Is The Fix In?

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Yesterday, I saw John McCain confidently assert that he's "going to win this thing," meaning the up-coming election, now less than a week away. His confidence (in the face of multiple polling results that show him hopelessly behind Barack Obama) seems utterly misplaced--unless the fix is in, and he knows it.

I for one will be very, very relieved when this campaign is over. I am appalled by the amount of slime, smears, and race-baiting coming from the GOP's general direction--all things McCain could stop by taking firm charge of his party and its behavior. But he has the fighter jock mentality. Anything is OK if it helps him win.

I mourn for his dead integrity. I mourn for his lost historical reputation. If we could stop his history back in 2000, he'd get high marks from future historians of all political stripes for his having taken principled stands on contentious issues. He himself was the victim of race-baiting back in 2000. A truly scurrilous robocall claimed he had a black child out of wedlock. The facts? The child was an adoptee, the beneficiary of a truly noble effort on McCain's and his wife's part.

But the slimy robocall worked, and McCain did not get the GOP nomination in 2000. The lesson he apparently took from that result is that winning is the only thing that matters. He is now using the very same company that made the slimy robocalls against him in 2000 to make slimy robocalls against Obama in 2008.

Perhaps he has convinced himself that he can resume his principled stands once he wins office and has some power to do something about what he sees as the nation's problems. But even a grade-schooler can tell him that "if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." He's fooling only himself if he thinks he can win the election and take office free of the mud stains he's inflicted on himself during the campaign. Once again, his judgment is called into question.

As for the GOP, most of the rabid right-wing, which is in fact the whole party at this point, has no love for McCain, but knows if he wins, the GOP keeps power. That's the party's only concern: keeping power. In my more paranoid moments, I even fear that if the GOP loses despite all its voter suppression efforts and vote fraud machinations and court challenges, its leaders simply won't let go and leave. One of the hallmarks of our system is the peaceful transition of power after elections, but I wouldn't put it past this crowd to throw that in the toilet, too--along with all the other civil liberties the Dubya administration has trashed in the name of its version of "America." Remember, this crowd is the group that thinks "real America" is only that part of the United States which agrees with them and walks in lock-step with them. The rest of us, as several GOP members recently have revealed in well-publicized gaffs, are somehow NOT "real Americans," and in fact are "anti-Americans." But wasn't Joe McCarthy totally discredited in the 1950s?

Here's another news flash: the GOP does NOT have a monopoly on patriotism! Seriously. I love my country just as much (if not more) than anyone in the right-wing crowd). Indeed, I love my country more because I understand that compromising what America truly is, even for the sake of "national security," is no different from lying down with dogs. You do get up with fleas.

It's going to be hard enough to endure the flea-dips we'll need if Obama wins and if the transition of power does go the way it's supposed to under our Constitution. But four more years of flea bites would be infinitely worse.

Happy Birthday, Weird Al!

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As Weird Al celebrates the 20th anniversary of his 29th birthday, let us all contemplate his unique talents.

OK, that didn't take long, did it?

But seriously: writing parodies of popular songs, parodies which themselves skewer popular culture, is not nearly as easy as it seems. I know whereof I speak. I have the itch to write such parodies, too, and I have to admit that I don't do it nearly as well as does Mr. Yankovic.

Nevertheless, I am offering my latest, in appreciation for a kindred spirit, as my tribute to Al's birthday [I cannot believe I am 2-years-plus older than he is.--Ed.]. Have a happy one, Mister White and Nerdy!

It's The Most Horrible Time Of The Year
(to be sung to the tune of the Christmas carol "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year," written in 1963 by Eddie Pola and George Wyle)

It's the most horrible time of the year
With the endless campaigning
And no one explaining
How the heck we got here
It's the most horrible time of the year

There'll be speeches for hearing
And opponents for smearing and
Ads cutting into your favorite shows,
There'll be mud-slinging stories and
Tales of gory lies spread in campaigns of
Long, long ago

It's the most horrible time of the year

The incessant door-belling and
Robocalls are compelling me
To drink more beer . . .

With the lies and mud-slinging
Politicians are bringing
Us unending fear . . .

It's the most abhorrent time,
It's the most disgusting time,
It's the most horrible time of the year!

[copyright 2008, Eclectic Iconoclast
all rights reserved]

TANSTAAFL, Baby, TANSTAAFL

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. --Robert A. Heinlein

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You wouldn't go to a five-star restaurant and expect to walk out after dining without paying, would you?

You wouldn't go to the grocery store and load up your cart and wheel it out the door without paying, would you?

You wouldn't go to your favorite department store, select the clothes and housewares and electronics of your choice and take them to your car without paying, would you?

So why do Sarah Palin and people like her say that it's OK to live in America, taking advantage of all the benefits of being an American, but that paying taxes is "unpatriotic"?

Because they are greedy, that's why.

There's no other explanation [rational or otherwise--Ed.] for their willingness to take advantage of all the benefits of living in American society without contributing their fair share to maintaining that same society.

Remember, in the US Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of the federal income tax, no lesser a light than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."

Yes, there are loopholes in the tax structure--most of which allow the very rich to privatize their profits while socializing their risks. That doesn't mean that those who take advantage of the loopholes are less than greedy. After all, most of the loopholes were put into the system at the behest of their lobbyists in the first place. So they get to keep all their profits and they get to take advantage of everything the government does for all of us (including but not limited to things like providing national defense, certifying the safety of the foods we eat, the drugs we take, and the places we work, and maintaining infrastructure), but they don't have to pay their share of the costs of doing these things?

What's wrong with this picture?

Anybody out there ever heard of noblesse oblige? Just in case you haven't, it's a concept not unlike the philosophy given to Spiderman: those to whom much is given are also given great responsibility.

We cannot go on spending billions more than we have while exempting that those who can best afford to help cover the costs from any responsibility to help do the same. That's economic class stratification. It's saying that those with the most money have the least responsibility. It's saying that those with the most money are better than the rest of us. That's what's un-American, not the calls for fiscal responsibility and for everyone to pay his/her fair share of the burden.

[Then again, they probably are hoping that if they spend the government into the ground, the govenrment will stop spending entirely . . . after all, they can afford to pick up the slack. But what about the rest of us, the ones who are actually in the trenches, the ones who fight the wars and do the jobs and who spend what money they have on the goods and services that give the very rich their obscene profit margins? They couldn't care less. This is the twisted end of "rugged individualism," and it ultimately means the end of America. Like it or not, there are times when we all have to put our individual wants on hold for the sake of the nation--just not to the point that the end game is the economic destruction of that very nation.--Ed.]

And they say liberals are the ones whose agenda is to exercise rights without responsibilities!

When Is A "Moral Victory" A Victory In Fact?

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Yesterday, the Nebraska Cornhuskers managed to hold down the highest-scoring average offense in the nation during a 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini's Huskers have finally arrived.

After the Huskers got their collective clocks cleaned by Missouri last week, I was of a mind that it was going to take Pelini and his staff at least 2 more years to undo the damage to the program that former Athletic Director Steve Pederson and former Head Coach Bill Callahan had done. After yesterday, however, I have changed my mind. This team, as one of the TV announcers noted, "grew up before our eyes today." Husker football is back!

Now, the won-loss record still may not reflect that for another year or so (got to get the best possible personnel in all the key on-field positions), but this was a true Husker team. Texas Tech was in serious danger of losing its homecoming game, and everyone in Lubbock knew it.

I have not always been a fan of Husker football. For one thing, my dad's Air Force career meant that I'd lived in every other state comprising the (then) Big Eight long before he got stationed in Nebraska. So there was some question of prior loyalties. Furthermore, I never cared much for the fact that under legendary head coach Bob Devaney (and to a somewhat lesser extent, coach Tom Osborne), football players who committed criminal acts were protected from the consequences of those acts for the sake of the team--and winning. But Nebraska IS my alma mater, and Nebraska's academic scholarships awarded to me are what allowed me to afford getting a college education in the first place, so . . . it's kind of nice to see positive reporting related to my school in the national news for a change.


Go Big Red!

