What's Wrong With McCain's Picture?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's Getting Hot In Here

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Who's Zoomin' Whom?

(with apologies to Aretha Franklin)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fly Me To The Moon?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I'm Not Mr. Kotter

Welcome me back anyway!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More soon!

It IS A Woman's Prerogative To Change Her Mind

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

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

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

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

Can Effervescence Be Eternal?

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

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

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

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

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

School Daze

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

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

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

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

Geography 101

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breathtakingly Spectacular Bad Logic

The only presumption I consciously make about anything is that God gave humans brains in the hopes we'd put them to good use. I do not do so perfectly, but I try . . . and I find myself increasingly frustrated with the sheer quantity of poor thinking humans reveal every day. Consider several recent examples:

(1) Nebraska just failed (again) to pass a statewide smoking ban . . . and all the smokers are happy, because (a) their "rights" have been preserved; and (b) according to some of the state legislators, this is the sort of thing that each and every city and town should decide for itself. The first reason is wrong--no one has a right to smoke. Smoking is not an issue of "rights." It's a public health problem. There is more than enough credible evidence demonstrating the terrible effects smoking has on smokers and non-smokers alike. As I've said before, spittoons were ubiquitous until people figured out their connection to the spread of tuberculosis. Spittoons thereupon disappeared. The second reason is a cop-out pure and simple. Smoke doesn't obey political boundaries. But craven politicians who don't want to give up the money they get from cigarette companies would have you think so.

(2) If I heard the talking heads on MSNBC correctly, the latest lame attempt to prove Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing John F. Kennedy is this: Oswald got his job at the Texas School Book Depository about 6 weeks before the motorcade route was announced. Therefore, someone in the White House had to arrange for the motorcade to go past the Book Depository to let Oswald do his evil deed.

No one in the conspiracy theory crowd apparently has heard of Occam's Razor. It's really simple [that's the point!--Ed.]: if you have more than one possible explanation for something, the one that's most likely correct is the simplest, most straightforward one. In the JFK assassination case, the simplest explanation is that Oswald got the job, learned of the motorcade route when it was published, and decided, you will pardon the expression, to take his shot. We know he was already fixated on killing some important public figure (he tried to kill General Walker in April of 1963). He was just looking for his opportunity, which presented itself in November. The reason this explanation is preferable to the "high government insider" version is that it requires fewer people, it uses no uncorroborated allegations, it fits human behavior in general, and it matches what we know in particular about both Oswald's mind-set and the other physical evidence of the assassination.

(3) The Supremes are at it again. Now, by a 5-4 majority, the Court has ruled that no woman can claim sex discrimination in being paid a lesser wage than men doing the same job unless she brings the claim within 180 days of learning what her pay will be. Count me with Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the dissenters on this one. Most employers keep their employees from knowing what they pay. Besides, it is well-established at law that a person has time from the moment that person discovers the wrong done against him/herself to file a claim. If memory serves, the phraseology is a specific number of days/weeks/months/years from the time the person "knew or reasonably should have known" what was happening. It's not reasonable to say that the person should have known in the face of an employer's official policy to keep such information secret from its employees. This is even more true when an employee's knowing others' wages would likely be grounds for that employee's dismissal.

The Court majority admitted frankly that it held the interests of employers in highest regard, saying that no one intended employers to be socked economically for claims against behavior that happened so long ago as to be stale. Maybe so. Maybe not. The remedy in any event is simple. Congress needs to clarify the law, which is something Ginsberg exhorted Congress do, quickly. After all, Congress has done so in the past. Indeed, Congress years ago passed laws to overturn prior Supreme Court decisions that the Court in this case cited as precedent. Talk about slovenly research! Until Congress acts again, however, I see only another instance of "them what has, gets. The rest of us just gets screwed." [a/k/a "He who has the gold makes the rules."--Ed.]

(4) More silliness from the government: a NASA administrator on NPR this morning was trying to justify NASA's lack of interest in investigating global warming [more politically correctly now known as "climate change"--Ed.] on the grounds that it's not up to him or to NASA to determine that the climate we have now is the best climate there is for humans all over the globe. He also claimed his First Amendment free speech rights were not at all infringed by his position in the Bush administration. The myriad long pauses between words while he blatantly edited himself during each sentence were coincidences, I guess.

