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Friday 31 December 04
SNOOGLE-FLEEJERS...
It appears to be a pretty popular storybook, even 10 years after publication. I ordered it from the library back on Tuesday, 7 December. There are 15 copies of the book available in the greater Cleveland Public Library system. My copy came in today. I read it in about five minutes (all 12 pages) and, as children's books go, found it enjoyable. I'd be happy to read it to any of my nieces or nephews. Susanna, working from the publisher's summary, however, saw something different: A sad little boy that no one will play with because they're mean!, who leave him at the mercy of a monster... but then he finds out the monster and he are actually kindred spirits! Could it be a metaphor for Jimmah and his monstrous buddy, Fidel Castro? Sounds good to me. Here's what the publisher's summary says: When all the other children run off at the sight of a terrifying sea monster, Jeremy, who is unable to walk, discovers a kindred lonely spirit in the baby snoogle-fleejer. This is the reason I try to actually read, see, experience things before I sound off. The person who wrote that summary, hadn't taken the five minutes to read the book. Here's what President Carter wrote: Being crippled, Jeremy was not able to run and play with other children, but he could move around using his crutches. He enjoyed reading and studying and was a happy child. Hmmmm... Jeremy is a happy child, not a sad little boy. Then there is the matter of the mean children who will not play with Jeremy and leave him to the mercy of a monster. Again, in the words of President Carter: All of a sudden an enormous head came out of the waves, and the frightened children screamed, "It's a sea monster!" They all ran away as fast as they could. All except Jeremy. He reached for his crutches, but one of them slid off the rock and fell on the sand just as the strange creature was coming out of the ocean. I don't see the meanness there. Seems pretty much like a standard reaction to a perceived threat. Susanna found the story's opening lines on Amazon: Once upon a time there was a little boy named Jeremy who lived with his mother in a small house near the sea. His mother earned a bare living for the two of them by washing clothes for some of the wealthy families in their town. Her comment on this was: Can you say "class envy", little Jeremy? We wouldn't want Mom thinking she could maybe parley that expertise into a chain of laundromats, would we? No, no, we want to create the image of a crippled little boy barely scraping by with his hard-working mom before making friends with a monster. Now, taking in washing for wealthier families has long been a traditional source of income for women supporting their families. I've heard more than a few stories over the years from successful doctors, lawyers and business professionals who could not thank their hard working mothers enough for the back-breaking labor they performed so that their children might learn to work hard, get good educations and aspire to better lives. Classy envy? No. I just see good solid American self-reliance. The kind of bootstrap attitude we like to emulate. (And no, I don't think that is the same thing as the Horatio Alger myth.) Now, where Susanna might have read and found a legitimate dig, although I don't think it was meant that way, is the crisis in the book. Jeremy's mother becomes ill. She needs an operation that she cannot pay for and does not know what she is going to do. You could see this as an indictment of the American health care system. But I just see a plot twist. I'll leave the solution to those of you who want to read the book. I hate spoilers. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.
RECOUNT FOLLOWUPS...
The basic premise is that there was a two pronged attack to hijack the election in Ohio (and maybe in other states): a) Pad the Bush vote by rigging the vote tabulating machines in primarily Republican counties. b) Suppress the vote in heavily Democratic counties. It's worth reading Friedman's entire rationale. He's asking for additional help with information from the rest of Ohio's counties. I'll be sending an email to Friedman to find out what, if anything, he's discovered. As always, I'll keep everyone posted as the replies roll in. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.Thursday 30 December 04
A JEWISH RESPONSE...
I ran into my co-teacher yesterday morning at the Arabica on Lee—I was doing my usual work, she was waiting to pick her son up from his guitar lesson—and the subject of how we should treat the natural disaster in the Indian Ocean came up. There have been a number of stories in the Mainstream Media and the Blogosphere about the proper response of the United States. I was going to base my comments on what I thought President George W. Bush and the federal government, as my representatives, ought to do; but then I caught myself. There is a principle in investing about using Other People's Money. OPM in finance is a good thing, for the person doing the deal. And when I considered where my thoughts were going on disaster relief I realized I was thinking with OPM. At this point my politically opposite friends (you reading Rick, Susanna and George?) are probably doing Snoopy Dances of Joy.
In most Jewish homes you'll find small metal Tzedakah boxes with a coin-and-bill slot in the top. Before the candles are lit on Shabbat, family members push a few coins or bills into the box and at some point in the year, the collected money is extracted and sent to one or more groups as a donation. How much to put in the boxes is always a question. A couple thousand years ago the rabbis worked it out this way. First, everyone is obligated to give something. Even the beggar in the street is not exempt. The minimum annual gift is one-third of a shekel or somewhere between $1 and $2. Second, if you are of acceptable means, i.e. you have a roof over your head, clothes on your back and you're not missing any meals, then 10 percent of your net annual income is the correct amount. Third, if you are comfortable, i.e, have more than acceptable means, then somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent is correct. Interestingly enough, the rabbis say that with a few exceptions, a person should not give more than 20 percent lest they risk impoverishing themselves. Now, one of the important things is that the rabbis are specific about is that the appropriate amount is calculated on net, not gross, income. The reasoning is that money paid is taxes was never the individual's to distribute in the first place. It comes off the top. So, from the Jewish perspective, OPM—aid derived from tax revenues—doesn't count. Now, there are certain kinds of aid that only a government can provide. Only the U.S. can move an aircraft carrier battle group, for instance, in to provide logistical support. But outside of that narrow scope of tasks, the public sector should not be in the business of spending tax money for disaster aid. Here's the main reason I feel this way: letting the government take care of it let's us pretend that we're off both the financial and moral hooks. We can pretend that we're off the financial hook because we know that a portion of our tax dollars, never mind that it is way below even the 10 percent minimum, is going to aid those in need. We get to ease our conscious by spending money that was never ours to spend in the first place. We can pretend that we're off the moral hook because, without having to truly engage the tragedy, we've done something. For me it's similar to the idea that, I think, there would be a lot more vegetarians in the world if we all had to raise, kill and butcher our own meat. When you put a real face on something, it changes your views forever.
It is so easy to become paralyzed by shear numbers and not do anything; to believe that $10 or even $1 cannot make any difference. I cannot wrap my head around the 120,000-plus death-toll figure reported this morning. But I can imagine one. I can imagine ten. I can deal with those kinds of numbers. And so can you. Deal with it. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.Wednesday 29 December 04
A CONSPIRATORIAL GENERATION...
That one fact, more than any other that I can discern, explains how a third-rate piece of writing has made Dan Brown the mega star that he is. With more than eight million copies sold in the United States, The Da Vinci Code is the book that any author, including myself, would like to have written. Not for any literary reason, but because it has made Dan Brown king of the Best Seller lists. I don't know where he is in the hierarchy of all-time records on the top lists, but it has to be up there. So, where is the conspiracy? Laura Miller does a good job of laying it out on Salon today. In her The Da Vinci Crock, she yanks back the curtain on even the thin "facts" that Brown puts up front in his book. The seed for the story comes from the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Writes Miller: ...a lawsuit was filed against [Dan Brown] for "breach of copyright of ideas and research." The complainants, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, are the coauthors, with Henry Lincoln, of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," a bestseller from the early 1980s. Virtually all the bogus history in "The Da Vinci Code" -- nearly everything, in other words, that today's readers' find so electrifying in Brown's novel -- is lifted from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." This puts both Brown and the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," in a tricky position. Baigent et al. have always maintained that the "facts" supporting their theories are available to any dedicated scholar and that the theories themselves, while unconventional, have been seriously entertained by other "experts," (including some, they claim, in the "upper echelons" of the Roman Catholic Church). Since "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" presents itself as nonfiction, it has been in its authors' interest to downplay how much of it is invented. However, if the "research" and ideas in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are not the original creations of the book's authors, they become harder to copyright, and the possible infringement suit against Brown might be weakened. No one, after all, has a copyright on the facts surrounding Abraham Lincoln's assassination or the Treaty of Versailles. And so, it now becomes a matter of greed. If Baigent and his co-authors step up and admit that they made it all up, then Brown doesn't have a leg to stand on. If the only place he could have gotten his "facts" is their work of fiction, he's screwed and they get a portion of his millions. Anybody want to bet which wins out: integrity or greed? Me either. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.Tuesday 28 December 04
THIS IS NOT LOCAL...
There is rule in journalism that if you can, you try to find the local angle on a story. Most of the time that is a good idea. This is one of the times when it isn't. At last count (Wednesday morning) the death toll has passed 65,000 and continues to climb. Faced with those kinds of numbers, it is just wrong for any publication to run a headline like 3 Americans Dead as the AP did on Sunday. This disaster transcends any and all boundaries. In addition to SEA-EAT, a perfect example of the power of the Internet, Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine is doing a great job of staying on top of the story. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.Monday 27 December 04
RABBIT PELLETS...
Headspace-On my stereo: Paint The Sky With Stars by Enya; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my computer: This Is How Memory Works by Patricia Hampl; On my screen: Deep Space Nine's The Muse (****) and The Visitor (****) directed by David Livingston and written by Rene Echevarria and Michael Taylor, respectively.
"I like your blog, but you know the picture at the bottom? It reminds me of when I'm mowing the lawn and I find a little pile of rabbit pellets." Thanks dad, that really enhances my morning espresso moment. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.
I CANNOT BEGIN TO IMAGINE...
Another element to the tragedy. From The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation's website: Project Warn in Partnership with the Japan US Science Technology and Space Applications Program (JUSTSAP) The purpose of Project Warn is to combine enhanced communications and IT systems to provide warning of impending natural or man-made disasters and to provide on-going communications and remote sensing and GIS support during disaster relief operations. The Clarke Foundation is working with the Pacific Disaster Center, the Asian Disaster Mitigation Organization, the United Nations, and the US and Japanese Governments as coordinated through the JUSTSAP organization to carry out a suitable test and demonstration in this area. In particular a simulation and test is being planned in the Pacific Region in 2005 to determine to how to use the latest information and sensing technology more effectively in the advent that a major Tsunami might impact an Asian country or island. [emphasis mine] Clarke Foundation personnel are providing technical advice and support on a volunteer basis to this project. Is it possible to imagine the horror and overpowering sadness of the scientists who have worked on Project Warn? To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.
TSUMAMI CLEARING HOUSE...
"The number of casualties will be more than most of us can bear." That was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani emotional response to the deaths of 2,752 New Yorkers on 11 September 2001. That tragic number pales before the more than 65,000 dead following the tidal wave that swept shorelines from Somalia to Thailand. That is more than the 63,251 total population of Washington County, Ohio, where I grew up. The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami SEA-EAT blog has been established as a clearing house for information and donation instructions. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.
DAVE DEBATTO RETURNS...
For those following the Sgt. Ford saga, writer Dave DeBatto has posted some follow-up commentary to the Guest Book. While DeBatto has been courteous enough to respond to questions, I can't say the same for Rone Tempest (LA Times Link, 21 December) at the Los Angeles Times. Not that Tempest is under any obligation to respond to a minor-league blogger, and maybe the reporter is on vacation or deadline, but a couple of words would have been nice. I'll keep you'll posted as things develop, or not. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.
