an adult because he had demonstrated repeatedly that he knew and understood the consequences of his actions. His grandmother was also upset that he wasn't "tried" in Juvenile Court, but that's silly. Juvenile Court was set up to handle juvenile things, the kind of pranks and family problems that were common 50 years ago--not murder.

The grandmother seemed to think that since she'd convinced her grandson to go and confess his role to the police late the same night of the crime that the young man should get consideration. But the tapes of his confession, which were aired on the local news programs all afternoon after the verdict was announced, showed that he didn't even want to admit he'd fired the gun at first. It was a long time before he finally "fessed up."

The prosecution wanted a first-degree murder conviction, but I don't think that was warranted, either. Yes, the young man went and got a gun, but unlike the young man in Plattsmouth, he didn't go out and seek his antagonists and confront them. He happened to see them and after some shouted exchanges, pulled the gun and fired--to scare them, he said--but since he aimed at the car and not in the air, he demonstrated he'd formed sufficient intent for a second-degree murder conviction.

So we had a gross miscarriage of justice in Plattsmouth and a major doing of justice in Omaha. I can hope only that the injured man in Plattsmouth files a civil suit against his attacker, so that he can get compensation for some of his medical expenses, at least. Not that it will matter. As all the professors in the Damages course in law school say, "You can't get blood from a turnip."

Hello? Hello?

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds Dubya's scolding of Russia for its military aggression in Georgia hypocritical and ineffectual. Which is not to say I disagree with it. It's just that when Dubya tells the leader (Prime Minister Putin) of another country that it has no right to invade a third and that its actions are "disproportionate," I can't get past a mental image of a pot calling a kettle black. As it were.

I very much would like to see Georgia keep its freely elected democratic government and not be re-subsumed into a revitalized Soviet Union--even if it's officially without the "Soviet," Russia is turning back into the same empire that lowered the Iron Curtain in the first place.

However, I can't see how anyone in the world can take Dubya's tsk-tsking and finger-wagging lecturing seriously, given the crap he dragged us into in Iraq. Not to mention Afghanistan (though I concede that our presence in Afghanistan is the more justifiable of the two wars).

November cannot come soon enough for me! (Assuming we get a new administration, and not McBush's third term, that is.)

I Want To Eat Lunch, Not Play Golf

As I age, I find myself increasingly distressed by people (who should know better) who mispronounce words. This despite the fact that I'm not perfect. "Poinsettia" always gives me trouble. I was raised to say "Poinsett-a," and for a long time thought it was an acceptable regional variant. "Poinsett-i-a" is correct, but so many say it the other way that I feel like a pretender or a snob if I say it correctly. But saying it wrong (i.e., according to habit) doesn't feel right, either. So I tend to avoid saying it at all. When I must say it, I tend to slide a "y" sound in the middle: "Poinsett-ya." Not pretty; not elegant; but workable. I hope.

Anyway, the current Wendy's ad wherein an animated Wendy says she doesn't like "gray areas" in her chicken is bugging the heck out of me. She also says "sand-wedge" instead of "sand-wich." She may not want any gray areas in her chicken sandwich, but I sure don't want to clamp my teeth down on a golf club in the middle of mine!

I'm not sure why it irritates me so much. Maybe it's because I tend to equate pronunciation laziness with mental laziness. This is the same reason that when otherwise intelligent, educated people like Keith Olbermann say "li-berry" instead of "li-brary," I go through the roof. It's worse than fingernails scraping a blackboard. It's worse than having aluminum foil and a stainless steel fork tine hit a dental filling at the same time. It is supremely discomforting.

Which is not to say that I still won't make mistakes. But at least I know better than the sociology professor [yes, the professor--Ed.] who repeatedly in his lectures said "ep-i-tome" instead of "e-pit-o-me." Yes, it was Sociology 101, with well over 250 students in the lecture sessions, and yes, it was the fall of [gasp!--Ed] 1975, and yes, the professor obviously was well on the way to "emeritus" status . . . but still! I was 18, barely out of high school, and I knew better than a Ph.D. with several books published how to pronounce an important word. What really scares me however is that no one else seemed to notice. Either they didn't know the word or they didn't know any better, either.

Here's hoping college broadened their horizons.

How Art The Mighty Fallen

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I hereby withdraw my call to draft John Edwards at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. I felt safe in ignoring the rumors of his having had an affair back in 2006, so long as the only media outlets "reporting" said rumors were bird cage liners like The National Enquirer. Now that both Edwards and his wife have confirmed the affair, however, I can ignore the rumors no more.

Do all our heroes have feet of clay? Is this an illustration of the "power corrupts" hypothesis? Why does it even matter?

To answer in reverse order: it matters because it goes straight to the issue of Edwards' integrity, which was one of his most important "selling points" as a potential presidential nominee. It does illustrate almost perfectly that even the potential for power corrupts. Edwards' own admission was that he became increasingly narcissistic as his efforts to become the Democratic nominee progressed. The potential for power increased his attractiveness to himself AND others; it also increased his interest in responding to the attraction others felt for him. All our heroes must have feet of clay, therefore. I can't think of a single person for whom I've ever expressed admiration who hasn't disappointed or shocked me at some point. [And I am sure anyone who has ever expressed admiration for me has been disappointed in or shocked by me at some point. If anyone ever has expressed any admiration for me, that is!--Ed]

The real tragedy of Edwards' dalliance is manifold. (1) Though his affair has little to do with his stand on public policy issues, his stand no longer has any credibility . . . at least, not when coming from him.

(2) Edwards' political rivals--indeed, rivals of all Democrats--now have an additional smokescreen issue to divert attention and energy from the genuinely important issues of the upcoming election. So what that John McCain regularly lies about his own voting record [let alone Obama's--Ed.] and about where he stands on the issues? So what that McCain can't get straight the most basic facts about foreign policy issues--allegedly his area of greatest advantage and expertise over Obama? So what that his own campaign staffers have said that McCain doesn't necessarily speak for the McCain campaign? Look at those nasty Democrats who can't keep their zippers zipped! [If you think the rabid right wing of the GOP isn't going to raise the spectre of Bill Clinton's shenanigans again, you are way too naive to be involved in politics.--Ed]

Hmm . . . that last reminds me of my ex-husband's take on Nixon's "Checkers" speech: "I may be a crook, but look at this dog." [Gotta give credit where credit is due. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, per Ann Landers.--Ed.]

(3) Elizabeth Edwards' voice has been stilled. Because of her personal experiences, she was a powerful advocate for (among other things) better health care for all Americans. Now, not only has her speech at the upcoming convention been cancelled, neither she nor her husband will even attend.

(4) Most personally, the toll it has taken on the entire Edwards family. How much energy did it take away from Elizabeth Edwards' efforts to combat her recurrent breast cancer? She has forgiven her husband, but how much of her trust in him remains broken? And their children's trust, too?

(5) The potential harm to the country. Edwards was being considered for a Cabinet post, most probably Attorney General. It is impossible, however, for someone whose personal integrity is now so tarnished to take on the task of returning the Dubya administration's politically-infected Justice Department to a state of politically-neutral respectability. Contrary to what some of Dubya's minions think, career attorneys at Justice do not serve a particular president or administration. They serve the American people. All of us. All the time. No matter who's in the Oval Office. At the moment, however, I can't think of any other Democrat who has the practical trial attorney experience and the national reputation to bring credibility back to the DOJ. And Edwards simply will no longer do.

I'd go cry in my beer, except I don't drink beer. Somehow, "crying into my Coca Cola" doesn't have the same cachet.

Three Things I Wish I'd Never Seen

My jaw literally dropped when I saw and heard John McCain offer up his wife Cindy to be a Miss Buffalo Chip contestant at the Sturgis (SD) motorcycle rally yesterday. Was it ignorance or really bad taste? Miss Buffalo Chip contestants have to take their clothes off . . . and the winners also usually simulate various sex acts with bananas . . . Gross! Of course, the bikers ate it up. Cindy just stood at her husband's side, head down, a strained, close-mouthed smile on her face. If I were her, I'd have socked McCain right in the chops, walked off the stage, and filed for divorce. Is there no low to which his pandering for votes will not stoop?