But the serious error is in what he said about this climate being "the best possible one." NO ONE is saying that, nor has anyone ever said that, nor will anyone with even half a brain ever say that about "climate change." That is NOT what global warming means. Indeed, the people encouraging more global warming research are saying quite the opposite, to wit: the climate already has worsened. Moreover, the warming is dangerously close to becoming irreversible and ultimately fatal to humanity. The NASA administrator's verbal tap dance was a shamefully apparent and sadly ineffective attempt to change the terms of the discussion so he'd not get into trouble with Dubya. And that's pathetic.

[(4a) I also just heard on the afternoon news that high US military officials in Iraq now say that September will be too soon to see whether the the troop surge is working. That isn't bad logic; it's simply duplicity. Dubya said when the troop "surge" was first announced that the Iraqi government would have to have its act together by September. But the new spin is also plenty disgusting. Russia may have been an enigma wrapped in a mystery, but Iraq is becoming a quagmire wrapped in quicksand. This news article is not unlike the ones that came out before Memorial Day about increasing gas prices. We the public are being softened up for results we don't want but cannot seem to convince our leaders to prevent.--Ed.]

(5) I've heard people carping about Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards's $400 haircut and the six-figure speaking fees he commands. They seem to think he is a hypocrite because fighting the insidious effects of poverty is one of the linchpins of his campaign. Well, I cannot quarrel with the complaints about the $400 haircut. That seems excessive, even allowing for the fact that the hairdresser had to come to him instead of him going to the hairdresser.

However, to complain about Edwards's speaking fees is pointless and mean. It's expensive to run for president. Everyone doing so is wealthy to start with--and with few exceptions, still needs to raise additional funds to mount an effective campaign. Edwards is sincere in his interest in ending poverty in the US. He understands better than a lot of people that the costs of poverty sap our economy and our society in countless ways that hurt all Americans. Better that Edwards's critics should examine how Edwards spends the money than at how he raises it.

(6) Have you ever noticed that pundits and the media collectively assume that the end of the Cold War was a good thing? That assumption is not correct. First, the way the Cold War ended wasn't such a good deal for us in economic terms. We didn't so much WIN the Cold War as we survived it. In the last few years before the USSR was dissolved, the USA and the USSR stumbled around like a couple of punch-drunk heavyweight boxers, mutually staggering under the size and weight of their military expenditures. We are still bearing that burden.

Second, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know." Love the Soviet Union or hate the Soviet Union, we knew after the Cuban Missile Crisis that we could deal with the Soviet Union. Their leaders were no more eager than were ours to plunge the world into nuclear chaos and disaster. But nowadays, who can you trust? With the Soviet Union gone, dangerous people have come into power--dangerous people who no longer have the USSR's influence reining them in.

Third, the Soviets mostly kept the lid on the Arab terrorists in their allied states, all at the USSR's own expense in money, weapons, and manpower. With the Soviet Union's "Iron Hand" gone, however, terrorists now run amok all over the globe. So the USA now gets stuck footing the bill, in money, weapons, and most of all, in manpower. It would have been better for us to have kept the USSR around to contain that mess and buffer us than it is for the USSR to be gone and for us to sit directly in the terrorists' cross-hairs.

Fourth (as if all that weren't bad enough) substantial Soviet nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon components are missing. Who knows who has them? And when they'll be used? And how to stop them? We could keep an eye on the USSR and its military resources. But no matter how advanced our technologies, we can't keep track of hundreds and thousands of independent actors who now seek to destroy us.

In short, ending the Cold War let the genie out of the bottle. We didn't "win" the Cold War. We survived it. And now we are paying too high a price for having survived it.

(7) The History Channel's insistence on running programs--sloppy ones, to boot--about UFOs right after running really smart, up-to-date, well-researched and produced programs such as The Universe is also pathetic. The powers that be at that channel cannot decide whether they want the History Channel to be credible or popular. My disgust with the UFO programs boils down to those programs' most fundamental error of logic. They presume that because someone cannot identify what s/he saw, it means the thing comes from alien civilizations outside our solar system and even our galaxy.

WRONG. All it means is that the person seeing it has no idea what it is. Period. It says or even implies absolutely nothing about whence the unidentified thing came. [I won't believe in any UFO reports, Yeti sightings, or even Nessie sightings until I see long-lasting, sharp and in-focus film footage of same. I want a clear look. It's easy to fool people with the fuzzy and out-of-focus. It's harder to fool them once ambiguities are removed--Ed.]