RESOLUTIONS...
Today, view every person you find difficult as your partner in character development. View every encounter as an opportunity to develop your positive qualities. All too often I avoid difficult people because I don't like confrontation. Perhaps it's an echo from being a child of divorce who was unsuccessful as a mediator and peacemaker. As usual, however, R. Pliskin hits upon the opportunity to turn a negative into a learning experience for the positive. To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium. Sunday 26 December 04
EMERGENCY ROOM...
In many ways this was a mortality Christmas. In addition to the scare with my father, on Christmas day my youngest sister-in-law's father went into the hospital and was moved from Marietta Memorial to a hospital in Columbus today. My oldest sister-in-law's father had a bout of vertigo Christmas eve and had to cut short his celebrations to go home to rest. And across the country the blogger at I See Invisible People (and our own WebGoddess) ended a year filled with tragedy with the loss of a 10-year-old cousin to a drunken driver. Time passes for all of us at one moment at a time. There can be no moment more important that this one we all share right now. The past is a memory and the future is never dependable. Cherish the now. I do. Comments?Saturday 25 December 04
CHRISTMAS DAY...
The second was a USA Today story picked up by Salon.com about an Arizona National Guard member spending his Christmas in Iraq. His wife had to make trips to the local food bank for her and their two children because his military pay is significantly less than that from his civilian job as a machinist. The need is so great in Phoenix, says Cynde Cerf, a spokeswoman for St. Mary's Food Bank, that the Catholic charity intends to make the National Guard a regular distribution center in January. While a great deal of derision was cast upon Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) premise that it takes a village to raise a child in the '90s, it's clear that communities do a much better job of caring for their own than any government cares to. Comments? Friday 24 December 04
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS...
With due respect to the spirit of the season we set aside petty squabbles and perceived slights. We forget why we were angry about things we can no longer remember. For me it's knowing that the family gathered in the room are the most important people in the world to me, and, no matter how lonely I may feel sometimes, there are people who really do love me. I got into Marietta this morning thanks to a break in the weather. The tree and the lights were all in place. There was a last-minute rush of picking up and toting (don't you just love that word) things down to the basement. Containers of cookies and my mom's fudge (better than any, anywhere) were stacked on the kitchen counter. It was home and a step out of Time. My dad and I spent the afternoon together. We gravitated first to the computer (it's become one of those things-in-common that my dad and I talk about). Then my youngest brother, Jason, dropped in and the three of us shared stories and opinions about nothing really. It was just two sons enjoying being with their father. After Jason went back into the cold to take care of Christmas errands, dad and I went down to the local American Legion hall, where my parents are both members, to cash in a stack of bar chips for a Christmas-case of Bud Lite. The Legion's Christmas party was in full swing and we shared a couple of beers over toothpick food: wienies in sweet and sour sauce, Swedish meatballs, ham, turkey, cheese cubes and crudités. My dad introduced me to a few of his old and new friends and I reintroduced myself to the facility manager, someone whom with I shared a winning season of little league baseball on the Vanguard Paints team the summer between 3rd and 4th grades. (Or was it 4th and 5th? No matter, really.)
Two things are plainly obvious in the shows: first, Benjamin and Jake Sisko love each other. It's a father-son relationship on television that stands out because of its positive intensity. Second, Benjamin Sisko is proud of his son's aspirations to become a writer and supportive of it at every step. It would have been too easy for the writers to have turned Benjamin Sisko into a Star Fleet father who naturally assumes that his son will attend the academy and carry on the tradition, but they went for something real. While, with our mid-western reserve, my family is not big on demonstrations of affection (we are getting better), I know that my father loves me and I him. I also know that he is proud of what I have accomplished and that he has faith that I'll accomplish those things I've set out to do. He has little ways of letting me know that he thinks of me and believes in what I do. Things like telling me that Buck Owens played every weekend in a little bar in Los Angles for 18 years before becoming an overnight success. Things like saving two episodes of Deep Space Nine to share with me on a quiet afternoon before Christmas. Thanks Dad, I love you. Comments?Thursday 23 December 04
REBEL YELL...
What Duty did was to show up at her senior prom wearing a dress with a Confederate Battle Flag motif. The dress, of course, was no surprise to the school's administration and it was waiting for her. According to the story on CNN, school officials told Duty before the prom to not wear the dress. Her response was: since she didn't have another dress, she decided to wear the one she had and see if administrators would change their minds. If you believe that, I've got this really great deal on condos in Baghdad. The money quotes from the story, both fine-tuned for sympathy, were: She said she worked on the design for the dress for four years, though she acknowledged that some might find the Confederate flag offensive. And, my favorite: "Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio," said her lawyer, Earl-Ray Neal." Duty should have stood up and named her protest for what it was: a political statement of her personal beliefs. That would be in the honorable tradition of Free Speech and the First Amendment. What we have instead is a weak stunt that may not have been designed to engender a law suit, but that has resulted in one all the same. If there is a settlement, and I'd bet there will be, anybody want to give me odds on how much of the post-legal-fees cash will go to the Sons of Confederate Veterans? You can't make this stuff up. Comments?
THE UGLY REINDEER AND OTHER PR PLOYS...
One of the things that fascinates me about this particular story is the way American mythology, or fakelore as some call it, is driven by people in sales and marketing. Not only is Rudolph the result of such efforts, but so are the Pledge of Allegiance (written by Francis Bellamy as a way to sell flags); and the lumber-company-public-relations-inspired Paul Bunyan. Comments?Wednesday 22 December 04
GOT TO LOVE THE BRITS...
The writing contest is simple: write a 1,900 to 2,000-word short story inspired by the themes, such as lust, greed, or revenge, of Canterbury Tales, BBC America's interpretations or Chaucer's originals. Entries will be accepted from January 7th through February 21st. To enter you must be 18 years of age or older and a U.S. resident. Submissions will only be accepted from novice writers. Entries are subject to submission guidelines. Now, I'm not sure what qualifies as a novice writer, but I'm going to give it crack anyway. I'll post my entry in the Forum section when I send it off. And while you're at it. Be sure to check out the BBC's Get Writing section. It looks like fun. Comments?
IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE...
According to this morning's Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.: for 101 days, an undetermined portion of 2,300 gallons of waste water daily flowed into the ground via a break in an 8-inch PVC pipe. The waste water was the run off from pressure hoses used to clean railroad diesels while they refueled at the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. facility above the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer near Hauser, Idaho. The aquifer supplies drinking water to some 400,000 residents of the Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, region. The leak was discovered Friday, 10 December. The state-of-art facility opened 1 September. The PVC pipe was believed to have been broken during construction, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. Officials are, of course, hopeful and stress that there is no cause for alarm. Yeah, right. Comments?
EIGHT %^@$* VOTES!...
Because of them, reads a story in this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Washington State is expected later today to announce the end of it's third recount and to name Democrat Christine Gregoire the victor over Republican Dino Rossi by eight votes in the governor's race when King County reports its results. I can only begin to imagine how now Governor-elect Gregoire must feel this morning. I really know nothing about the woman other than that she was supported in the state by someone whose opinion I respect. But I do hope that she takes more than a few moments after the blush of victory fades and doesn't follow the erroneous example of our president by declaring some kind of mandate. Every morning for the next four years she has to look up at the ceiling and realize that half of the voters in Washington thought she was a bad choice to govern their state. If that isn't humbling, I don't know what it is. She has the opportunity now to demonstrate how a person of true character behaves by saying to the that other 50 percent: "I'm your governor too. I hear and understand your concerns and I'm going to act in a manner that is respectful to all Washingtonians." During the recount, the Republican party has done everything it could to stop the process and save the taxpayer's money (I made a small donation to the cause a few weeks ago). Party officials have repeatedly said that Gregoire needed to accept reality and step aside. I have to wonder if failed gubernatorial candidate Rossi will follow his own party's advice to Gregoire. I kind of doubt it. Comments?
AS PROMISED...
The email exchange between myself and anti-[everything] is now posted to the guestbook. Comments?Tuesday 21 December 04
THE LA TIMES LINK...
Back on 5 June, LA Times reporter Rone Tempest filed this story about Sgt. Ford. Interestingly enough, I didn't find any follow-up in the LA Times from Tempest. I dropped a email to the reporter who is now based in Sacramento. I'll see what bubbles up. Comments?
READ THE MEMO...
A lot of the buzz today is about documents related to the use of torture in Iraq obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Request Act filing. The one at the top of everyone's interest is this one, which indicates that there was an Executive Order detailing just how far interrogators would be allowed to go. Comments?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. POWELL...
From Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac today: It's the birthday of the novelist Anthony Powell, born in London (1905). He wrote the longest novel in the English language, A Dance to the Music of Time, which he published in twelve volumes, starting in 1951. It follows a group of English men from their time together in public school just before World War II, through the next fifty years of their lives. Though he was already a successful writer by the time he started working on it, he wrote the whole thing, more than a million words, on an ancient typewriter at a card table squeezed into his bedroom. Anthony Powell said, "As far as I can see, writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work." Comments?
MORE ON JOHN AND SGT. FORD...
Havecoffeewillwrite.com is not the only blog getting the attention of John on the Sgt. Ford issue. At least two other sites have threads running on the same topic: Arianna Huffington's Arianna Online; and anti-[everything]. I'm in an email conversation with the blogger at anti-[everything]. In the next day or so I hope to post that conversation for both of my readers. Comments?
HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE...
BRADLEY VS. HUMVEE...
Time magazine ran a piece last week (How Safe Are Our Troops, 20 December) on the issue of "up-armoring" Humvees. As someone who rode around in Willey's Jeeps (or Peeps, as my father tells me the 1/4-ton trucks were originally called, the Jeep was the 3/4-ton version), I know that it wasn't uncommon to put sandbags on the floorboards for protection from landmines, but the most common way handling getting attacked while driving in a Jeep was to: (a) floor it and get the hell out of there; or (b) un-ass the vehicle and take cover in a ditch. The basic point being that Jeeps were never intended to be combat vehicles.
But not in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's more modern, lighter, Army. An M2 Bradley cost a little more than $3 million. A Humvee (High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle) costs $50,000 for the basic model and another $70,000 or so for the armored version. So, for the money, you can buy 25 Humvees for the cost of one Bradley. But, as Lieutenant General R. Steven Whitcomb,Commander, Third Army "Patton's Own," and Coalition Forces Land Component Command, told reporters last week: The humvee was a vehicle that was not designed to afford armor protection, nor were most of our trucks. They were designed as cargo carriers. The only up-armored humvees, the high-end ones, we had were for our military police forces. They were not for use by -- as we see them used today with the numbers of forces. And there are lots of other problems such as burning out transmissions and engines when you pile on a couple tons of armor. (Ever see what happens when an Chevy S-10 tries to pull a six-ton trailer?) Comments?
