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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
A DIFFERENT LOOK AT MEMORIAL DAY Somebody wished me a "Happy Memorial Day" yesterday - a young man who had popped in to say hello and goodbye to a group of us enjoying a cook-out in my neighbor’s back yard. Up to the moment he extended those good wishes, I don’t think I had paid much attention to the "memorial" part of the day. There had been some parades over the week-end and I’d seen a few minutes of some of them on television - but otherwise, the "day" was just a holiday. A day off. In England, yesterday was a Spring Bank Holiday that always coincides with our Memorial Day. A day off there too.. But on the day after Memorial Day, I’ve been thinking a little bit about what it’s supposed to mean. I don’t think "Happy" Memorial Day strikes quote the right note. I guess there can be pride in those who have lost their lives in the military service of their country - but I have a hard time thinking of it as a "happy" day. In truth, when we look back at wars we have fought for what we believed to be noble causes, there’s more sadness in remembering those who have fallen in pursuit of those wars at a time when we and other countries around the world are still battling each other for one cause or another. I’m old enough to have lived through one world war that was a "war to end all wars" - and to have studied the history of an earlier world war that was also a "war to end all wars." We take time to remember those who died fighting those wars - but it seems that we learn nothing from them because we - and I speak now of the species homo sapiens, not just Americans - seem incapable of eschewing war as a means of resolving our differences. But beyond that, we seem incapable of relegating our differences to an appropriate measure of their importance in dealing with each other as nations or as groups of people. For example we kill each other because we have different visions of a supreme being and of how we should conduct ourselves in acknowledging that being’s omnipotence. And some of us do it with great joy - making murder an act of religious sacrifice. And when you think of the world in these terms, it makes Memorial Day - anyone’s "Memorial Day" - more of an affirmation of our failures as human beings, rather than a celebration of the sacrifices that men and women have made, fighting for what they believed to be noble causes. I hope that doesn’t make me a cynic. If it does, it makes me a sad one. ________________________________ And sadly still, it seems a perfectly natural segue at this time of "in memoriam" to lament the continuing absence of anything resembling a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, now in it’s 58th year since the re-birth of the ancient Jewish state and of course stretching even further back to the decades preceding the UN resolution. The Palestinians continue to reject every chance that comes their way to move toward a peaceful two state solution. I have no idea what they were thinking when they elected Hamas to lead them. Was it simply disgust with the corrupt Palestinian authority - and if it was, did they really believe that their newly elected representatives would immediately give up their sworn promise to destroy the state of Israel and become diplomats, ready and able to negotiate that long sought final settlement with the Jewish state? Whatever they were thinking, one has to ask if the so called "peace process" is in any more jeopardy than if they had given a majority vote to the PA’s Fatah faction. The conventional wisdom has been that of course it is - that no matter what the faults of Mahmoud Abbas, he and the PA were willing to negotiate with Ehud Olmert and to honor any agreements of the past. For a moment there, it looked like Abbas had found a way to make an end run around Hamas by threatening to hold a referendum on creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Hamas of course rejected the notion and the likelihood of such an event taking place is slim and none. But even if it did, would any result come close to his assertion that "We must stop with the slogans and start dealing with reality. We must stop dreaming and accept what we can take now. " Well, you be the judge. The resolution says in part: The Palestinian people seek to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital in all of the lands occupied in 1967 and to guarantee the right of return of refugees and to liberate all prisoners, based on the historical right of our people in the land of our fathers and grandfathers, and to the UN resolutions.And… The right of the Palestinian people to resistance would concentrate their resistance in the lands occupied in 1967.In other words Palestinian people, our idea for your future - our proposed reality - that which we can take now- as opposed to Hamas’s "unrealistic’ idea of destroying Israel - is to ask you to endorse proposals for negotiations with Israel that are non-starters - that we know Israel rejects and that will continue us along the path of a perpetual war that we cannot win. Negotiations of course always begin by each side asking for the moon but also with each side having a fair idea of how many slices of green cheese it is willing to settle for. As long as the Palestinians - Fatah, Hamas - it really doesn’t matter - enter or propose negotiations based on these kinds of unrealistic concepts of "reality," the conflict will continue, the body count will grow, and they - the Palestinians and the Israelis, like us, will continue to honor their dead for the "sacrifices" they have made in what they believe to be their noble cause. And every Memorial Day, I’ll be reminded of how far we have to go before we can think of ourselves as a civilized species - and why "they" - and readers of this blog know who "they" are - don’t come. . Friday, May 26, 2006