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Any and all of the current Citgo ads. They are full of sunniness and light, talking about how all Citgo stations are locally owned, and how that by supporting Citgo, buyers of its gasoline are helping their local economies. They very conveniently do not mention that Citgo is owned by Venezuela. Yep, it's the state-owned and run corporation of Hugo Chavez--you know, Hugo Chavez, whose anti-US rhetoric will curl your hair [or straighten it out if it's already curly--Ed.]. So we as a nation aren't fit to wipe his shoes, but our money is more than good enough to fund his nation's economy.

And for all of you who think I'm betraying my beliefs by condemning an avowed Communist, let me remind you of two things: (1) my opinions are based on fact--I do not let my personal proclivities color my evaluation of anything; (2) Communists in practice are much more to the right than to the left, as philosophical orientations go. The mistake that people make in calling Communists leftists is that thinking because Communists run their abusive power through "the state," they like "big government." And that "big government" equals being "leftist." No, no, no! They are dictators, pure and simple. And that's to the right end of the political spectrum. The mechanism they use to wield their power isn't the issue--their control over everything is.

* * * * * * * * * *

Baskin-Robbins has an ad wherein a soccer dad promises the team Oreo shakes (or sundaes, or something) if they win the game, and a soccer mom promptly kicks the winning goal, then screams at one of the opposing players, "Go-o-o-o-al! In your face!" As of a few days ago, the "in your face" has been cut from the ad. I guess B-R got a lot of complaints from people about that. I hope so. It was beyond obnoxious. I confess to not paying close enough attention to what exactly the winning players were promised, as all the local Baskin-Robbins franchises left the Omaha area years ago, and I see no point in torturing myself by wanting something yummy that I can't have. Even though the temperature is well over 90° every day lately. Even though I still miss B-R's World Class Chocolate [which, in my perhaps not-so-humble estimation, is the single best ice cream flavor ever made.--Ed.].

More Things That Make You Go "Hmm . . ."

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Barry Bonds' either tying or breaking Hank Aaron's career home runs record. No one on this year's San Francisco team has hit a many as 10 homers. So much for them being the "Giants." Which leads me to wonder whether the team should have received an automatic exemption from the steroids ban just to be able to better embody the team's nickname. Maybe Barry Bonds should use that argument as part of his defense. "I had no choice. I had to be a Giant, in every possible way."

* * * * * * * * * *

I still can't figure out why the Dubya administration felt the need to trump up a bunch of secret evidence against Osama bin Laden's driver to use (in secret) at the driver's trial at Gitmo. [That's "Guantanamo Bay" to you normal, not-infected-by-being-connected-to-the-military, people.--Ed.] There was no need to subject the driver to torture via rendition or anything else. We have a picture of the driver standing next to Obama--and the driver is holding an assault rifle. Assuming the picture wasn't PhotoShopped, I have to agree with the prosecution's argument that no one who wasn't highly trusted would be allowed to get that close to bin Laden with weapons in his hands. So what's up with all that other crap that Dubya's minions pulled?

Maybe they LIKE torturing people.

Creepy.

* * * * * * * * * *

So the Green Bay Packers apparently blinked. Brett Favre has been reinstated by the NFL Commissioner, and he's in Green Bay, and as I write this, the promised press conference hasn't yet been held so that we'll all find out what the Packers organization is doing next. Like we don't have anything else to do except wait to find that out.

The NFL is already playing pre-season games. And college football fall camps have opened. It's 90+ fricking degrees outside! C'mon! The baseball pennant races are just now starting in earnest. It's much too early for football. Excuse me while I go take a nap inside my freezer.

* * * * * * * * * *

Does anybody know the name of the singer who's featured in the current Reebok NFL-related T-shirt commercial? I've tried finding out, using "Traveling North" as the name of the title of the song she's singing, but that hasn't worked, so now I'm asking for help. And I'm going to feel really stupid for not recognizing her myself once I learn the answer, aren't I? Oh, well. So what else is new?

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm with Lisa Marie Presley. Those "Viva Viagra" commercials make me puke. Her, because she thinks they disrespect her dad. Me, because no one connected to the ads apparently gets the irony of the singer calling himself an "ol' goat." And health plans that jumped all over covering Viagra still won't cover female birth control. Feel free to roll your eyes in disgust. I know I am.

* * * * * * * * * *

John McCain has obviously planned his campaign around PT Barnum's admonition that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. He said he wasn't going to run a negative campaign, but so far, all his ads attack Barack Obama--and not even with facts, but with lies and distortions and innuendos. He said he had no intention of playing the "race card," but so far, his most-frequently run ad juxtaposes pictures of Obama with Brittney Spears, Paris Hilton, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, and crowds of Europeans applauding for Obama. He said he was going to stick to the issues in his campaign, but so far, his tactics are to claim that Obama is either too popular or to thin to be president.

This is perfectly in line with McCain's contempt for us, the voters. He lies about his voting record on a regular basis and expects us NOT to censure him for it. Anyone who does call him on his lies is branded an evil "liberal" member of the press, denied access to McCain's so-called Straight Talk Express, and demonized as just another cog in the machine conspiring to keep McCain from getting favorable media coverage.

Where'd I put my spare barf bags? I'm gonna need more than one or two at this rate!

Cat Lady, Cat Lady, Find Me A Cat

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In Omaha earlier this week, the Nebraska Humane Society raided the home of a 68-year-old woman because of a tip from a Council Bluffs, Iowa (just across the Missouri river, still part of the larger metro Omaha area) pet store. The woman had been caught trying to shoplift cat food. The NHS found over 100 cats in the woman's home.

I am not going to reveal her name, even though it's been in all the news stories, because she doesn't need more publicity directed at her personally. She has sought out the media (print and TV) and taken an active role in claiming she's "not one of those [weird] old ladies" who hoards cats. She merely helps and protects cats.

The NHS would disagree. While NHS workers admitted that the woman's home was not as bad as some they've had to raid [they didn't need to don HazMat gear--Ed.], even three days after they removed all the cats, cleaned what they could, and left the house's windows open, the house still smells of urine and illness.

The NHS also has had to euthanize over 60 of the cats already. NHS workers also say they found several dead kittens under the woman's bed and some dead cats buried in her back yard.

The woman disputes all these things. She says the only reason her house wasn't as clean as normal the day of the raid is that her normal 4-5 hour routine of cleaning all the litter boxes was not completed because she had to leave for a medical appointment. She says there was only 1 dead kitten under her bed, and no cats buried in the yard.

It's perfectly obvious that she is, in fact, one of those "old ladies" who hoards cats. Delusion about the good she's is doing is the hallmark symptom of an animal hoarder. My heart aches for her, because she is trying to do a good thing--but she doesn't know when or how to stop or set limits, and has allowed her need for being a care-giver to overwhelm her sense about how much care she can responsibly give.

The reason this matters? Well, Socrates said an unexamined life was not worth living, and the lady's story made me wonder how much and in what areas we all delude ourselves, and what harm we are doing as a result, even when [especially when--Ed.] we think we are doing good.

I am mulling over my answers about myself. I hope you will do the same for yourselves. Taking time to reflect--and then act on what we discover--gives us all the opportunity to improve ourselves and make our world a better place.

If nothing else, it should provoke us to donate to our local Humane Societies.

What He's NOT Saying Is As Important As What He Is Saying

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Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been indicted for accepting all kinds of goodies in connection with a second story renovation and expansion of his home . . . goodies made at the behest of a company with big oil drilling interests. Stevens has protested his innocence, claiming he paid every invoice he received regarding the redo on his house.

What he didn't say is whether he recognized that whatever invoices he received totaled a great deal less than the actual supplies and labor of the work done. That isn't exactly difficult to calculate. If he got bills totaling, say, $5,000.00, one would have only to look at the work done to see how short that bill fell of covering the actual expense. One does not have to be a construction genius to figure this out. One needs only a Menard's ad showing its charges for materials like the ones used on Stevens' house.