I, REPUBLICAN...
Sometimes reading old stuff can be good. While working my way through Chris Muir's back Day-by-Day strips I came across a reference to a piece titled I, Republican at billmon.org's Whiskey Bar (sadly, it seems, now closed). It's a hilarious remake of Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics. One of the many signs of Asimov's greatness is that his laws have become as universal in Science Fiction as the Laws of Newton and Einstein. But the writer of this version missed the opportunity to do something Asimov himself did in one last of his 500-plus (yes, 500-plus! books); add a Law that changes the whole thing. In 1985, Asimov published Robots and Empire, a monumental work for Science Fiction because it united in one universe Asimov's Robot books and, the strangely robot-free, Foundation books. (Writer Greg Bear, who has written in Asimov's Foundation Universe, offers some comments on the Laws.) In Robots and Empire Asimov formulates his Zeroth Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. So, I had to wonder. What might be the Zeroth Law counterpart for the I, Republican list? Here's a couple of suggestions: A Republican may not injure Capitalism, or through inaction, allow Capitalism to come to harm. That one works, but what is the root of the corporation? It's the secret that Henry Ford discovered when he raised his worker's pay to $5 day. If people can't afford to buy what you make, then your corporation (and Capitalism) comes crashing down. So, I think that with one tiny word change, Asimov was still right. A Republican may not injure humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. But I'm not going to hold my breath until that one shows up on the Republican Party platform. Comments?Monday 20 December 04
CALLING HOME...
Over at Democracy For America there is a simple and powerful story about how real people show real love and support for our veterans. Gov. Howard Dean's people got together funds to pay for 100,000 calling minutes and DFA matched that amount with a further 100,000 calling minutes. The cards are being distributed to nine veterans hospital in seven states so that sick and injured veterans can call home over the holidays. Sgt. Chris Missick writes about his Christmas memories in his A Line in the Sand. He also writes about a great, 11-year-old program that provided a Christmas gift to every soldier of the rank E4 (corporal in the Army, petty officer 3rd class in the Navy, corporal in the Marine Corps and senior airman in the Air Force) and below. I almost changed the word "Christmas" to "Holiday" in that last sentence, but I just couldn't. I'm Jewish, so I could go on and on about sensitivity, but in the service that all kind of blurs. That someone back home, who you don't know, cares enough about you to thank you for your sacrifice is enough. I can't imagine anyone in the service becoming upset because a caring American got the holiday wrong. It really is the thought that counts.
Please write at least one note. Here's a copy of the brief (you're limited to 1,000 characters, including spaces; this one is 980 characters) message I sent: Dear Sailor, Back in the day, Operation Dear Abby used snail mail and I remember how important those stuffed mail bags were to us all. Wherever you are serving always know that Americans have never waived in their pride and gratitude for the men and women who chose to stand between our families and those who would harm them. There is no more honorable task. As a small holiday gift, I'd like to offer you the use of my website (http://www.havecoffeewillwrite.com) to post any pictures or messages you'd care to share with your family or with the rest of America. If you'd like, I can set up a section of the forum pages just for your use. I think it is amazing that the Internet allows us such instant communication with the people we care about. Thank you for your service, for continuing the traditions of us who go down to the sea in ships and for making us all proud. May you come home safely and soon to those you love, and whom you love. Jeff Hess, GMM2 U.S.S. Bainbridge, CGN-25 You can't know how important those words can be. Comments?
WE'RE NOT IDIOTS...
Dan Piraro is one of our comic geniuses. I look forward to his Bizaro single-panel every morning. Because I get the panels from his website, I see them time-delayed by two weeks. But since I still get one a day, and generally Piraro's panels are not time sensitive, it's not a problem.
The panel this morning, however, ticked me off. If I hadn't taken part in the recount last week I might not have been so upset, but conversations with a handful of my fellow recounters have made me more sensitive to this issue. Intelligence is not a coastal or urban thing. I had to speak up several times to interrupt conversations where urban non-Republicans were attacking the intelligence and moral values of those who lived in the rural parts of our country. Bruce Tinsely hits it on the head with his Mallard Filmore strip this morning.
As long as we continue to assume that anyone who does not agree with our political, social or moral point-of-views must either be an idiot or evil, we are going to have great difficulty making any progress in this country. That is not to say that there aren't idiots or evil people out there. There are. But they're not some great shambling horde. Remember the bumper sticker from the '80s: The Moral Majority is Neither? Comments?
INDULGENCE VS. COMPASSION...
They realized that they were raising their children with a sense of entitlement and teaching them that the joy was in the getting, not the giving. They turned it around the next year by telling their children that they had to give a portion of their "gift budget" to help other children. The mother used a gift catalog from the not-for-profit she worked for that listed things like goats, chickens and other practical gifts. The method worked. Her daughter didn't give up one gift, she gave up all her gifts to buy things the children in the catalog really needed. Comments?Sunday 19 December 04
THE FORD PHOTOS...
As promised, and with much thanks to our webgoddess who put the photos together using Paint Shop Pro 6.0, here are the two photos of Sgt. Frank Ford. The photo on the left is enlarged from salon.com. The photo on the right is from veriSEAL.com I think it's clear that Sgt. Frank is, indeed, wearing a SEAL patch. Now the question is, is he entitled by Navy or Army Regulations to do so? David DeBatto indicates he may be. The folks at veriSEAL say no. I've dropped a note to authentiSEAL to ask their opinion. I'll keep you posted.
APPALACHIAN STORIES...
DAVE DEBATTO RESPONDS...
I received a detailed email reply from writer Dave DeBatto this morning. I'm posting his reply to the guestbook. DeBatto writes more than well enough for his words, with one minor exception, to need no embellishment from me. The small exception is a possible confusion between dueling SEAL sites. John referred to veriSEAL.org which does list Sgt. Ford on it's Wall of Shame. Dave refers to authentiSEAL.org which does not list Sgt. Ford. Readers may assess the two websites for themselves. Comments?
WHAT IDEA YOU HEARD...
Every morning I get a number of emails from services I've subscribed to. The one that I've received for the longest time is Rabbi Pliskin's Daily Lift from Aish.com. I save about one in ten or so for future reference. This morning's is one of the keepers.
What idea that you heard had the biggest impact on your life? Think of someone you can share that with. If you can't think of a specific person, share it with a stranger. Simply say, "I heard this idea, what do you think about it?" I don't know off the top of my head what idea I've heard has had the biggest impact on my life. There are quite a few and it's difficult to pick a No. 1. I'll be pondering the question for the rest of the day and I'll post my response when I have a top pick. Comments?
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
I thought I was going to be teaching this morning, but the snow-advisory system malfunctioned and I drove about 15 miles round trip through some pretty nasty snow for nothing. It was too early for the plows to have done much more than make a first pass at the main roads, but I made it safely there, found out school had been canceled, and turned around, after calling students to let them know to stay home, to park myself near the fire at Arabica. It's still coming down pretty thick but I've got my coffee, the fireplace a parking space with a broken meter and plenty of work to do, so I'm at my favorite table for most of the day. Comments?Saturday 18 December 04
GUESTBOOK DISCUSSION...
Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Moonlight Mile (***) directed by Brad Silbering. Things are working a little differently today. I've found myself spending my blogging time in conversation with a guest to the site concerning a salon.com article by Dave DeBatto that I commented on back on Wednesday, 8 December: Making Uncle Joe Proud. The guest, John, has leveled a number of charges against the character of Sgt. Frank Ford, DeBatto's source for the story. His charges are reasonable enough that I'm willing, after further consideration, to give him the benefit of the doubt on what he says are Sgt. Ford's flaws. A deeper problem arises however in that those charges do not shed light on to whether or not the assertions made by Sgt. Ford are true. Anytime the character of someone is used to question the truth of what they say, I want to carefully watch the lady on the table. At the core, I want to know this: is what Sgt. Ford reports he said to his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, true? The only way to ascertain that is through an investigation by the proper military authorities. While I know that those who have not served in the military often do not trust such internal investigations, my experience leads me to extend that trust without reservation. The great majority of service men and women fully understand the absolute need for integrity. Without it, the long honorable line crumbles. Comments?Friday 17 December 04
RECOUNT FINISHED...
Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Moonlight Mile (***) directed by Brad Silbering.
The tension was much higher on Friday. There were whispered messages that we would all be meeting across the street at lunch to "discuss" what was going on, but since I had to leave at noon for tutoring a student, I didn't get to hear what the "what" was. I'm sending an email to the organizers to see what it might of been. If I hear anything, I'll post it here. One of the numbers that we repeatedly heard during the morning was that we had 1,436 cases to examine. Interestingly enough, the Official Results Report, run 29 November, lists 1,458 precincts in Cuyahoga County. I have no explanation for the discrepancy. Perhaps the number we heard was wrong. But I've got to wonder what happened to the other 22 precincts and where they might have been located.
What we did find was a number of precinct that either had too many ballot page assemblies (seven precincts and a total of 10 extra page assemblies) or missing ballot page assemblies (eight precincts and a total of 23 missing page assemblies). Now, there doesn't seem to be anything sinister about this. For the record, you can examine my my tally sheets from Friday morning, here and here. We found that a number of ballot page assemblies were incorrectly returned to the Board of Elections in black "grips," large, but simple suitcases intended to hold "non-secure" items. The metal cases, which hold the page assemblies, as well as blank and completed ballots are sealed at both ends of the process. It is likely, said Elections Coordinator Jacqui Maiden, that the missing page assemblies were packed in the empty ballot boxes which are returned to the warehouse and not the Board of Elections offices. If that is the case, they were most likely disassembled there, Maiden said. Comments?Thursday 16 December 04
MORE CHRISMUKA INSANITY...
Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Jabberwocky (**) directed by Terry Gilliam.
It delighted me in that it demonstrates that religion is not the driving force the religious wrong keeps trying to make it out to be. People just want to have fun, to come together and share good times with family and friends. Faux News Bill O'Reilly notwithstanding, I'm beginning to think that the total commercialization of all winter religious holidays is a good idea. To see where this is all going, watch the Virgin Mobile: Christmahanukwanzkah commercial on iFilm.com What next? Well Schwartz did suggest Eastover. Comments?
RECOUNT UPDATE...
A very interesting moment came at the end of the question and answer period during the Board of Election training session. Remember my comment from last Sunday about lame questions from people more interested in hearing themselves talk than in getting work done? Well, a few of them tried to deliver speeches and the assembled witnesses shouted a very loud and unequivocal NO! when Elections Coordinator Jacqui Maiden said she was going to take a few more questions. I estimate that there were 160 to 180 people in the room representing the Democratic, Republican, Green and Libertarian parties. The room was very white. From where I was standing I only saw one African American. But I know that there were at least two there because the Republican witness at my table (No. 8, we counted Cleveland precinct 13N) was an African American woman. That, for me, says a great deal about the voting process. Where the &^$#@ were the minorities in this process? One of the things that surprised me was the lack of local media covering the recount. I only saw a representative from our local Public Radio station, WCPN, 90.3 FM. Karen Schaefer filed a brief report that I heard in the local news rotation this afternoon. I'll post more tomorrow about this when I've learned if I'm going to be doing it all again in the morning or if the recount was successfully completed this evening. I should know after 9 p.m. EST. Comments?Wednesday 15 December 04
I HATE SPORTS-ENTERTAINMENT...