I Get Mad At The Mass Media, Too, You Know

I realize that the mass media are under considerable time and space constraints, and that they feel obliged to report the news as succinctly as possible . . . but I don't think that excuses the media from misreporting facts for the sake of communicating quickly.

Case in point: Troopergate. The Alaskan legislative panel's report about Gov. Sarah Palin's involvement in the firing of her erstwhile brother-in-law did NOT say that her firing of his boss (the Alaskan Public Service Commissioner) violated state law, even though every recap of the story I saw, heard, and read claimed that was the report's conclusion. What the report said was that the pressure Palin and her husband and her staff put on the Commissioner violated state ethics laws. The firing was perfectly within her power as chief executive of the state.

The reason this locks my jaws is that it provides those who want to whitewash or otherwise downplay what Palin did both a scapegoat and a diversion. Blame the "liberal" media! They are reporting it wrong because they have a political agenda! So the argument will be about the press coverage, the political make-up of the legislative panel (something on the order of 10-4 Republican, but the panel's head was a Democrat who made intemperate comments to the media before the report was released, thus adding more ammo to the GOP attack), whether Palin really did improperly fire the Public Service Commissioner . . . anything except what the real issue is--which is her ethics.

Alaska law makes it plain that no one is to use his/her office for either financial gain or personal advantage. There is no doubt that Palin's pressure on the Public Service Commissioner violated that ethics law. "I'm your boss and I want this guy fired because he's my sister's ex and is fighting with her over their kids' custody." That's the quintessential illustration of using one's office for personal gain. [Do we really want someone with such non-existent ethical standards sitting one heartbeat away from the Presidency? I say not. Our system runs on our mutual faith and trust in the idea that everyone buys into the system, that the system is greater than the powers of any individual person, and that the people we select to run it will do so properly. Hence Dubya's increasingly record-breakingly negative polling numbers, among other things.--Ed.]

But the ethics issue is going to get lost in the shuffle and the noise of all the imprecise news summaries and arguments about that instead of taking the center of the stage the way it ought to be doing.

So, thanks for nothing, "liberal" media! You're not supposed to be part of the story--you're supposed to be reporting the story--but you sure screwed it up in this case.

On Connecting The Dots, Redux

Late yesterday afternoon, long after he'd have had time to make a change if he really wanted to do so, Sen. John McCain was still running his TV ad suggesting that Barack Obama consorts with terrorists because of his connection to former Weather Underground member William Ayers.

Oh, puh-lease! The "connection" was really a one-time interaction. They were both members on a community advisory board founded and funded by William Annenberg, former ambassador and friend of Ronald Reagan--more than 30 years AFTER Ayers had been involved with the Weather Underground. Obama knew Ayers as an educator; Obama was only 8 years old at the time Ayers was involved with the Weather Underground; Obama inferred, once he learned of Ayers' history--AFTER having served with Ayers on the advisory board--that Ayers had been rehabilitated, or else none of the Republicans connected to the board would have had anything to do with Ayers.

So McCain is still talking out of both sides of his mouth, and I hereby take back every nice thing I said about his finally standing up on Friday to the more extreme fanatics attending his campaign events. McCain is so desperate to attain the presidency that he will say or do anything that he thinks will help him reach his goals. The man has squandered his integrity for the sake of his ambition. That kind of "leadership" America doesn't need!

On Connecting The Dots

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Does John McCain realize that his own excessively misleading rhetoric is at least partly to blame for the frightening ideas his campaign-appearance crowds seem to have embraced? If he does, his chastising those crowds (to boos, no less) yesterday was not only too little, too late, but hypocritical. So much for the integrity we ought to expect in our leaders. If he does not realize it, he lacks the clear perception and judgment to be president. Either way, he has no business becoming the so-called leader of the free world.

He has boxed himself quite neatly into a no win situation--in his attempts to curry favor with the rabid right wing of the GOP, he's unleashed the truly wild-eyed fringe elements. Even so, he has not succeeded in placating the rabid right wing, talk-radio crowd of his own party.

Worse, he's now damaged what little credibility he might have gained with them by telling them yesterday to rein it in and be respectful, and that not only is Barack Obama no Arab, he IS a good and decent family man, someone who we need not fear occupying the Oval Office.

And he's lost whatever good will might have remained among the more center-to-left voters who'd at least have tolerated his election and tried to work with him should he in fact win the presidency.

I really do welcome his decency in trying to tamp down the more excessive untruths his crowds have embraced--that's the John McCain I remember from 2000. That's the man I could accept in the Oval Office should Obama lose, except for Sarah Palin's then being only one heartbeat away from the presidency. She is not only not ready, she lacks the temperament to get ready. She's another one of those "don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind" people. They are dangerous, as the incomprehensibly stupid "leadership" we've had for the last 8 years has demonstrated. [It's the only thing at which they've excelled.--Ed.] The real world has absolutely NO interest in conforming to our expectations. The sooner the people we have in our highest offices realize that, the sooner we can rehabilitate our standing as the leader of the world community.

The problem is this: McCain's behavior during this entire campaign has been so erratic and self-contradictory that there are no guarantees that the decent McCain would be the one in charge, should he win the election. I, for one, cannot live with that uncertainty.

I think the vast majority of Americans who take the time to think about things would overwhelmingly vote for Obama . . . except for the "race thing." I heard one of Obama's advisers on NPR earlier this week claiming there was no racial issue or problem at all affecting the campaign, but let's get real. What else could he say? At this point in the campaign, the goal is to persuade the undecided not just to vote, but to vote for "your guy." The minute anyone connected to Obama suggests that race might play an issue in people NOT supporting Obama, all the people who have been hurt enough by the economic meltdown to consider voting for Obama, but who hesitate because of their own racially-related preconceptions, will abandon the idea of voting for Obama. Why? Because even hinting that race is an issue or a problem is tantamount, in those people's minds, to calling them racists. Even if they are, they're going to resent it to the point that no matter how bad the economy gets, Obama will have lost their votes.

This is not unlike those who have already been hurt badly (and for years) by GOP economic policies, but who will never vote for Democrats because those voters are "pro-life," unlike those nasty, baby-killing liberals. They vote against their own best interests because they nobly, although naively, think other issues matter more. The one thing they've not grasped is that for the first 6 years of the Dubya administration, the GOP could have legislated Roe v. Wade out of existence if it had wanted to do so. Doing that, however, would cost the GOP a wedge issue that has proved to be magic in getting them into and thus keeping power. That's what the GOP cares about, not the rights of the unborn. Or else Roe v. Wade would already be legislated out of existence.

One of the worst failures of our educational system is that all too often, it does not teach students HOW to think. No school should be responsible for teaching students WHAT to think--that's the job of parents and churches. Knowing HOW to think, however, is essential to survival in the real world, and that is an ideal task for educators. Alas for us, it's virtually impossible to do that while being overwhelmed by wildfires such as coping with students who come to class not ready to learn.

It's not just our physical infrastructure that's falling apart. Our educational system is coming apart at the seams, our health care system is broken, and a stable (financially and emotionally) middle class, the bulwark of every successful society in history, is being squeezed out of existence. America, as I know, love, and understand her, is disappearing before our eyes. Something has to give . . . and for the sake of both America and the world, I hope that what retreats is all the old and untrue racially-based canards that have infected our country for centuries. We need to vote for hope, not for fear, if we are to reclaim America's position as the real moral authority and voice of freedom for the whole world.

The Real Danger We Face

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A movie review in Saturday's Omaha World-Herald included a truly astute observation. In the context of reviewing two satires, An American Carol (pro-right-wing) and Religulous (pro-far-left-wing), the reviewer suggested that our worst enemy comprises those people who have no sense of humor.

I think he's right.

I recently forwarded an email I'd received to several friends, of all political stripes. The email asked for clarification about things such as why someone born in Hawaii is "exotic and strange" while someone from Alaska is just a "normal American," and why someone named "Barack" is weird but someone who named one of her children "Twig" is just folksy. And on and on in that vein.

Everybody to whom I sent it thought it was both hilarious and thought-provoking . . . whether they fancy themselves to be left- OR right-wing . . . with one sad, lonely exception. One person asked me to remove her from my mailing list. Which I did, immediately. I don't want to waste my time and energy on someone who has no sense of humor. People like that can suck the life right out of a body. Lord knows, I have enough trouble staying alive without being subjected to that.