OK--I know what you're going to say. If President Bush (I) had no idea about grocery scanners, and Sen. John McCain wears a pair of $500+ Ferragamo shoes while claiming to be "just folks," it's possible Stevens had no clue about the actual expenses of the work on his home. Possible, but not plausible. As I said, one does not have to be a genius to have a clue.

But even if he honestly did have no idea, are we sure we want such people voting on how our taxes are spent? Stevens has been in office a long, long time . . . methinks he got a little too comfy and cozy with being Alaska's designated "Senator for life," as he was (until now) regularly called in the Alaskan media.

Listen! (Doo Wah Doo) Do You Want To Know A Secret?

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I'm not usually very big on conspiracy theories. I maintain that in any society with a vigorous and truly free press, conspiracies cannot hold for long. Once exposed to the light of day, conspiracies "go poof!" Secrecy is their binding agent. Without it, they will oollapse.

This is one of the reasons I used to argue with my [dear departed--Ed.] dad all the time about the Kansas City Chiefs. From the mid-80s on, he firmly maintained that at least one player (usually he referred to the field goal kicker) was being paid to throw close games. And the kicker in those days did seem to have a problem splitting the uprights when a field goal would mean the difference between a win and a loss for the Chiefs. I kept reminding my dad that given the ever-increasing presence of sports reporters (due to the expansion of sports coverage on Cable TV), no reporter would sit on such a story--breaking it would make his reputation and ensure his career success. Therefore, if such a conspiracy existed, someone would have ferreted it out and told us about it.

He clung to his conspiracy theory nevertheless. Perhaps he found it easier to live with the Chiefs' failures when it wasn't really the entire team's fault . . . perhaps he was just "yanking my chain." Perhaps it was a bit of both. For my part, I cling just as firmly to my belief in the power of the free and investigative press, the strength of human curiosity, and the inability of most people to keep their mouths perfectly shut.

On days like today, however, I wonder. The presence of Fox "News" has corroded the concept of a free and independent investigative press--my only question is how far the damage has spread. After 7+ years of the Dubya administration debacle, I am forced to concede that Machiavelli was right about what the exercise of power does to some people. And when I hear about how school systems all over the country are under such financial pressure that (1) teachers pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets; (2) communities hold "backpack" drives to make sure all students have what they need to attend school; and (3) people everywhere in this country demonstrate their ignorance of American history every time they open their mouths, I wonder: is there a conspiracy to demolish our public school system in order to create a permanent economic underclass?

It would make it much easier for the rich to keep--nay, increase--their riches at the expense [literally--Ed.] of the rest of us. It would do a lot to return the USA to a 19th century model of economic social stratification. It would mean the end of America as "the land of opportunity," where only one's own limitations affect how successful anyone can be. But it would make it easier for those in power to keep selling the "land of opportunity," because no one would have any education by which they could question what the powers that be tell everyone.

Education is the one thing that no one can steal. Once you have it, you are truly free. Destroy equal opportunity education for all, and you destroy the ability of future generations to rise above whatever economic circumstances limit them at their birth. That has always been the true hope America held out to the world. It won't be much for longer, if people like Fox "News" head Rupert Murdoch have their way, however. They don't want people have access to information, to think for themselves, and to make up their own minds about issues. They want to tell us what to think, and to beat down anyone who disagrees. How much easier to accomplish this once our schools are squeezed down into being mere babysitting services, instead of true gateways to Knowledge!

I hate that I am thinking this way. Maybe it's the rainy weather . . . it always makes me tired and pessimistic. But God help me, I have this urge to contact Hillary Clinton and apologize to her for rolling my eyes at her allegation several years ago of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." It doesn't matter that she said it in terms of certain people's efforts to "get Bill." It's part and parcel of the same thing. Rich right-wingers in power want to limit everyone else's access to same. They think the economic pie is limited, and they want to hog all they can for themselves. They just don't get it. When we all have equal access to the keys to success, the pie gets bigger, and there's more to share for everyone. JFK was right: a rising tide does "lift all boats."

Just Because You're Paranoid, It Doesn't Mean They're NOT Out To Get You

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Former Dubya administration toady and water carrier (i.e., temporary UN Ambassador) John Bolton has denigrated that administration's noticeable shift toward talking to and negotiating with countries Dubya said formed "the Axis of Evil." Bolton says this shift (1) demonstrates the "intellectual collapse" of the Dubya administration, thus (2) starts "the Obama administration six months early."

Two responses occur to me: (1) before you can have an "intellectual collapse," you must have an intellect. Had Bolton said "ideological collapse," his observation would have been much more accurate. Note, however, that he and I still disagree on whether said collapse is a good thing. He thinks not. I think it's more than about time.

(2) Bolton has unwittingly provided me with some support for a rather paranoid supposition, to wit: far, far right hard-liners are paying people on Sen. John McCain's election staff to screw up McCain's chances to get elected, as they are willing to "endure" four years of an Obama administration in the hopes that by 2012, said hard-liners can regain the presidency . . . only this time, with permanent control of the government. How else to explain the myriad out-and-out stupidities and lies McCain's campaign is experiencing?

[For a stupidity, consider McCain's "press conference" yesterday wherein he was filmed standing in front of a grocery store cheese case. Too tempting, and too easy, to make any number of cheesy jokes about it. For a lie, consider McCain's assertion yesterday that the Iraqi "surge" actually started several months before Dubya announced it. McCain seems to have no idea that the things he says are "facts" are easily checked and easily disproved. No surprise, I suppose, given his admitted ineptitude regarding the Internet.--Ed.]

Not that it really matters. If the Mayan calendar is correct, the world will end about 6 weeks after the November 2012 elections, on December 12, 2012. Long enough for the far, far right to know whether its nefarious plan has succeeded, but not long enough for that plan to go into effect. For them, then, T.S. Eliot's observation will be correct: "This is the way the world will end, not with a bang but a whimper."

Brett Favre, Go Away, Don't Come Back Another Day

I'm sorry, but I am totally fed up with the Brett Favre psycho-drama. For the past several years, Favre has played coy with the Green Bay Packers, leaving the organization guessing as to whether he was going to play another year--until this March, when he finally said he was now officially retired.

Except that he didn't mean it. I wondered during his March announcement whether he meant it, as he kept saying that he knew he could still play, but he wasn't sure he wanted to any more. He seemed less than committed to what he was saying, but he said it, so he should have to live with it.

And now that the Packers as an organization took him at his word and moved on--both in terms of modifying the offense to take advantage of new starting QB Aaron Rodgers's skill set and in terms of whom the Packers chose during the recent NFL college football draft--Favre has come out of the woodwork and is demanding to be given his outright release so that he can play somewhere else.

And women are hopeless prima donnas? My understanding of the situation is that Favre, still owing 3 years' service on his most recently signed contract with the Packers, has the choice of staying retired or of asking the NFL, through a letter to the Commissioner's Office, for reinstatement. Until he is reinstated, the Packers organization is within its rights to consider him retired and to do nothing else.

But Favre doesn't want reinstatement, because Green Bay most likely would neither trade nor release him--rather, Green Bay would make him the most expensive bench-sitting back-up in history, at approximately $12 million a year. Green Bay has no reason to grant Favre an outright release, as Favre would use it to negotiate a contract to play for one of the Packers' biggest divisional rivals, the Minnesota Vikings. [As Green Bay's recent complaint to the NFL suggests.--Ed.] Nor does Green Bay want to trade Favre, as that would be anathema to most Packers fans, not to mention that the only teams with the need and the wherewithal to vie for Favre's services are the very teams, like the Vikings, to whom Green Bay most emphatically does not want Favre to go.

So Favre's family has been making noises for weeks now that the Packers organization has made Brett feel "not welcome in Green Bay" for the past several years, and Favre's legal representative claims the ball is in Green Bay's court and it's up to Green Bay to make the next move.