All of this is preamble to the steroid scandal. I've wanted to scream every time I've heard some sanctimonious sports sycophant recited the phrase "sanctity of baseball" over the past week. So, it is with great pleasure that I link to a piece by someone who does love the game of baseball and yet shares my disgust with all the hand wringing. Comments?
RECOUNT UPDATE...
Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Pop at Arabica; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Jabberwocky (**) directed by Terry Gilliam.
POLITICAL SPAM...
The thrust of the petition is to get one Senator and one Representative to contest the Electoral College vote. On its homepage Contest The Vote says: According to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, one senator and one House Representative are required to contest an election prior to inauguration. We have the representatives. We still need a senator. Let Senator Boxer know that we want her to be that senator by signing our petition. The signed petitions will be delivered to her in person by a coalition of representatives from a variety of concerned organizations and individuals. Here are two pieces from the 2000 election that addresses the Electoral Count Act of 1887: Safe At Any Speed: Legislative Intent, The Electoral Count Act Of 1887, And Bush V. Gore; and It's Not Over Till It's Over, and Maybe Not Then. The representative is not listed, but at the top of the CTV homepage is a callout quote from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Ca.). The implication is that the Bay-Area congresswoman is that representative. I've sent an email to Rep. Lee's office requesting further information. In the Senate, the group says it wants to draft Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-Ca.) Five groups are listed on the website as being concerned organizations that will deliver the petition to Sen. Boxer. The listed groups are: Activist San Diego; North County Coalition For Peace and Justice; The Peace & Democracy Action Group of the First UU church of San Diego; San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice; and the San Diego Indy Media Center. This group's link used by CTV (on the same server as CTV) is dead. I checked each site. Activist San Diego has no mention of the petition on its homepage and only a forum item posted by CTV on its Activist Alerts forum page. North County Coalition for Peace and Justice had no mention of CTV on its website that I could find. I found the same at the The Peace & Democracy Action Group of the First UU church of San Diego. The San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice was the same. Even though the link provided by CTV is dead, I did find a good URL for the San Diego Indy Media Center through Google. There is no mention of CTV on the site other than a forum post from a Peter Johnson that is similar to that found on the Activist San Diego's site. I've sent emails to all of the organizations that provided email addresses on their sites asking them if they are, in fact, associated with CTV. After checking the sites this morning, I'm suspicious that this may actually be just some spammer misusing the webpages of these organizations to lend him legitimacy so that he can collect email addresses. I'll post an update when if and when I get replies from the organizations. Comments?
RECOUNT UPDATE...
Tuesday 14 December 04
GOOGLE REEAAALLLLYYYYY EXPANDING...
This is really great. Google is moving beyond indexing Internet publications and start making materials traditionally found only in print form available to its Internet users.
Of course, Project Gutenberg has been providing a similar, though limited, service for books in public domain and other eBooks since 1971. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine had this to say: "Just yesterday, as I walked by the New York Public Library, I saw school busses passing and the thought occurred that someday (soon), that building could be seen as either a museum or a public wi-fi hotspot instead of as a storage bin."
REGISTRATION LIES...
On WCPN's 90.3 at Nine program this morning's panelists answered questions from the moderator and took calls from listeners concerning Ohio's 2 November election. Near the end of the program a caller told the panelists that he had registered to vote at a Steve Miller concert with a representative of the National Organization for Women. When he went to vote on 2 November, the caller said, he discovered that he had not been in fact registered. He then went on to say that because he had attempted to register as a Republican, someone at NOW had tossed his registration in the trash. But there's a problem, as noted by one of the panelists, Ohio's voter registration forms do not ask anything about party affiliation. So the caller was clearly lying. You have to wonder why people are willing to lie publicly about something that is so easily checked. But here's my real objection to all the registration shenanigans: why would anyone attempt to register in a slipshod manner? I cannot conceive of a more precious right for any adult citizen of the United States than that of our right to vote. I keep my voter registration card on the front of my refrigerator where I always know where to find it. Every time I have moved in my life, the first thing I have done once I have an address is to register to vote, before I've even turned on the utilities. I get my attitude from my paternal grandmother, Anita Ray Evans Hess, who was a suffragette. More than a few times she talked to me about how important it was to vote and how she was always angry with women who didn't vote because their husbands took care of such things. I get equally angry now with anyone who has other such excuses to not treat voting as a deadly serious issue. Comments?
RECOUNT UPDATE...
My plan is to be at the building at 7 a.m., both to ensure a parking space, always an issue in Cleveland, and that I get in the door at the Board of Elections. Further updates will come as I receive them, and I'll be writing a much longer piece on Friday or Saturday following the recount. Comments?Monday 13 December 04
TOO COOL FOR WORDS...
This is so amazingly incredible that I can't even begin to describe it. You have to see this.
A YEAR AGO TODAY...
In his address to the nation following the capture, President George Bush said: In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived. All Iraqis can now come together and reject violence and build a new Iraq. [snip] I also have a message for all Americans: The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq. We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East. Such men are a direct threat to the American people, and they will be defeated. Comments?
ALUMINUM FOIL SALES GOING UP?...
I came across this piece titled Democratic Bugs In SONY VCRs while reading the newsgroup soc.culture.iranian. My favorite paragraph is the concluding one. LASTLY, HARD DISKS ALL OVER THE WORLD CAN BE READ FROM AND WRITTEN TO VIA YOUR COMPUTERS POWER SUPPLY OVER THE ELECTRICAL POWER LINE GRID. All caps in the original, of course. Comments?
OHIO RECOUNT UPDATE...
Even though most people arrived on time, the 2:30 p.m meeting did not start until 2:50 p.m. And when it did get started, the first 15 minutes were spent in a rambling pep talk that irritated even the principle speaker who wasn't able to start her well-delivered and very focused presentation until 3:05 p.m. Several times the speaker, a law professor from Cleveland-Marshall School of Law, had to remind people to hold questions to the end, so that she could get out the important information to those of us who had other things scheduled after the announced 4 p.m. finish time. I finally left at 4:30 p.m. Here's what I learned. We will all be sitting down, thank goodness. There will be three shifts: 8 a.m. to noon; 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The hope is to get everything done on Thursday, but if that is not the case, we will continue on Friday. I'm signed up for the first shifts on both Thursday and Friday. Because the board has a history of locking doors at announced times, regardless of whether or not people are in line to get into a meeting room, we were all told to be sure that we arrived early. Also, each party will be issue 21 special badges, one for each table and one for a roaming supervisor, and we have to be very careful to ensure that we don't walk out the door with that badge since the next shift needs it. Cuyahoga County will be sampling 20 precincts. The precincts are to be selected randomly. Kind of. In an attempt to make the sampling representative of the county, the Board of Elections will be picking the precincts with input from the political parties. At each precinct table will be up to six people: two board employees (one Democrat and one Republican) and witnesses represent the Democratic, Libertarian, Green and Republican parties. (The Libertarian party pulled out of the recount call on Friday, reportedly because it did not want to be associated with the $1 million-plus cost to the taxpayers, but will still be represented.) One of the things that was stressed again and again during the training was the fact that the Board of Elections people have been working 12/7 pretty much since July. These people are justifiably tired. We were all reminded to be on our best cordial behavior. This is not meant to be a confrontational exercise. In accordance with Ohio Law, we will be hand-counting three percent of the votes. If the hand-count disagrees by even a single vote from the machine count, it triggers a state-wide hand recount. Witness like myself may not, under any circumstance, touch a ballot. We may ask for it to be held up to the light, we may lean over it with a magnifying glass and it will be placed on brightly colored piece of paper so that the punched-out holes will be quite clear. What we will be looking for will be ballots on which the vote for president is in question. For instance: hanging chads (by at least two corners), dimpled or pregnant chads, mangled or crumpled ballots, and backward ballots are all fair game. For an excellent overview of the whole chad thing, take a look at Douglas Jones' Chad website. Each witness will be keeping a written tally of all the information as we proceed as a way of creating a paper trail that may be useful if disputes arise. If we find a questionable ballot then what? We can ask for a chad to be completely punched out or that a ballot be remade. If we disagree with the board employees we can appeal to the director of the board and his top assistant (a Democrat and a Republican respectively) for a final decision. Their decision is final. Once all the ballots have been hand counted, they are carefully stacked and held up to the light so that we can see that the presidential holes line up (kind of like the holes in notebook paper) and then the stacks will be run through the machine again. This is the point where the machine count has to exactly with the hand count. It may be done a second time, to recheck the hand count, but after that it's off to a state-wide hand recount.
The other problem is that to sort the ballots in Ohio, you would have to move the machine to the boards of election: the ballots can't leave the building. That would mean moving machines in all 88 counties (if there are 88 such antiques in the state) to sort the cards on-site. One of the things that was not mentioned at all was a dress code for the recount. Now, on the surface, the way anyone is dressed should not make any difference. My normal dress is jeans and a black t-shirt, but on Thursday I will be decked out in my lawyerly best (not that I'm J.D.-challenged). People involved in politics do make decisions based on how people look because you never know when the person you're being rude to might be your next boss. It sucks that things are that way, but they are and I don't intend to be on the short end of that stick. Today or tomorrow I expect to receive a number of documents associated with the recount. I'll be posting those to the forum page as I get them. Comments?Sunday 12 December 04
A SOLDIER'S BLOG...
One of his entries that caught my attention was his 27 August discussion of sblogs (soldier's blogs). The advent of micro computers and the Internet fell in the middle of my own years of service – 1974-1986 – and I can imagine how important the Internet must be to military personnel today. The best we hoped for were letters at mail call and the occasional phone call. To have near instantaneous communication with your family and friends has to be a tremendous comfort to those serving our country. I think it is also a credit to our country, our military and our Constitution that so much information is flowing in both directions from military personnel. Comments?
THE MONO-POLAR...
Just as being depressed is not simply sadness; being manic is not simply happiness. Writes Jamison: "Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless, billowing state." Jamison opens her book with an examination of President Roosevelt, the quintessential manic perhaps best exemplified by the fact that he was our only President to win the highest honors in both War, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Peace, the Nobel Peace Prize. The passage that gripped my attention is a portion of President Roosevelt's 23 April 1910 speech titled The Man in the Arena delivered at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. Jamison snipped the passage a bit, but in its entirety it reads:
Last month I wrote about the importance of political whining (Cartoons and Puppets, Wednesday, 17 November) in this year's elections. A good prayer for Americans might be: God help me to not become one of President Roosevelt's cold and timid souls. Comments?Saturday 11 December 04
CHAPBOOK UPDATE...
