A woman in California has developed a thriving business by creating and selling wedding cake toppers for diverse ethnic groups--including gays. She tried a year or two ago to get her merchandise included in Macy's wedding registry offerings, and Macy's turned her down flat.
Now that gay marriage is legal in California, however, Macy's jumped at the chance to add her product line to its wedding registry offerings. So much so that it took out a million-dollar full page ad in several of the state's largest newspapers to trumpet the fact.
Macy's has decided that it stands to make more money from courting the gay marriage market than it stands to lose by doing the same. Morality doesn't enter into it. Macy's is after the most money possible . . . all in the best interests of its shareholders, of course [she added, sarcastically--Ed] . . . and so will take advantage of whatever new business the change in California's law brings it. If that's not greed, I don't know what is.
What I don't know is why more people cannot or will not recognize that for what it is: naked opportunism. We really should either regulate our businesses to make them comply with our stated moral goals, or give up claiming we believe in one thing but acting like we believe in the exact opposite. I can't stand the hypocrisy.
Consider also the case of General Motors and its negotiations with the United Auto Workers in the 1950s. Walter Reuther, head of the union, suggested that GM come to Washington with him and lobby Congress to make health care for its workers (and by extension, everyone) a governmental responsibility, thus reducing GM's costs and responsibilities under the union contracts. Well, the dim bulbs at GM turned him down flat: (1) it's SOCIALISM [oh, horrors--Ed.]; (2) as the contracts were written, GM was out nothing, because it just passed all those costs along to those who bought its cars. "We don't care about anyone else--we are taking care of our own--and at your expense, so it's no skin off our noses," nicely sums up GM's attitude.
The upshot? GM is now paying for the health care expenses of workers who retired decades ago. Because GM never realized that it was going to have to compete in the auto sales market with higher quality, less expensive imports, GM never realized it was going to have to start eating those health care costs. And now Detroit is the heart of the Rust Belt, suffering unconscionably high unemployment, and GM as a corporation is losing money hand over fist and is no longer the world's biggest car company.
It would have been, and still is, much cheaper for everyone in the country to get health care from one provider than what we're suffering through now. Don't kid yourselves: GM's troubles hurt all of us, as declining sales increase unemployment and decrease demand for both new cars and car parts and thus ripple throughout the entire US economy.
The real reason people are against universal, single-payer health care is because they think it's going to cost them more than they'd otherwise have to pay. [We're back to greed as motivator.--Ed.] They are wrong about that for two reasons. (1) It doesn't matter how many people in your family lived to ripe old ages and died peacefully in their sleep and never saw a doctor till the day they died--it takes only ONE catastrophic illness or injury to wipe you out financially. There's no guarantee that you won't have such an illness or injury, either. You can plan and prepare and do everything right and still get hammered. (Look at what happened to me, if you doubt it.) John Lennon was right about this: "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."
(2) Everyone already is paying higher costs then they would under a single-payer system that covers everyone. Since those costs are indirect, however, people don't realize they are paying them. The simplest example (as cited by Roger Lowenstein in a recent NPR interview about his book While America Aged) is Starbucks Coffee. Starbucks pays more every year for its workers' health care costs than it pays for coffee beans, which are the sine qua non of its business. Starbucks is not paying those health care costs out if its own pockets. It's adding them into the price it charges you for those lattes you drink every day. You are already paying . . . you just don't realize that you are nor how much you are.
The reason a single-payer, truly universal health care system would be less expensive to all of us is that a single payer can negotiate rates for everyone, as opposed to Starbucks' negotiating rates for its workers, and GM for its, and every other employer's for its. [You'd also know exactly how much you were paying, because you'd be able to see the entirety, not just your part of it--Ed.]. To use a crafts metaphor, a single piece of fabric is both more uniform and stronger than a patchwork of pieces loosely stitched together. It's not socialism. It's sensible. Heaven help us if we don't recognize it and fix things soon.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Maybe It's Time For Occam's Razor
I've been waiting since Saturday, along with many others, for the official word on why Big Brown performed so poorly in the Belmont Stakes. I am (as are many others, I'm sure) relieved to know that it wasn't because of the repair to the quarter crack on his hoof; nor that it was because he did not get the Winstrol steroid shot he normally would have received on May 15th (no signs of internal bleeding or other respiratory distress).
I am not, however (unlike many others) mystified as to the probable cause of Big Brown's comedown. He most probably simply didn't like running in the heat. The track temperature at race time was 93° according to the race telecast. This was at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. All afternoon, horses were being given toddler-sized ice packs immediately after completing their races and being unsaddled. I've never seen that before--anywhere at any time, let alone at Belmont Park in early June. Just as some people feel more energetic in the heat and others wilt, some horses run better in the heat and others wilt. Big Brown wilted. He certainly was unhappy about something--he'd been acting much more fractious than usual all day, and it was easy to see he was sweating even before the race began. [Frankly, I can't blame him. I don't like the heat, either. Nor do I function well in hot weather. I just don't buck and kick. Much.--Ed.]
After all, as Occam's Razor posits, the simplest explanation in line with all the facts is usually the correct one. No other cause was uncovered. No one connected with the horse or the track has said anything about the heat NOT adversely affecting Big Brown. The heat is the one factor at Belmont that Big Brown never otherwise faced. Therefore the heat is most probably what "done him in." Let's hope that Big Brown's connections figure that out and that the horse's future value is not diminished. He didn't win the Triple Crown, but he's no slouch. Whether one assesses his value in terms of future stud fees or in terms of his rekindling popular interest in the sport of kings, Big Brown deserves our applause.
I am not, however (unlike many others) mystified as to the probable cause of Big Brown's comedown. He most probably simply didn't like running in the heat. The track temperature at race time was 93° according to the race telecast. This was at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. All afternoon, horses were being given toddler-sized ice packs immediately after completing their races and being unsaddled. I've never seen that before--anywhere at any time, let alone at Belmont Park in early June. Just as some people feel more energetic in the heat and others wilt, some horses run better in the heat and others wilt. Big Brown wilted. He certainly was unhappy about something--he'd been acting much more fractious than usual all day, and it was easy to see he was sweating even before the race began. [Frankly, I can't blame him. I don't like the heat, either. Nor do I function well in hot weather. I just don't buck and kick. Much.--Ed.]
After all, as Occam's Razor posits, the simplest explanation in line with all the facts is usually the correct one. No other cause was uncovered. No one connected with the horse or the track has said anything about the heat NOT adversely affecting Big Brown. The heat is the one factor at Belmont that Big Brown never otherwise faced. Therefore the heat is most probably what "done him in." Let's hope that Big Brown's connections figure that out and that the horse's future value is not diminished. He didn't win the Triple Crown, but he's no slouch. Whether one assesses his value in terms of future stud fees or in terms of his rekindling popular interest in the sport of kings, Big Brown deserves our applause.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Brilliant!
I just discovered a Robert Kennedy quote that I think everyone needs to read--and to think about, especially as it pertains to their own attitudes:
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not in what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
This crystallizes my dislike of extremism of every stripe, be it religious, political, economic, social, whatever. I confess to being intolerant myself--but what I don't tolerate is intolerance itself. Don't coerce me, and I'll tolerate you, and I'll work to find ways to live in peace with you--but the second you say "It's my way or the highway," I'm hitting the road--to speak out against your intolerance.
Once again, we see the genius of the American system. Compromise is the essence of public life. The government must stand neutral on matters of personal belief, so that everyone's voice can be heard. Call it a "free market economy of ideas." Let the people see and consider all stripes of belief, and decide for themselves what they accept. So long as they give other people room to accept different beliefs, and most importantly, so long as the government, the official power of the state, does not raise one belief set above any other, our system works.
And that's why I so detest the Radical Religious Right. Its members are trying to hijack the government to support their beliefs at the expense of the rest of us. They may have fine goals, such as the saving of all our souls, but just because they think they are correct, they do not have the right to use the power of government to make the rest of us agree with them, even if we do so only "on paper." Too many in the Radical Right think that disagreeing with them means they are being attacked. Far from it. Disagreeing with them may well mean disagreeing with EVERYONE. Disagreeing with them may be the only way to preserve the neutrality of the system for all of us, including them.
Too many of them just don't get the difference between saying "the public schools won't teach your kids about Jesus" and "the public schools can't teach your kids about Jesus." In our system, "can't" is the operative expression. The government must stand neutral, for the sake of its citizens who do not believe in Jesus. Doesn't mean YOU cannot proselytize your neighbors to your heart's content . . . unless, of course, you are becoming a public nuisance or a stalker or the like. It just means you cannot use the government to do your proselytizing for you.
But then again, asking the intolerant to tolerate may be just too much to ask. And so the noble American experiment will collapse into failure, because some of us just can't get out of our own way. And that's incredibly sad.
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not in what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
This crystallizes my dislike of extremism of every stripe, be it religious, political, economic, social, whatever. I confess to being intolerant myself--but what I don't tolerate is intolerance itself. Don't coerce me, and I'll tolerate you, and I'll work to find ways to live in peace with you--but the second you say "It's my way or the highway," I'm hitting the road--to speak out against your intolerance.
Once again, we see the genius of the American system. Compromise is the essence of public life. The government must stand neutral on matters of personal belief, so that everyone's voice can be heard. Call it a "free market economy of ideas." Let the people see and consider all stripes of belief, and decide for themselves what they accept. So long as they give other people room to accept different beliefs, and most importantly, so long as the government, the official power of the state, does not raise one belief set above any other, our system works.
And that's why I so detest the Radical Religious Right. Its members are trying to hijack the government to support their beliefs at the expense of the rest of us. They may have fine goals, such as the saving of all our souls, but just because they think they are correct, they do not have the right to use the power of government to make the rest of us agree with them, even if we do so only "on paper." Too many in the Radical Right think that disagreeing with them means they are being attacked. Far from it. Disagreeing with them may well mean disagreeing with EVERYONE. Disagreeing with them may be the only way to preserve the neutrality of the system for all of us, including them.
Too many of them just don't get the difference between saying "the public schools won't teach your kids about Jesus" and "the public schools can't teach your kids about Jesus." In our system, "can't" is the operative expression. The government must stand neutral, for the sake of its citizens who do not believe in Jesus. Doesn't mean YOU cannot proselytize your neighbors to your heart's content . . . unless, of course, you are becoming a public nuisance or a stalker or the like. It just means you cannot use the government to do your proselytizing for you.
But then again, asking the intolerant to tolerate may be just too much to ask. And so the noble American experiment will collapse into failure, because some of us just can't get out of our own way. And that's incredibly sad.
Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!
I see from many news sources this week that a lot of Hillary Clinton's most ardent supporters have threatened either to sit out the November election or vote for John McCain rather than support Barack Obama's bid for the presidency. They are miffed at what they perceive as misogyny directed against Hillary (and by extension, them) by Obama and his campaign staffers.
Let me preface my comments by saying I am in those women's demographic group: 50-somethings who've felt the sting of discrimination against women very personally and directly in their own lives. I was not eligible to apply to the US Air Force Academy once I became a high school graduate--women were not accepted until a few years later. My sports participation predated Title IX, so there was no funding or support even though we were official University of Nebraska representatives (yes, it was bowling. So what? I was good. I was the only one who made it to the All-Star team from NU one year.) Nearing the end of my undergraduate career, I was not eligible to apply for Rhodes or Fulbright Scholarships because they were not given to women. I was subjected to a lot of "women are in law school to get their M-R-S degrees" comments and behavior while in law school (as were all the women in my class). Never mind that I and several other women were graduated in the top 10--not top 10 percent, top 10--of our class. While married, I was expected to subordinate my career to my husband's, but then when he wanted out of our marriage, he said he didn't have to provide me any financial support because it was my choice to follow him all over the Earth. Never mind that I was already physically disabled at that point.