But if Green Bay doesn't have to do anything until and unless Favre applies for and is given reinstatement, why should the Packers organization lift a finger? Favre's representative says Favre isn't going to ask for reinstatement because he has no intention of attending training camp just to be a backup, and that if Favre asks for reinstatement he'll be fined for every day he doesn't attend camp, so Favre isn't going to do that . . . but get real! He's under contract--either he stays retired or he complies with the terms of the contract, which includes paying any penalties for non-compliance.

Favre doesn't really want to play any more, I suspect. This is a case of Favre realizing he's no longer in the spotlight and still wanting to be the center of attention. He says the Packers organization has been telling him one thing for months but saying something completely different to the general public. However, I have seen no inconsistencies in Green Bay's statements over the past several months. The organization has said it tried to talk Favre out of retiring, but Favre wouldn't listen. And now he's changing his mind, but now it's too late.

If Favre was as unsure of retiring as he now says he was, he never should have made the announcement in the first place. So suck it up, Brett, and realize that you don't get to have everything 100% of your own way just because you hold a whole mess of NFL records. Show a little grace, show a little class--move on.

I have a friend who's husband insists that Brett Favre will be his #1 QB choice forever, but I say this: Favre is durable and workmanlike, to be sure, but give me Joe Montana in his prime any day of the week. At least Montana had--and still has--class. He also knew when it was time to go. [Which saddened me no end. My dad raised me to be a KC Chiefs fan, and I was so tantalized by how close to the Super Bowl Montana got the Chiefs in his 2nd year at KC that I didn't want to see him retire . . . even though I have come to see the wisdom of his decision.--Ed.]

Heck, I still remember when John Elway, newly out of college, was drafted by the Colts, and basically pitched a fit and said he wouldn't go . . . and the Colts caved in and traded him. My dad was disgusted about that for years. Being a career Air Force NCO, my dad understood that when your employer tells you to go somewhere, you go . . . no matter how much you may not want to do so . . . until you've earned the right to make other arrangements, which Elway, never having played a day in the pros at that point, had not yet done.

So I am totally fed up with the crass egoism of certain professional athletes. What else is new?

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Who Won the '58 FA Cup?

A commentator on the upcoming Beijing Olympics said on TV the other day that no one should be surprised that an officially Communist country has adopted a capitalistic economic system, because "Communism is a political philosophy and capitalism is not political but economic." First, I apologize for not remembering exactly who said this, as I would prefer to attribute it correctly, and I cannot. Second, I feel like a fool--mostly because I initially attributed a great deal of sense to the statement.

But the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder whether the commentator or I was the one who was crazy. Karl Marx defined Communism (as he would have societies practice it) as inherently political, true. But he demarked the political sides based entirely on their economic status in their communities.

So politics and economics are inherently intertwined, according to Marx. Saying China is not being self-contradictory by combining a Communist-Party-dominated government with a capitalistic economic system is thus delusional. Then again, Communism as it is and has been practiced in the actual world has virtually nothing to do with Communism as practiced according to Marx. Marx maintained that the working industrial proletariat would overthrow capitalism. Yet Communism has taken deepest root in agrarian, subsistence societies. Marx maintained that Communism in practice would cause "the withering away of the state." Yet Communist states are run by pervasive, totalitarian governments. Marx maintained that under Communism, everyone would contribute "according to his ability" and be cared for "according to his needs." [I never cease to be amused by how many Americans think this concept is enshrined in the US Constitution, but who proudly call themselves anti-Communist and who scream bloody murder at the smallest attempts at "social engineering," even when it would help them.--Ed.]

Of course, the biggest problem with Marx's entire system is that he never set forth who decides what an individual's abilities and needs are, thus determining who has to give and who gets to take. The upshot? The rise of nominally Communist totalitarian regimes, because "he who has the gold makes the rules." Even though their existence contradicts Marx's prognostications, their rise answers perfectly what Marx failed to address. Who decides? Those in power do. Whether their power is political and gives them the opportunity to control the economy or whether their power is economic and thus gives them the ability to control the government is irrelevant. Politics and economics are inseparable.

And there's the rub. Capitalism by definition promotes the idea that anyone who can will earn as much money as possible by dint of his own efforts. Thus capitalism, for all its faults, is a bastion of individual liberty. Your success is limited only by your own efforts. And that is the contradiction built into the idea of a Communist totalitarian government running a capitalistic economic system. It contains the seeds of its own destruction. Once people realize the regime is limiting their ability to earn more money, they are no longer going to support the regime. Sooner or later a tipping point will come, and the regime will come down. The only question is whether what replaces it will be worse.

Keep all this in mind while watching the Olympics. And don't worry too much about the title question for this post. It's from a Monty Python sketch wherein notable Communists in history compete in a game show to win a lounge suite. The title question stumped Karl Marx himself. At least Mao Tse Dong knew that Jerry Lee Lewis sang "Gleat Balls of File!"

-->

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Adding Insult To Injury

So I am minding my own business, watching the annual baseball love-fest of the All Star Game, it's the bottom of the 8th inning (the American League is at bat) with 2 out, and a violent thunderstorm rolls in and my power goes off.

When the power comes back on, I find it's the bottom of the 9th and the game is tied 3-3. So the game goes into extra innings. As the National League keeps getting out of defensive trouble yet stranding runners on base during its at-bats, I am enjoying the quality of play (except for poor Dave Uggla's 3 errors and one major failure to drive home a run)--until I realize it's after midnight and I really want to go to sleep!

And then the American League finally wins it in the bottom of the 15th inning. Four-and-a-half hours plus after the first pitch, the stupid AL wins again.

(1) I must be getting really old. I normally am a total night owl.
(2) I don't care that it's a love-fest for the final year of Yankee Stadium (AL) in its current incarnation--I'd really like to see the National League win one of these things, as it's been more than a decade now since the NL's last outright victory in the "midsummer classic."

What's worse: I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those of you who know me know to which team's foibles I refer. I can't say more about it, because I fear I'll jinx the team . . . again. But it's really Hell On Earth when one cannot even enjoy one's favorite team's successes because one fears in one's heart that said successes cannot and will not last.

No one ever said life was fair, but this is ridiculous!

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Never Teach A Pig To Sing

It Wastes Your Time And Annoys The Pig

Mark Twain's observation is just as valid today as it was when he first penned it. The problem is applying it. I am quite sure Dubya and his minions would like to fling it in my direction on occasion. Their problem is that I am armed with the facts, thus am more properly in a position to fling it at them than they are to fling it at me.

This morning, Dubya lifted the executive order prohibiting offshore oil drilling in American waters. He also urged Congress to overturn the Congressional prohibition on same. What's wrong with this picture, you ask? Let me tell you:

IT WON'T MAKE A BIT OF DIFFERENCE TO THE PRICE OF GAS, either now or in the long run.

Why not? Because all our oil refineries are already operating at maximum capacity. You can't refine it faster than the laws of physics dictate. No one can, no matter how much Dubya wishes it were otherwise. Not that he does wish it otherwise. He doesn't. He's an oil man, though he wasn't any good at that, either. His interests dovetail with the oil companies, not with John and Jane Average Citizen.

So why don't the oil companies build more refineries? Because the oil companies (1) aren't interested in lowering the price of gas--they are interested in raising the price of oil, thus increasing their profits (they don't need more refineries to sell their oil all over the world); (2) don't want to spend what otherwise goes into their pockets as windfall profits on the costs of building said new refineries, which would in the short term reduce their windfall profits; (3) find it easier to milk the cash cow they already have in the barn than to spend resources [you know, silly things like time, money, and human endeavor--Ed.] developing alternate energy sources.

Evidently no oil moguls have ever been in on the ground floor of developing a new technology. For sure none of them ever studied history in a serious way. And it doesn't even have to be ancient history. If they'd just take a look at the history of the oil industry's stepchild, the auto industry, they could not help but realize that GM (for one) first got into trouble in the early 70s because the executives were trying to tell consumers what kind of cars to buy instead of building the kinds of cars consumers said they wanted--as the increasing level of sales of Japanese imports illustrated.