(8) Speaking of the out of focus . . . did you hear the NPR interview with the Australian founder of the Creation Museum in Kentucky? I think it aired Monday. One of the easiest ways to trash an opponent's point of view is to misstate that person's position. I'll give the Aussie this: he did it wonderfully well and with great subtlety. He claims that scientists who support evolution presuppose that everything they look at is millions of years old. He says that all he's doing is showing how a different supposition, namely that Genesis is literally correct, changes how one interprets what we find in the fossil record.

Two points: (1) even though his "museum" contains dioramas showing human children and T. Rexes together, I'll wager he's never found any fossil sites with human and T.Rex bones in the same stratum. And I'm no gambler. (2) Scientists do not presuppose ANYTHING. They are trained in the methods of logic and reason. They look at what they see and they let it tell its own story. When they find evidence that alters the story as they know it so far, they note the changes to the story and investigate further. They are not in the business of "truth." They are in the business of "fact." Their bailiwick is not "why." It is "how." [And that is why evolution is still called a "theory," even though nothing found so far in the fossil record has contradicted its basic premise.--Ed.]

I am sick practically to death of the people who try to squash scientific endeavor in the name of their faith. If they'd use their God-given brains, they'd see that there is no fundamental conflict between science and faith. I also wish they'd use those brains to realize that there is a very good reason for the First Amendment's prohibition on official government support of religion. Not everyone has the same religion. It is irrelevant that you know you are right and everyone else is wrong. From their point of view, they are right and you are wrong. If you are not in power and those in power do not share your faith, they cannot--because of the First Amendment--compel you to follow theirs. I, for one, do not want to live in an officially Islamic state. Nor, however, do I wish to live in an officially fundamentalist Christian state. God doesn't want us to push our particular beliefs down each other's throats. He wants us each to find Him and His love and redemption for ourselves.

I wonder how the fundamentalists would take it if they were shown that Jesus Himself believed in the separation of church and state. You know: "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." (Matthew 22:21) Unfortunately, too many people like to cherry-pick from the Bible and cobble together a belief system that lets them keep behaving exactly the way they did before they "found religion" instead of meeting Christ's challenge to become new beings through faith.

[I find it truly astonishing that Tom Delay can say with a straight face that his adultery was not as bad/hypocritical as was Newt Gingrich's, since Delay was not committing adultery at the time he condemned President Clinton for doing so, while Gingrich was still committing adultery at the same time he condemned Clinton for his extramarital adventures. I say that adultery is wrong, period. But only those among us without sin should cast stones--or aspersions--on others.--Ed.]

My own take on how to use the Bible to guide one's life (if one claims to be a Christian) is to start with the words of Christ. While everything else in the Bible is important and useful to know, none of it has the same cachet as Christ's own words--otherwise, we are either raising lesser things to Christ's level or lowering Christ to the level of those lesser things. If we are to live according to the New Covenant that Jesus's death and Resurrection offers us, Christ's own words have to count more than anything else.

I could be wrong about that. I often am. And a huge thunderclap just struck, so maybe I ought to take the hint. In any event, I am signing off for now so that my computer doesn't get fried by lightning.

Rosenblatt and Guildenstern Are Dead

Have you been following the latest local political dust-up? Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey and several important businessmen want to build a new baseball stadium in North Downtown (a/k/a NoDo), near the Qwest Center and the new riverfront development. Rosenblatt Stadium, on South 13th Street, next door to the world-class Henry Doorly Zoo, is to be abandoned, apparently.

Pressure comes from several directions to support this. The new stadium would be smaller, which would improve the attendance figures (and hence revenues) of the Omaha Royals, Triple A farm team for the Kansas City Royals. The new stadium would have all the latest amenities, including luxury boxes, thus improving the city's revenues. Creighton University could play its home games there, making for an easier, shorter trip from campus to ball park than the student-athletes have to endure now. [And if you cannot feel the sarcasm dripping from that statement, either you have no clue about Omaha geography or I am losing my touch.--Ed.] The out-of-town guests who come to the College World Series every year would have a much more cohesive experience, as their commute from their hotels to the new stadium would be easier. Plus the locals would have to use the Qwest Center's parking lot . . . again adding to the city's coffers. Finally, the zoo would now have room to expand. In its present configuration, its expansion is apparently blocked by Rosenblatt's presence.