Some of my more creative right-wing friends even tried (a bit tongue-in-cheek) to clarify my confusion for me, which I greatly appreciated. I don't agree with them, but I appreciate their efforts. They knew I meant no offense, and took it in the spirit it was offered. And we all got some laughs out of it.

And that's what is great about Americans. We can agree to disagree and still have some fun with each other's political beliefs. But people who are willfully humorless and who take offense at facts expressed in a humorous way (even if it is done to make a point they don't want to hear) need professional help.

Please note two things: (1) my sense of humor is as broad as anyone's (and broader than most); (2) things that pander to racial stereotypes are NOT funny. The "Aunt Obama" pancake mix some GOP idiots were selling at a GOP-related event in August, for example, was NOT funny. It WAS appalling and shameful.

I was certainly ashamed of the perpetrators' claims to be good Americans and to be clueless as to why what they did was offensive. How could they not know? When the subject came up on The View, the entire audience gasped in shock and revulsion upon seeing the box with Obama in a Mammy-style bandanna on the front and in an Arabic headdress on the back. The idiots who created the thing knew exactly what they were doing, and thought they could hide behind pretend "ignorance" to deflect criticism. That was likely their fallback position. They most probably never expected anyone to betray them by revealing their racist crap to that part of the world (i.e., the vast majority of the rest of us) that would shame them for expressing it.

And yes, distinctions can be drawn. If you, for example, wonder why I'm not complaining about Keith Olbermann's "Auntie Sarah's Moose Stew," here's why I'm not: Sarah Palin herself says she cooks and eats moose stew; the picture of Palin on the wrapper is an accurate, even flattering picture, showing her megawatt smile. [I've been on record for years of loving megawatt smiles.--Ed.] I would have been offended and would be complaining about it if she'd been shown with filthy, tangled hair, broken glasses, and blacked out/missing teeth. Demeaning stereotypes of every and any kind are not funny. Period.

Humorless people have another strike against them: they're the ones who foisted "political correctness" onto the rest of us. So you see, humorless people exist on the left as well as the right. Respecting people's preferences (as much as possible) is not wrong--but lecturing others on what is and is not acceptable, when the ones doing the lecturing are NOT in the group being referred to, is arrogant.

Thus humorless people of all stripes are the ones who pose the real threat to America. Their ultimate goal is to make the rest of us conform to their notions of propriety. They suck all the oxygen out of the air. That's anti-American. What is American is to show a little tolerance, to take a live-and-let-live approach to the world, and to give everyone a little breathing--and laughing--room.

Job Must Have Been A Cubs Fan

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"How long, O Lord?"

If the other shoe drops on your head while you're alone in the forest so that no one can hear you scream, are you still in agony? Oh, yeah.

I cannot believe the Dodgers swept the Cubs in the NLDS. The only explanation I have for it is that despite everything Lou Pinella did to keep the Cubs from feeling the weight of 100 years of Cubs fans' expectations, the Cubs carried that load. There's on other rational reason that Gold Glove-caliber infielders made 4 total errors in Game 2. There's no other rational reason that one of the best power hitting line-ups in the major leagues scored a measly 6 runs in 3 games. There's no other rational reason the pitching staff on the winningest team in the National League this year gave up 20 runs in 3 games.

Either that, or Manny Ramirez is Samson in reverse--the more he trimmed his hair after he got traded to Los Angeles, the more the Dodgers won.

I'd be crying in my beer if I had any.

Somewhere the sun is shining; somewhere children play and shout,
But there is no joy in Wrigleyville--the Cubbies have struck out. Again.

It's Called "Fixed News" For A Very Good Reason

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I just finished trying to vote (in all the online polls open to nationwide participation) for who won last night's Vice Presidential candidates' debate. I had no trouble casting my vote at MSNBC.com, AOL.com, the WallStreetJournal.com, nor even the Guardian.com poll. I even managed to get my vote recorded at the Drudge Report poll--which is so out-of-touch with reality that it's showing Palin a 72% to 18% winner. Even the other right wing polls are showing at best a statistical tie. The independent polls (and yes, the more liberal-leaning ones, too) are showing Biden with a solid lead.

I met with one glaring exception, however. When I tried to cast my vote at the Fox News poll, I got an error message saying there was a problem "taking my information." So I went to the "internet options" section of my toolbar, erased my temporary internet files, my history of web sites visited, logged off the internet, restarted my computer, logged on again, and tried to vote at Fox News again. Same result. I repeated these procedures several more times. No difference in result. [I never tried voting for Palin because I did not want to be suckered into casting a vote I did not intend to cast.--Ed.]

Fox "News" is the only online poll, out of all the ones I tried, no matter where they can be said to be located along the American political spectrum, that would not let me cast my vote.

If anyone who tried to vote at the Fox News poll for Palin had the same problem, I will gladly eat my words. For now, however, I am quite sure that the only reason there was a problem "taking my information" was because my "information" was a vote for Joe Biden--who clearly had a more comfortable and in-depth knowledge of the debate issues raised than did Gov. Palin. Watching her while he was speaking was informative: she didn't listen to him; she pored over her notes . . . and then responded with canned platitudes along the lines of what she was scripted to say instead of engaging in honest debate.

But spinning is the only weapon someone who has no real ideas has. Lord knows, she's learned that quickly at her running mate's behest. On Wednesday, John McCain claimed to be totally unaware of any GOP unease at Palin's candidacy . . . and said if anyone in the GOP was opposed to her, it was only cocktail-swigging people at parties in Georgetown. [I saw the interview tapes, with the editors of the Des Moines Register, myself. I am not putting what he said in quotation marks because I don't remember the quote exactly.--Ed] So much for the people at the National Review--only about the most intellectually credible of the right wing magazines--and the only and obvious object of McCain's oblique slur. Yet McCain still insists he is being 100% truthful and upright in his campaign, that he has nothing to be ashamed of, and that he has no need to regain anyone's trust because he's never done anything to lose it.

I'd like to have some of the happy pills he's taking. Having an unrealistic view of the world is apparently much more pleasant than having a genuine one.

The Apocalypse May Be At Hand

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The government is--for once--implementing sensible rules. Medicare has announced that it will no longer pay for a list of 10 "reasonably preventable" conditions that happen to patients who are injured by medical mistakes during their in-patient care. The list includes such errors as giving incompatible blood transfusions, second surgeries to retrieve sponges left behind by the first, serious bed sores, and infections caused by improperly placed urinary catheters. Every one of these errors can be prevented by taking an extra few seconds to double-check whatever is being done at the time it's being done. [One wonders why paying for these things was ever allowed at all.--Ed.]

Nor will the hospitals be allowed to bill patients for the costs of treating those errors. Why should a patient have to pay beyond the obvious pain and suffering caused by such errors in the first place?

It's an excellent idea. Not only will this save taxpayer money (and patient pain), it gives hospitals added incentive to make fewer mistakes. It's less expensive to implement a few additional double-checks than it is to eat the costs of actually making the mistakes. Lower costs and improved patient care. What's not to like?

I have two quibbles. First, as the New York Times report noted, hospitals will not be allowed to bill patients "directly" for the costs generated by their medical errors. They thus have the option of raising the money "indirectly." Hospitals will be able to increase their prices for everything to cover the estimated added costs of their errors. As long as it's a very small, truly across-the-board increase, however, I cannot take too much exception to that. After all, that's just putting the concept of insurance into action--by spreading the costs throughout as large a coverage pool as possible, every individual's actual expenses are held as low as possible. We all make mistakes. As long as we do everything we can to minimize them, it's not wrong to allow for the few that inevitably will still occur.

Second, the government is doing things that make sense. Can "The End" be far off when that starts happening?

My Body Detests Daylight Savings Time

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As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am not, never have been, and never will be a morning person. If left to my own devices, my body would prefer to sleep until the mid-to-late afternoon, crank all night, and go to sleep in the wee hours (usually around 5 a.m.). Where I am in the world makes no difference. I've lived in Europe; I've lived in Southeast Asia; I've lived in all 4 times zones in the continental USA. In each and every place, I am a night owl when left to my own devices.