A friend who read the poem told me that these lines spoke the most strongly to her: It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me/is true./I want to know if you can/disappoint another/to be true to yourself./If you can bear the accusation of betrayal/and not betray your own soul./If you can be faithless/and therefore trustworthy. Comments?
SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS...
[Omar] tells the story of one of my favorite posts of Omar's, about a cousin who hated Americans; they wrote his story; and the cousin read the comments from around the world, all of them encouraging. "Maybe I don't hate them, but I don't like them," the cousin said. A few weeks later, the cousin's father got a car and the cousin had to admit that would not have happened two years ago. He put up a picture of the young man in the car and the comments made him cry. And Omar almost starts himself as he says: "If I visited America a year and a half ago, before I started this blog, I feel a stranger." but he does not now. "I am surrounded by friends." The old world is about building walls. The new world is about building bridges. Comments?
FROM MY DAD...
Yes, some people have way too much time on their hands. But it's still fun. Comments?
WHAT WOULD TONY DO?...
(A) Mr. Soprano calls the local police and asks them to investigate? (B) Mr. Soprano calls in a favor for the money he donated to the Republican Party and asks for assistance from the Attorney General? (C) Mr. Soprano does things inappropriate for discussion in a public forum to the terrorists and then whacks the &*$%@? I suspect that the presence of radical Islamic elements in Amsterdam may be about to suffer severe reduction. Comments?Friday 10 December 04
FOUND IT!...
I finally found the link to the video that shows the soldiers cheering when Spc. Thomas Wilson stood up and asked the question that stunned Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. If you haven't seen it a dozens times already, do so at least once. (Look for the image of Sec. Rumsfeld on the right side of the page, under the free video banner.) Comments?
DEMOCRATS, BEINART AND PRIORITIES...
Back in the dark ages when I was a lowly associate editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich I found a book that finally helped me get organized. The book, Time Power by Charles Hobbs, changed how I approach each day. The core message is simply, as important message always are: divide tasks into vital, important and desirable. Rank tasks in each category using 1, 2, 3, etc. Then tackle all your vitals first, then your importants and then the desireables. When you're one person, that works really well. Why in the world would you want to work on anything other than something you've decided is your most vital task? No sane, rational person would. Multitasking is a myth. One person can only do one thing at a time. Governments are different.
Stopping further degradation of our air, water and soil and beginning the restoration process; Ending our dependence on foreign oil through implementation of technological solutions that reduce energy consumption and simultaneously drastically curtail the production of Green House gases predominently responsible for Global Warming. (Contrary to the Oil Industry position, there is no honest scientific disagreement with the facts of Global Warming.) Restoring full confidence in our election process by standardizing the voting systems in all 50 states; Stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons technology, and beginning a roll back among all nations until we keep just one nuke on display somewhere as a reminder of how close we came to Armageddon. Now, how you go about accomplishing these five is up for debate. Some argue that the only way to end World Terrorism is to kill them all; others want to talk about addressing issues like hunger, isolation, oppression, and ignorance. That is a good debate; and one that free people in free nations can have. The same is true as regards the environment, Global Warming, elections and nuclear weapons. But it's not an either or question. We can do all five. We're the greatest nation that the world has ever produced. Why do we want to limit ourselves? Comments?
I'M GOING TO BE A RECOUNT WITNESS...
Headspace-On my stereo: Violin for Anne Rice by Leila Josefowicz; In my backpack: Exuberance: The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Van Helsing (*) directed by Stephen Sommers.
I noted two of the questions in particular. One was reasonable and not unexpected. The other a little disturbing. The former sought to determine whether or not my eyesight was adequate for discerning small objects (the ubiquitous chads, I can only assume). The latter inquired if I could stand for long periods of time. I questioned in reply, define a long period of time. The answer was that a long period would most likely be two to four hours, but could, conceivably, stretch to eight hours. In Ohio's 88 counties, each Board of Elections has the freedom to set its own standard and rules for how the witnesses may perform their duties. The kinds of things each county's board will determine include at what distance witnesses must watch and how long they must watch. And, because it is expected that the witnesses will be required to stand while they watch (while I'm sure those counting will be sitting) the ability to stand on your own two feet for two, four or (god forbid) eight hours is critical. I have a problem with this. Not because I don't think I can do it, I'll get by, but rather because I have to think that most people volunteering for this work will be retired, and less able to stand for several hours. I make that assumption not because the retired are more politically involved, but because they have the freedom to do this kind of volunteer work on a weekday. Please excuse my paranoia (I have to remind myself of the advice I once received from Abby Hoffman, "Never trust conspiracy theorists, they're all in it together"), but the requirement does seem unnecessarily prohibitive and designed to discourage citizens from taking part in the process. One friend even observed that the requirement to stand may be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ohio law is sketchy on the whole recount issue. Here is the only law on the books. On Sunday evening, I expect I'll have better answers following my completion of training scheduled for 2:30 p.m. I'll write a full report then. Comments?
FOLLOW-UP ON WILSON, PITTS AND RUMSFELD...
The first salvo came as an internal email revealed that Lee Pitts, a reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, embedded with Wilson's unit had "...brought two of [the unit's soldiers] along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have." The implication of the attacks are, of course, that Pitts had somehow acted unethically by planning the questions. As a former working journalist and magazine editor I find nothing ethically wrong with Pitts action. Both his publisher and an ethicist with the Poynter Institute came to the same conclusion. Pitts' publisher wrote: "Questions have been raised as to whether Mr. Pitts used the soldier or put words in his mouth. While Mr. Pitts states that he discussed the armor question with the soldiers, Spc. Wilson chose to ask the question." Bob Steele, an ethicist with the Poynter Institute, said, "Lee Pitts used some enterprise in how he went about getting that question on the table. From an ethical standpoint, he certainly needed to be honest with the soldiers about what he was doing -- that he wanted them to ask his question. My impression is that is what he did. I don't see any form of deceit in what he did." As an 11-year veteran (1974-1986) of the U.S. military, I resent any implications that somehow Spc. Wilson was duped by Pitts. When Wilson stood up and asked his question he knew that he seriously risked ending his military career. That is not the kind of thing you do lightly. I have no doubt that his heart was in his throat as he stood up. But, listening to the audio it becomes clear that Wilson spoke with courage, clarity and conviction. I also find it disingenuous that some suggest that the question was not prominent in the minds of the assembled soldiers and sailors. I heard the audio. (I'm still searching for a link to it.) The cheers that went up following Wilson's question were so loud that Sec. Rumsfeld had to ask Wilson to repeat the question. There is also the question of are we doing all we can do. The only company under contract to provide the armor for vehicles that Wilson asked about had an interesting response. "Armor Holdings Inc., the sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output by as much as 22 percent per month with no investment and is awaiting an order from the Army." Rumsfeld is dancing faster and faster to dodge the falling turkeys. Oh, the humanity. Comments?
SHARING GOOD TIMES...
Thursday 09 December 04
WHAT MUSLIMS TALK ABOUT...
"There are no free elections or reliable opinion polls in the Arab world. So no one knows what the silent majority really thinks. The best one can do is rely on anecdotal evidence. On that basis, I came to believe that the Palestine-Israel issue was low down on the list of priorities for the man in the street but something approaching an obsession for the political, business, and intellectual elites." Taheri's explanation of why that is is simplistic, but still worth considering. Comments?
THIS IS SO WRONG...
Yet another reason why Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should do the honorable thing and resign. Comments?
ALL THE WORDS...
A lot of people, including myself (see The Army You Have... below), jumped on the question from Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday. But Wilson's question only scratches the surface. I think that the Bush Administration is starting to believe it's own propaganda. Based on the Department of Defense release of the transcript, I don't think Sec. Rumsfeld was ready for the kind of questions he got. Comments?
YES!...
From Lynn Johnston today:
SPEWING COFFEE...
This just in from Tony (thanks to his Mother). The one that made me spew was Surrealism. Comments?
THE ARMY YOU HAVE...
"You have to go to war with the army you have, not the army you want," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told troops at a staging area in Kuwait yesterday. Rumsfeld was responding to a question from Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, who asked: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Secretary Rumsfeld's answer was dead on. And I think he should resign.
If he is to save his ship, Captain Zateyev knows that he must send men into the reactor compartment. When he discovers that the ship has been equipped with chemical, rather than radiation suits, he also knows that the men will die horrible deaths. Zateyev does not hesitate. A few will die to save the many. That's the way it works in the service. The fact that the men must die because they do not have the proper equipment does not change the equation. Jump even further back to 2 July 1863 at Little Round Top, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Col. Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine is tasked with anchoring the left flank of the Union Army. At a desperate moment, when most of his troops have exhausted their ammunition, Col. Chamberlain orders the impossible: a bayonet charge against Confederate troops about to overwhelm his position and roll up the entire Union line. The 20th Maine, not only repulsed the Confederates, but is credited with shattering the final attack and saving the Union Army from destruction. When later asked how his troops prevailed, Col. Chamberlain replied, "In the privations and sufferings endured... in battle, some of the highest qualities of manhood are called forth - courage self-command, and sacrifice of self for the sake of something held higher...." That is the American fighting spirit and our military history is filled with such stories of poorly equipped troops performing extraordinary feats. Return to 2004. In February Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa) "asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ensure that the 81st Armor Brigade at Fort Lewis has the equipment they need before deployment to Iraq next month."
"Our soldiers in Iraq have been fighting without the body armor they need for months. I'm glad the full Senate today agreed that these soldiers should not bear economic consequences due to the Administration's failure to plan and outfit our soldiers properly," Murray said. But, the important point is, they have been fighting, armor or no. For some, however, the lack of the equipment is a reason not to fight. Back on 13 October, 19 members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company refused an order to make a fuel-supply run because their tank trucks lacked armor and were in bad repair. I called that mutiny. The Army disagrees. Army officers told CNN, "they did not consider the action a mutiny, and said the soldiers involved raised some valid concerns." Five of the 19 will receive non-judicial punishment rather than criminal charges, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Boylan. The rest, although not specifically mentioned, have presumably been cleared and returned to duty. But what about Rumsfeld? There is a story about the letter of resignation that then General Dwight Eisenhower wrote on 5 June 1944. Gen. Eisenhower knew that the risk of failure on D-Day was tremendous. But he also knew that his troops were as prepared as they would ever be and that waiting would only make the risks worse. He gave the order and awaited the outcome. If the landings had failed, Gen. Eisenhower would have tendered the resignation and retired quietly to his home. Despite tremendous losses, the Allied forces prevailed and the free-world's gratitude for Gen. Eisenhower was assured. Rumsfeld, apparently knows no such sense of honor, or, it seems, shame. Our valiant troops deserve better. Comments?Wednesday 08 December 04
CHAPBOOK UPDATE...
For those interested in such things, I've added an entry for The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori to my electronic chapbook.
Enjoy. Comments?
ASH...
If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen, Canadian poet, 1934- Comments?
MAKING UNCLE JOE PROUD...