What no one connected with the proposal is saying, however, is how this would be a more efficient use of money than re-re-re-renovating Rosenblatt. Building a new stadium is estimated to cost $50 million dollars. Making Rosenblatt 100% state of the art would cost much less--plus the history of the place would be preserved. Besides, what do the powers that be at the NCAA and the College World Series have to say about this? They regularly sell out all the games at Rosenblatt. A new, albeit smaller, stadium, surely cannot please them, despite the suggestions that temporary bleachers can be helicoptered in for the CWS games and then removed again once the CWS is over. I know as a CWS fan, I'd not be happy paying more (as I am sure I would have to) to sit in temporary bleacher seats. That strikes me, as a fan, as being more than a bit of a rip-off.

What of the complaints of the Omaha Royals that Rosenblatt is just too big? They wouldn't have that problem if they'd field a better team. The Royals had no trouble at all regularly selling all the available seats in the mid-80s . . . which is the last time both the Omaha and Kansas City incarnations of the Royals were winning.

And what of all the renovations already made to Rosenblatt to keep the CWS here? That includes the destruction of several homes along the east side of 13th Street. These homes were razed to improve the landscaping around the side of the stadium that most people see first. The human cost of that was huge. At the time, most of us (including many of the homeowners whose homes were taken) thought it was a worthy and noble sacrifice for the sake of keeping the CWS in Omaha. But to abandon Rosenblatt just a few years later makes it a cruelty to the people whose homes were taken.

Further, Rosenblatt is up on a hill, and it's pleasant to attend games there even in the hottest of Omaha summer weather. A new stadium, farther north and down by the river, would be a sauna . . . except in the luxury boxes, I suppose. Nor would a new stadium be nearly as charming, even if the "Road to Omaha" sculpture is moved to the new stadium's entrance area.

Nonetheless, despite the large and vociferous outcry against it, I suspect that the building of the new stadium is a done deal. Fahey wants his legacy, the financiers want their vision of the riverfront, and the money is probably already in place. The SAC Museum (renamed the Strategic Air and Space Museum) got moved from its historic home in Bellevue because the powers that be [i.e., those with the money--Ed.] wanted it to be nearer Interstate 80 for easier tourist access, historical accuracy be damned. They got their way because they refused to finance enclosed display spaces for the historic planes unless the museum relocated. And they lost a tremendous amount of local support from the large US Air Force (active duty and retired) community in Bellevue . . . but they think their success in increasing tourist dollars has more than compensated for it. They're probably right, darn it.

I hate to see Rosenblatt go, though. No matter what amenities are built into a new stadium, there is no way it will be as charming a place to watch a ball game as is "the Blatt."

Mark Twain Advised Against This

Despite Mark Twain's excellent advice, a letter writer opened his mouth [so to speak-Ed.] and removed all doubt about his own ignorance in one of last week's Omaha World-Herald's Letters to the Editor. The man expressed astonishment that Warren Buffett is a (gasp) Democrat and that he supports (gasp) a Democratic candidate for President. He was bewildered that Buffett would be so stupid as to give money to people who want only to destroy the free market system that helped Buffett make his billions in the first place.

What's wrong with this picture? Where do I start? First, the man never seems to have entertained the thought for a nanosecond that Buffett knows more than he, the letter writer, does about markets and what makes their worlds go around . . . and that maybe, just maybe, the letter writer needs to adjust his own attitude instead of thinking Buffett is stupid.

Further, the letter writer never seems to have recognized (unlike Buffett) that there are more important things in life than money, and that the Spider-Man philosophy applies to more than just super powers. "Those who have been given great gifts have great responsibilities." Didn't we used to call that noblesse oblige in the old days?

If anyone out there is reading this, you've heard me say it before, but it bears repeating: humans are social beings. We live in societies. We have obligations to one another if we are to have successful societies. No society that has a cadre of super-duper rich at the top, a large population of very poor at the bottom, and a disappearing middle class which is mostly sinking into poverty and not rising to the level of the super-duper rich, can long endure. No society in all of history lacking a stable middle class ever has.

Not everyone wants to be super-duper rich, believe it or not. Not everyone wants to make a symbolic financial killing. Many of us are content to live a modest life, as long as we have enough to cover our basic needs for clothing, housing, food, utilities, transportation, medical necessitites, and a bit left over for fun or to save for the unexpected disasters (like flooded basements) that inevitably occur.