HAVING A YOGI BERRA FEELING I think you have to be around for a few years before you can really say that you are experiencing deja vu. For example, it takes time for a period of history to unfold and for those who live through it, to have it sink in and understand what they are experiencing. You can’t really say that because Mike Steroids hit three home runs against the Louisiana Lumberjacks in a home game this year - just like he did last year - that’s it’s deja vu. More like same old same old. But after a few decades go by and memories remain intact, it isn’t that hard to recognize true deja vu - and if we’re not in that kind of period now, I don’t know what kind of period we’re in. I came back to the US in the early fifties. I was here as a child but grew up in England and didn’t get back here until I was 22. O.K. mathematicians. I’m in my seventies. My young seventies my wife tells me. She’s a lot younger so she sees everything through younger eyes. When I got back here it was a full decade after the debacle of interning US citizens simply because of their Japanese ancestry, but the country was still reeling from the witch hunts of HUAC - the House un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood black list. It was a time when men with narrow ideas held sway in Congress and those who didn’t live up to their ideas of patriotism - or "Americanism" if you wish - were in danger of being deprived of their means of making a living - and even their liberty. The Republican chairman of HUAC from 1949 to 1953 was a Ku Klux Klan supporter. A later chairman - a Democrat - was co-sponsor of a bill that imposed entry quotas on immigrants and allowed the government to deport and bar from entry those identified as "subversives" - particularly members or former members of the Communist Party. As you can see, it was an era of bi-partisan intolerance. In the early fifties came the exploits of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his infamous "list" of "Communists" known to be working for the State department. Before he self destructed in 1954, he had done serious damage to dozens of innocent victims of his evil crusade. But he had been able to work in the fertile ground nurtured by the "Loyalty Oath" requirements of the Truman Presidency - a requirement adopted by our current President during the 2004 campaign. You want to attend a Bush rally? Sign a loyalty oath!! The overriding theme of those activities of the forties and fifties - the backdrop against which they unfolded - is one that we are dealing with again today - the "deja vu" aspect of our times. It is fear. Fear of Al Qaeda. Fear of illegal immigration. Fear of homosexual rights. All things that are likely to do us great harm if we don’t deal with them. So we are told. Using fear as a raison d’etre that trumps the Constitution, we are again living in an era where men and women with narrow minds and narrow views of right and wrong and what represents a danger to our society, are leading us down a dangerous path as they move to protect us from that which they say is to be feared. While no wild eyed Senator is holding up a list of known members of the Communist party working at the highest levels of our government - we have revelations of lists of every phone call made by US citizens being compiled by the National Security Agency - because among those citizens there may indeed be enemies of the state and their phone calls may reveal that acts of terrorism - perhaps another "9/11" - are being planned. While no Senator is proposing legislation that would allow us to deny entry and to deport anyone suspected of being a Communist - we have Congressmen proposing legislation that would make it a felony for anyone - not just Communists - to be in this country illegally. The guy who mows your lawn. The dishwasher at your favorite restaurant. The ladies who clean your house. If they’re here working permanent jobs without the proper papers saying they have a right to be here in those permanent jobs - they’re felons. Dangerous people. Fear is to be found everywhere and our government officials are rushing to protect us from its causes. A Senate committee wants to protect us from the menace of gay marriage - since we all know that married gays are as subversive as any Communist ever was. A Senator from Oklahoma wants to protect us from the democracy crushing onslaughts of the multi - linguists by proposing (gasp) that we recognize English as our "official" language. Some may say that there are large differences between the witch hunts of the forties and fifties and the narrow minded, simplistic, jingoistic congressional proposals and White House edicts being handed down in response to today’s supposed dangers . But I think the differences pale in comparison to what is the same - the erosions to our freedoms that HUAC and McCarthy and loyalty oaths threatened in that era - and the growing erosions to our freedoms in this era. I guess that what comes from being around so long. To me, it’s deja vu all over again. . Wednesday, May 24, 2006