But back to the topic at hand: these Clinton supporters need to get their priorities straight. Obama wasn't my first choice, either . . . but he's a damn sight better than getting a third-Dubya-term-by-proxy by voting for John McCain. John McCain, who says he's for governmental fiscal responsibility, but who has lived off government money all his life; John McCain, who says he is for family values, but who ditched his first wife, the mother of his children, for a rich, blond trophy wife; John McCain, who says he has supported every effort to find out what really went wrong leading up to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, but who in fact, as his public record shows, has voted AGAINST every single piece of legislation relating to same as being "too expensive;" John McCain, who says he's a maverick and an independent thinker, but whose voting record demonstrates he's a clone of Dubya and a toady of the Radical Right.
Ladies, untwist your knickers! Take a slightly longer view, and use your brains, not your emotions. When the choice is between Obama and McCain, Obama is the only plausible option. Otherwise, you're "burning down the village in order to save it." If you insist on your Pyrrhic victory, you'll have done nothing but prove right all the men who disparage you for being unstable, emotional, whiny idiots who don't deserve to exercise the power of the vote or otherwise express your political opinions.
Politics is tough. There are winners and losers every time. If you take it personally, you guarantee that you'll lose, because you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. Maybe Abagail Adams was too polite when she reminded her husband John to "remember the ladies" as he helped establish the government of the United States . . . but going too far the other way, and having a very public hissy fit, is no way get a better result now.
Let me preface my comments by saying I am in those women's demographic group: 50-somethings who've felt the sting of discrimination against women very personally and directly in their own lives. I was not eligible to apply to the US Air Force Academy once I became a high school graduate--women were not accepted until a few years later. My sports participation predated Title IX, so there was no funding or support even though we were official University of Nebraska representatives (yes, it was bowling. So what? I was good. I was the only one who made it to the All-Star team from NU one year.) Nearing the end of my undergraduate career, I was not eligible to apply for Rhodes or Fulbright Scholarships because they were not given to women. I was subjected to a lot of "women are in law school to get their M-R-S degrees" comments and behavior while in law school (as were all the women in my class). Never mind that I and several other women were graduated in the top 10--not top 10 percent, top 10--of our class. While married, I was expected to subordinate my career to my husband's, but then when he wanted out of our marriage, he said he didn't have to provide me any financial support because it was my choice to follow him all over the Earth. Never mind that I was already physically disabled at that point.
But back to the topic at hand: these Clinton supporters need to get their priorities straight. Obama wasn't my first choice, either . . . but he's a damn sight better than getting a third-Dubya-term-by-proxy by voting for John McCain. John McCain, who says he's for governmental fiscal responsibility, but who has lived off government money all his life; John McCain, who says he is for family values, but who ditched his first wife, the mother of his children, for a rich, blond trophy wife; John McCain, who says he has supported every effort to find out what really went wrong leading up to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, but who in fact, as his public record shows, has voted AGAINST every single piece of legislation relating to same as being "too expensive;" John McCain, who says he's a maverick and an independent thinker, but whose voting record demonstrates he's a clone of Dubya and a toady of the Radical Right.
Ladies, untwist your knickers! Take a slightly longer view, and use your brains, not your emotions. When the choice is between Obama and McCain, Obama is the only plausible option. Otherwise, you're "burning down the village in order to save it." If you insist on your Pyrrhic victory, you'll have done nothing but prove right all the men who disparage you for being unstable, emotional, whiny idiots who don't deserve to exercise the power of the vote or otherwise express your political opinions.
Politics is tough. There are winners and losers every time. If you take it personally, you guarantee that you'll lose, because you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. Maybe Abagail Adams was too polite when she reminded her husband John to "remember the ladies" as he helped establish the government of the United States . . . but going too far the other way, and having a very public hissy fit, is no way get a better result now.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Bobby?
Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Robert Francis Kennedy. This, in many ways, is the day hope died in America. John Kennedy's assassination was a body blow to the country--it knocked the wind out of America. But the twin assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Robert Kennedy in April and June, 1968, were the knockout punches. 1968 descended into chaos after that; the country, into despair; the Right, into repeatedly abusive exercise of power.
Fear (of lawlessness) is what got Nixon elected in 1968--and he turned out to be one of the most lawless of Presidents. I always used to say Watergate made Nixon, hands down, the worst president in US history, because Nixon knew better. Nixon knew history, understood history, and understood America's uniqueness and that America's genius lay in her systems of government requiring compromise to get things done. Nixon signed the original Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, for goodness' sake.
But because Watergate allowed the Radical Right to destroy the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and thus ultimately to let Dubya and his minions take control of our government, Nixon is in large part responsible for the mess we're in today. Dubya and his minions have turned using fear to manipulate the populace into an art form. A perverse art form, but an art form. The reason I now say Dubya's administration is the worst in US history, however, is that Dubya's administration doesn't even care about the pretense of adhering to uniquely American values and ways of doing things. No one in the current government knows a thing about history, judging from the things Dubya and others have said and done. Their only goal was getting, keeping, and expanding their political power by any means at all.
But back to Bobby Kennedy.
As much as I admire John Kennedy's accomplishments, intelligence, genuine wit, and vision for the country, I have to admit that Bobby Kennedy turned out to be the better man. He didn't start out that way--his public, political persona was the conservative hatchet-man, from his start as an investigator/prosecutor of organized crime to his days as his brother's Attorney General. Something in his brother's death changed him, however. It took him time to find his true voice, but by 1968, he was speaking eloquently about our need to help those Americans who could do him no good politically--the poor, the disenfranchised, the educationally and economically marginalized. The people who didn't need a hand out, but who did need a hand. Our fellow Americans, who should have been our primary focus, and not proxy wars overseas which brought naught but suffering to the civilian populations in the countries unlucky enough to be the battlegrounds.
The trait that I admire the most in Bobby Kennedy is the same trait I admire most in Abraham Lincoln: the ability to learn and to grow as a person, and to change one's thinking and focus in line with higher principles as opportunities to do so arose. John Kennedy, for all his progressive ideas, was by today's standards very conservative economically. He used to say "a rising tide lifts all boats." In modern terms, that's "trickle down" economics, a philosophy discredited among those who've taken the time to study the matter objectively. Bobby Kennedy, by 1968, knew that insisting the poor and disenfranchised wait longer was wrong. He was going to work to solve their problems right then and there.
Yet they are still waiting. John McCain accuses Barack Obama of embracing the "failed policies of the past," like "big government." He's wrong. He's the one embracing the "failed policies," like endless WAR. War spending, on unnecessary wars, like the war in Iraq, is what has failed the country. War spending has diverted and squandered our money and our young men's and women's lives, all for the sake of a military-industrial complex which cares only for making ever more money off the most destructive enterprise on the face of the Earth.
Forty years later, and how little has improved. Maybe this November will mark the true beginning of what Bobby Kennedy tried to start in the early, heady, optimistic days of 1968.
Fear (of lawlessness) is what got Nixon elected in 1968--and he turned out to be one of the most lawless of Presidents. I always used to say Watergate made Nixon, hands down, the worst president in US history, because Nixon knew better. Nixon knew history, understood history, and understood America's uniqueness and that America's genius lay in her systems of government requiring compromise to get things done. Nixon signed the original Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, for goodness' sake.
But because Watergate allowed the Radical Right to destroy the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and thus ultimately to let Dubya and his minions take control of our government, Nixon is in large part responsible for the mess we're in today. Dubya and his minions have turned using fear to manipulate the populace into an art form. A perverse art form, but an art form. The reason I now say Dubya's administration is the worst in US history, however, is that Dubya's administration doesn't even care about the pretense of adhering to uniquely American values and ways of doing things. No one in the current government knows a thing about history, judging from the things Dubya and others have said and done. Their only goal was getting, keeping, and expanding their political power by any means at all.
But back to Bobby Kennedy.
As much as I admire John Kennedy's accomplishments, intelligence, genuine wit, and vision for the country, I have to admit that Bobby Kennedy turned out to be the better man. He didn't start out that way--his public, political persona was the conservative hatchet-man, from his start as an investigator/prosecutor of organized crime to his days as his brother's Attorney General. Something in his brother's death changed him, however. It took him time to find his true voice, but by 1968, he was speaking eloquently about our need to help those Americans who could do him no good politically--the poor, the disenfranchised, the educationally and economically marginalized. The people who didn't need a hand out, but who did need a hand. Our fellow Americans, who should have been our primary focus, and not proxy wars overseas which brought naught but suffering to the civilian populations in the countries unlucky enough to be the battlegrounds.
The trait that I admire the most in Bobby Kennedy is the same trait I admire most in Abraham Lincoln: the ability to learn and to grow as a person, and to change one's thinking and focus in line with higher principles as opportunities to do so arose. John Kennedy, for all his progressive ideas, was by today's standards very conservative economically. He used to say "a rising tide lifts all boats." In modern terms, that's "trickle down" economics, a philosophy discredited among those who've taken the time to study the matter objectively. Bobby Kennedy, by 1968, knew that insisting the poor and disenfranchised wait longer was wrong. He was going to work to solve their problems right then and there.
Yet they are still waiting. John McCain accuses Barack Obama of embracing the "failed policies of the past," like "big government." He's wrong. He's the one embracing the "failed policies," like endless WAR. War spending, on unnecessary wars, like the war in Iraq, is what has failed the country. War spending has diverted and squandered our money and our young men's and women's lives, all for the sake of a military-industrial complex which cares only for making ever more money off the most destructive enterprise on the face of the Earth.
Forty years later, and how little has improved. Maybe this November will mark the true beginning of what Bobby Kennedy tried to start in the early, heady, optimistic days of 1968.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Oh, The Huge Manatees!
(With apologies to Herbert Morrison and Les Nessman)
Ideas that have crossed my mind of late:
How can Dick Cheney have been involved in public life for so many years and still have managed to insult the entire state of West Virginia in one sentence? His remark about having Cheneys in his ancestry on both sides of his family, "but we're not from West Virginia," is beyond jaw-droppingly dumb. Sure, he apologized, but he shouldn't have said it in the first place. Methinks this is a perfect example of the arrogance of power. He's gotten away with so much for so long that he no longer bothers to engage his brain before opening his mouth. Lucky for us his departure from office will come soon. It cannot come soon enough for the well-being of the country.
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Have you seen the Miller Lite "Beer Heaven" commercial? I get the intended message: Miller Lite is so good that you'll think you're in heaven after drinking it. But I wonder: did the ad's creators get the unintended implication of their work? "Drink Miller Lite, and DIE." Talk about your "things that make you go hmmm . . ."!
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Big Brown may be a lock to win the Belmont Stakes and thus become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. But no one knows until the race is run for real. Things happen. The Chicago Cubs were a lock to win the NL pennant in 1969, too . . . until a black cat at Shea Stadium and the so-called Miracle Mets wrecked that dream.
If you believe in that sort of thing.
So, while I am going to enjoy the good things I see happening in sports this summer, I am not going to anticipate or presume anything.
While we're on the subject of horse racing: if Big Brown does win it, I will have been privileged to have seen 1/4 of all the Triple Crown winners accomplish the feat. I do wish, however, that Big Brown had a more Triple Crown-winner-worthy name. "Secretariat" has a special ring of class to it. "Big Brown" sounds like a lunch bag . . . or something that goes down the toilet . . . He's a really nicely conformed horse, too, so his name totally doesn't match his quality. I wish it were less pedestrian.
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What's wrong with this picture? WGN, a Chicago TV station, is now announcing all its show times in Eastern and Pacific (which it's calling "East" and "West," God help us!), not in Central, the time zone in which Chicago is located. Count me as one viewer who dislikes that intensely. Why give the "stuck up sticky beaks" (thank you, Graham Chapman) on either coast another reason to look down upon the middle of the country as something to fly over?
Sheesh! We Midwesterners have enough self-esteem problems as it is!
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One of humanity's great talents is to take a disparate batch of things and make something coherent out of them. We see patterns in things, which lets us find the significance of seemingly unrelated things. It's a great survival mechanism. Then again, we also see patterns where none really exist, which can distract us into defending against dangers that aren't really there.