Now, it seems, the folks in the U.S. Army in Iraq are stealing a page from Uncle Joe's play book. According to writer David DeBatto: Capt. Victor Artiga, commanding officer of the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, had Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford strapped to a gurney and medevaced for treatment of battlefield fatigue 36 hours after he reported witnessing "five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base," to Artiga, "and requested a formal investigation." I'm sure that soldiers who, unlike the 30-year-plus-veteran Ford, had careers to consider, took Capt. Artiga message to heart and, as we used to say in the Army, "continued to march." Comments?Tuesday 07 December 04
A NEW FOIL...
Today's entry takes on uber liberals and one of my personal heroes: President Jimmy Carter. Susanna begins with commentary on Jim Geraghty's article on Michael Moore. He takes exception to a passage in Moore's Dude, Where's My Country? Here's what Geraghty quotes: [Horatio] Alger was one of the most popular American writers of the late 1800s. Alger's stories featured characters from impoverished backgrounds who, through pluck and determination and hard work, were able to make huge successes of themselves in this land of boundless opportunity. The message was that anyone can make it in America, and make it big. We're addicted to this happy rags-to-riches myth in this country. People elsewhere in other industrialized democracies are content to make a good enough living to pay their bills and raise their families. Few have a cutthroat desire to strike it rich. If they have a job that lets them go home after seven or eight hours of work and then gives them the standard four to eight weeks of paid vacation every year, they're relatively happy. And with their governments providing health care, good free schools, and a guaranteed pension to live well in old age, they're even happier... They live in reality, where there are only going to be a few rich people, and you are not going to be one of them. So get used to it... Geraghty's interpretation of Moore's words is this:
[snip] Moore's argument is essentially, "You can never get ahead. Only the government can help you. Settle for the predicable, immutable, perpetual dependent existence that only government aid can provide!" I'm no apologist for Moore, but Geraghty overreaches to make his point. First, in the final paragraph I've quoted, he puts quote marks around words he's putting in Moore's mouth. When I was a working journalist, that got you fired. Second, Moore does not say "you are never going to be rich." What I think he says, correctly, that in any society, there will only be a few people will be rich. Take a look at the United States. My figures are four or five years out of date, but approximately 5 percent of our head-of-household population, ballpark, say 3.5 million people, has an annual income of more than $120,000 a year. So, for every rich person, there are 19 people making less than $120,000. Not that being in the lower 95 percent is bad, but the point is that the bell curve puts most of America a lot further down the scale. So the simple fact is that most Americans will never be in that upper bracket. Does that mean you sit in the ditch wearing sack cloth and ashes? Of course not. But it is reasonable to plan your life on realistic expectations: the kind of life Moore describes in other industrial nations. If you have a special talent or are particularly good at doing what you do, then, with diligence, hard work and more than a touch of luck, you too could rise into the elite. But, and I don't believe I'm quoting him, Prince Charles recently got in hot water for saying:
One way the Horatio Alger myth manifests itself is through the imagination of children and adolescents who see themselves as professional sports players. The odds of being even a minor league athlete are astronomical, yet students with unreasonable expectations make bad academic choices based on the belief that "it could happen." In Perkei Avot, a volume of the Talmud Rabbi Ben Zoma said, "Who is rich? He who is happy with his portion" (4:1). That, I think, is what Moore is really saying. That it is better to be happy with what you have, rather than to make yourself unhappy with unreasonable expectations and desires. I fully recognize that this runs counter to the American myth. But I also recognize that the myth is one tool that those in the highest brackets use to pacify those not in the club. In a way it's like the undesirable fraternity pledge, who doesn't have a chance in hell of becoming a member, being made to humiliate himself during pledge week purely for the entertainment pleasure of the brothers. Susanna continues by addressing a children's book written by President Carter: The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer. I haven't read the book, but I plan on stopping at the library later today to pick up a copy. I'll comment on it once I've read the entire book. But I do want to comment on what follows Susanna's reading of the first page of the book. She uses the name of the hero of the book, Jeremy, to expand the discussion to a real-life Jeremy, President Carter's grandson. According to the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, "Peachtree City police charged Jeremy Carter, 17, with burglary, misdemeanor possession of marijuana and being a minor in possession of alcohol. Carter appeared in court Sunday and was released on $11,500 bond. Susanna comments: "...it appears that Jimmah's own grandson - the real Jeremy? - could use a little lesson in handling that old moral failing, greed." What does this say about President Carter? Not much. Just as similar incidents dealt with by two other fathers, presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, says little about them. Comments?
MORE SELLING OF IGNORANCE...
I'd like to think that Time magazine could be above sloppy thinking, but deep in my heart I know that it isn't. Case in point is this story I finally got around to reading today from the 29 November issue. The story, Cosmic Conundrum, ran with the subhead: "The universe seems uncannily well suited to the existence of life. Could that be an accident?" The word accident is, of course, loaded. The implication is that if it wasn't an accident, then some thing caused it to be that way. But it is two pages, seven paragraphs and 538 words into the article before we get to the money quote that tells us what the thing is:
A vocal sector of the religious community, on the other hand, has seized on the anthropic principle as further evidence that God created the universe just for us—adding intellectual support to the so-called intelligent-design movement.... So, the lack of consensus is between the scientific community which gives the hypothesis zero to no credibility and "a sector" of the religious community that desperately wants to cling to it. And what, I have to ask, is intellectual about the support for intelligent design? That is not a balanced argument, damn it. One does not equal the other in any stretch of the imagination. Comments?
COFFEE PLUG...
IN THEIR FACE...
Monday 06 December 04
NOW HE TELLS US...
And this is the guy that President Bush is keeping in place because he's done such a good job for the past four years. Comments?
THE FIGHT CONTINUES...
Last night I put a classic DVD on my computer and experienced again the brilliance of Elia Kazan's vision. Gentleman's Agreement, based on the book by Laura Z. Hobson, still holds up after nearly 50 years and should be watched again by liberals and progressives who think they're doing all they can. At the end of the movie, Phil Green, played by Gregory Peck (he lost the Oscar that year to Ronald Coleman's performance in A Double Life), confronts anti-semitism at a swank New York resort where he had planned on spending his honeymoon. That experience crystallizes everything for Green and he returns to New York City to pound out the magazine article he'd been assigned to write. His mother, played by Anne Revere, reads a section aloud that she tell's her son his father would have been proud of:
I don't know if that is in Hobson's book or if that passage was written by screenwriter Moss Hart, but in either case, it's the money quote in the movie. Order it from your library, rent it, buy it, hell, get the book, in any case, we need this kind of reminder on a regular basis. Comments?
PUPPET HEADS...
But what I am a fan of is Kinky's writing. Since I started reading his detective fiction in the late '80s with Greenwich Killing Time, I've read each book as it came out and looked forward to the next. So I was surprised after I finished reading The Prisoner of Vandam Street to discover that I'd missed one. I was even more surprised when I checked and found that not a single copy of this book existed anywhere in Cuyahoga County. How could that be? The book, The Curse of the Missing Puppet Head, was available for purchase online, but not a single library had bought it. What was going on? (Aside. While the big-box-in-the-little box operations like Amazon and Barnes & Noble do provide a valuable service, please make every effort to buy any books from a local, independent bookseller first. You can find the one closest to you by clicking on the Booksense link in the left-hand column. Thank you. We now return you to our regularly schedule rant.) My local reference librarians were equally puzzled. The librarian responsible for purchasing that genre was called in. He was as puzzled as everyone else. How had a Kinky Friedman book been published without him knowing about it? He promised to order it immediately. A month passed. Then two. Then three. Even though Barnes & Noble promised delivery of the book in three days, the library couldn't seem to get a copy.
But it was a Kinky Friedman book and I kept reading, if for no other reason to reassure my writer-self that even someone as published as Kinky could write a turkey now and then. I'm glad I kept reading. While the book falls short of what I think is his best work to-date: Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned, Curse jelled somewhere in the middle and started to rock. It finishes well and I'm glad I read it. There is another new Kinky book out, a collection of essays, that had me laughing through an entire evening. It's 'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out: remember the Cleavon Little line in Blazing Saddles? I specially liked Kinky's version of the Hanukah story. I'm going to read it to my students next weekend as part of our Hanukah celebration. Comments?Sunday 05 December 04
LIBERAL VS. PROGRESSIVE...
For the foreseeable future I won't be going to see any movies at the Cedar-Lee Theater or Shaker Square Cinemas. My reason is a boycott called by Local 160 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees of theaters operated by Jon Forman and Cleveland Cinemas. According to the Cleveland Indy Media Center, Forman has locked out the projectionists and replaced them with non-union employees. This means, of course, that I'm not going to be able to see the vast majority of independent films that are released for a while.
But I feel more badly for the union employees who are out of work. My first "on-the-books" job was as a movie usher at the Colony Cinema in Marietta, Ohio. I hauled in a whopping 55-cents an hour for basically standing around and occasionally filling the candy machines. I did get to know the projectionists and learn the tricks of the trade, so to speak. Projection technology has changed since then and the platter-style of projecting movies (it works like a huge eight-track tape) has eliminated the need to change reels the way the projectionists did at the Colony. Perhaps that is Forman's rational: that with the new technology he doesn't need skilled projectionists. I don't know. But there does seem to be other, modern, theaters who have the technology and also employ union labor. A web search failed to turn up anything from Forman's point of view so I'm working strictly from what the union has said. What is the liberal thing to do? What is the progressive thing to do? The liberal thing to do would be join the picket line. The progressive thing, however, is more nuanced. Questions that need to be addressed but haven't been, as far as I can tell, include: would Forman's continued employment of union projectionists have resulted in the failure of the business? Did Forman or the union attempt to negotiate at all before the projectionists were locked out? Is this a national trend (perhaps forced by technology) faced by all IATSE members or is it a local phenomenon? For now, I see the progressive thing to do as this: support the boycott in the short term while seeking answers to the above and other questions that arise. You'd think that one of the local daily or weekly newspapers would have answered those questions, but either they haven't or I'm not finding those stories when I look. So much flies below the radar. Comments?Saturday 04 December 04
HAWKS...
One of my daily email boosts comes from Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Everyday it includes a poem selected by Keillor and a listing of authors and events associated with that day in history. Today's entry is the poem The Mind Is A Hawk by Walter McDonald. Wow. Comments?
LYING TO OUR CHILDREN...
It's starts with either Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, or maybe that Uncle John's medicine makes him sleep so much, I don't know. But what I do know is that children believe what we tell them until we give them a reason not to. Adults end marriages when they discover that they've been lied to and that they can't trust what their partner is telling them. Why do we expect our children to react any differently when we lie to them? If your son came home from school and told you he'd learned that 2+2=5 in math that day, or if your daughter reported that her geography teacher taught her that the world was flat, I'd hope you'd be upset. You don't pay taxes so that your children can be taught lies, right? Well, yes you do, according to the 26-page report The Content of Abstinence-Only Education Programs from the office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA):
Here's a sample of some of the lies being taught: The popular claim that 'condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,' is not supported by the data. In heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31 percent of the time. Premature birth, a major cause of mental retardation, is increased following the abortion of a first pregnancy. Twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to create [a] new individual. Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments." The human mind is an amazing thing. When we are lied to we can react in a number of ways. Two possibilities are: we remove the source of the lie from our pool of credible sources and either discard or seriously question anything else we learn from that source; or we rationalize that, contrary to other credible evidence, the lie is not a lie because the source cannot lie. The former is an adaptive behavior and healthy, the latter is not. Comments?Friday 03 December 04
WAY TOO MUCH FUN...