However, I have taught my body to adapt to the "normal," "9 to 5" world, if for no other reason than to function within it. Even so, there are some adjustments my body simply will not make--the most irritating of which is the adjustment to Daylight Savings Time. Bad enough that we have to have DST at all. Worse, that our powers that be have extended it to cover nearly 10 months of the year. If I have to live and function in the "9 to 5" world, my body insists that it at least coordinate with the changes of season throughout the year.

As of September 21, the first day of fall this year, my body went off DST. My sleeping patterns are now abiding by Central Standard Time, even though DST still has over a month more to run. This is messing seriously with my ability to adjust my routines to the demands of the clock. I am running an hour behind at all times. Changing time zones wouldn't help, either, as my body is merely complying with the signals of the rising and setting sun, no matter what the clock says.

The only good thing about Daylight Savings Time is going off it. I'm just not sure I can cope until the clock and the calendar revert to my circadian rhythms.

The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

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Either that, or the boy finally cried "wolf!" one too many times. Sorry for mixing my metaphors, but let's face it: had the Dubya administration not played the "fear and panic" cards as often as it has over the past 7+ years, maybe someone would have paid attention to Dubya this time when he said we were on the verge of financial meltdown if his Wall Street bailout didn't get passed.

Note that he's finally learned how to compromise, at least a little. Once he realized that the "no review by anyone at any time of anything" the Secretary of the Treasury would do with the 700 billion dollars [talk about your blank checks!--Ed.] was Dead On Arrival, he was willing to attach a few small strings to the money to get the legislation passed. Just not allowing bankruptcy judges to help homeowners rewrite their mortgages along less onerous lines. [Corporate socialism is OK by the GOP, but assisting individuals to keep their homes is unacceptable, evil socialism, I guess.--Ed.]

No one told the House GOP members, apparently. Partisan bickering is more important to them than salvaging the economic future of the country. Even though neither the breakdown of the votes nor the other facts support them, GOP House members are blaming the Democrats for the bill's failure. [George Orwell would love this.--Ed.]

Fully two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted against the bill, sending it to defeat by fewer than 30 overall. The Democrats voted for the bipartisan bill just as they'd agreed to do. Two-thirds of them supported it, even though many had to hold their noses while they did so.

The GOP representatives are also blaming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "partisan rant" for the collapse of the bipartisan agreement to pass the bill. I listened to her speech. She ranted no such rant. All she did was point out--rightly--that the economic deregulation policies of the last 7+ years are to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves. And that we'd better pass some regulations with teeth to keep it from happening again [or at least to keep it from happening until the next time we forget our history and re-deregulate to assuage the greed of Wall Street--Ed.].

Even if she had ranted a partisan rant, so what? Isn't the economic future of the country more important than such trivialities? Not to the GOP representatives, apparently, since they are the ones who scuttled the bill.

[Anybody notice the irony here? More Democrats than Republicans voted to support legislation proposed by a Republican Administration. Dare I hope that this split within the GOP foretells the end of the rabid right wing? Nah. Wouldn't be prudent.--Ed.]

Not that the bailout is such a great idea anyway. I'm none too keen on giving even more money to the people who screwed everything up to begin with. I'd like to propose an alternative plan: you want to save the economy? Take Dubya's tax rebate program of earlier this year and make it big enough to do some good. You're prepared to spend 700 billion dollars we don't have? If you can give it to Wall Street, how much better to give each and every legal American (all 305 million of us) 2.295 billion dollars apiece?

I'll bet we all could do some serious power shopping with that. Wal-Mart, beware!

Summon Your Creative Muse

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People For The American Way has started a haiku contest. The winners will submit, in the proper 5-7-5 syllable format, haiku best describing the McCain-Palin ties to the far right, the issues at stake in this election, or what their election would mean for the Supreme Court should they [shudder--Ed.] win in November. Contest winners will be announced October 27th, and the winning entries will also be published in The Nation.

To submit an entry (up to three are allowed per person), or to get more details, go to: https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=action_haiku&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr001=ete4zfjin1.app304a

I have submitted my three entries, but I have to confess, my creative muse is more like Weird Al than Ogden Nash. That is to say, I do better with songs than with poetry.

To honor my musical muse, here is my entry into my own personal Skewer-the-Candidates contest. It is to be sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques."

Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin
Cooks moose stew
Eats it too
Rocky begged you not to
Bullwinkle's hiding from you
Moose pot au feu?
Shame on you!

If you can come up with anything better [and I am certain you can--Ed.], post it as a comment to this post of mine. I promise not to delete anything on the basis of whom or what it skewers. All I ask is that you be witty as opposed to going for cheap, potty humor.

Break Out The Pepto-Bismol

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College football experienced a bloodbath this weekend. Four of the top five ranked teams were upset [hence my need for the pink stuff--Ed.], and even Nebraska managed to lose its first-of-this-season's nationally televised games by losing to Virginia Tech.

Bo (Pelini) may know football, but he needs to learn some anger management. After playing generally poorly, with occasional flashes of both offensive and defensive brilliance, it's a miracle of sorts the Huskers lost by only 5 points. What's worse, they may have won the game except for late and stupid self-inflicted penalties that kept Virginia Tech scoring drives alive. The worst of these was inflicted by head coach Pelini himself. After the officiating crew warned him, he kept arguing and didn't leave the field with enough alacrity--and got the Huskers slapped with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty . . . which kept alive the Hokies' touchdown drive that ultimately provided them their margin of victory.

There is no joy in Huskerville this morning.

Still, I don't think Pelini is in serious danger of losing the faith of the Husker Nation. Most of the tribe like and admire his passion and his intelligence, and concur with his ideas about "how to play the game." We just wish he'd be a little smarter about his sideline conduct while the game is being played.

Criminal Mastermind--NOT!

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This article ran in Saturday's Omaha World-Herald. I am posting it in its entirety because there's no other way to explain it.

LINCOLN--Lincoln police report the rare occurrence of arresting a man who called them for help.

Officials say the 25-year-old man called police Wednesday night to say someone was trying to break into his apartment. When police arrived, they discovered it was the apartment manager trying to get into the apartment, which was supposed to be vacant.

Police say someone had illegally changed the locks on the apartment, and the man arrested was illegally occupying it.

Police also found more than three pounds of marijuana, equipment used to grow marijuana and nearly $3,500 in cash in the apartment. -- AP


Two questions: (1) Why hadn't the apartment manager called the police?
(2) Do you think, as I do, that the man who called the police
had been sampling his illegal wares?

Revisiting The 70s

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I was channel surfing last night when I discovered that one of the cable networks was running all three Airport movies (Airport, Airport '75, Airport '77). It was fun, revisiting the pop culture of my latter high school and early college years, but it was also disquieting. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

I loved seeing the old Hollywood stars--everyone from Gloria Swanson to Olivia deHavilland, Joseph Cotton to Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston to Burt Lancaster, Lee Grant to Helen Hayes--mixing it up with young, important (in the day) stars like Brenda Vaccaro and Karen Black, Monte Markham and Erik Estrada (yes, that one--playing a curly-haired obnoxious kid)--and, of course, the acting link uniting all three films, George Kennedy. Not to mention the colorful cameos provided by everyone from Sid Caesar to Jerry Stiller to Darrin McGavin. It was both interesting and instructive to see how real stars, with real star power, tried (albeit with varying degrees of success) to make very, very thin material worthwhile.

[For my money, Burt Lancaster's best role ever was not in Airport; it was as Doc Graham in Field of Dreams. Efram Zimbalist, Jr., as the wounded but gallant pilot in Airport '75, was about the only credible thing in that film. However, Olivia deHavilland, in Airport '77, was a totally delightful hoot as a Steel Magnolia with a penchant for playing poker.--Ed]

But the clothes were awful, each movie's plot was less and less credible than the one in the movie before [--not to mention that the state of airport security was less than woeful . . . especially by current standards.--Ed.], and the attitudes! Well, all I can say is, we have come a long way, baby!