But this letter writer seems to have swallowed the current right-wing Republican party line . . . and hook . . . and sinker. He can't even see that his position hurts his own economic well-being. He just presumes that a very successful man is stupid because his political and social beliefs don't revolve around the grubbing of money (even though Buffett is very, very good at doing so). He senses there is something wrong with the situation as he sees it, but he draws the wrong conclusion. He exhibits all the classic symptoms of someone who has been brainwashed.

Not to make Buffett out to be a saint. Businesses under his control are frequently much more nasty in the ways they treat their employees than anyone listening to Buffett would expect. I have personal knowledge of the circumstances of several people who were laid off from a Berkshire-Hathaway-owned company with no notice, no warning, and no genuine concern for their well-being, financial and otherwise. This includes more than one person with a physical disability--all of whom had given loyal and dedicated service to said company for over 10 years each (and who'd never received a less-than-positive employee evaluation). I guess all that talk about the company being a family and its success revolving around teamwork was just so much hot air.

Not that I am surprised by this. It's no different in kind from the way the present Bush administration treats its soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Just look at the Walter Reed outpatient treatment scandal and also at how Dubya is arguing that a 3.5% pay raise for our troops is too high. He wants to limit it to 3%. That half-percent discrepancy makes a difference in pay averaging only $26 a month if the statistics reported on MSNBC are accurate. That's chump change to the super-duper rich like Dubya, but it's a lot of money to someone in the military who still has to use food stamps to feed his family.

This is one of the reasons Buffett supports the Democrats. Buffett does recognize, in general, that money equals power and power cannot be allowed to reign unchecked, lest it grind into the mud the people who form the basis of a truly stable, successful society. It's just too bad that Buffett's knowledge hasn't trickled down [ironic reference intended--Ed.] to the people he lets handle the day-to-day business of running the machines of his empire.

Tricks Of The Tirade

The single biggest trick of the tirade is the tirade itself. The second biggest trick is judicious use of irony. The third is rampant speculation. Fourth is the use of haughty contempt. I can illustrate all but the first with recent baseball events. The first, I can illustrate with a recent event, but it's in the current American pastime, political scandal.

First, regarding the DC Madame--how in the world can she say that she ran a "legal" sexual business but have no records of any customers' names? (All she has is telephone numbers. Hmmm . . .) As Graham Chapman would have said, "Stop that! That's silly!"

Second, regarding Alex Rodriguez's current wonderful stats at the same time the Yankees are playing crappy baseball--has anyone but me considered whether A-Rod has to play badly for the Yankees to do well? The moral of the story here is "Be careful what you ask for . . ." George Steinbrenner wanted the most expensive players to guarantee his Yankees even more World Series championships than they already have . . . but (1) just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no guarantees in baseball; (2) when A-Rod played (relatively) poorly, the Yankees won . . . it stands to reason that when A-Rod finally gets the hang of being a Yankee, the rest of the team goes south. Anybody out there remember Rowan and Martin's "Fickle Finger of Fate"?

Third, the reports are already coming out that St. Louis middle reliever Josh Hancock, who died in a one-car accident last Sunday, was seen drinking heavily late Saturday night . . . in the realm of rampant speculation, I suspect a lot more evidence is coming about his drinking habits, to the point of his being an all-too-young alcoholic. Frankly, I am surprised that the media have restrained themselves as much as they have regarding this possibility to date. That won't last much longer.

Fourth, in the realm of haughty contempt: how in the world could anyone for a moment take seriously (and report it as truth) the rumor (which turned out to be a joke) that Curt Shilling's infamous bloody sock from Boston's World Series winning season held just paint and not blood? I remember seeing the camera close-ups of the sock as the game progressed, and it was perfectly obvious that what was on that sock was blood. Geez, haven't any of these reporters ever looked at a Band-Aid of their own paper cuts? Journalistic standards have plummeted, judging from this debacle. Apparently the current standard is to be the first to report--and who cares if it's true, let alone take the time to verify? A pox on them all, I say!

Two other baseball notes for good measure: regarding the Cubs, who spent ridiculous amounts of money on the wrong players and the wrong new manager, and whose starting pitching staff is again on disability, plus ca change, plus le meme chose. They still stink. Why do I do this to myself every year?

