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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Who Won the '58 FA Cup?

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

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

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

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

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

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

-->

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Adding Insult To Injury

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Never Teach A Pig To Sing

It Wastes Your Time And Annoys The Pig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

It Doesn't Matter WHY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

At Least It's Truth In Advertising

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

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

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

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

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

A balance of power, as it were.

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Privacy, Schmivacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here endeth the American Dream.

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Connect ALL The Dots, Please

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

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

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

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

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

Ixnay On The Ottenray!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strict Constructionist--NOT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Modest Proposal

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

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

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

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

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People Listen, But Are They Really Paying Any Attention?

I have a friend who is very intelligent yet who insists that Paul Simon's song "I Am A Rock" is the ultimate anthem to independence. This mystifies me, as I am equally sure that the song is the ultimate expression of lonely, agonized pain. Of course, my friend was not an English major, so perhaps it is not surprising that he doesn't see the literary devices in Simon's truly poetic lyrics which reveal Simon's clear intent.

The character singing the song is trying to convince us and himself that he is what he claims to be, "a rock . . . an island" who "feels no pain" and who "never cries." He is frantic to do this because he knows in his heart (even if he doesn't know it consciously) that just the opposite is true. If he really were so strong and independent, he'd be out among people, loudly proclaiming his strength, not hiding alone in his room, looking out at and down on the cold and impersonal world. (Hence the images of "cold and dark December" and a "silent shroud of snow.") Also note how the "and an island never cries" lyric seems to stumble to a halt at the song's end. The hesitancy with which it is sung shows the character's own lack of belief in what he's singing.

Besides, earlier in the song he says he is "hiding" in his room. Someone who was really so strong and independent most definitely would not be "hiding." There are additional literary devices that can be teased out of the song, but I've made my point. Nor is my friend's misinterpretation unique. Other people--lots of them--have misunderstood or misinterpreted other songs over the years, too.

When I was a junior in high school [Yes, back in the Dark Ages--Ed.], the song of choice for every prom seemed to be Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven." Here is a song about someone full of self-delusion, who thinks she can buy happiness because she is rich. This strikes me as not being the most appropriate theme for a prom, but I guess no one on any of the prom committees got past the words "stairway to Heaven" and thought that was a great image to use for the prom's theme.

In the same vein, starting a year or two earlier, Carly Simon's song "The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be (You Want To Marry Me)" seemingly got played at every wedding reception and even during some weddings--despite the fact that this song is most assuredly NOT a paean to love and marriage. It's the somber cry of disillusionment of a woman who feels trapped and who has no other options but to marry the man who's asked her, despite her knowing her future will be full of isolation, loneliness, and despair, as the song's lyrics make plain. No irony here. It's stated flat out. Yet nearly no one gets beyond the title lyric to see what the song really means.

I see this tendency to ignore what's really being said also affecting and infecting people's ability to examine and digest the news. How anyone listening objectively to the news can continue to support not just Dubya's administration, but also John McCain's run to become "Dubya, Part III" is totally unfathomable to me. Yet (at least in these parts) a lot of people still do support both Dubya and McCain.

Many times it's because the people doing so presume that (1) anyone who disagrees with them is biased [but they never bother to examine their own biases first--Ed.] and (2) [and worse--Ed.] anyone who disagrees with them is a liberal. Gasp! Oh, horrors! That's a fate worse than death to some of the people around here. Yet neither of their suppositions is intrinsically true. But they will not or cannot see how their own biases and presuppositions color their view of the world. [Feel free here to break into a chorus of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black."--Ed.]

I will admit that some of my friends just don't think deeply about any of these matters. They presume that the President (when he's a Republican, that is, and "just like us") would be incapable of doing anything harmful to the country, so they think it is impossible for him to do anything harmful to the country. Even when it's plain as day that he has done harm to the country, they don't believe he could, therefore he has not. "Don't confuse me with the facts--I've made up my mind."

My mother--who is correct about this as she is about so many other things--blames our collectively increasingly short attention span on TV and the Internet. As said span gets shorter and shorter, we pay less and less close attention to things that require sustained thought, and pretty soon, we are incapable of paying attention to much of anything. And so TV and Internet segments in turn get shorter and shorter, starting a vicious cycle that ultimately will leave us unable to pay attention to ANYthing for more than about 5 seconds at a time--without being bored and turning to something else . . . for another 5 seconds. Our collective ruination cannot be far behind.

For Shame! For Shame!

In the past few days, I have received several emails (from people I've known most of my life--heck, I'm related to some of them) that are full of the most vile lies and frightening predictions about what's going to happen to this country if Barack Obama is elected president. I am stunned by the viciousness of their tone. I am shocked by their hatefulness. I am saddened beyond measure by what they show about how little we as a nation have learned in the past 40-plus years.

Not only do these emails claim that Obama is a Muslim (he most emphatically is NOT), they claim he's already in league with terrorists and is literally going to hand the US over to them if he's elected. Their tone is so extreme that I can see their writers spitting, spewing, and frothing at the mouth.

Now, my correspondents did not pen these emails themselves. They just forwarded them to me, either because they think I agree with them (how wrong is that?) or because they are trying to educate me. I certainly got some schooling, but not necessarily in the way my correspondents intended.