Headspace-On my stereo: Live acoustic guitar and vocals by Alex Alvarez; In my backpack: The Zen of Creativity-Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori; On my nightstand: Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart by Alice Walker; On my screen: Kinsey (***) directed by Bill Condon. Comments?
A REAL DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE...
The No. 1 threat to marriage? Why divorce, of course. For a little eye-opener, take a look at Andrew Sullivan's Conflicted America. Comments?
A VERY SCARY LADY...
There has been a great deal written lately about a need for Progressives to be more positive about things, to stop whining all the time and babbling about doom and gloom. OK. I can understand that. But then I read something like this New Yorker article and I just don't know. How do you put a positive spin on the need to prevent people like Judith Reisman from turning the United States into a Margaret Atwood nightmare? Here's just a bit of what writer Daniel Radosh had to say in the The Talk of the Town item:
HERE'S A NEW ONE...
In its regular media/popular culture column The Fix, salon.com talks briefly about a proposed boycott of the work of actor Will Smith by the website: Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood. Smith's offense was to respond when asked if 9/11 had changed anything for him:
A fair enough response. PABAAH's comment on Smith's statement is: "It is interesting to note that, on a certain level, Smith is comparing American police officers, those charged with protecting society, with Islamic terrorists intent on destroying America and everything it stands for. Smith implies that racism is so rampant among America's police that it is a threat equal in magnitude to black America as that of international terrorism. Instead of seeing 9/11 as a traumatic watershed event that contributed to uniting black and white America and healing racial tensions, Smith seems to believe that the terrorist attacks have had little impact on what he sees as the poor state of race relations in the USA." Nothing surprising there, either. But here's the funny part. When I clicked on the hyperlink from salon.com to go read the PABAAH site, I got a white screen and this message: "Your coming from a site that we don't like. So why dont we send you back! powered whit Protector System." Please note: The misspelling of "You're," missing apostrophe in "don't," lower-case "p" in powered and misspelling of "with" are all in the original. Now, since it's a simple enough matter to do what I did: cut-and-paste the url from salon.com into a search engine and then pop over to the PABAAH site, the whole exercise was a little like encountering a "No Girlz Alowed!!" sign on the outside of a treehouse. (As a sidenote, PABAAH also opposes any change to the U.S. Constitution that would allow naturalized citizens to become President. I give it full marks for consistency.) Comments?Thursday 02 December 04
CRY HAVOC...
Two weeks ago week (see Thursday, 18 November, Man Of The Year) I said Karl Rove would make a good candidate for Time's Man of the Year cover. Well, Newsweek has beaten it to the punch with: Rove Unleashed. The opening paragraph recounts a tale that might be legend and reads like New Age Zane Grey. "It was the day before Thanksgiving, November 1973. Things were quiet enough at the Republican National Committee for the chairman to spend a few minutes on parental logistics. Can't you just see the slow-motion gunslinger swagger as young George emerges from the steam?
WASHINGTON STATE NEEDS US...
The governor's race in Washington State has come down to a mind-boggling 42 votes; THAT IS 1.08 VOTES PER COUNTY! How is that possible? How can a state-wide race be that friggin' close? I just sent a contribution to the Washington State Democratic Party to help pay for a hand recount there. The party has to raise $750,000 to fund the recount. The Daily Kos makes an important point when it spotlights how two organizations—the Democratic National Committee and Howard Dean's Democracy for America—are approaching the fund raising need. The DNC emailed supporters to send it the money so that it can turn around and send money to the Washington State party. DFA cuts the crap and its email links people directly to the WDP's website. To make a contribution directly to the WDP click here.
FIRST, KILL THE CONSULTANTS...
Back on 14 November I suggested that the No. 1 priority for the Democratic Party had to be the retaking of Congress in 2006. This morning on salon.com, Arainna Huffington makes her case for storming the barricades. Central to Huffington's argument is this: "...Democrats need to take a page out of the GOP playbook and ignore all siren songs urging them to lurch toward the victors. Instead, they must reclaim the Party's true identify and return to the idealism, boldness, generosity of spirit and core values that marked the presidencies of FDR and JFK, and the short-lived presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy." Huffington lays out a number of key steps in the process. First, she says, make sure that there is never another election using electronic voting machines that don't leave a paper trail. Second, stop rehiring the same election consultants who lose election after election. Third, build a well-funded message machine; a network of progressive "think tanks, policy centers and media outlets..." Fourth, nationalize the 2006 congressional races so that the candidates are speaking with one voice "on the crucial political battles of the day including taxes, the environment, the war in Iraq, Social Security and the Supreme Court..." And, finally, Huffington says, "Democrats need to forge ahead with nascent efforts to recruit, train and fund a better crop of candidates. As one film director friend of mine put it: "It's ultimately about casting; I'm tired of voting for some guy who isn't right for the role but got the part anyway."
A FLORIDA PLAN...
But something I feel strongly we should avoid is a lot of little experiments. In 2006 each state needs to have a uniform voting method for its citizens. By 2012, I'd like to see one national voting method. It would be nice to do it by 2008, but I think asking states to change methods only two years after they implemented a new standard would be too disruptive. Comments?
AN ESPRESSO MOMENT...
What bugs me is that this is not a free-speech issue. It's a freedom-of-the press issue. What's the difference? If I want to stand in a public place and deliver a speech, then the First Amendment of our constitution guarantees me the right to do so. However, if I want to publish my speech with similar ease, I have to own the press, literally the means to publish. All the broadcast networks are in the business of making money and CBS and NBC are perfectly in their rights to not accept the ads. Anyone who thinks differently needs to have an espresso. Comments?Wednesday 01 December 04
PARTY OF LINCOLN...
Today's Republican Party grew out of a political revolution in the 1850s. Is it possible that, just as the issue of slavery killed the National Republicans, or Whigs, the issue of Civil Liberties might give birth to a centrist political party and bring down the hijacked, regressive, Neo Conservative Republican Party? I think that a statement made by Jerry Falwell on Meet The Press might be a first-tolling of the bell. Here's how the conversation went on Sunday: MR. RUSSERT: On "Desperate Housewives," Newsweek says that the creator of "Desperate Housewives" is a conservative, gay Republican. REV. SHARPTON: That's what I was going to say. Do you find that... DR. FALWELL: Well, the fact that he's a gay Republican means he should join the Democratic Party. I think Falwell's use of gay here is simply a code word for anyone-who-doesn't-fit-our-narrow-definition-of-christian. The Republican tent is getting smaller and senators like John McCain (R-AZ) and Arlen Spectre (R-PA) have to be feeling a little out in the weather.
REALITY TV WITH A PURPOSE...
REFURBISHING THE U.S.S. SEQUOIA...
There is a second presidential yacht, the U.S.S. Potomac, that served as President Franklin Roosevelt's yacht. Interestingly enough, both ships are in private hands. The Potomac was sold following President Roosevelt's death and The Sequoia was sold by President Carter to private investors in 1977. So why is Howard Dean jumping on the $2 million in the budget bill passed last month to refurbish the yacht? I'm sure it's because yachts just seem so elitist. Compared to the budget for maintaining the presidential residence, air fleet and limousines, however, I have no doubt that $2 million is a minor item. There are many, many more and better targets in the second Bush administration than this. It is a tempest-in-a-teacup issue. We need to stop running about shouting about things that don't matter and get serious about those that do. I'm getting sick and tired of the opposition to President Bush constantly being made to play the role of Gilda Radner's Emily Litella and telling the world: "Never mind." Comments? |
A while back, 
The sparring following the 3 percent hand-recount of ballots in Ohio's 2004 Presidential race continues. I've just posted a rather 
Here's the thing. Within Judaism there is a concept known as Tzedakah. The word literally translates as Justice, but has come to be understood in the modern world as synonymous with charity. While Tzedakah takes many forms—volunteering in soup kitchens, collecting school supplies for students, cleaning up blighted urban areas, etc.—the most common form is symbolized by the Tzedakah Box.
One of those ways it changes your views is that it removes the numbness. I remember a cartoon a while back of a man and a woman walking down a beach who discover thousands of starfish washed up on the sand and dying. The woman begins to pick them up and toss them back into the water. The man looks at her and says, "What are you doing? Tossing a few fish back in the water isn't going to make any difference." She picks up another to toss in and replies, "It will to this one."
Mine is a generation defined by Conspiracy. The moment that changed everything for Boomers came when Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger on his 
I'm down with the same flu bug that put my father in the Emergency Room on Sunday. The good news is that there's no fever, it's effecting me a lot less intensely and it's only a 24-hour virus. I'm sleeping through most of the day, but I wanted to post a comment on one aspect of the horrors in the Indian Ocean.
A couple of times a year I pull out Charles Hobb's Time Power and consider where I've been and where I'm headed. I try to save other bits of wisdom from a wide variety of resources to also consider during these times of reflection. This morning on Rabbi Pliskin's 
It was a scary trip to the Emergency Room at Marietta Memorial Hospital. Not one of those screaming sirens kind of trip. No, in many ways this was much worse. It was the quiet kind in the car with mom driving, dad in the passenger seat and me in the back. You feel very small and helpless at moments like that. My dad is back home and resting after the tests all came back negative. I hope to find out if it is a stomach flu (yes, he did have a flu shot) or something else this afternoon when I call to hear the results of further tests.
Television and the Internet offered two windows on reality this Christmas Day. The first was the A&E show 
Yes, Christmas. I'm a convert to Judaism, my family is fine with that, and it would take a lot to make me miss this time of the year. With the exception of 1979 when I was being processed out of the Navy at Treasure Island, California, I haven't missed a family Christmas in 49 years. The rituals are corny, the conversations hackneyed and the food mid-western bland; and I wouldn't change any of it. Christmas is about family; sorry Bill, you're just going to have to deal.
When we got home, Dad had something he had saved for me: two episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The first was 
In a hackneyed, but well executed piece of guerilla theatre last May, Jacqueline Duty had the administration of Russell High School jumping through all the requisite hoops and now she wants them to fund her college education.
You've got to love the folks at 
While I was walking out of the library this morning, I glanced at the bulletin board and saw a poster from BBC America for a writing contest based on The Canterbury Tales. I'd never visited the 
Somewhere in the state of Washington there are nine people who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that in a free and honest democracy, your vote counts. These unsung heroes, who will never be identified or receive a free car from Oprah, got out of bed on Tuesday, 2 November, and made their way to the polls and did something they may never have done before: they cast their ballots.