A FAREWELL TO WALGREENS I don’t often use this blog site to air personal gripes that would be of little interest to the casual reader - but since I have a personal gripe that speaks to the business practices of a major American retailer, I think it qualifies as a commentary on the "passing parade." It will also kill two birds with one stone in a manner of speaking, since I plan to call these comments to the attention of that retailer’s CEO. Some time ago, the local drug store that I had patronized for close to a half a century, abruptly closed it’s doors - and told me, in a form letter - that my prescription records had been transferred to a nearby Walgreens. Since there were no independent pharmacies anywhere close to my house, I had little choice but to accept this sad situation and to use Walgreens for my future prescription needs. From the beginning it was not a pleasant experience. The simple act of picking up a prescription that was ready for pick up, often resulted in an annoying overlong wait - even for someone to acknowledge my presence at the pick up counter. We had insurance coverage for prescriptions - but on about one out of every five or six visits to pick up a prescription, I would find it priced as though we had NO insurance and one of the pharmacy staff would have to do a computer search to find me or my wife and to try to figure out why the prescription had been wrongly priced. Then one day, I picked up a prescription which definitely seemed wrongly priced, even though the price was our normal co-pay for generic drugs. I wasn’t able to get an appropriate explanation from anyone at the store, so I thought I would try to get it from someone at Walgreens headquarters and on September 25, 2005, sent the following message via their web site: I'm not sure if this is an issue you can deal with, but I'll start here and go wherever else I need to go to get an answer. Today I picked up a prescription for my wife at a local store. Four, that's Four - Diazepam 10 mg tablets. The charge was $9.99, our normal co-pay for generics. It struck me however, that this exceeded the price for four tablets, but I was told this was the Walgreens price with or without a co-payment. Out of curiosity, I asked for the price for Thirty, that's Thirty tablets without any insurance co-payment. $13.99!!! Their was an automatic acknowledgment on 9/26/05
And the next day, September 27, 2005, there was this e-mail response . I responded on September 27, 2005 I waited patiently for an answer and after thirteen days became impatient and referred the matter via US Mail to the Chairman and CEO of Walgreens as follows: This brought a response by way of a letter of apology from a Walgreens executive and a refund check in the amount of $9.99, to which I responded by e-mail as follows: We're always happy to get checks in the mail, particularly unexpected checks - but if you read our letter of October 10 and the e-mail attachments, you will see that we were not asking for a refund but an assurance from Walgreens that you do not have a policy of charging insured customers an amount equal to their insurance co-payment for a prescription whose retail price is less than the insurance co-payment - and that if you do have such a policy that you will cancel it, since it is of course price gouging, whether intended or not.To which we received the following reply via e-mail: That sounded like a reasonable response from someone who understood that the so called policy described in their e-mail of September 27, 2005 was ludicrous if not downright illegal. We continued to use the local Walgreens store for our occasional prescription needs. (For sustaining drugs, our plan offered a by mail service - coincidentally, also managed by the Walgreen company). The local service stayed about the same. Frequent long waits just to pick up a prescription. The occasionally wrongly priced prescription - as though we had no insurance, necessitating a computer search to find us - and of course an even longer wait. And impersonal service. Through all the times that we came in to drop off or pick up a prescription, no one ever seemed to recognize or remember us. I appreciate the fact that like many Walgreens branches, it was a busy store with a large number of pharmacy customers - but you would think that people in this highly personal aspect of retail service would be trained to try to remember and relate to customers. Then last month, a number of medications were prescribed for my wife to take in preparation for a test procedure. When I picked them up, I didn’t check the price of each item, but when I got home and set them out on my dining room table, one item seemed very strangely priced. It was for a single pill and it was priced at $5 - our reduced co-pay this year for generic drugs - with the notation that "your insurance has saved you $6.99." An indication that this one pill retailed for $11.99!! On April 17, 2006, I sent the following e-mail to the Walgreens executive who has assured me last October that they would "get the message out" to all their stores about this ridiculous practice, attaching a copy of the $5 for one pill receipt: I would think that from the end of October of last year to the end of March this year would be more than enough time to inform your stores of what any grade school kid could figure out. When a doctor writes a prescription for ONE pill, the cost to the patient should be either the actual retail price - or the insurance co-payment, whichever is the smaller amount.I sat down and waited for what I was sure would be an immediate, apologetic e-mail - despite my telling him that it would take more than an apology to explain this second case of rip-off. But I also expected to be told that the word had gone out to all their stores to stop this ridiculous practice of automatically charging insured patients their insurance co-pay