No matter that several female characters in the films had important careers of their own, requiring them to make significant, often split-second, decisions. In danger and crisis, all females cry, wail, and wring their hands because they don't know what to do until they are rescued by some big, strong, handsome man. (And while I agree that Jack Lemmon with a mustache was good-looking in an offbeat sort of way, his obviously thinning hair shot his credibility for me as a romantic lead. Charlton Heston in a too-thin yellow turtleneck that showed only his relative lack of torsal muscle tone, was, well . . . eeeeeuuuuwwwwww! Give that man a bra!) The only independently competent thing any of the females seemed to be able to do was provide care and comfort for the injured.

And every one of them, no matter how old, was a "girl." And no matter what her name was, she was "honey." And she had to be spoken to in strong, stern, parental tones to calm her fears so that she would be able to focus on what she was being told to do. 'Cause that was the only sure way to make her do it competently.

I thought I was going to puke.

Not to mention that every single "bad guy" somehow or another "got his" by the end--with just enough innocent victims along the way to make the bad guys' deaths somehow even more justifiable than they'd have been otherwise. The morality of these films was starkly black and white despite all their widescreen Technicolor splendor.

Still and all, if it weren't for these three films, we'd never have gotten Airplane!; that alone justifies the continued existence of the Airport film trilogy.

And stop calling me Shirley!

Mark Twain Was Right

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"Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." This is not to insult teachers, or pigs . . . or anyone. It is to say there's no point in pursuing a futile activity. Truer words were never spoken.

A woman I consider a friend recently told me "I'd vote for Mickey Mouse if he were on the Republican ticket." That's tantamount to admitting that she cares not for the facts--she's going to shoe-horn them into her preconceived notions of what's right and proper. [Or should I have said Right?--Ed.] It is no different from saying "Don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind." She is intelligent, so her attitude shocked me. I thereupon undertook the fool's mission of trying to get her to open her mind a bit. Her only response has been to accuse me of being just as shallow, but from the opposite end of the American political spectrum. {Which is much narrower than the world's political spectrum, but that's a topic for another day.--Ed]

That's a problem, because I've related to her numerous specific incidents that show it's not true. I've never voted a totally straight ticket in my life; I doubt I ever will. No one political party has a monopoly on all the good people and ideas in this world. In 2000, I thought John McCain would be quite acceptable as the GOP presidential candidate. Barack Obama was not my first, nor even my second, favorite among this year's potential Democratic Party nominees.

But as I have watched the two men campaign this summer, and now especially after the events of the past 2 weeks, I just don't think McCain is up to the job. I won't recount all the outrages I've previously described. I'll just add a few of the most recent. McCain said he'd fire the Chairman of the SEC, when the President has no such authority; he called the president of the SEC the president of the Federal Elections Commission; he said the "fundamentals of the American economy are sound" at the very moment the stock market was dropping over 500 points. He then came up with the lame excuse that he was talking about American workers. No dictionary or thesaurus in the world says "workers" is a synonym for "fundamentals."

McCain attacked Obama because one of Obama's fundraisers was linked in the past to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet McCain's own campaign chief of staff was taking $15,000 a month till last month to lobby on Freddie Mac's and Fannie Mae's behalf. McCain claimed that his campaign chief of staff had cut ties to his lobbying business in 2006, but he's still listed as that business's treasurer and is a member of that business's board of directors. Talk about a pot calling a kettle black! [I shouldn't complain, I suppose. It is more evidence in support of my contention, expressed in previous my previous posts, that McCain's tactic is to run against himself by accusing Obama of all the things he, McCain, has done wrong.--Ed]

After Barack Obama called McCain this morning to suggest they issue a joint statement to address the economic crisis, McCain unilaterally announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington until the crisis was solved, and that he wanted to postpone the debate already scheduled with Obama for tomorrow night (on the campus of Ole Miss). Yet McCain's TV ads attacking Obama are still running nationwide, his campaign offices are still open (many staffers of which didn't even know about McCain's "suspension"), and McCain's web site is still accepting donations. First, what about this constitutes "suspending the campaign"? Second, Obama has correctly observed that now is the very time the American people need to hear as much from the candidates as possible on this issue, and he also noted (again, correctly) that the president has to be able to do more than one thing at once. America's enemies are not going to stand in line and wait their turn while the president deals with the crisis du jour.

McCain is careening all over the place with no rhyme or reason. It's "shoot first an ask questions later." It's a fighter jock mentality, which figures, since McCain was in fact a Navy fighter jock. My mother, who spent the better part of her 40+ years in civil service working at SAC (now STRATCOM) headquarters, in the Plans and the Personnel sections (the two busiest places in wartime), in wars from Vietnam through Iraq, says fighter jocks make the worst bosses--they refuse to acknowledge that they could not do what they do without the support of the rest of the military and civilian teams who handle everything from arranging their pay to gassing their jets. Their perception of reality isn't, for lack of a better term, realistic.

She also says that after those 40+ years of 12-hour days, she knows at 71 that she'd not be up to handling the job of the presidency . . . and she further knows that (1) her job was not nearly as demanding as the presidency would be, and (2) that she never suffered the physical deprivations McCain suffered while a POW in Vietnam. She thus has legitimate reasons, based on facts and her experience, to question whether McCain is physically up to being president, given what being president entails.

Based on the things I've seen this summer, I doubt it.

But my acquaintance thinks I'm just a liberal who's blind to "facts" with which I disagree. I'm scratching my head here. I'm quite sure that if she and I were to sit down and go down a list of "The Issues" one by one, I'd predict her stand on each of them correctly more often than she'd pick mine. For just two examples, I am way out of step with most "liberals" on things like illegal immigration and making English the official language of the USA. I base my positions on what I experienced while living overseas, both in Europe and in Asia, and on my understanding of American history--which, I am not ashamed to admit, seems to be better than most Americans'.

I think things through first, and only THEN make my choices. Why she refuses to recognize that, I do not know. [I can guess that it has something to do with the implication that forcing the facts to fit one's preconceptions is not merely lazy and shallow--it's wrong-headed and unwise. If I am just like her, my opinions are no better or worse than hers. But I cannot say for sure that that's her reason.--Ed.] It was driving me crazy that I couldn't seem to make that clear to her . . . until I remembered my Twain. I hereby give up my attempt to encourage her to see a wider world.

Oh, well. She probably thinks my quoting Twain was meant as an insult. It was not. If I'd wanted to insult her, I'd have quoted Dorothy Parker: when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence, Ms. Parker thought for a moment, then said, "You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think."

Here endeth the lesson.

Pardon, Your Myopia Is Showing

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The Omaha World-Herald is at it again. The editor on Monday chastised the Huffington Post for running articles about unnamed individuals hacking into Sarah Palin's email accounts. It showed "election-season hysteria" and a "disturbing disregard for someone's privacy."

Of course, what the World-Herald failed to note was that the reason Palin's email accounts were hacked is that she deliberately created and used personal accounts to conduct official Alaskan government business while avoiding the oversight legally required of anyone sitting in the governor's office.

Don't get me wrong. I do not condone illegal activities (as a rule) such as hacking. But I don't condone illegal conduct of official government business, either. There's plenty of wrong to go around on all sides in this slimy little scenario.

I wish the World-Herald had spoken out as strongly against the improper and probably illegal behavior of the one being hacked as it did against the hackers . . . who, for all we know, are the moral equivalent of whistle-blowers.

Ah, So That's What It Is!

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Many in the electronic and print media have confessed to having trouble figuring out Sen. John McCain's campaign strategy. McCain seems to be all over the place: one moment, he says offshore drilling is "a gimmick" that won't work, and the next, he's chanting "drill, baby, drill!" One [twenty-six year long--Ed.] moment, he's calling himself "a de-regulator," and the next, he's all for close federal oversight of stock markets and the entire investment banking industry. One moment, he says Sen. Barack Obama lacks the experience necessary to be president; the next, McCain says Obama is to blame for the economic mess we now find ourselves in. One moment, all Republicans (including the Dubya Administration) are saints from Heaven and all Democrats are the Devil incarnate; the next [and despite his 90% pro-Dubya administration voting record--Ed.], McCain is a maverick and the only candidate who can bring us real change as he will "clean up Washington."