Two benign manifestations of this human tendency are constellations and calendar conjunctions. Constellations I had nothing to do with. I do find it amusing, however, that the Big Dipper is eventually going to look like a stiletto heel before it disappears completely (from Earth's point of view, that is). Calendar conjunctions are one of my own pet patterns, even though I have no idea why. I find it fascinating, for example, that Ernie Kovacs and James Joyce both died on the same day--decades apart. Don't know why that should be of cosmic significance, much less what that significance might be, but it seems somehow to have great import. Likewise the notion that the first day of Lou Gehrig's Ironman streak (2,130 consecutive games played for the Yankees) and his death occurred on the same day, again, decades apart. It's easier to see why this matters, because what killed Gehrig (ALS) is the same thing that stopped his Ironman streak, but at some visceral level, doesn't it strike you as eerie that the two events coincide on the calendar?
And William Shakespeare is believed to have been born and to have died on the same day . . . again, decades apart. April is the cruelest month, isn't it? Unless June is--for Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Ronald Reagan died, on the same day 36 years apart. Both the Left and the Right thus mourn on June 5th.
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There are no new plots in science fiction--just nuances in how we tell them. I was watching an episode of David Tennant's Doctor Who and I suddenly realized that it was just the same plot as Star Trek V and aspects of Quantum Leap all roiled up into one neat package . . . by using a theatrical device that goes back to at least the Greeks. The Doctor Who episode was called "The Satan Pit," and was about a bunch of humans who found a planet orbiting a black hole (yes, even the people in the episode said it was impossible--that's why they were there, to investigate it and figure out what was going on). It turns out that the original incarnation of Evil had been captured and chained in a pit 10 miles plus under the planet's surface--and Evil wanted out.
So It transferred Its consciousness to one of the humans and set things up so the humans would leave, thus taking Its consciousness with them and loosing It again on the universe. The Doctor, of course, saved the day, but all the way through the episode, I kept hearing Captain Kirk saying, "What would God want with a starship?" I also figured out within the first few minutes of the first part of the episode (a two-hour two-parter) that while the Doctor's Tardis had disappeared, it would come back just when all hope seemed lost, thus literally becoming a deus ex machina, especially if you accept that the Doctor is the human incarnation of science as God.
Which is not to say that any of this was not entertaining. It was hugely enjoyable. Hey, I stayed up past midnight on Saturday night two weeks in a row just to watch it, even though I'd already figured out the overall sequence of events.
So the Doctor is like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap, popping in and setting right things that once went wrong--or should I say that Doctor Who inspired Quantum Leap since the original Doctor Who goes back at least 40 years?
And the whole idea of Evil needing curious humans (or humanoids) to escape Its prison comes straight out of Star Trek V, which in turn owes the idea to any number of previous stage plays, novels, and teleplays.
Let's hear it for Ecclesiastes. There really is nothing new under the sun. Just how we tell it.
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Speaking of science fiction: did you see the Arts and Entertainment remake of The Andromeda Strain last week? Compared to the original movie, what a stinkeroo! OK, the special effects were better, and the cast was more high-powered than the original movie's cast, but the reworked script put in a bunch of cliched and extraneous plot devices that made me roll my eyes in disgust. When it was just a story of an alien plague dropping to Earth and the humans' race to figure it out and find a cure before the entire planet died, it was a taut thriller. Yet its emphasis on science made it somewhat low-key and extremely credible.
But to turn the thing into a mish-mosh of government conspiracies, time travel, and assassination attempts (some successful) diminished the significance of the story and went way beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. For one thing, would wiping out the killer bug instantly return all the flora (and fauna?--the miniseries never made this plain) back to life the way the special effects showed? I mean, even if "the Andromeda strain" was killed, wouldn't all the Earthly things it had killed stay dead?
Also, the very end of the movie posited the type of time travel "do-loop" that is the bane of serious science fiction writers--people in the future send a warning to those of the past, but the need for the warning doesn't exist until after the warning from the future has gone awry in the past and caused people to do the very things that require sending the warning in the first place. Huh? That's why I call it a "do-loop"--there's no starting or stopping point. You can't have the future event without the past event, but the future event is what caused the past event in the first place. Makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.
I will give the A&E version some props. A lot of the dialog was snappy (though too many of the characters were walking cliches). Rick Schroeder, as a US Army Major and doctor and biological weapons researcher had the best line in the whole miniseries. When asked by one of his fellow scientists if he had a girl waiting for him outside the lab, he said, "If you don't ask, I won't tell."
That was brilliant, but not enough to overcome the miniseries' plethora of shortcomings. Michael Crichton should be ashamed of himself for allowing this updated "improvement" of his original work to be produced.
Ideas that have crossed my mind of late:
How can Dick Cheney have been involved in public life for so many years and still have managed to insult the entire state of West Virginia in one sentence? His remark about having Cheneys in his ancestry on both sides of his family, "but we're not from West Virginia," is beyond jaw-droppingly dumb. Sure, he apologized, but he shouldn't have said it in the first place. Methinks this is a perfect example of the arrogance of power. He's gotten away with so much for so long that he no longer bothers to engage his brain before opening his mouth. Lucky for us his departure from office will come soon. It cannot come soon enough for the well-being of the country.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Have you seen the Miller Lite "Beer Heaven" commercial? I get the intended message: Miller Lite is so good that you'll think you're in heaven after drinking it. But I wonder: did the ad's creators get the unintended implication of their work? "Drink Miller Lite, and DIE." Talk about your "things that make you go hmmm . . ."!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Big Brown may be a lock to win the Belmont Stakes and thus become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. But no one knows until the race is run for real. Things happen. The Chicago Cubs were a lock to win the NL pennant in 1969, too . . . until a black cat at Shea Stadium and the so-called Miracle Mets wrecked that dream.
If you believe in that sort of thing.
So, while I am going to enjoy the good things I see happening in sports this summer, I am not going to anticipate or presume anything.
While we're on the subject of horse racing: if Big Brown does win it, I will have been privileged to have seen 1/4 of all the Triple Crown winners accomplish the feat. I do wish, however, that Big Brown had a more Triple Crown-winner-worthy name. "Secretariat" has a special ring of class to it. "Big Brown" sounds like a lunch bag . . . or something that goes down the toilet . . . He's a really nicely conformed horse, too, so his name totally doesn't match his quality. I wish it were less pedestrian.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What's wrong with this picture? WGN, a Chicago TV station, is now announcing all its show times in Eastern and Pacific (which it's calling "East" and "West," God help us!), not in Central, the time zone in which Chicago is located. Count me as one viewer who dislikes that intensely. Why give the "stuck up sticky beaks" (thank you, Graham Chapman) on either coast another reason to look down upon the middle of the country as something to fly over?
Sheesh! We Midwesterners have enough self-esteem problems as it is!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
One of humanity's great talents is to take a disparate batch of things and make something coherent out of them. We see patterns in things, which lets us find the significance of seemingly unrelated things. It's a great survival mechanism. Then again, we also see patterns where none really exist, which can distract us into defending against dangers that aren't really there.
Two benign manifestations of this human tendency are constellations and calendar conjunctions. Constellations I had nothing to do with. I do find it amusing, however, that the Big Dipper is eventually going to look like a stiletto heel before it disappears completely (from Earth's point of view, that is). Calendar conjunctions are one of my own pet patterns, even though I have no idea why. I find it fascinating, for example, that Ernie Kovacs and James Joyce both died on the same day--decades apart. Don't know why that should be of cosmic significance, much less what that significance might be, but it seems somehow to have great import. Likewise the notion that the first day of Lou Gehrig's Ironman streak (2,130 consecutive games played for the Yankees) and his death occurred on the same day, again, decades apart. It's easier to see why this matters, because what killed Gehrig (ALS) is the same thing that stopped his Ironman streak, but at some visceral level, doesn't it strike you as eerie that the two events coincide on the calendar?
And William Shakespeare is believed to have been born and to have died on the same day . . . again, decades apart. April is the cruelest month, isn't it? Unless June is--for Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Ronald Reagan died, on the same day 36 years apart. Both the Left and the Right thus mourn on June 5th.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There are no new plots in science fiction--just nuances in how we tell them. I was watching an episode of David Tennant's Doctor Who and I suddenly realized that it was just the same plot as Star Trek V and aspects of Quantum Leap all roiled up into one neat package . . . by using a theatrical device that goes back to at least the Greeks. The Doctor Who episode was called "The Satan Pit," and was about a bunch of humans who found a planet orbiting a black hole (yes, even the people in the episode said it was impossible--that's why they were there, to investigate it and figure out what was going on). It turns out that the original incarnation of Evil had been captured and chained in a pit 10 miles plus under the planet's surface--and Evil wanted out.
So It transferred Its consciousness to one of the humans and set things up so the humans would leave, thus taking Its consciousness with them and loosing It again on the universe. The Doctor, of course, saved the day, but all the way through the episode, I kept hearing Captain Kirk saying, "What would God want with a starship?" I also figured out within the first few minutes of the first part of the episode (a two-hour two-parter) that while the Doctor's Tardis had disappeared, it would come back just when all hope seemed lost, thus literally becoming a deus ex machina, especially if you accept that the Doctor is the human incarnation of science as God.
Which is not to say that any of this was not entertaining. It was hugely enjoyable. Hey, I stayed up past midnight on Saturday night two weeks in a row just to watch it, even though I'd already figured out the overall sequence of events.
So the Doctor is like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap, popping in and setting right things that once went wrong--or should I say that Doctor Who inspired Quantum Leap since the original Doctor Who goes back at least 40 years?
And the whole idea of Evil needing curious humans (or humanoids) to escape Its prison comes straight out of Star Trek V, which in turn owes the idea to any number of previous stage plays, novels, and teleplays.
Let's hear it for Ecclesiastes. There really is nothing new under the sun. Just how we tell it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Speaking of science fiction: did you see the Arts and Entertainment remake of The Andromeda Strain last week? Compared to the original movie, what a stinkeroo! OK, the special effects were better, and the cast was more high-powered than the original movie's cast, but the reworked script put in a bunch of cliched and extraneous plot devices that made me roll my eyes in disgust. When it was just a story of an alien plague dropping to Earth and the humans' race to figure it out and find a cure before the entire planet died, it was a taut thriller. Yet its emphasis on science made it somewhat low-key and extremely credible.
But to turn the thing into a mish-mosh of government conspiracies, time travel, and assassination attempts (some successful) diminished the significance of the story and went way beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. For one thing, would wiping out the killer bug instantly return all the flora (and fauna?--the miniseries never made this plain) back to life the way the special effects showed? I mean, even if "the Andromeda strain" was killed, wouldn't all the Earthly things it had killed stay dead?
Also, the very end of the movie posited the type of time travel "do-loop" that is the bane of serious science fiction writers--people in the future send a warning to those of the past, but the need for the warning doesn't exist until after the warning from the future has gone awry in the past and caused people to do the very things that require sending the warning in the first place. Huh? That's why I call it a "do-loop"--there's no starting or stopping point. You can't have the future event without the past event, but the future event is what caused the past event in the first place. Makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.
I will give the A&E version some props. A lot of the dialog was snappy (though too many of the characters were walking cliches). Rick Schroeder, as a US Army Major and doctor and biological weapons researcher had the best line in the whole miniseries. When asked by one of his fellow scientists if he had a girl waiting for him outside the lab, he said, "If you don't ask, I won't tell."
That was brilliant, but not enough to overcome the miniseries' plethora of shortcomings. Michael Crichton should be ashamed of himself for allowing this updated "improvement" of his original work to be produced.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wow, Ivan! That's Terrible!
One of the first fatalities when a totalitarian government takes over is the free expression of humor. Think about it. Totalitarian governments are humorless, by definition. Not only do they have no sense of humor; they squash every attempt to get laughs that they can find. Why? Genuine humor, again by definition, is subversive. The real Adolph Hitler never would have been a great guest on, say, Saturday Night Live. The absurdity of the idea of Hitler's being such a guest, from my perspective in the here and now, is amusing, however. Hitler, not funny. Hitler, being made fun of without realizing it, very funny.
I nonetheless regard with increasing trepidation events of late in Russia. A government spokesman there recently denounced the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, asserting that its "unfortunate stereotypes" were enough to re-ignite the Cold War. The statement is absurd on its face, so it's very funny. The spokesman who said it was deadly serious, which is not in the least bit funny--it's frightening. And it speaks ill of Russia's future direction, and thus hope for world political stability. [Then again, maybe it's not so bad after all. With Boris and Natasha coming back, can Rocky and Bullwinkle be far behind?--Ed.]