I suppose I shouldn't blame them. Too much. They are reacting with typically short-term thinking. They care only about the current quarter's bottom line, not about what fortunes they could make 10 years down the road. They merely reflect one of the hallmarks of collective American thinking: we have an embarrassingly short attention span. Most of us don't know our own country's history, even when we think we do. If we did, we wouldn't have put up with Dubya and his minions and their crap for the last 7+ years. We'd not have elected him in the first place. [And maybe we didn't--remember Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004? Ed.]

American history has innumerable examples of creative and inventive individuals (often at the government's behest--witness the Manhattan Project, for example) rising to meet a challenge and keeping America ahead of the technological curve. Morse, Bell, Edison, Singer--just to name a few. Heck, even Abraham Lincoln has a patent! But all Dubya can offer us is the same old, tired suggestions that will not work because they are irrelevant to the real problem. However, if we fall for his shtick, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we, too, decide that lining the pockets of American oil men is more important to us than our own country's future, we deserve what happens to us.

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It Doesn't Matter WHY

Senator John McCain yesterday claimed that while he was a POW of the North Vietnamese, he was under such physical pressure at one point that he had to tell them something, and so he said the names of the other members of his Navy unit . . . and used the names of the Pittsburgh Steelers "Steel Curtain" defensive line that helped the Steelers win 4 Super Bowl titles starting in the mid-1970s.

He was on a campaign trip in Pittsburgh at the time.

This would not normally be particularly newsworthy, except for its implicit demonstration that torture does not work. However, there are two things very, very wrong with McCain's account: (1) he was held as a POW before the Steel Curtain defense achieved its fame and fortune; (2) he's told this story before, most notably in his book Faith of My Fathers, only using the Green Bay Packers defensive line.

Both versions of McCain's story cannot be true. At least the original version fits the chronology of the times: the Packers were the winners of the first two AFL-NFL championship games (known forever after as as "the Super Bowl"). Even a casual football fan of the period would have known the names of the Packers' defensive players.

The question becomes whether McCain knew he was lying when he revised his story--in Pittsburgh--to include the Steelers' players. If he knew and he did it anyway, he is guilty of the cheapest sort of political pandering. If he didn't know, he has memory problems approaching senility. Either way, he's not fit to be this nation's president. It doesn't matter whether it's a character flaw or a mental problem. It disqualifies him to be the one we voters select to have his finger on the nuclear button, among other things.

Now if he and his handlers start going around today and try to explain it away as his quirky sense of humor, and that he knew that we'd know that the story as he told it in Pittsburgh wasn't quite true, it changes nothing. For one thing, he never at the time by tone of voice or quick wink or any other gesture indicated this was all in fun. For another, even if he had, do we really want someone as president who takes the single most seminal experience of his life, a horrific one, and turns it into an inside joke? Especially when he's said for years he doesn't want to exploit his time and experiences as a POW for political purposes?

I think not. I hope not. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

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At Least It's Truth In Advertising

The Woodhouse family owns and operates a number of auto dealerships in the greater metro Omaha area, from Chevy to Mazda. The current Woodhouse TV ad campaign startled me with its frankness.

The ads end with children of Woodhouse customers saying their names and ages, and then saying, with various degrees of pronunciation clarity, "I am Woodhouse." (One little blond girl with pigtails is painfully adorable.) The ads all begin with a Woodhouse spokeswoman [and family member?--Ed.] cheerfully informing the viewers that Woodhouse is establishing a relationship with the viewers in order to establish a relationship with "the future generations."

It is well-established that a major purpose of advertising is to generate brand loyalty and repeat business--after all, those things guarantee positive cash flow, which in turn guarantees the business's continued successful existence. But it's not usually so blatantly stated in the ads themselves.

So as cute as the moppets are and as friendly as the spokeswoman's tone is, all I can think of every time I see a Woodhouse ad is, "boy, they get them when they're young, don't they?" The use of the children in the ads strikes me as being akin to brainwashing, and that's scary.

Yes, the Woodhouse ads are being honest . . . blatantly so. Nvertheless, I can't help but put these ads on my list of evidence supporting the notion (which I've expressed several times in these posts) that we as a society have lost our collective sense of shame. That's just sad.

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(Almost) All I Need To Know, I Learned From Star Trek

Do you remember the original Star Trek episode, "A Private Little War"? The Federation and the Klingons were both interested in a particular planet, and were trying to influence the leaders of factions in the society there to ally with one side or the other.

The Klingons were also providing technological advancements--read that military armament--to the side they favored. [Oddly enough, this was the side that favored them.--Ed.] Once Captain Kirk found out, he decided to arm the other side with comparable weapons, thus keeping the two sides roughly equal. When challenged by Dr. McCoy about the viability of his solution, Kirk said he knew it wasn't a great idea, but it was the best of the available options.

Gene Roddenberry doubtless intended this to be a cautionary tale about the Cold War, with the Klingons standing in for the USSR and the Federation standing in for the USA. More specifically, he intended it to be a morality play about the Vietnam War, with the lesson being that sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. With both sides having roughly equal arms and technology, a stalemate could be maintained, thus lessening the overall damage that would come should one side gain a big technological advantage over the other.

A balance of power, as it were.

For the past decade or so, at the least, I have wanted to show this episode to everyone who claims Ronald Reagan is one of the greatest US presidents "because he ended the Cold War." Note the presumption in the claim: ending the Cold War is a good thing, a desirable outcome.

But is it, really? Hence my desire to make them watch "A Private Little War." Roddenberry had more insight than maybe even he knew. Neither Vietnam nor the Cold War were wonderful, but maybe they were the best of a set of bad options, as the Star Trek episode demonstrates.

Consider this: when it was the US vs. the USSR (after the Cuban Missile Crisis that is), there was if not peace, a mutual understanding that the lid could come off only so far. The USSR was allied with most of the Arab states--indeed, it contained some of them--and it kept the lid tightly clamped on Islamic terrorists. And when it couldn't keep the lid totally clamped, it was the country spending its young people's lives and its money and its technology to put the terrorists down. Does the name "Afghanistan" ring a bell? Did you know that in the early 80s, we were supplying the Taliban with arms and advice? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," I suppose.

So why are we now losing our young people's lives and our money and our technology in Afghanistan, Iraq, and [I shudder to think of this possibility--Ed.] maybe soon in Iran . . . which used to be our one major ally amongst the Arab states? Because the Cold War is over. We "won" by spending the Soviet Union into oblivion, and now we are reaping the whirlwind.

The real moral of this story is that no one should ever presume that his/her presumptions are correct. Things change, normally in ways no one could predict. Hence the political "Law of Unintended Consequences." It's true in every other area of life as well: no matter how carefully and thoroughly one plans, what actually happens will be somewhat different from every possibility one considered. Thus what I've been saying for at least 10 years about the ending of the Cold War NOT being such a good idea. (And thus Reagan not having been such a great president.)

I don't know whether I should be singing "The World Turned Upside Down" or Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?"

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Privacy, Schmivacy

Maybe the retroactive immunity provisions for the telecoms under the current FISA proposal don't matter so much after all. Personal privacy doesn't seem to matter to most Americans anymore. This despite personal privacy's status as the foundation of all our liberties--"the freedom to be left alone," as one Supreme Court justice once called it.

There's a tangle of reasons for this phenomenon. One reason is social and multi-generational. In a misguided effort to boost self-esteem, we as a society have jettisoned the concept of "shame." We no longer teach children to be ashamed of the bad, dumb, and stupid things they do. Fear of feeling shame used to be an effective weapon in the fight to get us all to self-regulate our behavior. No more. People no longer seem to realize that there's a difference between bad attention and good attention. They care only about getting attention, of any kind, and the longer, the better.

Another reason is technological. Between the ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the proliferation of Internet sites such as MySpace and YouTube, and the ease with which we now can take and disseminate pictures or videos of just about anything or anyone, the norm has shifted from living in privacy to living in a fishbowl. So our expectations of privacy are reduced . . . if not destroyed.