for a prescription that retails for less than the co-pay amount!! And that he - the Walgreens executive - would personally talk to the people in the Skokie store to make sure that such a thing would never happen again. Fortunately, I decided not to hold my breath until I received a response - or these comments would never have seen the light of day. I waited a reasonable amount of time. I heard nothing - and so I did what I said I would do in my e-mail message of September 27, 2005 and in my October 10, 2005 letter to Walgreens CEO David W. Bernauer - I asked someone in the business of investigating these kinds of issues to look into it on behalf of all Walgreens pharmacy customers. The "someone" that I asked was the Attorney General of the State of Illinois - and in a letter dated May 10, 2006, her office advised me that the matter will be reviewed and they would let me know what "assistance" they might be able to provide. Their wording I’m waiting to hear what they think they can do. All I want them to do is to ask Walgreens to make damned sure that this practice of charging insured customers their insurance co-payment for a prescription that retails for less than the co-payment amount, be stopped immediately at each and every one of their stores. It won’t be a matter that will affect me personally. Over this past week-end, I went into my local Walgreens to pick up a prescription for my wife. We’d received one of those automated phone calls that says "your prescription is ready for pick up." It was wrongly priced. Insurance hadn’t been applied. I said so. The pharmacist, one who I’d dealt with on many an occasion, asked if my wife had ever had a prescription filled there before. It was a scene that should have been videotaped. It would have been perfect for use in anger management classes as an example of the kind of anger that’s not only justified but obligatory as a means of communicating with the species humanus sans cerebellum!! We will no longer be filling our prescriptions at this or any other Walgreens. Unfortunately, the only local option is another pharmacy chain and dealing with them may be another adventure. But at least their local store is closer to my house and in this age of the retail behemoth - I guess one has to be grateful for small mercies. Monday, May 22, 2006
KEN LIVINGSTON HIMSELF MAY NOT BE DANGEROUS. WHAT HIS ELECTION REPRESENTS MAY BE Crazy Ken Livingston is at it again. This nut, who the people of London have now seen fit to elect twice as their mayor is again thumbing his nose at his and our national governments. This time it isn’t a Sheik promoting suicide murder as a noble pursuit. It’s a government head from the Americas who considers President Bush no better than Hitler and calls Tony Blair "Hitler’s Main Friend." I’m speaking of Venezuela’s bad boy, Hugo Chavez, who had lunch with Ken the Red last Monday. When I speak of Chavez as a "bad boy" - that of course is the US administration’s point of view. Here’s a leader who hurls insulting comments at President Bush and who is friends with people we hate and who appears to enjoy our unhappiness over his presidency. On the other hand - a great many people in and out of Venezuela consider him a reformer and someone to be admired. I express no views either way about Chavez. This is about Ken Livingston and what his two elections represent. For example, to give you an idea of who holds Livingston in high regard, take a look at where his speech welcoming Chavez can be found - in the Palestinian Chronicle - a radical anti-Israel on-line publication where strange bedfellows are often found. For example, Jimmy Carter - - blasting Israel. The people of the United States, in their wisdom - un-elected Jimmy Carter in 1980, so they hold no responsibility for his antics today. Londoners - on the other hand - had four years of Livingston to assess the man - and they still re-elected him. This despite his promise after he was first elected, that he would not run for a second term!! The city of London holds a special place in my heart. I was born there. For a very short time, I went to Public (very private) school there - Haberdasher’s Aske’s Hampstead Public School. It’s a wonderful cosmopolitan city that I visit whenever I can - but where I haven’t lived for more than half a century. In many ways it looks the same when I go back - but sadly, in many ways , it has become different beyond belief. If someone like Livingston can get elected and re-elected mayor of the city, it tells me that there is a huge voting block of people living in London whose heritage is not English and whose interests and desires are not those of the British majority. We saw the most telling example of this on July 7 of last year when four suicide bombers set of explosions on trains and buses killing 56 people - including themselves. All four were British subjects - but who obviously hated their own country!! We are constantly being told that we in the west are engaged in a "war on terror" - that there are terrorists in the world who hate us and are bent on our destruction - something they are unlikely to achieve from beyond out shores. But what is going on in some English cities - and specifically in London, presents a picture of how we can so easily be weakened and harmed from within!! Can one extrapolate from the four suicide bombers of 7/7/05 and say that there are thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of British citizens who are like them, at least in some regard? People who hate the country in which they live and which affords them citizenship with all its rights? Perhaps we