On the other hand, it is nice to see Sammy Sosa back in the swing of things, literally, even if it is in a Texas Rangers uniform.

This Don Is Neither Dapper Nor Dandy

Don Imus put both feet into his mouth big time last week when he made a racially sexist slur against the Rutgers women's basketball team, which at the time was competing for the NCAA National Championship. I won't repeat what he said, because what he said was abominable. I will, comment on what he has said in his own defense in the wake of the ensuing firestorm.

Imus's defense consists of these elements: (1) my radio show is comedy; comedy is frequently cutting edge; sometimes we go over the edge; (2) I had no malice or anger in my heart; (3) I am not the first one who's ever said such things--the slurs actually came first from black males against the females of their own community; (4) nevertheless, I am sincerely sorry for what I said; and (5) now the media are picking on me unfairly.

However, these things all tend to confirm, not refute, the accusations against him.

Imus has a long, long history of saying patently offensive things and begging off on their consequences because he's just a "nice guy who said something stupid." Comedy is not always pretty, but even ugly comedy is not typically truly hateful and vile. Comedy can be found in making cruel fun of the powerful people who richly deserve it. It cannot be found in smearing a bunch of college girls who have done nothing more than work hard to achieve their dream.

This is the same reason that Mel Brooks's castigating the Nazis is funny and that Joan Rivers's castigating Holocaust victims is not, by the way.

Mr. Imus, I have news for you: no really "nice guy" would have let such vileness out of his mouth in the first place. That your brain did not stop you before you ate both your feet tells me that at the most basic level, you simply do not comprehend the crude filth of what you said. With your long experience in mass media, you should have known better. Maybe you did. But the fact that you did not stop yourself gives away your ingrained racism.

The last refuge of the true racist is that he "is no racist." And he truly believes this claim. His racism is so ingrained in him that he simply cannot see it until forced to by someone on the outside looking in. Imus, however, still doesn't see it. I guess the trees are blocking his view of the forest.

For his claim to lack malice or anger may well be true, but it's irrelevant--except in how it reinforces his preconceived notions. Being angry or full of malice is not a defining characteristic of a racist. Being totally insensitive (to the point of unconsciousness) to the nature of one's remarks, however, is. The very essence of prejudice is that one's beliefs override one's conscious, rational ability to consider the consequences of one's actions and to regulate one's behavior and words accordingly.

That the slurs Imus used came originally from black males speaking about black females is also irrelevant and does not deserve further attention. [With the exception of noting that it's equally inexcusable when said by them, too.--Ed.]

About Imus's fourth contention, the only thing I can say is: if you still think what you said is at all defensible, you cannot be sincerely sorry for having said it. You can be sorry only for being caught saying it and for being called on the carpet as a result.

Imus's final point, his plea for sympathy in the face of the media frenzy, is also irrelevant. He chose his profession. He knew the risks associated with opening his mouth in an exceedingly public forum. He seemed to feel that he had no chance to defend himself on the Today show this morning, as host Matt Lauer and fellow guest the Reverend Al Sharpton were "united against" him. That seemed to astonish him (when he commented on it during his own radio show later in the day). I was astonished that he was astonished. It's clear that Imus simply doesn't get it and that he is in fact a racist, sexist, poor excuse for a human being. [I was going to say "pig," but that would have insulted pigs everywhere, and I am loath to do that.--Ed.]

I am filled with joy that Staples has pulled its advertising account from Imus's show. Further, Bigelow Tea has decided not to renew its just-expired advertising contract with Imus's show. Other advertisers seem to be considering similar courses of action. I hope they carry them out. If Imus won't resign and his bosses won't fire him, the power of the advertising purse may be the only way to make him go away.

[For anyone wondering how this squares with my attitudes about freedom of speech, let me remind you: freedom of speech means no governmental repression of speech. In the commercial marketplace of ideas, however, the power of the purse is how we exercise our freedom not to hear the speech we hate. Even when the government has no power to censor speech, we as individual citizens have the power and the DUTY to do so when that speech is inimical to our social creed.--Ed.]

The Un-Natural

It's Major League Opening Day! "Let's play two!"

As part of its annual celebration of the return of baseball, ESPN last night ran a tribute by major league baseball players to the Robert Redford movie, "The Natural." It was very enjoyable to watch, but what it didn't say left me feeling sad.