I remember when airports had bank upon bank upon bank of phone booths--into which one could slip to place a personal call on a land line, with little fear of being overheard and no expectation of the call being wiretapped. Over twenty-five years ago, booths disappeared in favor of kiosks, which made it impossible to converse in private--one had to rely on everyone else's willingness not to overhear. Now, with cell phones, people don't think of using kiosks anymore, even if they could find them. Kiosks have gone the way of the buffalo.

But I wonder--is it that people no longer care that they have no privacy, or do they not realize that they have no privacy? Do they just expect people to respect their privacy while they blurt out the most personal details of their lives for all to hear? Or does it not even occur to them that while they are on their cell phones, they can be overheard not just by the people in the same room, but by anyone who has a receiver on the same frequency? I have heard people telling others their bank account numbers, their credit card numbers, and other information not usually so cavalierly bandied about. I try very hard not to listen, or if that cannot be helped, not to remember what I've heard. I am sure not everyone else would be so circumspect.

Still, it doesn't matter whether people no longer expect privacy or expect it in theory but abrogate it in fact by the way they behave. In either case, privacy disappears. Those who don't defend their rights not only don't keep them, they don't deserve to keep them. Alas for those of us who do care. Our attempts to preserve not just our privacy, but the privacy of all Americans, are overwhelmed by the mere weight of those who just don't care one way or the other. So let the telecoms off the hook for their illegal behavior, and let the members of the Dubya administration who encouraged the warrantless wiretaps off the hook, too. None of it matters anymore, and we're all going to die sooner or later anyway.

Here endeth the American Dream.

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Connect ALL The Dots, Please

I hear and see and read about a lot of hand-wringing amongst those whose job is to evaluate and explain the state of the American economy to the rest of us. The latest cause célèbre is Starbucks' announcement that it's closing 600 of its coffee stores. The consensus among the hand-wringers is that this is yet another bad sign for the economy, as it's more evidence that Americans are cutting back on spending for non-essentials.

The hand-wringers also note that while companies selling things everyone must have, like food, are doing just fine, a lot of other stores are tanking. If I remember correctly, I even heard on NPR this morning that the Bombay Company, CompUSA, and others were going to close all their retail outlets. The hand-wringers used this fact to suggest that as availability of goods shrinks, people will buy less, and once people get "really scared," they'll start saving, which means even less money in retail circulation, which means even more shrinkage in the economy--a downward spiral the likes of which we haven't seen in this country since 1929.

What I want to know is why the last dot hasn't been connected, to wit: with stores going away, jobs are going away, and with jobs going away, income is going away, which means even more people will have even less to spend on necessities, let alone on the "nice-to-haves" that we think we need to live happy and fulfilling lives. Why aren't the hand-wringers expressing concern about what effect the loss of jobs, thus income, thus money, will have on the economy?

What's being ignored or lost in this whole discussion is what the loss of jobs does to the people losing them. Until we as a society make that connection, and until we as a society realize that businesses exist to serve people and not the other way around, we're never going to have long-term economic security again.

I suppose this development should not surprise me. It's a repeated motif throughout America's history. I had hoped we'd collectively learned enough from the Great Depression to avoid repeating it, but I was wrong. Yet again, we get the twin pies in the face: those who don't know their history are condemned to repeat it . . . and those who learn the wrong lessons from history are doomed to suffer from their willful ignorance. What's really sad is that those of us who didn't make either mistake still have to suffer the consequences of the actions of those who made both.

Ixnay On The Ottenray!

John McCain says that Wesley Clark's statement that McCain's military service alone (especially his time as a POW) does not qualify him to be president is an attack on McCain's patriotism and also denigrates McCain's service.

Clark (who himself is a USAF general, retired) was not tactful in his choice of words, though in fairness and in context, Clark was merely answering a question whose terms were posed by CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer on Meet The Press. But the gist of Clark's statement is correct. Consider: Ulysses S. Grant was one of the nation's best military men, yet his presidency has largely been considered a disaster of corruption, graft, and greed. Not by Grant himself--Grant's personal integrity is unquestioned--but by Grant's political allies, who shamelessly took advantage of Grant's inability to notice that not everyone around him shared his level of integrity. Military service in and of itself does not reveal someone's ability to be president. That is the sum total of the meaning behind Clark's indelicately worded answer to Bob Schieffer.

Nor was Clark's statement an attack on McCain's patriotism. Nor did Clark's statement denigrate McCain's service. Clark merely mentioned McCain's service. He did not evaluate it in terms of its patriotism or other level of quality. If McCain believes any mere mention of his service by his opponents in this election cycle equals an attack on his service, McCain lacks the discernment and judgment to be president. If McCain knows better but resorts to such slimeball tactics anyway, he's too craven to be president. Either way, McCain's own behavior, NOT his life's experience, disqualifies him to be president.

Barack Obama's disavowal of Clark's remarks did no service to Obama's campaign, however. By buying into McCain's premise that Clark was attacking McCain's service and McCain's patriotism, Obama falls into the same trap that has ensnared McCain. If he believes what McCain said, his judgment and discernment are not high enough to qualify him for the presidency--and if he doesn't believe it but caved because he saw political advantage in doing so, he's pandering just as much as McCain is.

[This is why I still want to see a "Draft John Edwards" movement at the Democratic Party's national convention. Even though I know it "ain't gonna happen. Wouldn't be prudent."--Ed.]

So how does one decide for whom to vote? McCain has been all over the place: he tells the residents of New Orleans he's supported every attempt to discover what went wrong with the levees and to correct the all problems revealed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but his public record of voting shows just the opposite. He voted against every single piece of proposed legislation that was designed to do the things he told New Orleans residents he said he supported. He said Dubya's tax cuts were dangerous and he opposed them in 2000. In 2008, however, he says the tax cuts are a good idea and he's going to make them permanent. In 2005 he said eventually we'd have to negotiate with organizations like Hamas. In 2008, he says negotiating with groups like Hamas is "appeasement." But he supported Dubya's negotiations with Kim Jong Il of North Korea. Go figure.

I'll give Obama the nod here for being more consistent in his message in terms of the legislation he has proposed and what he says he will support as president.

Call me crazy, but I want a president who is intelligent, who will do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not act out of blind partisanship or expediency, and who has the courage to stand his ground in the face of opposition from his own base of support, as he has done on the FISA bill. McCain, who claims to be a maverick and who says he's bipartisan, has an actual voting record that's nearly 100% in support of Dubya's failed policies. Either he is too dumb to notice the discrepancy between his words and his actions, or he thinks we are too dumb to notice. Either explanation is disquieting.

Nonetheless, Phineas Taylor Barnum is laughing his head off, as both major party candidates prove once again that Barnum was correct: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Strict Constructionist--NOT!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has done it again. In writing for a razor-thin 5-4 majority, he ruled that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution does not allow any governmental entity to prohibit "handguns held and used for self-defense in the home." He bolstered his assertion by claiming that the "historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted proves his view. This from a man who claims to be a strict constructionist, whose understanding of the Constitution and its meaning starts and stops with the intent of the Founding Fathers.

Right. And I'm the Queen of the May, and I have a bridge to sell you. This ruling is just another example of the lie the so-called strict constructionists promulgate. The fact is that they use truly "strict construction" only when it suits their purposes to do so. To anyone out there who disagrees, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

If Scalia were to implement his claimed beliefs, he'd begin his analysis by looking within the "four corners" of the document itself. It is axiomatic that the words the Founders used, and the way the Founders structured those words, reveal most clearly the Founders' intent and meaning. Grammatically, when subordinate clauses [sentence elements that cannot stand as complete sentences on their own, usually because they lack a verb--Ed.] are written ahead of the main clause of a sentence, those subordinate clauses modify or restrict the meaning of the main clause--because they are literally listed ahead of it and thus are enhanced in their importance relative to it. But that fact does not support Scalia's purposes, so he ignores it.