Don't you get it? McCain knows if we were all smart enough to vote purely on the basis of the issues, he'd lose in a landslide. He therefore is trying to turn Barack Obama into McCain's evil black twin. If you want to find out what McCain stands for, all you have to do is consider the latest charges he's leveling against Obama.

It's ridiculous; it's wrong; it just may work. And so is proven my hypothesis yet again . . . for isn't McCain the one who said Obama's ambition to be president was so strong he'd do anything to win the election?

Wakey! Wakey! This Is Your Nine O'Clock Alarm Call!

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The New York Stock Exchange lost nearly 10% of its value in the past 2 days due to the ongoing effects of the subprime mortgage meltdown and its attendant effects on the entire banking structure of our country. How could this happen? Deregulation has once again come home to roost.

And now Sen. John McCain, who for the better part of 26 years has called himself a "de-regulator," says HE's the one with the knowledge and expertise to straighten out Wall Street, end unconscionable greed in America and get our economy back on track. And oh, by the way, he wants to privatize Social Security. That means taking all the money currently in the hands of the Social Security Administration and putting it into the SAME stock market.

Talk about your Social Insecurity!

I cannot believe that anyone who is paying attention to the issues is still even contemplating casting a vote for McCain. Are that many people so stupid and self-destructive? Or are America's problems with continued racism far worse than I want to believe? Or some of each?

The Piranha Brothers Have Nothing On John McCain

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I want to make sure I understand this: John McCain says the tone of his campaign against Barack Obama would have been different if only Obama had agreed to appear with him in several "town hall" style debates throughout the country.

So McCain wouldn't be spreading sleazy lies about Obama if only Obama had given in to McCain's demand that Obama agree to appear repeatedly in McCain's preferred campaign forum.

So McCain is both: (1) blaming the victim; and (2) committing extortion, pure and simple. This makes him of the cool and mature judgment to be the president exactly how?

And just when I think things couldn't possibly get any worse . . .

McCain's chosen VP candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has no real idea what the Bush Doctrine is. [People who are calling what Charlie Gibson asked her about that a "gotcha" question are missing the point. Her understanding of the Bush Doctrine is essential to our understanding of her foreign policy positions.--Ed] But her state's proximity to Russia makes her a foreign policy expert and ready to take over the presidency on a moment's notice. Right.

I'm still offering to sell that lovely bridge--you know, the one in Brooklyn--all you have to do is make an offer!

It Was Seven Years Ago Today

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On September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my computer, checking my emails and contributing to a blog that no longer exists, when I got a phone call from my mother. She was at work at Offutt AFB, doing her civilian job in the STRATCOM personnel office, when the world seemingly stopped--at her behest, I turned on my TV just in time to see the second plane crash into the second World Trade Center tower.

Every generation has its own "I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when ______________ happened" moments. But it seems to me that my generation has had more than our fair share. John F. Kennedy's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Challenger explosion, the terror attacks of September 11 . . . "and the beat goes on." Or, "we didn't start the fire."

Or "the road goes ever on." As worn down by my own personal tragedies as I have been at times, I never seriously wanted to die [I think.--Ed.]--the historian in me can't stand the idea of not knowing how everything will turn out. Or maybe it's the cat in me. Lord knows, I have more than enough curiosity for any three people.

Maybe I won't have long to wait. According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 12, 2012. It's not worth worrying about, because there's nothing we can do about it, but there may be something behind the Mayans' prediction. On that date, a rare astronomical event will happen. Our Sun, the Earth, and the center of our Milky Way galaxy will be in perfect alignment . . . and now that we know that a massive black hole sits at the center of the galaxy, we can surmise that something drastic may indeed happen at the moment of perfect alignment.

Then again, before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, some scientists feared doing so would set the Earth's entire atmosphere on fire. More recently, doom-sayers predicted that running the new neutron collider in Europe would create a mini-black hole that would destroy us all. Since I am still sitting here, typing, I can state with certainty that THAT didn't happen.

My mom is worried that my health will continue to worsen and that I'll start to let go. I keep telling her that no matter how bad my health gets, I'm not going anywhere: (1) I have too much to do--as long as I have even one unfinished craft project, I'm hanging in [and I have probably thousands of unfinished craft projects--Ed.]; (2) I have to find out how everything turns out [it's a rare occasion when I read a novel without peeking at the last few pages first--Ed.] ; (3) living is the best revenge. My ex-husband early this year expressed his wish that I'd die . . . and my response was that if I had to do it on will-power and one nerve, I was going to outlive him, just because of the crappy way he'd treated me when and after he abandoned our marriage. He got my Irish up. He has no one to blame but himself. [I suspect that if he had not abandoned our marriage, I would have died by 1998, just as the doctors who diagnosed my lung disease prognosed in 1988. I'd been telling myself by the time my ex left in 1993 that what was good in him was good enough, but he was draining me emotionally. I see now that I am in every way except financially much better off without his emotional poison in my life.--Ed.]

It's odd, the effects that the momentous events of the age can have on our small, individual lives. After 9/11, many people lashed out against Islam, Arabs, and anyone else they perceived to be "coddling" terrorists. It was sort of a collective wounded animal syndrome. Even people who tried to help got wounded by their indiscriminate anger.

Some of us looked inward and reexamined why we believe what we believe, and asked--and answered--the question of how we may best go about defending and preserving our beliefs. The one thing I know is that the moment we lower our tactics to the level of the terrorists', the terrorists have won. For they have made us abandon our most treasured beliefs, as embodied in our Constitution. That certainty is at the heart of my disgust with what the Dubya administration has done in the past 7 years; it is the core of my fear about what will happen to the country should McCain win the presidency in November.

Nevertheless, I'm hanging around. I'm sticking it out. I need to know for my own satisfaction that the good guys can still win. In the real world of late, it's all too often that the good guys get stomped by those who are willing to say or do anything to win--including accusing their opponents of having the overwhelming ambition that their own behavior reveals. Like lying under oath. Like ignoring the Constitution because it just "gets in the way." Like claiming to be an agent of "change" while voting 90% of the time just as Dubya wants.

Aha! Another lesson learned from Star Trek: in the episode entitled "Mirror, Mirror," a pacifist race called the Halkons is willing to die to the last man rather than to raise arms and fight, just "to preserve what we are." The Halkons knew that their integrity, once cast aside, could not be reclaimed. I daresay, if any of them survived their impending slaughter, they'd reclaim their moral high ground and continue to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Those of us who don't want to see Dubya's Third Term are no different from surviving Halkons. Our integrity is intact; if we win in November, we can bring that back to "official" America and restore the Founders' dreams. The only people who've lost their integrity are those who implemented all the illegal and unconstitutional doings of the past seven years. Their integrity is gone for all time.

There is a lot riding on the next few months. I feel the same way about this that I feel about certain baseball teams who shall continue to remain unnamed lest I unleash yet another jinx: I am full of hope, but part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nonetheless, I'm not going anywhere. If for no other reason, should I not be able to take my craft projects with me, I'm not going to go.

Veggie Tales

My cousin Anne yesterday brought me some of the bounty from her garden--tomatoes, a cucumber, assorted peppers, and green beans. I can't wait to make some Pico de Gallo with the tomatoes and peppers, and a side salad with the cucumber and some onions I already have on hand. Haven't figured out quite yet what to do with the green beans . . . and I must decide soon. When I got up this morning, I discovered that at least two of the green beans were making a break for it.

Well, actually, the cats were abetting the green beans in making a break for it. I caught Linus carrying one in his mouth while running down the stairs, and Lucy gingerly extracting one from the pile with her teeth.

I really need to get a video camera. The visuals are much funnier than any description I can provide.

Anyway, thanks to Anne for her generosity. Her garden's bounty will be put to good use . . . even if some of it does duty only as ersatz catnip.

Thank You, Garrison Keillior

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If you have never heard nor read Garrison Keillior's Lake Wobegon story Tomato Butt, I encourage you to find a copy (in audio, it's one of the "Summer" Lake Wobegon stories; in book form, it's in Lake Wobegon Days) and listen to it or read it immediately. If you don't laugh out loud and don't recognize yourself or your family/friends, you need a mental health check-up.