If this whole thing were an Apple commercial, the US would be the Mac and Russia would be the PC. "PC's Number Two! PC's Number Two!" Only this PC has the capability of throwing nukes all over the place if its government gets its collective knickers in enough of a twist. Oh, I am mixing my similes and metaphors, aren't I? Well, it's late, I'm tired, and my synapses make extra silly connections under such circumstances.
I wouldn't last long under a totalitarian regime. I cannot live without air, water, and food. I cannot live well without humor.
I nonetheless regard with increasing trepidation events of late in Russia. A government spokesman there recently denounced the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, asserting that its "unfortunate stereotypes" were enough to re-ignite the Cold War. The statement is absurd on its face, so it's very funny. The spokesman who said it was deadly serious, which is not in the least bit funny--it's frightening. And it speaks ill of Russia's future direction, and thus hope for world political stability. [Then again, maybe it's not so bad after all. With Boris and Natasha coming back, can Rocky and Bullwinkle be far behind?--Ed.]
If this whole thing were an Apple commercial, the US would be the Mac and Russia would be the PC. "PC's Number Two! PC's Number Two!" Only this PC has the capability of throwing nukes all over the place if its government gets its collective knickers in enough of a twist. Oh, I am mixing my similes and metaphors, aren't I? Well, it's late, I'm tired, and my synapses make extra silly connections under such circumstances.
I wouldn't last long under a totalitarian regime. I cannot live without air, water, and food. I cannot live well without humor.
It's Hedley!
Count me among those who mourn the death last night of the comic actor Harvey Korman. Not only was he brilliant in some of Mel Brooks' best movies--as everyone reporting on his death has noted with a clip or two from Blazing Saddles--he was delightful to watch on TV in The Carol Burnett Show. So far, most reporters mentioning Korman's work there have used bits of the infamous "Went With the Breeze" sketch . . . wherein Carol famously made a dress out of curtains with the curtain rods still attached at her shoulders.
My own favorite Korman moments include every time Tim Conway's ad libs cracked Korman up. The harder he tried to fight losing it, the funnier he and Conway got. There's something delightfully infectious yet healing about such uncontainable guffaws.
My very favorite Korman moment, however, will always be one from a series of Burnett Show blackout sketches featuring twisted interpretations of songs from great American musicals. Korman, in plaid logging gear, entered the stage (decorated like a forest) belting out that Paint Your Wagon tune, "I Talk To The Trees." And several men in white coats with butterfly nets and a straightjacket come to take him away.
Heaven is a happier place today. Earth may not be, but at least we have the DVDs to console us.
My own favorite Korman moments include every time Tim Conway's ad libs cracked Korman up. The harder he tried to fight losing it, the funnier he and Conway got. There's something delightfully infectious yet healing about such uncontainable guffaws.
My very favorite Korman moment, however, will always be one from a series of Burnett Show blackout sketches featuring twisted interpretations of songs from great American musicals. Korman, in plaid logging gear, entered the stage (decorated like a forest) belting out that Paint Your Wagon tune, "I Talk To The Trees." And several men in white coats with butterfly nets and a straightjacket come to take him away.
Heaven is a happier place today. Earth may not be, but at least we have the DVDs to console us.
No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition!
Confess! Confess!
OK, I confess--I was very pleasantly startled by the US Supreme Court's recent decisions in this term's two workforce discrimination/retaliation claims cases (by 7-2 and 6-3 margins), especially after last term's 5-4 decision that restricted certain discrimination claims. Last term's case had do do with when a woman could file a gender-based discrimination claim for not getting equal pay for equal work. The Supremes ruled in that case that she was limited to a certain amount of time after she received the first discriminatory pay (interpreting each pay check as a separate discrimination, not as all her pay over all the years being one, long, on-going act of discrimination). Her claim was denied as having been filed years too late after she experienced the initial discrimination. No matter that she didn't even learn she was being paid less, MUCH less, until right before she filed her claim in the first place.
This term's cases had to do with people who were fired after complaining that other, previously-fired employees, had been discriminated against. In both cases this term, the Supremes ruled largely in favor of the people who were retaliated against. My apologies for not being more specific with case citations and quotes. I've been waiting most of the week for the Omaha World-Herald to publish something about the cases so that I could have the information in front of me as I blogged. So far, the paper has published precisely nothing about the cases that I have seen. But I had to say something before the news got so stale that not even the USSCt junkies would care. Please accept my apologies for the somewhat general nature of my remarks.
What really startled me, however, was how blatantly the dissenters in the 7-2 decision confirmed my long-held contention that making law is inherent in what judges do, and that it's only called "judicial activism" by those who disagree with the verdict.
When a decision is 7-2, and especially when the majority decision is reasonable, the dissenters most likely will be Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. So it was in this case. Surprise--not!
Scalia said plainly that the majority's reliance on what he called "the fig leaf" of stare decisis was erroneous since the prior cases on which the majority relied had been "decided wrongly" in the first place.
The gist of his argument is thus revealed: it's OK to ignore precedent if you disagree with it. And that's the sine qua non of judicial activism . . . an approach that Scalia and Thomas are on the record as opposing. Vehemently. In fact, however, they oppose it only when they disagree with the substance of the result. They are thus just as much judicial activists as was, say, Earl Warren, though to an opposite substantive result.
I never thought they'd admit it so openly. My confession, therefore, is that I am surprised by their confession. And Michael Palin didn't even need to "get the comfy chair" to make me admit it!
OK, I confess--I was very pleasantly startled by the US Supreme Court's recent decisions in this term's two workforce discrimination/retaliation claims cases (by 7-2 and 6-3 margins), especially after last term's 5-4 decision that restricted certain discrimination claims. Last term's case had do do with when a woman could file a gender-based discrimination claim for not getting equal pay for equal work. The Supremes ruled in that case that she was limited to a certain amount of time after she received the first discriminatory pay (interpreting each pay check as a separate discrimination, not as all her pay over all the years being one, long, on-going act of discrimination). Her claim was denied as having been filed years too late after she experienced the initial discrimination. No matter that she didn't even learn she was being paid less, MUCH less, until right before she filed her claim in the first place.
This term's cases had to do with people who were fired after complaining that other, previously-fired employees, had been discriminated against. In both cases this term, the Supremes ruled largely in favor of the people who were retaliated against. My apologies for not being more specific with case citations and quotes. I've been waiting most of the week for the Omaha World-Herald to publish something about the cases so that I could have the information in front of me as I blogged. So far, the paper has published precisely nothing about the cases that I have seen. But I had to say something before the news got so stale that not even the USSCt junkies would care. Please accept my apologies for the somewhat general nature of my remarks.
What really startled me, however, was how blatantly the dissenters in the 7-2 decision confirmed my long-held contention that making law is inherent in what judges do, and that it's only called "judicial activism" by those who disagree with the verdict.
When a decision is 7-2, and especially when the majority decision is reasonable, the dissenters most likely will be Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. So it was in this case. Surprise--not!
Scalia said plainly that the majority's reliance on what he called "the fig leaf" of stare decisis was erroneous since the prior cases on which the majority relied had been "decided wrongly" in the first place.
The gist of his argument is thus revealed: it's OK to ignore precedent if you disagree with it. And that's the sine qua non of judicial activism . . . an approach that Scalia and Thomas are on the record as opposing. Vehemently. In fact, however, they oppose it only when they disagree with the substance of the result. They are thus just as much judicial activists as was, say, Earl Warren, though to an opposite substantive result.
I never thought they'd admit it so openly. My confession, therefore, is that I am surprised by their confession. And Michael Palin didn't even need to "get the comfy chair" to make me admit it!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Margaritaville This Ain't
This year's hot trend in beer is adding a touch of genuine lime flavor to one's brew. Corona commercials for several months have been showing Corona bottles with a real wedge of lime in their openings; Miller Lite has been advertising its "Chill" beer (lime flavor and a hint of salt flavor added) since at least February; Budweiser recently released Bud LIght Lime with a flurry of ads on TV sporting events.
I am glad that one series of those ads has already died and been yanked off the air--at least, off the air of the channels I watch. These are the ads wherein an oversized lime with human arms and legs--and no head--breakdances (among other things). Creepy!
The only time fruit should be dancing is when it's in Carmen Miranda's [or Bugs Bunny's when dressed as Carmen Miranda--Ed.] hat.
I am glad that one series of those ads has already died and been yanked off the air--at least, off the air of the channels I watch. These are the ads wherein an oversized lime with human arms and legs--and no head--breakdances (among other things). Creepy!
The only time fruit should be dancing is when it's in Carmen Miranda's [or Bugs Bunny's when dressed as Carmen Miranda--Ed.] hat.
Bass-Ackwards
The Omaha World-Herald has done it again. In a "Furthermore" editorial this past week, the Editor chastised Barack Obama for his response to Dubya's speech in the Israeli Knesset wherein the President equated negotiating with hostile entities to appeasement.
The Editor reasoned that it's unseemly to let domestic political disputes play out on the world stage. The traditional American axiom is "politics stops at the water's edge," though the Editor didn't say that so concisely.
By the Editor's own reasoning, the blame really should be laid at the feet of the President. After all, he's the one whose overseas revelation of his utter incomprehension of history started the verbal brouhaha in the first place.
But the World-Herald will never pass up the opportunity to take a swipe at someone with whose politics it disagrees, the facts and truth be damned.
What distresses me the most about the President's reliance on straw man logic and the World-Herald's support of same is that so many people accept it without question. These are the same people who, during the Vietnam War, quoted "America--love it or leave it" without realizing that the quote in its entirety required patriots to work to change America when America's policies were wrong. Intelligently questioning the actions of those in power is the essence of patriotism, and should be done as rigorously to those with whom we agree as much as to those with whom we disagree.
The Editor reasoned that it's unseemly to let domestic political disputes play out on the world stage. The traditional American axiom is "politics stops at the water's edge," though the Editor didn't say that so concisely.
By the Editor's own reasoning, the blame really should be laid at the feet of the President. After all, he's the one whose overseas revelation of his utter incomprehension of history started the verbal brouhaha in the first place.
But the World-Herald will never pass up the opportunity to take a swipe at someone with whose politics it disagrees, the facts and truth be damned.
What distresses me the most about the President's reliance on straw man logic and the World-Herald's support of same is that so many people accept it without question. These are the same people who, during the Vietnam War, quoted "America--love it or leave it" without realizing that the quote in its entirety required patriots to work to change America when America's policies were wrong. Intelligently questioning the actions of those in power is the essence of patriotism, and should be done as rigorously to those with whom we agree as much as to those with whom we disagree.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Take A Memo, Candidates
a/k/a "Take My Advice--I'm Not Using It"
Memo to Senator John McCain: stop trying to smear Barack Obama with your perceived implications of his long-term relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. For one thing, your "logic" isn't. I know plenty of people who regularly attend a church, which they consider to be their church, and who disagree (often vehemently) with official stands of that church on important matters of doctrine and history. Just because the Rev. Wright has said things odious to many of us doesn't mean Obama either agreed with him or is tainted by them. Or that his reluctance to throw the Rev. Wright "under the bus" is a fatal shortcoming on his part.
Furthermore, you, Sen. McCain, are on very shaky ground slinging such mud. You are either telling the truth or lying about your prior knowledge of Pastor Hagee's more disgusting beliefs. Remember, you actively sought Hagee's endorsement. So you and your staff either knew but didn't care about Hagee's venomous spewings, or didn't know and didn't bother to find out. That makes you and your staff either liars or incompetent. Either option disqualifies you to become president.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Memo to Senator Hillary Clinton: your tenacity in your now quixotic pursuit of the Democratic Party's nomination is not as unabashedly admirable as you think. Tenacity is normally a value I applaud wholeheartedly, but even I recognize there comes a point where tenacity slips over the edge of sense and falls into the pit of stupidity. Blind tenacity does not speak well of your powers of observation and reasoning, let alone of your concept of reality. And to bring up Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June of 1968 as another reason to keep up your fight (thus to lessen strife and uncertainty during the party's convention later in the summer) is beyond tone-deaf--especially in light of Sen. Edward Kennedy's malignant glioma diagnosis this past week. Even more so in light of your implication that Obama could be assassinated, too.