The Second Amendment in its entirety says: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." So the prohibition on the people's right to bear arms literally is modified by the government's need and power to regulate state militias. (In today's lingo, the National Guard.)

But for Scalia, people have an absolute right to keep handguns in their homes. Nor can the government make them equip those guns with trigger locks or keep those guns disassembled. The government has no power to regulate these things. Yet Scalia's opinion also says the government can require that guns be licensed and can restrict or even prohibit the presence of guns in governmental buildings or other public accommodations. So he ignores all of the Second Amendment but the phrase "shall not be infringed"--except when he says the right is infringed. This isn't even loose construction. It's bald-faced legislating from the bench.

The irony here is that Scalia's ruling actually confirms that the US Constitution implicitly affirms the people's right to privacy. Scalia believes no right to privacy exists because it's not "within the four corners" of the document. But his ruling makes it the sine qua non for implementing the Second Amendment (you have the unfettered right to keep handguns in your home, remember). This is the identical rationale the Court has cited in the past for implementing the other rights explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Oops! Scalia didn't see that one coming, I'll wager.

Scalia also stressed that the government cannot restrict law-abiding citizens from owning handguns because handguns are Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense. They "can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police." I'd love to see some statistics on how many times this scenario is what unfolds when there's a gun-related incident in someone's home. The more typical scenario according to everything I've read is that the burglar manages to take the gun away from the homeowner and turn it against him. When the burglar gets away, yet another gun is loosed illegally on the streets. Scalia's ruling therefore may have the real world consequence of increasing the number and presence of illegal guns, thus the amount of violence, in our society. I'll bet he didn't see that one coming, either.

What's scariest about Scalia's opinion is that despite Scalia's and the media's assurances that nothing in the ruling prevents governments from keeping guns, assault weapons, and the like out of the hands of felons, this ruling opens the door to other cases being brought to the Supreme Court with the aim of restricting the government's authority to do just those things. The National Rifle Association intends to keep pushing its agenda. According to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom." [Emphasis added.--Ed.]

I don't place much trust in LaPierre's assertion that these rights are only for law-abiding Americans. The other thing that too many people fail to realize is that laws do NOT change behavior. If someone is determined to do something that's illegal, he's going to do it. What laws do is give those of us who want a civilized society the means to impose consequences on him.

With guns, however, we move into an area where imposing consequences is not enough. Nothing can make up for the lives lost to gun violence. Yet for Scalia and LaPierre it's OK, because the violence is largely confined to minority areas--like Washington, DC, the site of the law Scalia's ruling strikes down. I think I am safe in presuming that Scalia does not himself live in a part of DC infected with gun violence. So far, anyway. Remember: as the number of guns spreads, so widens the circle of violence around them.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

A Little Sports, A Little Politics, A Little Of This And That

As for Fresno State winning the College World Series goes, never bet against Cinderella. Go Bulldogs!

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Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous: after ESPN aired Fresno State's wonderful win Tuesday, it showed an NBA Draft Preview. The commentators were blatant in their disregard of what was best for the players themselves while discussing the NBA rule requiring players to be a full year out of high school before becoming NBA draft-eligible. It gives the NBA an extra year to evaluate the playere' abilities, and the NBA doesn't have to pay those players while waiting that extra year. It's also better because with the rare exception of players like LeBron James, these players don't leave high school "NBA ready."

The commentators didn't say it would be better for the players to get a year of college education for its own sake, just in case they sometime get so injured that they can no longer make a career in the NBA; they didn't say it would be better for the players to have an additional year to get beyond being teenagers and learn how to live and behave in the world as adults; they didn't say that it would be better for their still-growing bodies just to get another year in before having to collide repeatedly and often with full-grown NBA players. I will concede that the "they're not yet NBA ready" comment implies these things--but the vast majority of the discussion focused on how much better the rule was for the NBA and its finances. The interests of the players themselves were secondary, a mere throw-away.

Is it just me, or is the naked gall of "Capitalism" getting ever more brazen? Don't we as a society WANT to value character and attitude and behavior ahead of money?

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Lately, most of the political discussion of energy policy has focused on the need to end our "dependence on foreign oil." What's wrong with this picture? How 'bout if we work to end our dependence on OIL, period? It's a finite resource. It's going to run out. Even if we drill everywhere and ruin ANWR among other places, even if drilling technology continues to improve, the OIL itself is going to run out. Based on the then-existing technology, we originally thought we were going to run out by the end of the 1970s. But our will to invest in alternate energy sources faded almost instantly once the 70s OPEC embargo ended.

So here we have another example of America's collective historical short-sightedness. And the chutzpah of John McCain to admit that most of his energy policy proposals are themselves gimmicks! Puh-leeze! Then again, as P.T. Barnum said, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." One of my cousins has maternal relatives who, in line with their fundamentalist beliefs, sincerely believe that since the Earth is only 6,000 years old, there's no such thing as fossil fuels, and that the oil is provided by God and will never run out . . . QED.

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Why have the pictures about Big Brown's loose shoe on his right rear hoof just now come to light? More importantly, if the loose shoe explains his poor performance at the Belmont Stakes, why didn't the trainer and the medical staff and the owners notice it when they examined the horse after the race? No one on any of the sports reports about it that I've seen, heard, or read has even asked the latter question, let alone tried to answer it. Nor has anyone ever addressed the issue of the abnormally high air temperatures as they may directly have hurt Big Brown's bid to win the Triple Crown.

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I am no fan of Adam "Pacman" Jones, but Don Imus's remarks Monday and Tuesday were inexcusable and unbelievable. On Monday, after Imus's sports reporter recounted the litany of Jones's problems with the law, all Imus wanted to know was "What color is he?" When told Jones was African-American, Imus said, "Well, there you go. Now we know."

On Tuesday, Imus said he was but making a sarcastic point about how the law unfairly picks on black people. I might be willing to cut Imus some slack--a neutral reading of his words, without hearing the tone and tenor and context of his Monday conversation, can be stretched to cover Imus's claims as to what he meant by what he said. Two reasons make it totally impossible to let Imus off the hook, however: (1) he's already screwed up badly (remember the Rutgers women's basketball team remarks?); (2) on Monday, just before he put his foot in it, Imus was talking about how people who go to nightclubs where there are drugs and booze and women and guns should not be surprised when bad things happen and the law shows up to arrest people. Thus the context of his remarks Monday becomes "how stupid ARE these people?"

As he said on Tuesday, Imus admitted he's have to be an idiot to say what people [myself included--Ed.] are claiming he said. Right. He's an idiot. His racism is so ingrained that he can't even see it, even after all the trouble he's already made for himself in the past. As Tom Johnson said on NFL Live, "I heard what you said and I heard the way you said it."

Too bad Imus's employer, WABC-NY, doesn't get it, either. No disciplinary actions are planned against Imus's most recent racially-insensitive outrage. How sad that no one seems to care enough to get really worked up about it, either.

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A high school senior in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, hacked into the school's computer system and changed his grades from Ds and Fs to As and Bs. He apparently did the same for a few friends. He also stole exams and answers. He was caught, and the family and his lawyer are up in arms about how "his life should not be ruined because of this." Though his hacking gave him the same consideration from college recruiters as students who actually earned their grades--effectively degrading the efforts of those who earned theirs--even those classmates think the charges are "a little harsh." Multiple incidents of theft, fraud, breaking and entering, and the charges are "a little harsh"?

I think I'm going to puke. When did such blatant cheating become "no big deal"? This is no Ferris Bueller prank. This is repeated serious criminal behavior. Yet the student responsible should not have his life ruined? Not to make him face the consequences of his actions is to reward his criminal behavior. If we do that,will it be any wonder when our entire country goes down the toilet? This is beyond sad. This is tragic.

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How do the people who claim that speculators (by using the so-called "Enron loophole") are NOT driving the price of gas through the roof explain away that this is exactly what happened to the electric energy markets in California when people there were getting hit with $600/month electric bills just before Enron collapsed? Record windfall profits, record high prices, consumers getting squeezed dry, the energy producers trading energy futures instead of producing energy, and the only thing these same consumers want is to open ANWR to drilling?