Today is the shortest day of year (Sunrise was at 0750 and Sunset will come at 1700; 7:50 a.m. and 5 p.m. for you civilian types) here in Cleveland. Short of the joy early humans must have felt when they figured out in a meaningful way that the Sun would rise every morning, there must not have been a more inspiring intellectual discovery than the fact that the days would not keep getting shorter and shorter forever until there was no daylight left. No wonder that all cultures in the Northern hemisphere found a reason to celebrate.
In WWII a new class of vehicle was developed: the Armored Personnel Carrier. In the U.S. Army it was the M3 Halftrack. In the late '50s the evolution of the APC reached the M113 Gavin and in the '80s the M2 Bradley. These vehicles are designed to carry foot soldiers into combat and get them as close as possible to the enemy before forcing them to disembark and do what foot soldiers do: engage the enemy face to face. In a battlefield environment these "battle taxis" made, and still do make, good sense.
During my five years in the U.S. Navy one of the most important moments of my week came on Sundays when I would call home, collect. There was never any real news to relate. Navy life was pretty dull back then. And frankly, Marietta, Ohio, is no hot bed of activity, but each minutes on the phone was gold. I have no idea how much those phone calls cost or how many minutes they totaled up to be, but I do know that those few minutes of connection with my family were precious.
And one final note, back in 1967 the famous columnist known by her pseudonym Abigail Van Buren created 
On National Public Radio's 
Radio Program Alert! This week on National Public Radio's Living On Earth you'll have chance to hear Appalachian poets and writers share their stories. You can listen to a 
Every person is unique. When you read ideas, try focusing on how they relate to you and your individual personality. Some ideas you'll want to incorporate into your world view. Other ideas you may want to share with someone else. (In this way, you'll be using those ideas as a tool for doing an act of kindness. 
What I observed, however was this. Our task on Friday morning was to open the metal supply cases from each precinct and examine the ballot assembly pages for president. There were four candidates in Ohio (Kerry, Bush, Peroutka and Badnarik. A fifth position was taken up for the "candidate disqualified" candidate: Nader) on the ballot page. In examining the page we were to first, confirm that the page was for the correct precinct; and second to check to make sure that the rotation was correct for that precinct. To see what the rotation looked like, you can look 
Today on NPR's 
I've never particularly cared for sports and was quite happy when I stopped playing little league baseball. My younger brother (and his two sons) have more than enough sports skill to keep the family happy. I don't follow any of the Cleveland teams and consider them a great drain on the local economy (I still can't believe tax dollars paid for a $300 million-plus football stadium that gets eight days a year.)
I received an email this morning from an old friend I reconnected with via the Ohio recount effort, imploring me to sign an Internet petition from an organization billing itself as 
"The goal is to unlock the wealth of information that's only available offline and bring it online," said Google Director of Product Management Susan Wojcicki. "We believe we'll make information accessible that previously was not available to users, for example, out-of-print books only available on the library shelf now will be available to Google users." The project will take years to complete, she said.
One year ago today U.S. forces discovered the pathetic Saddam Hussein cowering in a hole dug in a basement. Some predicted then that resistance in Iraq would collapse without its leader to rally around.
A disturbing piece of information that came up concerned the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio that had no vote for president. Those ballots, more than any others, would be the ones that any recount effort would want to look at. But, according to the boards of elections, they have no way of sorting out those ballots. The reason I was upset is that I began my computer programming education in the early '70s when we did everything with punch cards. And one of the pieces of equipment we had access to was the 
I came across missick.com this morning via a story on salon.com. 
We talk a great deal in our society about the bi-polar, the manic-depressive; and the mono-polar depressed. But we don't talk about the sibling of the depressed: the mono-polar manic. To be constantly manic in human society is seen as a good thing. 
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Oraih Mountain Dreamer's poem, The Invitation has made more than few trips around the internet. I actually picked it up at the library in hardback form. The opening lines of the poem sucked me in because I get so tired of people asking me what I do rather than actually having the time to learn who I am. The absolute pit of that question came to me nearly ten years ago when in a business seminar we all had to develop our 30-second commercials. No wonder we pick the most powerful leader in the world based largely on sound bites. The whole poem can be found on 
Jeff Jarvis, over at Buzz Machine is blogging from Harvard where bloggers from around the world are gathered at the
One can only imagine what is going to happen in Amsterdam now. 
There has been a tremendous amount of discussion this week about Peter Beinart's The New Republic cover story: An Argument for a New Liberalism: A Fighting Faith. What upsets me is this: everyone, including Beinart, seems to treat the United States as if it is one person. By that I mean while I can only do one A1 at a time, my country is much more versatile than that. Is fighting terrorism in all its forms (not just Islamics) vital? Hell yes! If I was the only one who do anything about it, I'd make it my A1. But I'm not the only one. So I feel confident in saying the United States has a number of A1's that it must address simultaneously. There are four that I would immediately add to ending World Terrorism:
Weak attempts to discount the exchange between Spc. Thomas Wilson and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are hitting the parking lot like turkeys from the WKRP helicopter.
I'm buried under other work, but I didn't want to let this one pass. In an on-going discussion with my friend 
Flash back to 4 July 1961. As portrayed in the 2002 movie 
Rumsfeld couldn't issue such an assurance and the troops deployed without adequate equipment because they were needed. Family members began buying equipment costing upwards of $1,000 on the Internet and shipping it to their soldiers. In June 
One of my favorite passages is: "Practice, whether Zen or art, is a way of making the invisible visible. We are all complete, lacking absolutely nothing. This was the first teaching of the Buddha. It remains the first teaching of Zen. Some may realize the truth of this perfection, some may not, but nevertheless, we are all perfect. Practice is a way of making that fact visible."
Just because...
In the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin had a technique for removing dissidents that made perfect sense to him: since (a) Communism was the most sensible system of government ever conceived, and (b) as leader of the Communist Party he was the perfect arbiter of how that system should be implemented, then (c) anyone who opposed his vision must be, by definition, insane. So that they might be successfully treaded for their mental illness, Comrade Stalin immediately shipped dissidents off to state-of-the-art mental health facilities run by the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD. (I've always loved the way the name and acronym match up in English.)
A few days ago (28 November, 
Listen, friends, you have to face the truth. You are never going to be rich. The chance of that happening is about one in a million. Not only are you never going to be rich, but you are going to have to live the rest of your life busting your butt just to pay the cable bill and the music and arts classes for your kid at the public school where they used to be free. 
What is wrong with people now? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People seem to think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.
The proposition that the cosmos is—against all odds—perfectly tuned for life is known as the anthropic principle. And while it's getting a lot of attention lately, there is no consensus on how seriously to take it. Some scientists are confident that there is a law that dictates the values of key cosmic numbers, and when we find it the anthropic problem will go away. Others think the answer is even simpler: if the numbers were any different than they are, we wouldn't be around to argue about them—case closed. "The anthropic principle," complains Fermilab astrophysicist Rocky Kolb, "is the duct tape of cosmology. It's not beautiful or elegant, and it sure as hell is not going to be permanent."
OK. It's no big secret. I'm a caffeine junky. A friend of mine remarked awhile ago as she watched me make espresso, "Isn't it funny that we treat coffee beans the way we used to treat marijuana buds?" And it's true. More than half of the whole coffee thing is the ritual and the paraphernalia. And that's why I so much enjoy the 
There is something to be said for self-identification. I've been pleased that I still see a lot of Kerry-Edwards signs on people's lawns. Interestingly enough, the Bush-Cheney signs seem to have come down. I wonder, if perhaps, people would rather not have their neighbors reminded that they have to take responsibility for what happens in the United States and the rest of the world over the next four years. Al Wasco, Assistant Professor for Visual Communication & Design at the Wester campus of Cuyahoga Community College, has one way we can all 
"Driving away from the inn I knew about every man or woman who'd been told the job was filled when it wasn't, every youngster who'd been turned down by a college or a summer camp. I knew the rage that pitches through you when you see your own child shaken and dazed. From that moment, I saw an unending attack by adults on kids of seven and eight and ten and twelve, on adolescents trying to get a job or an education or into medical school. And I knew that they had somehow known it, too. They, those patient stubborn men who argued and wrote and fought and came up with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They knew the tree is known by its fruit and that injustice corrupts a tree; that its fruit withers and shrivels and falls at last to that dark ground of History where other great hopes have rotted and died; where equality and freedom remain still the only choice for wholeness and soundness in a man or a nation." 
Twelve years ago or so, my dad gave me a cassette tape of 
The mystery of the delay was never solved, but the book did arrive some four months after I requested it and, as is my habit with important books, I set aside everything else and began reading. The book was unusual in that it had a letter from the publisher up front describing how the book came to be. It had been written in a hotel room over a two-week period while Kinky was in Hawaii and then allowed to languish in the files. When I started reading I suspected that there was another reason the publication had been delayed: it read like something Kinky had written in a hotel room over a two-week period.
I feel badly about that because I think it is important to support artists who are pushing limits. If it were not for the Cedar-Lee I would not have had the opportunity to see movies like 
"Under the Bush Administration, federal support for “abstinence-only” education programs has expanded rapidly. The federal government will spend approximately $170 million on abstinence-only education programs in fiscal year 2005, more than twice the amount spent in fiscal year 2001. As a result, abstinence-only education, which promotes abstinence from sexual activity without teaching basic facts about contraception, now reaches millions of children and adolescents each year."
"To a reader of Reisman’s scholarly papers, it sometimes appears that there is little for which she does not hold Kinsey responsible. In her research on gays, for instance, she has written that the “recruitment techniques” of homosexuals rival those of the Marine Corps. The Kinsey paradigm, she holds, created the moral framework that makes such recruitment possible. Reisman also endorses a book called 
"No. Absolutely not. When you grow up black in America you have a completely different view of the world than white Americans. We blacks live with a constant feeling of unease. And whether you are wounded in an attack by a racist cop or in a terrorist attack, I’m sorry, it makes no difference."
His eldest son was taking the train down from Harvard Business School and would need the family car for the weekend. Would the young aide deliver the car and the keys to Union Station? Years later, the aide describes what happened next in the kind of sunlit, slo-mo tones they use in movies. "I'm there with the keys and this guy comes striding in wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a bomber jacket," he recalls. "He had this aura." Which is how 22-year-old Karl Christian Rove met 27-year-old George Walker Bush."
From the Miami Herald yesterday comes this report of serious 
Here's the 
There has been a great deal of talk of late about Democrats breaking off to form a third party like the Green Party. The more I think about it, however, the more I think it's likely that conservative Republicans will bolt their stolen party and stake out the reasonable high ground in the middle of the debate. It would be a party led by people who are strong on defense and responsible on fiscal and social issues: a new party of Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy, not Franklin). Who might lead such a party? I have no idea. Perhaps California 
Morgan Spurlock, creator and star of 
The last time this issue came up I think it was in the early '70s when then President Richard Nixon decided that it was time to refurbish the neglected presidential yacht: The U.S.S. Sequoia. The yacht has a 
Stop back often - the refills are always free.