Give it up, girl! Pull on your big-girl panties and deal with it. You screwed up your campaign. You do not have any right to be the Democratic nominee, no matter how much it cost you personally to stay with Bill in light of his very public philandering while he was president. Concede graciously and soon so that you can turn your attention to mending the rifts you've caused in the party. After all, the ultimate goal is a Democrat in the White House. If you keep up this fight, you're going to tear the party in two and McCain will wind up winning in November. Maybe that's what you want, but in the real world, a Pyrrhic victory will help no one but the very, very, very rich right-wing.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Memo to Senator Barack Obama: Be very, very circumspect and careful as your staff begins to vet potential vice presidential candidates. It doesn't belong to Hillary, and I would think she'd have no interest in taking it if offered, but her opinion about whom you should select must be given serious consideration. Your best bet for the future of the country is to get Hillary to realize that her most effective option is to stay in the Senate--with her increasing seniority and her admitted mastery of policy issues, her position on key committees (indeed, possible chairmanships) makes her an invaluable ally in getting your legislative agenda passed, should you become president. [After all, Senator Edward Kennedy may not be in a position to continue that role for long, given his present medical situation.--Ed.]
Whatever you do, keep it exceedingly low key until after Hillary has regained her senses and conceded the nomination to you. Being perceived as "jumping the gun" won't help you during the fall campaign at all, as it will alienate a large, vocal wing of the party--some members of which have already said if they can't vote for Hillary, they'd rather vote for McCain than for you. You need to win them over, and fast. If you do, you can point to your success as showing your skill and experience in diplomacy. If you don't, you may well lose in November.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here endeth the lesson. I have nothing to say to Ralph Nader (Green Party) and whomever the Libertarians nominate later today. Sadly or no, they are irrelevant.
Memo to Senator John McCain: stop trying to smear Barack Obama with your perceived implications of his long-term relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. For one thing, your "logic" isn't. I know plenty of people who regularly attend a church, which they consider to be their church, and who disagree (often vehemently) with official stands of that church on important matters of doctrine and history. Just because the Rev. Wright has said things odious to many of us doesn't mean Obama either agreed with him or is tainted by them. Or that his reluctance to throw the Rev. Wright "under the bus" is a fatal shortcoming on his part.
Furthermore, you, Sen. McCain, are on very shaky ground slinging such mud. You are either telling the truth or lying about your prior knowledge of Pastor Hagee's more disgusting beliefs. Remember, you actively sought Hagee's endorsement. So you and your staff either knew but didn't care about Hagee's venomous spewings, or didn't know and didn't bother to find out. That makes you and your staff either liars or incompetent. Either option disqualifies you to become president.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Memo to Senator Hillary Clinton: your tenacity in your now quixotic pursuit of the Democratic Party's nomination is not as unabashedly admirable as you think. Tenacity is normally a value I applaud wholeheartedly, but even I recognize there comes a point where tenacity slips over the edge of sense and falls into the pit of stupidity. Blind tenacity does not speak well of your powers of observation and reasoning, let alone of your concept of reality. And to bring up Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June of 1968 as another reason to keep up your fight (thus to lessen strife and uncertainty during the party's convention later in the summer) is beyond tone-deaf--especially in light of Sen. Edward Kennedy's malignant glioma diagnosis this past week. Even more so in light of your implication that Obama could be assassinated, too.
Give it up, girl! Pull on your big-girl panties and deal with it. You screwed up your campaign. You do not have any right to be the Democratic nominee, no matter how much it cost you personally to stay with Bill in light of his very public philandering while he was president. Concede graciously and soon so that you can turn your attention to mending the rifts you've caused in the party. After all, the ultimate goal is a Democrat in the White House. If you keep up this fight, you're going to tear the party in two and McCain will wind up winning in November. Maybe that's what you want, but in the real world, a Pyrrhic victory will help no one but the very, very, very rich right-wing.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Memo to Senator Barack Obama: Be very, very circumspect and careful as your staff begins to vet potential vice presidential candidates. It doesn't belong to Hillary, and I would think she'd have no interest in taking it if offered, but her opinion about whom you should select must be given serious consideration. Your best bet for the future of the country is to get Hillary to realize that her most effective option is to stay in the Senate--with her increasing seniority and her admitted mastery of policy issues, her position on key committees (indeed, possible chairmanships) makes her an invaluable ally in getting your legislative agenda passed, should you become president. [After all, Senator Edward Kennedy may not be in a position to continue that role for long, given his present medical situation.--Ed.]
Whatever you do, keep it exceedingly low key until after Hillary has regained her senses and conceded the nomination to you. Being perceived as "jumping the gun" won't help you during the fall campaign at all, as it will alienate a large, vocal wing of the party--some members of which have already said if they can't vote for Hillary, they'd rather vote for McCain than for you. You need to win them over, and fast. If you do, you can point to your success as showing your skill and experience in diplomacy. If you don't, you may well lose in November.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here endeth the lesson. I have nothing to say to Ralph Nader (Green Party) and whomever the Libertarians nominate later today. Sadly or no, they are irrelevant.
Maybe I'm Not Such A Lonely Voice In The Wilderness After All
Do you ever listen to NPR's weekly feature, This I Believe? It is always interesting to learn how other people think and why they believe what they do--and often most enlightening to discover what events got them to where they now are.
This morning, I heard an essay for the feature by Kenneth Weinberg, an attorney who, among other tasks, helped determine the distribution amounts of financial compensation to the family members of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11.
After having accepted for his entire professional life the premise at law that the major method for determining such compensation is to determine the economic impact on the survivors of each victim's death, Weinberg's actual experiences relating to 9/11 changed his mind. He no longer thinks that an attorney who, say, represented (among other clients) Emeril Lagasse should automatically be worth more than a firefighter who lost his life trying to rescue others on that horrible day, just because the attorney had more education and training and thus a higher lifetime earnings potential. Mr. Weinberg now believes that all life should be valued equally.
Hallelujah and Amen! He didn't say it in so many words, but Mr. Weinberg's conclusions directly support several things I've been saying for years. First, that life itself is the most fundamental and important of our unalienable rights. Therefore, under our system of government, the things that directly affect life--like health care--should be made available to everyone, equally. Second, that financial worth is not a proper fundamental social value, for it promotes greed above other, more important social values, such as honesty, integrity, and yes, heroism. Third, that our adversarial system of justice doesn't necessarily provide the best way to learn the truth about any contested/litigated situation. Taking people who already disagree with one another and forcing them to adopt the most extreme version of their respective positions so they can maximize their chances to win a lawsuit is no way to guarantee long-term successful dispute resolution. Much better to have everyone sit down together and act like rational grown-ups and work out a solution with which everyone can live comfortably.
[However, this does not go so far as Dubya and Sen. McCain would have you think and make you into a wimpy "cheek-turner" to terrorists. Self-defense is never wrong. But note the prefix: self-defense. Hence one of my biggest problems with the US invasion of Iraq. That is not what the USA does. Not my USA, anyway. Especially when using Dubya's own reasoning, other targets of invasion would have been better, like, oh, North Korea. Then again, North Korea has no oil. And so the moral, intellectual, and policy bankruptcies of the Dubya administration are revealed.--Ed.]
I was half-asleep when Mr. Weinberg's essay started, but I was wide awake by its end. Now if we can only get the rest of the county to wake up, too.
This morning, I heard an essay for the feature by Kenneth Weinberg, an attorney who, among other tasks, helped determine the distribution amounts of financial compensation to the family members of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11.
After having accepted for his entire professional life the premise at law that the major method for determining such compensation is to determine the economic impact on the survivors of each victim's death, Weinberg's actual experiences relating to 9/11 changed his mind. He no longer thinks that an attorney who, say, represented (among other clients) Emeril Lagasse should automatically be worth more than a firefighter who lost his life trying to rescue others on that horrible day, just because the attorney had more education and training and thus a higher lifetime earnings potential. Mr. Weinberg now believes that all life should be valued equally.
Hallelujah and Amen! He didn't say it in so many words, but Mr. Weinberg's conclusions directly support several things I've been saying for years. First, that life itself is the most fundamental and important of our unalienable rights. Therefore, under our system of government, the things that directly affect life--like health care--should be made available to everyone, equally. Second, that financial worth is not a proper fundamental social value, for it promotes greed above other, more important social values, such as honesty, integrity, and yes, heroism. Third, that our adversarial system of justice doesn't necessarily provide the best way to learn the truth about any contested/litigated situation. Taking people who already disagree with one another and forcing them to adopt the most extreme version of their respective positions so they can maximize their chances to win a lawsuit is no way to guarantee long-term successful dispute resolution. Much better to have everyone sit down together and act like rational grown-ups and work out a solution with which everyone can live comfortably.
[However, this does not go so far as Dubya and Sen. McCain would have you think and make you into a wimpy "cheek-turner" to terrorists. Self-defense is never wrong. But note the prefix: self-defense. Hence one of my biggest problems with the US invasion of Iraq. That is not what the USA does. Not my USA, anyway. Especially when using Dubya's own reasoning, other targets of invasion would have been better, like, oh, North Korea. Then again, North Korea has no oil. And so the moral, intellectual, and policy bankruptcies of the Dubya administration are revealed.--Ed.]
I was half-asleep when Mr. Weinberg's essay started, but I was wide awake by its end. Now if we can only get the rest of the county to wake up, too.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Regrets? I've Had A Few
Unlike Paul Anka, however, not too few to mention.
Is the singing of My Way still as ubiquitous at high school graduations as it was thirty-some years ago? Why? I think I may have stumbled upon a major cause of America's collective mental instability: we say we praise individuality and initiative, but we stomp down the truly creative and innovative at every turn. We publicly praise the iconoclasts amongst us, yet we collectively don't want anyone to be "too much" smarter than we are. We honor and reward some of the unique members of our society, but we hammer down most of them in small ways every day.
Is it an echo of the herd mentality of our ancestors? Most species which congregate in groups use the survival tactic of letting the group members who don't blend in be the main targets of the group's predators. The survival of the group matters more than the survival of any one individual group member.
Herein, too, lie the roots of Social Darwinism--for the individuals in a group who "stick out," who do not conform, are different in some easily identifiable way: they are old; they are sick; they are weak. Conservatives act like liberals are the bad ones in our society, but the logical end of much conservative thinking is euthanasia.
Which would horrify most conservatives if one brought this to their attention. Unfortunately for all of us, most people, liberal and conservative alike, do not bother themselves with the logical consequences of their expressed "thinking."
Even worse, reading many of the letters to the Editor of the Omaha World-Herald of late suggests that we've time-warped into George Orwell's 1984. Did you know, for example, that Democrats are the ones who don't tolerate anyone who disagrees with them? That Democrats run the media and control the spin on all the news we get, no matter its sources? That our starting the Iraq War was justified and is still a good thing? That tax breaks for the rich are good for all of us?
What's worst of all, many of these letter writers seriously think that "liberal" is a dirty word, and that liberals actively work to destroy the USA . . . not that liberals just have different ideas about what is best for our country.
I may be a lonely voice in the wilderness, but I am not ashamed of my stands on the issues. I came to them by thinking through the problems I see and determining what is the most practical, sensible solution. I did not start from any pre-conceived bias, liberal or conservative. For goodness' sake: I am the child of a true redneck (who was proud of it) and a Kennedy Democrat. Of course I can see things from all sides. It's how I was raised. I am just as angry at the radical left-wing as I am at the radical right-wing. Neither extreme has the best interests of the country in mind--only their own short-term advantage.
Just as the adversarial approach, in my opinion, is not the best way to run a legal system, it is not the best way to run a society. It only exacerbates the worst tendencies in all of us. We have to find a better way, or the future of America will be a bleak one, indeed.
Is the singing of My Way still as ubiquitous at high school graduations as it was thirty-some years ago? Why? I think I may have stumbled upon a major cause of America's collective mental instability: we say we praise individuality and initiative, but we stomp down the truly creative and innovative at every turn. We publicly praise the iconoclasts amongst us, yet we collectively don't want anyone to be "too much" smarter than we are. We honor and reward some of the unique members of our society, but we hammer down most of them in small ways every day.