Don't get me wrong. I love that movie. It has wonderful cinematography, a marvelous score (by Randy Newman), a great story, great acting, the mythology of baseball, and a happy ending. Everything that makes a film timeless, a classic.

And it's exceedingly understandable why so many major leaguers like it. Heck, why so many Americans of all stripes like it. Americans love movies with happy endings, movies where the hero triumphs.

But it's not true to the book by Bernard Malamud on which it was based. That makes me sad because in its original configuration, it tells a story with a message just as important for all of us to hear. In the book, you see, Roy Hobbs does not hit the game-winning home run. In the end, his old injury from having been shot reaches out and bites him, and he fails. His wound is a metaphor for his overwhelming pride in his abilities. Roy Hobbs never learned the folly of the sin of pride, and in the book he paid for it. In the movie, on the other hand, his pride was ultimately rewarded as he triumphed over physical adversity and hit the home run.

So viewers of the movie get the message that heroes triumph, and that pride is no great hindrance to success. And that's a dangerous message to send. If our present President had a little less pride (and stubbornness) and had more ability to reflect on things, we would not be in the mess we're in in Iraq. That "heroes succeed" message pervades almost all of American thinking, and it can make Americans behave recklessly when they are sure of their own righteousness.

Lest you think this changing of the ending from book to movie is an aberration, let me assure you: it is not. Consider "Pretty Woman" if you don't believe me. In the original story, the businessman does NOT come back to rescue the prostitute with the heart of gold, and she winds up killing herself. But Americans LOVE that happy ending, so the movie had to change the ending in order to succeed. I don't care who was in the cast--if the movie had had the same ending as the book did, it would not have made money.

The larger inference, which can be drawn from any number of examples beyond the two I've mentioned here, is that Americans not only do not like unhappy endings, Americans just plain dislike reality.

"Don't confuse me with the facts. I've made up my mind." That's the new American motto, and it does not speak well for us or for our collective survival in this dangerous world.

All Politics Is Local

For anyone neither residing in nor keeping track of the metro Omaha area, you've missed a fun bit of local politics over the past year or so. Omaha (the evil, greedy big city) has annexed Elkhorn (a tiny, rich, white, suburban, and to-the-west-of-Omaha town),which emphatically did not want to be annexed.

Just about everyone in Elkhorn who has expressed an opinion on the matter (i.e., everyone) has lots of venom to spit and blame to lay at the feet of Omaha in general, and Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey in particular. [So far, my favorite rant has been, "They get to vote in Iraq. We didn't get to vote on this!"--Ed.] And they universally have praised their own (now-former) mayor, city administrator, and legal advisor for their efforts to stave off the inevitable.

Well, here's some news for you Elkhornians (Elkhornites?): you're barking up the wrong tree. If your city officials hadn't wanted to run their town on the cheap, Elkhorn could have annexed enough people and territory itself in time to get Elkhorn's population over the 10,000 threshold. This would have triggered a statutory provision preventing Elkhorn from being taken over by Omaha--but Elkhorn's officials didn't try that until after Omaha had already started to annex Elkhorn. Every court ruling on the matter said that Elkhorn started too late. "You snooze, you lose."

It isn't as though Elkhorn's administrators didn't know what was coming. The topic of Elkhorn's being annexed has been around for years and years, at least ever since Omaha annexed Millard (in southwest Douglas County) back in the mid-70s. But Elkhorn's administrators did not want to absorb the extra costs of increasing their population to the statutory trigger level of 10,000. So they, like the GOP in the previous post, wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. When will people learn that that just doesn't happen?

Nor did the powers that be in Elkhorn want to puruse the same sort of "gentleman's agreement" that Omaha made several years ago with the city of Ralston. Omaha just about surrounds Ralston, except on Ralston's southern edge, which is the county line, but Omaha and Ralston authorities back in the 60s reached an understanding that Omaha would not try to annex Ralston. The agreement has held ever since. Apparently the decsion-makers in Elkhorn rebuffed Omaha's attempts to make a similar arrangement with them. Or so the news reports detailing the history of this mess reveal.

Moreover, the Elkhornites (Elkhornians?) bewailing the loss of "quality governmental services" they surely will suffer (now that they officially reside in Omaha) must not have noticed that Omaha managed to complete the transition in the middle of last Thursday's blizzard. Looked reasonably efficient to me!

Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of Omaha. That's one of the major reasons I live in Bellevue. Besides, Bellevue had its own annexation scare from Omaha back in the 60s--until the US Supreme Court ruled that Nebraska's state constitution prevented "cities of the first class" [which refers to population size, not quality.--Ed] from annexing across county lines. Elkhorn had the misfortune to be located in the same county, Douglas, as Omaha, and not across a county line, a la Bellevue in Sarpy County.

This distinction is one that Elkhorn's administrative and legal advisors either missed or ignored. So why aren't more Elkhornians (Elkhornites?) complaining about that? Could it be that they are infected by the dreaded fuzzy thinking virus? Oh, no, no, no, no--yes.

The GOP Ain't Got Nothin' On Marie Antoinette

It's called having your cake and eating it, too--and the GOP has taken that talent to previously unimagined levels of hypocrisy.

I see that Ann Coulter has been spouting filth at official GOP functions again. She called John Edwards a faggot at the GOP C-PAC fund-raiser last week. There was a great deal of consternation amongst the talking heads to the effect that it's way past time the GOP ought to renounce any claims to her and her obnoxious ideas. So I am again going to rail against fuzzy thinking.

The GOP is never going to renounce Coulter. This way, the party officially can say "tsk tsk" and "isn't that awful" . . . while at the very same time getting the support of the ignorant bigots to whom she appeals. So everyone who presses the GOP to renounce her, denounce her, and otherwise dilute her venom is going to lose. (Hence their fuzzy thinking in trying to press the GOP to do so anyway.)

This GOP behavior is worse than gross. It's truly heinous.

But it won't change. Look how long the GOP has used Roe v. Wade to whip up frenzy amongst the cultural conservatives. They'll never really push or pack the Supreme Court to overturn it. It's too useful a tool right where it is. It gives them an instant issue that gets people's minds off the real scandals of the day, like the illegal outing of Valerie Plame and the fact that Dubya has no intention of living up to his administration's oft-repeated promise to can anyone involved with that particular bit of skullduggery. Like the entire war in Iraq. Like letting al Quaida reestablish itself in Afghanistan. Like the mess with the conditions at Walter Reed--and most probably every other stateside military health-care facility that's on the base closing list. Like the administration's efforts to get everyone frothing at the mouth about the risks to us from Iran, so that we have an excuse to invade Tehran, too.

I could continue. But it's just too depressing. I'd go on a chocolate binge, but then I could be accused of trying to have my cake and eat it, too. So Ill just soak my head. Calgon, take me away!

Quo Vadis?

Did anyone watch the Discovery Channel special last Sunday about The Lost Tomb of Jesus? I am very much of two minds about the entire subject. I am fascinated by anything archaeological that either tends to prove or disprove Bible-recounted events. But I hate sloppy reasoning and hype even more.

The one fact that no one either in the "documentary" or in the following panel discussion acknowledged was that no matter how good a statistical probability is, it's still merely a statistic. It is most emphatically NOT proof.

Remember, and as Mark Twain so cogently noted, "[t]here are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

A 1 in 600 chance that the tomb in question was not that of the Biblical Jesus and his earthly family means that there is still a real possibility that said tomb is not Jesus's. The closest anyone came to recognizing this is when the statistician who compiled the statistics reminded everyone that his calculations are only as good as the assumptions he used are true and complete.

I will continue to follow developments and comment on them as the need arises. It truly is fascinating from every angle--not to mention that the only person on the discussion panel who had any trouble accepting that the tomb might truly be Jesus's own was the Protestant fundamentalist. He kept arguing that the tomb couldn't be Christ's because then the Biblical accounts of the Resurrection would be incorrect. The Catholic priest on the panel had a much more nuanced and mature thought-process in his interpretation. For him, if it does turn out to be Christ's tomb, it means our understanding of the Bible may have been lacking, not the Word of God itself.

But the university professor had the best take on the entire subject: she noted that no one should accept anything passively. Christians have a duty to use their God-given critical thinking skills to evaluate the quality of the science behind any claims made about how an archaeological find may change the basis of their faith.

Ted Koppel did yeoman's work moderating an often-contentious group of panelists--the most contentious of whom were the documentary film-makers themselves. They just didn't want to hear that there possibly could be any question as to the accuracy of their interpreation of their finds. They obviously forgot that statistics are not proof.