Besides, it makes a perfect bookend to my tale of Linus and Lucy and the Roma tomato (see my previous post, You Say To-May-To, I Say To-Mah-To). The wandering Roma has been found . . . and disposed of without further incident, thank goodness.

Sometime in the last day, Linus retrieved it from whatever downstairs hidey-hole he'd used for it, and he deposited it amongst my stash of 1- and 2-liter bottles of water awaiting refrigeration. Complete with kitty tooth marks. [On the tomatoes, not the water bottles . . . though I wouldn't put that past Linus, either.--Ed.] My lovely friend Sarah (not Palin, praise the Powers That Be) noticed it while we were making pizza last night. As I was telling her the wandering Roma story.

Timing is everything!

You Say To-May-To, I Say To-Mah-To

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I haven't written much about my kitties of late--not because they don't do something amusing every day; they do--but my attention has been focused primarily on other things. What happened yesterday, however, deserves special mention.

That's Linus in the photo, Lord Of All He Surveys. He likes to get up on the china hutch to get my attention when he feels I am not sufficiently attentive to his needs. So far, he's done nothing up there other than rattle a lid or two, but I am relieved that the hutch's crown molding creates a 4" deep barrier. I have no doubts he'd try to push one of the soup tureens or teapots off the thing if he thought it would get him what he wanted.

Sometimes he is a bit more subtle. Monday, my mom brought me a slightly under-ripe tomato from her garden. I left it out on the kitchen counter to get a day's sun to hasten its attainment of tomato-y Nirvana, and thus hasten my attainment of tomato-eating Nirvana. Yesterday morning, as I stumbled through my a.m. routine, I heard a thump, then the sound of Linus jumping off a counter, then the scurrying of cats playing with new and interesting toys, like twist ties.

I didn't think too much of it. I wasn't yet entirely awake. [Those of you who know me know well that I am not a 'morning person,' I have never been a 'morning person,' and I will never be a 'morning person.'--Ed.] Only later, when I entered the kitchen, did I realize that Linus and Lucy were playing soccer with the once and future tomato. Which has since disappeared. I have no idea where it is. I've looked for it in all the most likely places (as determined by whence the sounds of their playing with it came). I have looked in all the places they usually stash their toys, or lose them, depending on one's point of view. I have looked in places I believe it would be impossible for the tomato to be.

It's gone. I don't think they ate it; had they done that, there would have been seeds or juice residue visible somewhere. Besides, they've never shown a bit of interest in eating "people food"--except for Lucy with clotted cream and Linus with Ranch salad dressing.

I know. If I wait a few days, the tomato's location will make itself known. I'm just not sure I really want to find it by that method.

And why the heck didn't someone tell the cats the Olympics were over already, anyway?

It's The Eleven O'Clock News

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[Please see my 8/25/2008 post, "When 'Fairness' Isn't Fair" for background.--Ed.]

And here's the film: a Nebraska court has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to change some of the wording in the non-official parts of the proposed constitutional amendment to end affirmative action; but that a few minor changes must be made in the wording of the text of the proposed amendment itself.

So the amendment, with this tweaking, will appear on the November ballot.

I'm still scratching my head about this whole thing, and still hoping that most Nebraskans will see through the smokescreen put up by the people pushing the amendment. However, I am not going to hold my breath.

If Ronald Reagan Could Do It, How Hard Can It Really Be?

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Face a fact: no one, no matter what his or her political experience has been, no matter how much history he or she has studied (and not just studied, but learned), no matter what his or her military service consisted of, can ever really be "ready" to be president.

Why should that matter, anyway? I mean, we're talking about a job that a B-movie actor held for 8 years. A B-movie actor who never ever performed military service. A B-movie actor who spent 8 years acting like the genial grandpa, telling us all what we want to hear instead of dealing with the facts of the world. How hard can it be?

On the other hand, American history is full of examples of men (that's historical fact, not political correctness) who had impeccable credentials, but who made a total muck of their time in the Oval Office. George Bush pater is merely the most recent example.

And some of our greatest presidents, while they had legislative experience at the national level, essentially learned the job on the fly--two of the most important being JFK and Abraham Lincoln.

"Experience" is not the issue. "Experience" is a smokescreen. The issue is judgment. The issue is character. The issue is ability to think, to learn, to analyze, to make decisions, to know when idealism should be served and to know when to pull back and be pragmatic. "Coolness under fire" is the military terminology. But one does not have to have served active military duty in wartime to possess this trait in any or all of its permutations.

One has to show by how one leads one's life that he or she has the judgment and cool temper to LEAD. Barack Obama is cool under fire. Almost every decision he's made since he came to national prominence demonstrates his ability to think dispassionately about a problem and find the best possible solution to it. I don't always agree with him. I'm still peeved that he voted for Dubya's FISA bill that granted the telecoms immunity from their illegal spying on all of us. But he sent out a detailed email explaining his reasons. He had several; I don't generally agree with them, but I do now understand. He had his eyes on a bigger prize, one reached by passing the FISA bill in its final form. I can respect his reasons for his vote. I doubt that John McCain is even capable of giving such an explanation for anything he's done, given that his main campaign tactic seems to be accusing Obama of being the "flip-flopper" that McCain himself has turned out to be.

John Kerrey cogently noted this in his speech to the Democratic National Convention yesterday. The candidate McCain of the past said Dubya's tax cuts, if made permanent, were dangerous. McCain the candidate today says he embraces those tax cuts and will make them permanent, to name just one instance of many in which McCain has sold out to the far, far right of the GOP.

Yes, Obama has tweaked his positions on many issues as the need has arisen. Politics IS "the art of the possible," after all. If it's better to give in on 10% of something to get 90% of one's agenda passed, it's better to give in on that 10%. That's what real politicians do. They don't cry and scream and stamp their feet and insist on "all or nothing." They don't smear their political opponents with ridiculous lies. They don't act as though anyone who dares disagree with them is a traitor.

They work together to achieve the larger goals of accomplishing what's best for the country. They don't finagle the system to get what they want by subterfuge when they don't get their way legislatively. [The way Dubya's administration is at present trying to do by redefining "abortion" to include "birth control."--Ed.] They don't regard the government as a plum to be divided up amongst only their supporters.

Our government is supposed to be a government of laws, not of men. Our government is supposed to represent all of us, not just those who want to make campaigning permanent and keep power permanently in their own hands. Our government is supposed to function in a bi-partisan way. [Indeed, the Founding Fathers never wanted our government to be subjected to political parties at all.--Ed.] Our government is supposed to be a place of (voluntarily) limited-time service by citizens who care about all of America who will go back to their private lives after briefly performing public service.

Our government can be none of those things when it's under the control of people who say "government doesn't work." Of course it doesn't work when they control it. They don't want it to, so it won't. The system has to be above the attempts of any group, right OR left, to control and manipulate it. It has to be dispassionate, credible, and as objective as the people involved in it can be. It is a higher calling, not a heap of junk to be trashed.

I hope the cheeky nature of this post's title doesn't betray what I am saying here. I think being the president of the USA has to be the most difficult job on Earth. I also think that no matter what one has done in life, there's no way one can truly get the experience to prepare one perfectly to be president. And that's why one's character, as revealed through one's actions, matters.

How hard can it be to be president? Really hard, if one cares more about doing it and doing it well than one cares about posing and posturing and acting one's way through it.

So think: do you want to elect a man who obviously loves and respects his family and his fellow citizens, or do you want to elect a man who says whatever he thinks his immediate audience wants to hear, a man who had an affair with his present wife while still married to his first one, a man who would offer up his present wife to compete in a biker beauty contest, a man who has no trouble at all lying by accusing his political opponent of all the weaknesses of character he has demonstrated during the course of this campaign? Which one has demonstrated genuine strength of character in both his life AND his campaign? The future of the country depends on how you answer.

Nobody's Home--And The Lights Are Out, To Boot

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Some of the most rabid of Hillary Clinton's supporters are disregarding Hillary's plea that they now support Barack Obama. They are threatening to vote for John McCain on the grounds that Obama disrespected and disregarded Hillary.

Hello? Anybody in there?