Is it an echo of the herd mentality of our ancestors? Most species which congregate in groups use the survival tactic of letting the group members who don't blend in be the main targets of the group's predators. The survival of the group matters more than the survival of any one individual group member.
Herein, too, lie the roots of Social Darwinism--for the individuals in a group who "stick out," who do not conform, are different in some easily identifiable way: they are old; they are sick; they are weak. Conservatives act like liberals are the bad ones in our society, but the logical end of much conservative thinking is euthanasia.
Which would horrify most conservatives if one brought this to their attention. Unfortunately for all of us, most people, liberal and conservative alike, do not bother themselves with the logical consequences of their expressed "thinking."
Even worse, reading many of the letters to the Editor of the Omaha World-Herald of late suggests that we've time-warped into George Orwell's 1984. Did you know, for example, that Democrats are the ones who don't tolerate anyone who disagrees with them? That Democrats run the media and control the spin on all the news we get, no matter its sources? That our starting the Iraq War was justified and is still a good thing? That tax breaks for the rich are good for all of us?
What's worst of all, many of these letter writers seriously think that "liberal" is a dirty word, and that liberals actively work to destroy the USA . . . not that liberals just have different ideas about what is best for our country.
I may be a lonely voice in the wilderness, but I am not ashamed of my stands on the issues. I came to them by thinking through the problems I see and determining what is the most practical, sensible solution. I did not start from any pre-conceived bias, liberal or conservative. For goodness' sake: I am the child of a true redneck (who was proud of it) and a Kennedy Democrat. Of course I can see things from all sides. It's how I was raised. I am just as angry at the radical left-wing as I am at the radical right-wing. Neither extreme has the best interests of the country in mind--only their own short-term advantage.
Just as the adversarial approach, in my opinion, is not the best way to run a legal system, it is not the best way to run a society. It only exacerbates the worst tendencies in all of us. We have to find a better way, or the future of America will be a bleak one, indeed.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
It's All Greek To Me
Rather, maybe I should have been Greek. I find myself of late complaining mightily that "civilization" is going straight to hell. Such kvetching is a time-honored tradition, going back to ancient Greece, if not farther. Every generation thinks the next several are lesser than it in every measure. And every generation is right. Yet the world keeps turning.
I must admit that if things keep going the way I currently perceive them, however, I may not want to stick around to see how everything turns out. If it weren't so sad, the ignorance of those calling Barack Obama "an appeaser" would be laughable. I am glad for Sen. Clinton's sake that she immediately spoke out unequivocally against such accusations. Why is it that she finds the guts to act presidential only when it's much too late for hopes to become this year's Democratic Party's presidential nominee?
I was also glad to see Obama speaking forcefully and rationally against such wrong-headed attacks. I'll give the man this: he is cool under fire, which is a prime presidential character trait.
But for John McCain to claim Obama thinks America has no enemies and that Obama is living in la-la land is beyond ridiculous. McCain's supporters also called Obama's response to the absurd attacks hysterical political maneuvering.
None of these people could make themselves look more ignorant or worse liars/fools if they tried. They are the ones living in la-la land. I increasingly fear that their realization of the total bankruptcy of their "ideas" is going to make Dubya invade Iran before he has to leave office--worse yet (and thanks to my cousin Val for expressing this so concisely), he's amassed so much executive power and cowed so many people into submission that he may even try to declare martial law and suspend the elections just to hold onto power. Part of my brain is telling me I'm being paranoid . . . but the other part of my brain and my heart are palpitating in fear. I didn't think Dubya and his minions would be brazen enough to do some of the stupid things they've actually already done, so . . .
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Things are no brighter on the social front. I saw a commercial for the new season of The Bachelorette yesterday, and it filled me with sadness. The new bachelorette is the one who did not win the bachelor's heart in the just-finished season of The Bachelor. She says she's out to win her happy ending. The bachelors among which she gets to choose are all making "I'm going to win" noises. They don't even know her--nor does she know them. To expect her to find her "one and only" when she claimed to have done just that on The Bachelor, only to be rejected, is ludicrous. It's staged. It cannot be genuine. Everyone's behavior is geared to getting to a conclusion . . . a conclusion that probably wouldn't happen were events allowed to proceed without outside interference or influence.
Since when did love become such a callous and calculated win-or-lose proposition? Since when does one's success in life ride on "winning" in such an artificial, manipulated "game of love"? When it's a game, it can't be genuine. How many times has each of these shows run through its cycle? At least seven of each, if memory serves. And how many of the couples are still together? One, if memory serves.
It's all so coarse and callous. I'd rather be alone than subject myself to such public indignity. But the younger generations don't seem to have any understanding of what self-esteem really means. Nor any sense of shame. Nor any capability for truly deep feelings.
Why does anyone watch this crap?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Another reason the unregulated free market isn't such a good idea: if farmers raise their crops based purely on what's going to give them the highest price, we're going to have overages of some crops and shortages of others. Free Marketeers will tell you that this is OK because prices will shift in response and the farmers will then shift in response to that, and things will level out. But food is not something you can let the market control. For one thing, there's lead time--a/k/a growing seasons. It will take a year or two for changing prices to affect changing production. What do you do in the meantime? After all, farm production is also perishable. And what of people's health? What if we discover that some very unpopular crop is vitally necessary to human biological health? If we insist on letting a free market control farming, we could be committing long-term slow collective suicide.
Not to mention that unregulated free markets often dictate that the very best, most productive farming land is too valuable to be used for farming. We're importing food into this country that we could well produce here, but the farm land is worth more when built on for commercial development than it is to grow what sustains us. What's wrong with that picture?
If for no other reason, being dependent on other nations for our very "stuff of life" is no way to improve/enhance national security. I've heard some people say that when we get such global trade entanglements, it's actually good for national security, because (as they've said, in all seriousness) "no countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever gone to war with each other."
McDonald's has been around for only 50 years or so. That's not even an eye blink in terms of all of human history. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are no guarantee of world peace. The notion is nonsensical in other ways, too. Anybody who thinks he is on the short end of resource allocation is not going to let anyone else (fellow franchisee or not) take what he perceives to be rightfully his . . . not without a fight, at least.
I don't know what's going to happen. I hope I am wrong about Dubya's intentions. I hope the American electorate wakes up enough to realize what's happening and to do something about it. The historian in me wants to hang around and see how everything turns out . . . but the pragmatic realist in me wants to go hide under a very large rock.
I must admit that if things keep going the way I currently perceive them, however, I may not want to stick around to see how everything turns out. If it weren't so sad, the ignorance of those calling Barack Obama "an appeaser" would be laughable. I am glad for Sen. Clinton's sake that she immediately spoke out unequivocally against such accusations. Why is it that she finds the guts to act presidential only when it's much too late for hopes to become this year's Democratic Party's presidential nominee?
I was also glad to see Obama speaking forcefully and rationally against such wrong-headed attacks. I'll give the man this: he is cool under fire, which is a prime presidential character trait.
But for John McCain to claim Obama thinks America has no enemies and that Obama is living in la-la land is beyond ridiculous. McCain's supporters also called Obama's response to the absurd attacks hysterical political maneuvering.
None of these people could make themselves look more ignorant or worse liars/fools if they tried. They are the ones living in la-la land. I increasingly fear that their realization of the total bankruptcy of their "ideas" is going to make Dubya invade Iran before he has to leave office--worse yet (and thanks to my cousin Val for expressing this so concisely), he's amassed so much executive power and cowed so many people into submission that he may even try to declare martial law and suspend the elections just to hold onto power. Part of my brain is telling me I'm being paranoid . . . but the other part of my brain and my heart are palpitating in fear. I didn't think Dubya and his minions would be brazen enough to do some of the stupid things they've actually already done, so . . .
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Things are no brighter on the social front. I saw a commercial for the new season of The Bachelorette yesterday, and it filled me with sadness. The new bachelorette is the one who did not win the bachelor's heart in the just-finished season of The Bachelor. She says she's out to win her happy ending. The bachelors among which she gets to choose are all making "I'm going to win" noises. They don't even know her--nor does she know them. To expect her to find her "one and only" when she claimed to have done just that on The Bachelor, only to be rejected, is ludicrous. It's staged. It cannot be genuine. Everyone's behavior is geared to getting to a conclusion . . . a conclusion that probably wouldn't happen were events allowed to proceed without outside interference or influence.
Since when did love become such a callous and calculated win-or-lose proposition? Since when does one's success in life ride on "winning" in such an artificial, manipulated "game of love"? When it's a game, it can't be genuine. How many times has each of these shows run through its cycle? At least seven of each, if memory serves. And how many of the couples are still together? One, if memory serves.
It's all so coarse and callous. I'd rather be alone than subject myself to such public indignity. But the younger generations don't seem to have any understanding of what self-esteem really means. Nor any sense of shame. Nor any capability for truly deep feelings.
Why does anyone watch this crap?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Another reason the unregulated free market isn't such a good idea: if farmers raise their crops based purely on what's going to give them the highest price, we're going to have overages of some crops and shortages of others. Free Marketeers will tell you that this is OK because prices will shift in response and the farmers will then shift in response to that, and things will level out. But food is not something you can let the market control. For one thing, there's lead time--a/k/a growing seasons. It will take a year or two for changing prices to affect changing production. What do you do in the meantime? After all, farm production is also perishable. And what of people's health? What if we discover that some very unpopular crop is vitally necessary to human biological health? If we insist on letting a free market control farming, we could be committing long-term slow collective suicide.
Not to mention that unregulated free markets often dictate that the very best, most productive farming land is too valuable to be used for farming. We're importing food into this country that we could well produce here, but the farm land is worth more when built on for commercial development than it is to grow what sustains us. What's wrong with that picture?
If for no other reason, being dependent on other nations for our very "stuff of life" is no way to improve/enhance national security. I've heard some people say that when we get such global trade entanglements, it's actually good for national security, because (as they've said, in all seriousness) "no countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever gone to war with each other."
McDonald's has been around for only 50 years or so. That's not even an eye blink in terms of all of human history. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are no guarantee of world peace. The notion is nonsensical in other ways, too. Anybody who thinks he is on the short end of resource allocation is not going to let anyone else (fellow franchisee or not) take what he perceives to be rightfully his . . . not without a fight, at least.
I don't know what's going to happen. I hope I am wrong about Dubya's intentions. I hope the American electorate wakes up enough to realize what's happening and to do something about it. The historian in me wants to hang around and see how everything turns out . . . but the pragmatic realist in me wants to go hide under a very large rock.
Riddle Me This Redux
OK, so no one took the bait. Too bad. The answer is: They're all Cubs fans, unaware!
Don't blame me if you read this before you read the original "Riddle Me This."
Don't blame me if you read this before you read the original "Riddle Me This."
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Score One For Me!
I am insufferably pleased to report that Nebraska Democrats overwhelmingly voted yesterday to nominate Scott Kleeb instead of Tony Raimondo to challenge GOP candidate Mike Johanns in November for the Nebraska US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating. Kleeb's margin of victory was something on the order of 70% to 30%, so it's not as if Raimondo lost a squeaker.
As I wrote yesterday, I was sure NE Democrats didn't like the relatively negative tone of Raimondo's campaign, especially when contrasted with Kleeb's much more positive one. I also think NE Dems were quite aware that Raimondo's running in the Democratic primary was pure opportunism as opposed to a real shift in his political ideology.
I can't be too gleeful in my prognosticating triumph, however. I was wrong about how Nebraskans would vote on this year's proposed Amendment 1, which would let governmental entities in the state invest like they were private businesses. I thought fiscally sensible Nebraskans would see through that, but no . . . they didn't. No one campaigned against it, to be sure. Moreover, our other US Senator, Ben Nelson, along with NE Attorney General Jon Bruning, made a frequently-run commercial in favor of it.