I refuse to quote from the email screeds because I do not want to add even one iota to their credibility quotient [Zero plus one iota is one iota, after all.--Ed.]. I also deleted them from my computer as soon as finished them. Yes, I read them all the way through. Everyone is entitled to a hearing. Besides, I was in such a state of disbelief that people whom I consider friends could say such things, that I was hoping that the emails would end by saying, " . . . NOT!" No such luck. I am left with a filthy taste in my mouth and a deep wish I'd never read the things to begin with.

The original writers are the very people Obama indelicately called "bitter" in his speech in San Francisco several months ago. Believe me, calling these people "bitter" is an understatement. But what saddens me the most is that the writers feel so free to express their bigotry in such vile ways. I know we collectively have a long way to go, but I thought race relations in this country had improved in innumerable little ways which in turn would bring about long-term improvements. Again, no such luck.

The original writers of these embarrassments are at heart afraid. They seem to think that by giving an opportunity to someone not 100% just like them means they are losing something and that they will thus be diminished or reduced somehow as a result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Diversity in success improves all our lives. But they are acting like cornered, wounded animals. They are jaw-droppingly vicious and irrational in their attacks on Obama.

I would like very much to help them, to reassure them, to correct their errors of fact and logic, but I know I cannot. I'd get attacked as being just another one of those evil. liberal, elitists who are trying to ruin the country. I am neither evil nor elitist. I am liberal on most issues, but not because I presuppose the liberal stand is the correct one. I am liberal where I am liberal because I think through the issues using facts and logic to get to what is the best result for the benefit of my country. I LOVE my country, thank you very much. That's why all this blind, raging hatred so distresses me.

Besides, Mark Twain was right: Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Postscript: I am not calling anyone a pig, either. It's just a metaphor!

There Are No Atheists In Foxholes . . . Or In Tornado Shelters

The storms of the past 10 days or so must be the single worst stretch of bad weather I've experienced in all my years in Nebraska. And I was lucky enough to have missed most of the worst of it. [My heart aches for the families of the Boy Scouts who were killed or injured at their camp in Little Sioux, Iowa.--Ed.] Still, it was bad enough.

My house has the good (or bad, take your pick) fortune to be located in the eastern part of Bellevue, equidistant from Offutt Air Force Base and City Hall. I thus get double weather warnings, as the base and the city do not coordinate their tornado sirens. The base's sirens sound when there's an immediate risk to the base; the city's, when there is an immediate risk to the city. Usually, they do not sound at the same time. I have learned from experience that when the base's sirens sound, the threat tends to be far enough south and west of my house that I can disregard the sirens. Likewise, when the city's sirens sound, the threat is to the north and west of my house, and again, I can disregard the sirens. However, when both the base's and city's sirens sound at the same time, the threat is headed right at me, and my moving immediately to the safest part of the basement is in order.

I spent a lot of time in the basement over the past 10 days. Usually late at night. With the power out. I couldn't even watch the Weather Channel for updates. Nor were the cats around--they disappeared into some secret nether region as soon as the first thunderclap sounded, and they didn't come out till well after the storms had passed. On the other hand, once they did come out, they attached themselves to my ankles and shadowed me even when they normally would be napping or otherwise ignoring me.

This has been traumatic for all of us. Every time I hear of a beloved pet that gets lost or killed in a storm, I want to cry. I don't know what I'd do without my "kids." I know they couldn't survive long without me, either, should we get hit by a tornado and separated.

Nor do I want to sound like a "Nervous Nellie." Nor do I want to make the mistake of confusing "weather" with "climate." But I have to wonder, when this many storms come this fast and this early, and daily high temperatures that we don't typically experience till August are occurring in early June, what the heck is going on?

I should not be as astonished as I am that people deny the human impact on climate change. After all, the oil companies and their ilk have a vested interest in denying it; the scientific "experts" [read that "quacks"--Ed.] who deny it are well paid by those who have that vested interest in denying it; and the individuals who deny it seem to engage in other activities that preclude thinking, like getting their "facts" from Fox News.

As a simple matter of logic, however, it is irrefutable: humans are having a massive impact on global climate. The worldwide population of over 6 billion [yes, that's "billion" with a "B."--Ed.] has been on this earth for only a little more than two hundred and fifty years . . . coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Coincidentally enough, the Industrial Revolution is also the beginning of drastic changes to what humans use for transportation, fuel, manufacturing, and just about every other activity in which we as a species engage.

The volume alone--the population is over 6 times bigger than it's been in all previous history--makes a huge difference. For a visual representation, put red food coloring in an ounce of water. One or two drops hardly shows. Several more make light pink. The whole bottle makes it blood red. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that the higher the quantity, the more extreme the result. You cannot compare the climate of the past few centuries with all the previous geological records and conclude what we are experiencing now is just a "normal swing in the climate cycle." Our mere presence in record-shattering numbers has introduced a variable into the calculation that has to be analyzed on its own terms.

And we know by looking at air quality statistics in, for example, Los Angeles over the past 40-50 years that humans can make things much, much worse or much, much better depending on what they decide to do and how they do it.

If I were to be granted one wish, I'd have to wish that people would think things through before just reacting along what they perceive as their favored political lines. Not everything in this world is political. Nor should it be. But I guess it's easier for many to cling to what they "know," the facts and logic be damned. What a shame! Our collective unwillingness to think or to challenge our presuppositions is going to destroy this planet and everyone and everything on it.