If these women think Obama disrespected Hillary, what the heck do they think McCain will do in regards to ALL women? After all, McCain is the one who offered up his wife as a "Miss Buffalo Chip" contestant at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally earlier this summer. Miss Buffalo Chip contestants are encouraged, if not required, to remove most or all of their clothing and perform simulated sex acts with bananas in front of the (male) biker "judges."

Now I'm sure that if McCain is confronted about this, he'll plead ignorance. I don't buy it. Watch the clips of his little performance at Sturgis. There's his wife Cindy, standing dutifully by his side, her face a riot of suppressed rage and humiliation. She knew. And if she knew, he knew. For the life of me, I don't know why she didn't sock him in the jaw and walk off the stage. I guess you can take the good little hausfrau out of the house, but you can't take the GOP toady out of her. No matter how much money she has.

Hillary supporters, wake up! McCain's willingness to humiliate his wife for the sake of a few votes is vastly more disrespectful of all women than was anything Obama did to Hillary. Where do you think that will leave all women if McCain wins the presidency?

If your real objection is in fact the matter of respect for women, you must vote for Obama. Or are you using the respect issue as a smokescreen for your own racism? You'd rather vote for a white man who treats his wife like dirt than for any black man, especially one who demonstrably treats the women in his family very, very well? What are you? Nuts?

Or is it that you have no self-respect? If you vote for McCain, don't expect me--or anyone with half a brain--to respect you, either. Your actions will prove you don't deserve it.

Chutzpah, He Has--Brains, Not So Much

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The worsening economy has sparked a rash of metal thefts in the metro Omaha area. The most common target is copper (wire, sheeting, whatever), from houses under construction, from houses scheduled to be razed, even from the construction site of the Omaha Police Dept.'s new shooting range, if memory serves. Other metals, such as steel, are also taken--the scrap value for any and all of them makes the risks of stealing them worth it in the eyes of the despicable, the desperate, and the dumb.

I was of the opinion that the copper theft from the OPD was the most brazen . . . until yesterday. Yesterday, a man spotted a semi-tractor trailer loaded with 21 tons of steel beams. So he got a semi cab, hooked it to the trailer, and tried to drive off with it. Had he succeeded, he'd have gotten $10,000 for the scrap value of the metal.

Unluckily for him, his bold daylight theft was seen, and he was caught and arrested almost immediately.

Good thing, too. The beams were on their way to Fremont, to be used in the construction of a new medical facility there.

Part of me wants to laugh about the sheer absurdity of the situation. Part of me wants to cry because things have gotten so bad that the putative thief thought his act was worth the risk.

Maybe I should have called this post "Putting The 'B' (For 'Brazen') In DumB."

When "Fairness" Isn't Fair

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A current petition drive in Nebraska has people of all political stripes frothing at the mouth. Californian Ward Connerly is pumping tons o' money into the "Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative," which has been collecting signatures to add a ban on virtually all forms of affirmative action to Nebraska's November ballot. Apparently, he and his minions succeeded. They claimed Friday that they have turned in signatures from enough Nebraskans to put his measure to the vote this fall.

It is difficult to discuss this issue without feeling like I've fallen through Alice's looking glass and into Orwell's 1984. The group calling itself the "Civil Rights Initiative" is working to end an important civil rights tool. And the name of the group fighting the "Civil Rights Initiative" doesn't exactly stir up images of crusaders for justice and substantive equality. It's called "Nebraskans United." It has challenged the validity of most of the petition signatures on the twin bases of improper collecting techniques and unclear wording of the petition itself. I doubt it will succeed in keeping the ban off the ballot, however. There's too much money on the other side, even though "Nebraskans United" is on the side of the angels in this fight. Money talks, especially when the group with the money adopts a name that makes it seem as though it's the "good guy," that "black is white," and that it's the group favoring fairness--as the name "Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative" has done in this case.

I am not an uncritical fan of affirmative action, but I cannot think of a better way to provide immediate redress for the centuries of discrimination which various minorities in our society have suffered at the hands of the traditional white-middle-aged-male power structure. I feel about affirmative action the way Winston Churchill felt about democracy--it's the second worst form of government . . . after every other form of government. Affirmative action is the only reasonable means at present to redress effectively that which centuries of poverty and ethnic discrimination have wrought.

Affirmative action does this by eliminating the long ladder minorities have to climb just to get to the level of the playing field, not to mention a level playing field. When you are starting in the sub-sub-basement and everyone else is starting on the 10th floor, you are never going to get out of the sub-sub-basement unless employers are encouraged to make some allowances for the wide disparity between your and everyone else's starting points.

If you grow up in a poor neighborhood with lower property values and thus lesser-quality schools (since property taxes paid into the state determine where and how much the state and its local branches spend on education), and your neighborhood has been that way for decades, you not only have no good educational system to help you escape poverty, you have no family or neighborhood tradition of getting an education to rise above your initial, impoverished circumstances. Nevertheless, many--maybe even most--minorities come close to overcoming all the disadvantages heaped upon their heads from even before they were born. They go to school, they stay in school, they learn, they graduate. [They don't generally make the news, because they don't fit the media's "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra.--Ed.] But they need assistance in getting beyond the dead-end jobs available in their own neighborhoods.

Affirmative action provides the mechanism by which those who are close to climbing out on their own can climb out for good--it's a hand up, not a hand-out. No one has to hire as a librarian someone who, say, can't read--but if a minority member has an 11th-grade reading level and a white has a college-freshman reading level, affirmative action encourages hiring the minority member. Once hired, any employee still has to be a good and sufficient employee to KEEP the job. So affirmative action is just a way to get a fair shake at the starting line. One's own talents and abilities have to carry one from there.

Unfortunately, some of the rich bigots out there won't accept affirmative action. They are masters of pitting groups of the poor against each other, often on the basis of race, because they know that as long as poor whites and poor blacks are fighting each other, the bigots and their riches are safe from both. Hence Ward Connerly's interference in Nebraska politics. His published comments make clear he wanted to get his measure on the ballot in 5 states this year alone, but citizens in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Missouri have all already rejected his attempts. Only Nebraska and Colorado seem likely to vote on Connerly's proposal this fall. [Even that is two too many.--Ed.]

I cannot speak to what's happening in Colorado. When I lived there (in the early 1960s), Coloradans made Attila the Hun look like a flower child. One example: my mother helped with a neighborhood petition drive to get a crosswalk installed so that children could safely cross the 4-lane, 45 mph, road between us and our school. At least two people in the neighborhood wouldn't sign because they didn't have any kids, so it would do them no good and (allegedly) increase their taxes. Nice, huh? I guess civilization was a foreign concept to them, but their attitude was not uncommon. I have no idea whether Coloradans have since evolved beyond such troglodyte thinking.

In Nebraska, I am hoping that people who signed the petition did so because they thought they were encouraging fairness, not taking it away. My experience with most Nebraskans has been that they are more concerned with being fair than with being bigots. Connerly's minions played on this by making the petition's wording fuzzy enough to confuse anyone not paying very, very close attention (one of the things he's counting on, no doubt), and those soliciting petition signatures were told to say that signing the petition would "ensure fairness in Nebraska" for the future. I know this because I and several others got that very spiel when we were asked to sign but said "no" and tried to explain why. We were accused of being unfair for our positions. Yet we are the ones fighting for fairness! Through the looking glass and into 1984, indeed.

Nebraskans United is using the petition's fuzzy wording and alleged misconduct by those soliciting petition signatures to challenge the signatures' validity in court. The case is on an expedited calendar, given that the election is now only about 3 months away. Nebraskans United is also challenging the financing behind the petition drive, as the principal backer, Connerly, has no valid residential or business connections to Nebraska. The problem is this: the petitioners needed a total of 112,000 valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot. The so-called "Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative" group says it passed this number by a "comfortable margin." I interpret that to mean by more than 25% (or a total of at least 140,000), as one can presume from prior petition submissions that about 10% of all signatures collected will be ruled invalid even when everything done to collect them is unquestionably proper--as most assuredly was NOT done in this case.

Keep your fingers crossed that this abomination won't make the November ballot--or if it does, that Nebraskans, fundamentally sensible, will take the care and time to see through Connerly's smokescreen and vote the ugly thing down. Connerly doesn't live here. He shouldn't be allowed to taint elections here.

Film at eleven!