But geez! Doesn't anyone remember what happened in Orange County, CA, a few years ago? CA taxing entities had that kind of private investing authority, along with all the bells and whistles that were supposed to go off in the event of problems, so that the taxpayer's "investments" would be protected. None of that mattered. The county went bankrupt after losing literally millions of dollars on investments that were way too speculative to begin with, and which only got worse as the County Clerk tried to recoup his initial losses by making even more risky investments when he started losing money.
Oh, well. I think we get one more shot at it in November, and by then, I hope, cooler heads will prevail. I'm still keeping my bragging rights about Kleeb's victory, though. I don't know anyone else who predicted it.
As I wrote yesterday, I was sure NE Democrats didn't like the relatively negative tone of Raimondo's campaign, especially when contrasted with Kleeb's much more positive one. I also think NE Dems were quite aware that Raimondo's running in the Democratic primary was pure opportunism as opposed to a real shift in his political ideology.
I can't be too gleeful in my prognosticating triumph, however. I was wrong about how Nebraskans would vote on this year's proposed Amendment 1, which would let governmental entities in the state invest like they were private businesses. I thought fiscally sensible Nebraskans would see through that, but no . . . they didn't. No one campaigned against it, to be sure. Moreover, our other US Senator, Ben Nelson, along with NE Attorney General Jon Bruning, made a frequently-run commercial in favor of it.
But geez! Doesn't anyone remember what happened in Orange County, CA, a few years ago? CA taxing entities had that kind of private investing authority, along with all the bells and whistles that were supposed to go off in the event of problems, so that the taxpayer's "investments" would be protected. None of that mattered. The county went bankrupt after losing literally millions of dollars on investments that were way too speculative to begin with, and which only got worse as the County Clerk tried to recoup his initial losses by making even more risky investments when he started losing money.
Oh, well. I think we get one more shot at it in November, and by then, I hope, cooler heads will prevail. I'm still keeping my bragging rights about Kleeb's victory, though. I don't know anyone else who predicted it.
Monday, May 12, 2008
This Ain't Chicago!
So it's OK to vote early, but not often.
Yes, tomorrow is--at long last--Nebraska's primary election day for 2008. In typical Nebraska fashion, we have choices among an odd list of candidates. In the Democratic Party primary for the US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating, we can choose between Tony Raimondo and Scott Kleeb (pronounced "Klebb"). Raimondo is a Republican-turned-Democrat, most probably to take a clearer path to a nomination. He's also a businessman who dies his hair [which wouldn't matter but it's cheap and badly done, and it looks worse than a bad comb-over, all suggesting that Raimondo has some serious self-delusion problems--Ed.] and who keeps saying we need to elect him "to change Washington." He subtly insults his Democratic Party opponent by calling him "an academic," and the Republican candidate (running unopposed) as a "lifelong politician."
Kleeb is young, and is an academic in that he teaches history courses at one of the state colleges. But the tone of his campaign has been more positive in that he's stressing "it's not a matter of right or left" and "it's what my grandfather taught me--a politics of service, not of self." In a western Nebraska populist way, it's an appeal for the partisans to take off their boxing gloves and work together for everyone's benefit. For my money, it's a much more mature campaign approach than Raimondo's. Then again, Kleeb has a lead foot and has run up a ton of speeding tickets covering western Nebraska's expansive spaces. This will not endear him to the majority of generally law-abiding Nebraskans.
One would almost be sure that the Republican candidate, Mike Johanns, former mayor of Lincoln, former Nebraska governor, former US Secretary of Agriculture, will win automatically come November. After all, Johanns is popular, and his association with Dubya's administration hasn't seemed to hurt him. But Johanns is a Democrat-turned-Republican. There are plenty of people in the western part of this state who will hold that against him even though he switched parties years ago, mostly so that he'd have a clear path to the governorship back when he ran for and won that office. He won it, by the way, by winning the two major population centers of the state: Omaha, because business interests perceived him to be a good choice, and Lincoln, because the university and government-oriented population there knew him and liked him. He got the votes he got in the western part of the state because a lot of people there voted by party affiliation only.
I can hear the program hawkers now: "You can't tell the players without a scorecard! Get your programs here!" Not that party-switching is new around here. Those of you who remember the late Nebraska US Senator Ed Zorinsky and our own current senior US Senator, Ben Nelson, just to name two, know that.
But back to tomorrow: Johanns' ad is more like Kleeb's in tone than Raimondo's, but it's Muzak rendition of Tom Petty's Won't Back Down oddly jarring. Still, it seems like Kleeb and Johanns are on the same page, at least. It would be fun to see their campaigns against each other come fall. Raimondo has made it clear that he'll just attack Johanns as being a Washington insider. Well, I have news for Raimondo: no one is going to "change Washington" all by himself, especially as a first-term junior senator from a relatively low-in-population state. So Raimondo is already falling into a typically Republican pattern of making promises he cannot or will not keep. That won't wash with many of the voters I know, be they Democrats, Republicans, Greens, or independents.
I do love the politics in this state! At some level, there's always unpredictability. Despite Nebraska's well-deserved reputation as one of the reddest of the so-called Red states, the way Nebraskans will vote in any given election can shock you. I wouldn't put it past Kleeb to beat Raimondo in the Democratic primary, for these main reasons: (1) Nebraskans do not like negative campaigning. Despite the relatively mild way Raimondo does it, his tone is more negative than is Kleeb's. (2) Not many of the Democrats in this state are fooled by Raimondo, even though--or maybe even because--he has the Omaha World-Herald's endorsement. Raimondo is the classic DINO ("Democrat In Name Only"). Nebraska runs closed primaries. Only registered Democrats can vote in the Nebraska Democratic Party primary. There may not be many Democrats in Nebraska overall, but we tend to vote in our primaries against those running for Democratic nominations who get the World-Herald's endorsement, just to be ornery.
Besides, Raimondo's call is "to change Washington." If he dislikes it so much, why does he want to become part of it? I, for one, do not trust people who say the system is crummy and the system needs fixing, but who still want to run the system. They tend to be out for their own gain more than anything else. I don't think there's that much seriously wrong with the system--only with the poor choices we've made of people to occupy positions in it. I'm not alone in my belief that someone like Kleeb, who makes it plain that he wants to work together with others to get the system to work better, sends a much more positive message than does someone like Raimondo, who despite his stated desire to change things, is running the same old negative campaign.
So go forth and vote tomorrow, Nebraskans. Just remember: only once! Till November, that is.
Yes, tomorrow is--at long last--Nebraska's primary election day for 2008. In typical Nebraska fashion, we have choices among an odd list of candidates. In the Democratic Party primary for the US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating, we can choose between Tony Raimondo and Scott Kleeb (pronounced "Klebb"). Raimondo is a Republican-turned-Democrat, most probably to take a clearer path to a nomination. He's also a businessman who dies his hair [which wouldn't matter but it's cheap and badly done, and it looks worse than a bad comb-over, all suggesting that Raimondo has some serious self-delusion problems--Ed.] and who keeps saying we need to elect him "to change Washington." He subtly insults his Democratic Party opponent by calling him "an academic," and the Republican candidate (running unopposed) as a "lifelong politician."
Kleeb is young, and is an academic in that he teaches history courses at one of the state colleges. But the tone of his campaign has been more positive in that he's stressing "it's not a matter of right or left" and "it's what my grandfather taught me--a politics of service, not of self." In a western Nebraska populist way, it's an appeal for the partisans to take off their boxing gloves and work together for everyone's benefit. For my money, it's a much more mature campaign approach than Raimondo's. Then again, Kleeb has a lead foot and has run up a ton of speeding tickets covering western Nebraska's expansive spaces. This will not endear him to the majority of generally law-abiding Nebraskans.
One would almost be sure that the Republican candidate, Mike Johanns, former mayor of Lincoln, former Nebraska governor, former US Secretary of Agriculture, will win automatically come November. After all, Johanns is popular, and his association with Dubya's administration hasn't seemed to hurt him. But Johanns is a Democrat-turned-Republican. There are plenty of people in the western part of this state who will hold that against him even though he switched parties years ago, mostly so that he'd have a clear path to the governorship back when he ran for and won that office. He won it, by the way, by winning the two major population centers of the state: Omaha, because business interests perceived him to be a good choice, and Lincoln, because the university and government-oriented population there knew him and liked him. He got the votes he got in the western part of the state because a lot of people there voted by party affiliation only.
I can hear the program hawkers now: "You can't tell the players without a scorecard! Get your programs here!" Not that party-switching is new around here. Those of you who remember the late Nebraska US Senator Ed Zorinsky and our own current senior US Senator, Ben Nelson, just to name two, know that.
But back to tomorrow: Johanns' ad is more like Kleeb's in tone than Raimondo's, but it's Muzak rendition of Tom Petty's Won't Back Down oddly jarring. Still, it seems like Kleeb and Johanns are on the same page, at least. It would be fun to see their campaigns against each other come fall. Raimondo has made it clear that he'll just attack Johanns as being a Washington insider. Well, I have news for Raimondo: no one is going to "change Washington" all by himself, especially as a first-term junior senator from a relatively low-in-population state. So Raimondo is already falling into a typically Republican pattern of making promises he cannot or will not keep. That won't wash with many of the voters I know, be they Democrats, Republicans, Greens, or independents.
I do love the politics in this state! At some level, there's always unpredictability. Despite Nebraska's well-deserved reputation as one of the reddest of the so-called Red states, the way Nebraskans will vote in any given election can shock you. I wouldn't put it past Kleeb to beat Raimondo in the Democratic primary, for these main reasons: (1) Nebraskans do not like negative campaigning. Despite the relatively mild way Raimondo does it, his tone is more negative than is Kleeb's. (2) Not many of the Democrats in this state are fooled by Raimondo, even though--or maybe even because--he has the Omaha World-Herald's endorsement. Raimondo is the classic DINO ("Democrat In Name Only"). Nebraska runs closed primaries. Only registered Democrats can vote in the Nebraska Democratic Party primary. There may not be many Democrats in Nebraska overall, but we tend to vote in our primaries against those running for Democratic nominations who get the World-Herald's endorsement, just to be ornery.
Besides, Raimondo's call is "to change Washington." If he dislikes it so much, why does he want to become part of it? I, for one, do not trust people who say the system is crummy and the system needs fixing, but who still want to run the system. They tend to be out for their own gain more than anything else. I don't think there's that much seriously wrong with the system--only with the poor choices we've made of people to occupy positions in it. I'm not alone in my belief that someone like Kleeb, who makes it plain that he wants to work together with others to get the system to work better, sends a much more positive message than does someone like Raimondo, who despite his stated desire to change things, is running the same old negative campaign.
So go forth and vote tomorrow, Nebraskans. Just remember: only once! Till November, that is.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Snakes! Why'd It Have To Be Snakes?
"Indiana, he's my man
"He's my hero, I'm his biggest fan . . ."
[try singing it to the tune of the main title theme of the Raiders movies--it works]
I hate to admit it, but I am excited that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about to invade movie theaters nationwide. I've been a fan of Harrison Ford's way back since American Graffiti was in initial release, and of George Lucas's for the same film. Of Steven Spielberg's? Since Jaws. Well, the first half of Jaws, anyway.
However, I was skeptical about this fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series until I heard that (1) Ford was going to play Indy at his own real age--'cause as good as Ford still looks, I don't think any 65-year-old can play 30-something realistically, and (2) Karen Allen would reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We should get answers to some questions that have long plagued us--like did their relationship 10 years before Raiders end because Indy left Marian at the alter, or did he just seduce her and then dump her? And is Shia LaBeouf's character Indy's and Marian's son? (According to what I've heard, the answer to this is "yes.")
But now, I can hardly wait to see it. This is additionally miraculous because I no longer much enjoy seeing movies in theaters. Too much talking, too much cell phone silliness, too much loudness from the speakers--going to the movies hasn't been "going to the movies" for a long, long time.
I'm going to make the exception to see this one, though. From the trailer and the buzz, it looks to be just as good, funny, and exciting as any of the first three. In other words, well worth the time and frustrations of seeing it in a theater.