What astonishes me the most about this is that even a cursory study of American history reveals innumerable episodes of deregulation producing excessively greedy profit-taking, greatly hurting ordinary people, eventually prompting re-regulation, and when markets settle down a bit, the push for deregulation starts all over again. The affected industry may change, but the pattern is a constant cycle in American history.

I say again: greed is not a positive fundamental social value on which to base a civilized society. It pits people against each other instead of allowing us to find ways to work together for the ultimate benefit of all of us. Ah, well. Wiser heads than mine have already realized that not to know one's history is to be doomed to repeat it.

My Modest Proposal

OK, I know. I'm no Jonathan Swift. Neither is anyone else, except Dean Swift himself. Nor do I advocate the eating of Irish infants . . . but I do have a modest proposal about another English obsession: soccer.

Of late, I have been watching the UEFA matches on ESPN, along with several World Cup qualifying matches. I have been watching soccer on a more or less regular basis ever since my three-year stint of living in Europe. I still don't get what all the fuss is about. Soccer is BORING! Actually, it's more than that: it's irrepressibly drab and awful. [Thank you, Michael Palin.--Ed.] I suppose Europeans would tell me the same thing about baseball, but I disagree. In baseball, there is strategy and movement on every pitch, and no one knows exactly what will happen at any given moment. In soccer, on the other hand [or foot--Ed.], everything comes down to the same three maneuvers: move the ball toward the goal, veer off to the side, kick it back to the middle, and hope someone redirects it into the goal. Hockey is similar in this regard, but it, too, is more interesting than soccer for two reasons: (1) the field of play is smaller; (2) the pace of the game is much faster. If I could choose, I'd prefer to watch hockey to watching soccer--but I prefer even more to watch baseball to watching either hockey or soccer.

Yet I keep trying, in the hopes that sheer exposure to the game will somehow open its mysterious attractions to me. So far, no luck. I suspect this has to do with how the winner of any given match is decided. In the vast majority of matches, nobody scores (or if anyone does, the sides typically are tied at 1-1) and the game comes down to penalty kicks. Penalty kicks always make me think of the old joke about the guy who takes home his beer and pours it straight into the toilet because he's "eliminating the middle man." Thus my modest proposal: let's just skip the 90+ minutes of pointless running around and go straight to the penalty kicks. What a great time-saver! It has the additional advantages of being (1) very interesting immediately and throughout, and (2) faster-paced than the interminable "game" played to get to said kicks in the first place.

But my modest proposal will never fly--TV advertisers would never go for it. No place to put all the ads that normally infest sports telecasts.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Last night, I heard once again Cindy McCain's sniping at Michelle Obama for Obama's comment some time ago that for the first time, she was "proud of [her] country." McCain said, for those of you who didn't hear it, that she had no idea what Obama was talking about, because she's "always been proud of [her] country."

I started thinking about all the reactions to Obama's comment, and I realized something I'd not noticed before. All the people who sniped at her were members of what traditionally have been the "Have" elements of our society. No one from a background that traditionally called a "Have Not" has complained about what Obama said, at least, not that I've heard. OK, I've heard a few lower economic stratus whites spew about it, but let's face it: they're bigots, as their overall behavior demonstrates.

True, the Obamas are wealthy--much more so than I, for instance--but by white folks' standards, their means are still relatively modest, and since it takes wealth to participate in national politics, they've come a long way, baby (largely by dint of their own efforts). And I can understand perfectly well what Michelle Obama meant: a black man, of mixed race ancestry, is for the first time being taken really seriously at the highest levels of national American politics. [No, I am not discounting Jesse Jackson and others who've run before--without them blazing the trail, Obama would not have been able to get to where he is--but I don't think anyone except naive idealists gave Jackson's try for the presidency any serious chances of success. Obama has a more than serious chance at success. He's actually well ahead of McCain in several very significant national polls.--Ed.] This is a cause for celebration, as it means that significant portions of the American body politic have gotten past the prejudices of the past.

But it's also perfectly clear why people like Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh snipe at Obama's comment. Their vast monetary resources have insulated them from the daily realities many of us face. It's easy to be a patriot when you're on the receiving end of the country's largesse, and not the ones being squeezed. You can afford to lobby to put the country's financial burdens on people other than you: those the least able to afford it. McCain inherited her money--and the profit she stands to make from the potential sale of Anheuser Busch to a foreign company is not only obscene, it strikes me as being un-American. How can you take Budweiser and sell it into overseas control? You can if your fundamental loyalty is to making money and not to your country's well-being and self-image. Yes, Limbaugh "earned" his money by spewing hatred at anyone not of the Radical Right, but he's obviously forgotten his roots. He started out wanting to be a rock n' roll DJ, but he failed at that--and ever since, he's taken out his revenge against those who rejected him as a DJ by slamming those of us who, in his perception, share the values of the people who rejected him.

In some ways, they are no different from the people who make money off their profession of their Christian faith. Not just the televangelists (who are all charlatans and con men and women), but people like Thomas Kincade, the self-styled "Painter of Light." Not only did he not invent the painting technique he claims to have invented (Impressionists were doing it 100 years ago, people), he seems to think he's justified in charging hundreds of dollars for a single lithograph--that's a print, not an original--of his paintings because gullible people will pay that much for them: people who are moved by his "sincere" Christianity and his thankfulness for all of God's blessings that have rained down upon him (apparently because of his artistic talent and because he's such a good and faithful believer).

I'd like to see just how much of a good Christian he'd be if his lovely home in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, and his family, and his bank accounts, and everything else were taken away from him. It's easy to preach the Protestant version of the Gospel, which I call the Gospel of Prosperity, when one is more than financially comfortable. That doesn't have a lot to do with Jesus, frankly. I think the Jesuits are much closer to the Truth when they say that the reason Jesus came to Earth was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." At least that's more consistent with what I read in the Bible than what the rich folk read--and don't--in theirs.

Lest you think I've gone completely off topic, my point is that all this demonstrates that people who have never known want, or the feeling of being a second-class citizen--or who have known it, but who've escaped it and deliberately forgotten it--seem totally unable to get outside their own heads and even try to understand what people who aren't "just like them" are saying. And why.

Someone wrote an op-ed column about this recently (I think it may have been Leonard Pitts, Jr., but I cannot remember--my apologies) in terms of race relations. Surveys show that white people, by and large, look at the past 40-50 years and see how much better things are now: no more legislative bans on interracial marriage, no more sitting in the back of the bus, and so on. They thus think that the civil rights problems of the past have been solved. As a result, many are amenable to the idea of ending affirmative action and other programs (that were the only reasons any of these situations have improved in the first place).

Blacks, on the other hand, mostly see how far they still have to go: most are still stuck in the mire of economic segregation, with poorer neighborhoods, lesser quality schools, fewer opportunities to break out of such straits, and (worst of all) the intractable attitudes of those who couldn't care less. The difference is as stark as night and day. The problem is that there's no level playing field on which to start. I'm not exactly enamored of affirmative action--I would prefer that Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson be true, that "our Constitution [be] color blind," but until everybody starts by being able to attend the same high quality schools and living in decent housing, I don't see any way to get rid of it. It's not perfect, but it's the best alternative we have to make up for even some of the inequities and injustices of the past.

But back to the root of the problem: people are talking past each other instead of to each other. There's no true communication when that happens. Each side has presuppositions that inform its point of view. The side with less power knows what the other side's presuppositions are--it has to, in order to survive. The side with more power, however, doesn't know and doesn't care about the other side's presuppositions. It doesn't need to know or care; it already has more power, so it feels free to ignore anything challenging its world view. But remember: might does NOT make right.

If we want to make the reality of America better reflect the ideals of America (you know, to form a "more perfect union"), however, we need to get those with the social, economic, and political power to stop sniping at those with whom they disagree and start examining--and trying to understand--why others disagree with them. Oh, and to make Cindy McCain stop plagiarizing cookie recipes.