As part of the pre-release hype, the Omaha World-Herald has been asking readers to submit their favorite moments from the first three films. My all-time favorite moment so far comes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: it's the scene wherein Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery) hugs his son tight once he realizes that Indy didn't go over the cliff with the Nazi tank. The feelings washing over Indy's face at that moment--the sense of relief, of reconciliation, of redemption--are wondrous. He finally is getting the one and only thing he ever wanted from his father--unconditional love. And then, of course, it's right back to business as usual, Saving The World. The breeze blowing Indy's fedora back to him when his father drops him and Indy collapses to his knees, exhausted, is Spielberg's version of the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: it's Fate knocking at the door.
My second most favorite moment all-time also comes from The Last Crusade: it's the entire back-story of how Indy became Indy. River Phoenix was brilliant as young Indiana Jones [his death in real life was too tragic for one so young and talented--did you know he'd also played Ford's character's elder son in The Mosquito Coast? For my money, that's Ford's finest role, though it's incredibly painful to watch.--Ed.] Besides, it's screamingly funny and incredibly inventive. And it all makes perfect sense, given the context of what we already know about our intrepid archaeologist.
My favorite "moment" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is actually the mine car roller coaster ride. It's a perfect encapsulation of what Indiana Jones movies are all about: extremely high production values, excitement, danger, humor, and revealing glimpses of the characters' inner selves, all delivered at breakneck speed. It literally careens almost off the tracks, without ever going too far over the edge into irrelevant campiness.
It's much more difficult to pick a favorite moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I watched it again last night, and realized just how much I'd been taking for granted of late. The entire movie is wonderful. It was unique when it was released in 1981; it remains so today. Though if I had to pick only one moment, it would be the one where the scimitar-wielding Arab in black is threatening Indy and with a look of perfect weariness, Indy takes out his pistol and shoots the guy. It gets the biggest and longest laugh of the movie. As I understand it, it was also Harrison Ford's idea. They'd been filming all day, he was suffering from dysentery, and he just wanted to be done. Spielberg and Lucas are to be commended for recognizing the brilliance of the moment and letting it stand, instead of filming the long "whip vs. scimitar" fight sequence in the original script.
No, I'm not objective about any of this. Harrison Ford has been an oddly significant presence in my life in many weird ways. My first date with my now ex-husband was to see Star Wars back when it was first released in 1977. We saw Raiders of the Lost Ark the night we got engaged in 1981. And the night I nearly died from my lung disease and it was finally diagnosed correctly was on Harrison Ford's birthday in 1988.
I wonder, though: at each of those moments, I thought Harrison Ford was my good luck charm. Given the way things have turned out, however, maybe I should hate him instead of being such a fan . . .
"He's my hero, I'm his biggest fan . . ."
[try singing it to the tune of the main title theme of the Raiders movies--it works]
I hate to admit it, but I am excited that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about to invade movie theaters nationwide. I've been a fan of Harrison Ford's way back since American Graffiti was in initial release, and of George Lucas's for the same film. Of Steven Spielberg's? Since Jaws. Well, the first half of Jaws, anyway.
However, I was skeptical about this fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series until I heard that (1) Ford was going to play Indy at his own real age--'cause as good as Ford still looks, I don't think any 65-year-old can play 30-something realistically, and (2) Karen Allen would reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We should get answers to some questions that have long plagued us--like did their relationship 10 years before Raiders end because Indy left Marian at the alter, or did he just seduce her and then dump her? And is Shia LaBeouf's character Indy's and Marian's son? (According to what I've heard, the answer to this is "yes.")
But now, I can hardly wait to see it. This is additionally miraculous because I no longer much enjoy seeing movies in theaters. Too much talking, too much cell phone silliness, too much loudness from the speakers--going to the movies hasn't been "going to the movies" for a long, long time.
I'm going to make the exception to see this one, though. From the trailer and the buzz, it looks to be just as good, funny, and exciting as any of the first three. In other words, well worth the time and frustrations of seeing it in a theater.
As part of the pre-release hype, the Omaha World-Herald has been asking readers to submit their favorite moments from the first three films. My all-time favorite moment so far comes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: it's the scene wherein Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery) hugs his son tight once he realizes that Indy didn't go over the cliff with the Nazi tank. The feelings washing over Indy's face at that moment--the sense of relief, of reconciliation, of redemption--are wondrous. He finally is getting the one and only thing he ever wanted from his father--unconditional love. And then, of course, it's right back to business as usual, Saving The World. The breeze blowing Indy's fedora back to him when his father drops him and Indy collapses to his knees, exhausted, is Spielberg's version of the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: it's Fate knocking at the door.
My second most favorite moment all-time also comes from The Last Crusade: it's the entire back-story of how Indy became Indy. River Phoenix was brilliant as young Indiana Jones [his death in real life was too tragic for one so young and talented--did you know he'd also played Ford's character's elder son in The Mosquito Coast? For my money, that's Ford's finest role, though it's incredibly painful to watch.--Ed.] Besides, it's screamingly funny and incredibly inventive. And it all makes perfect sense, given the context of what we already know about our intrepid archaeologist.
My favorite "moment" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is actually the mine car roller coaster ride. It's a perfect encapsulation of what Indiana Jones movies are all about: extremely high production values, excitement, danger, humor, and revealing glimpses of the characters' inner selves, all delivered at breakneck speed. It literally careens almost off the tracks, without ever going too far over the edge into irrelevant campiness.
It's much more difficult to pick a favorite moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I watched it again last night, and realized just how much I'd been taking for granted of late. The entire movie is wonderful. It was unique when it was released in 1981; it remains so today. Though if I had to pick only one moment, it would be the one where the scimitar-wielding Arab in black is threatening Indy and with a look of perfect weariness, Indy takes out his pistol and shoots the guy. It gets the biggest and longest laugh of the movie. As I understand it, it was also Harrison Ford's idea. They'd been filming all day, he was suffering from dysentery, and he just wanted to be done. Spielberg and Lucas are to be commended for recognizing the brilliance of the moment and letting it stand, instead of filming the long "whip vs. scimitar" fight sequence in the original script.
No, I'm not objective about any of this. Harrison Ford has been an oddly significant presence in my life in many weird ways. My first date with my now ex-husband was to see Star Wars back when it was first released in 1977. We saw Raiders of the Lost Ark the night we got engaged in 1981. And the night I nearly died from my lung disease and it was finally diagnosed correctly was on Harrison Ford's birthday in 1988.
I wonder, though: at each of those moments, I thought Harrison Ford was my good luck charm. Given the way things have turned out, however, maybe I should hate him instead of being such a fan . . .
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Is It What He Said, Or Did The Press Miss The Nuances?
The Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, also known as "the Woodstock of Capitalism," just concluded this year's festivities in Omaha. CEO Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha," presided over events as diverse as a special shopping excursion to Borsheim's Jewelry and Fine Gifts, dinners at Gorat's Steakhouse, private bridge games, and the meeting itself.
Shareholders from all over the world come to Omaha for this event, to bask in Buffett's investing brilliance and to hear him deliver his evaluations on "life, the universe, and everything" [apologies to Douglas Addams--Ed.]. One of Warren's gems this year was to note that "risk is inherent in capitalism" as his reason for not helping bail out individuals trapped in the mortgage lending crisis.
Mr. Buffett is usually very wise and practical--for a maven of capitalism, he lives relatively modestly; he supports Planned Parenthood; he doesn't believe in investing in things he doesn't completely understand (one of the main reasons Berkshire Hathaway did not get caught when the so-called "dot.com" bubble bust). But I must disagree with his take on the mortgage lending crisis.
He did say that people who were misled about the adjustable rate mortgages they took should get some relief, but his implication is that many, many people were not misled and that their present problems are due to their own greed, so they should suffer the consequences and learn from their mistakes. (1) Is that even true? (2) Why doesn't he apply this same logic to the mortgage companies who lent exorbitant sums willy-nilly to people who really shouldn't have received such largesse in the first place?
The root problem is that we don't actually have true capitalism. Those with money and power influence legislation so that they get to reap the benefits of their money and power without taking any of the risks of doing the same. Joe Schmo, individual, is not afforded these same advantages, however. It's upside down. Collective greed, massed in companies to maximize power and influence, gets protected . . . and the majority of the burden is borne by those who can afford it the least. The little guy carries the big guys on his back. No wonder things break down and individuals' lives are thrown into chaos at the same time the biggest companies are reporting record profits. Anybody out there ever hear of noblesse oblige? Apparently not.
It's the same reason we need labor unions but much union-protecting legislation has been eviscerated of late. It's the same reason the US Supreme Court until after FDR's "court-packing scheme" in the 1930s, claimed that corporations, being artificial persons, had equal and identical bargaining power to individual job-seekers. It's the same reason the Fed will bail out Bear-Stearns but won't help individual mortgagors . . . except for the ones who don't really need it. The only individual mortgagors who will get relief under Dubya's plans are the ones who are not behind on their payments and whose credit is otherwise good. But the people who've been struggling along and whose crises are more immediate are hung out to dry. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Them what has, gets. The rest of us gets screwed."
Then again, I'm basing my criticism of Mr. Buffett's remarks on a news report I heard yesterday on the radio. I, in turn, should know better than to accept what any reporter says without checking to make sure he didn't miss any nuances in what he's quoting. Context matters. I'll check further and post any changes to my analysis soon.
On the third hand, Mr. Buffett is also known to have said, "money cannot buy happiness." True enough. I wish, however, he'd indicated some understanding of the concept that the lack of money sure causes a lot of distress, especially when it forces people to choose between such frivolous things as eating or buying needed prescription medicines.
Shareholders from all over the world come to Omaha for this event, to bask in Buffett's investing brilliance and to hear him deliver his evaluations on "life, the universe, and everything" [apologies to Douglas Addams--Ed.]. One of Warren's gems this year was to note that "risk is inherent in capitalism" as his reason for not helping bail out individuals trapped in the mortgage lending crisis.
Mr. Buffett is usually very wise and practical--for a maven of capitalism, he lives relatively modestly; he supports Planned Parenthood; he doesn't believe in investing in things he doesn't completely understand (one of the main reasons Berkshire Hathaway did not get caught when the so-called "dot.com" bubble bust). But I must disagree with his take on the mortgage lending crisis.
He did say that people who were misled about the adjustable rate mortgages they took should get some relief, but his implication is that many, many people were not misled and that their present problems are due to their own greed, so they should suffer the consequences and learn from their mistakes. (1) Is that even true? (2) Why doesn't he apply this same logic to the mortgage companies who lent exorbitant sums willy-nilly to people who really shouldn't have received such largesse in the first place?
The root problem is that we don't actually have true capitalism. Those with money and power influence legislation so that they get to reap the benefits of their money and power without taking any of the risks of doing the same. Joe Schmo, individual, is not afforded these same advantages, however. It's upside down. Collective greed, massed in companies to maximize power and influence, gets protected . . . and the majority of the burden is borne by those who can afford it the least. The little guy carries the big guys on his back. No wonder things break down and individuals' lives are thrown into chaos at the same time the biggest companies are reporting record profits. Anybody out there ever hear of noblesse oblige? Apparently not.
It's the same reason we need labor unions but much union-protecting legislation has been eviscerated of late. It's the same reason the US Supreme Court until after FDR's "court-packing scheme" in the 1930s, claimed that corporations, being artificial persons, had equal and identical bargaining power to individual job-seekers. It's the same reason the Fed will bail out Bear-Stearns but won't help individual mortgagors . . . except for the ones who don't really need it. The only individual mortgagors who will get relief under Dubya's plans are the ones who are not behind on their payments and whose credit is otherwise good. But the people who've been struggling along and whose crises are more immediate are hung out to dry. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Them what has, gets. The rest of us gets screwed."
Then again, I'm basing my criticism of Mr. Buffett's remarks on a news report I heard yesterday on the radio. I, in turn, should know better than to accept what any reporter says without checking to make sure he didn't miss any nuances in what he's quoting. Context matters. I'll check further and post any changes to my analysis soon.
On the third hand, Mr. Buffett is also known to have said, "money cannot buy happiness." True enough. I wish, however, he'd indicated some understanding of the concept that the lack of money sure causes a lot of distress, especially when it forces people to choose between such frivolous things as eating or buying needed prescription medicines.
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