can’t pick a number, but I think it’s safe to say that there is something akin to a growing "fifth column" of citizens living in London and that their election and re-election of Ken Livingston cries out to the National government to recognize something that prior to 7/7/05, they seemingly chose to ignore - that there are large numbers of Englishmen and women whose primary loyalty is not to their country. "English" or "Englishman" may not even be he one of the top three answers to the question of "what are you" or "how would you describe yourself?" I’m not sure what can be done about it at this stage of the game. It’s not like problems we have here deciding how to deal with millions of "illegal aliens" or "undocumented workers" or whatever you want to call them. If they all became US citizens over night, they wouldn’t present any danger to our democracy. It might result in a few more Congressmen of Mexican descent - or a few more Hispanic mayors. We might even have an Hispanic mayor in Chicago one day - but I’d be willing to give odds that he wouldn’t invite Hugo Chavez to join him at City Hall to call Bush our hemispheric Hitler - even if he (the newly elected Hispanic mayor) personally couldn’t stand our esteemed President. I had a few mild ideas about what might be done when I penned some comments last July about those British citizens who turned against their own country and their fellow citizens on 7/7/05 - but as far as I can tell, there’s been no concerted effort to work on a problem that shows no signs of going away. Arresting the occasional Islamic preacher who calls for the death of his fellow citizens is a start - but if future responses to those calls are to be avoided, a hell of a lot more needs to be done. . Thursday, May 18, 2006
IS IRAQ BECOMING NO MORE THAN BACKGROUND NOISE? I haven’t said anything about Iraq for a while - so perhaps it’s time to post a thought or two. As President Bush’s approval ratings continue to tank, one of the major reasons cited for his poor showing is his handling of the Iraq war. I emphasize the word "handling" rather than the war itself, because that’s what the pollsters are reporting. This despite the fact that a majority of Americans now believe that the war was a mistake. We shouldn’t have gone there in the first place. Yet there seems to be a strange disconnect between the war and its casualties - and the American people as a whole. There aren’t millions of us directly affected by the occupation and the fighting. We don’t turn on our televisions and see the unloading of body bags as the dead are brought home for burial. We see very little of the thousands who have been seriously injured - many crippled for life While the administration wants to keep telling us that "progress" is being made, they don’t want us to see the price we are paying to maintain our continuing presence in Iraq - progress or no progress. What brings me to this topic is a news report of an all too frequent event that took place two days ago in Baghdad. Gunmen riding in two buses drove into a parking lot in northern Baghdad - shot five Iraqis who were working there as guards and then set off a car bomb that killed another eighteen people who had rushed to the scene of the shooting. Twenty three people dead in a sudden, bloody attack. It wasn’t the only such attack that took place on that day - but it was certainly the worst. A horrifying event. The attack was reported on television news programs - and while not the lead story anywhere, it was given as much coverage as is usually assigned to what have become routine - almost daily stories. For a more detailed report, one usually has to wait for the next day’s newspapers - and I found it yesterday in my paper - the Chicago Tribune. As with the television reports, it wasn’t a lead story. That is, it wasn’t on the front page. Or on page two or three. I had to hunt a little to find it - but find it I did. "Attack in parking lot kills 23." There was the headline on page eighteen - tucked away in a corner of the page in tiny print in a 3 ¾ by 2 ¾ inch box! The rest of the page was filled with a couple of ads and a story continued from the front page about how our troops in Iraq fill their non combat time with fly fishing!! The full page measures 22 by 12 inches. Of which a report of twenty three horrific deaths merited 3 ¾ by 2 ¾ inches!! I know there is a massive outpouring of news every day for Americans to try to absorb - both international and domestic. We have escalating tension between Iran and the United States. We have the legality or illegality of the NSA’s mining of our telephone records. We have ridiculous gas prices. We have what may be a contentious confirmation hearing on General Michael Hayden to head up the CIA. We have members of Congress on their way to jail or to trial and we have the potential of "Bush’s Brain" being indicted momentarily. But none of that is a reason for the dichotomy that seems to exist between our loss of trust in the President because of his handling of the Iraq conflict - and the acceptance of that conflict as a routine component of our times. It’s almost as though the press is cooperating with the administration’s desire to play down the constant flow of bad news out of Iraq. Twenty three people slaughtered. Ho hum. It’s reported there on page eighteen. What more would you want the story to say? What’s even worse is that these stories are being reported in this fashion while we become more and more entrenched in Iraq with no visible hope of a successful conclusion that would allow us to withdraw. I heard a few minutes of a conversation on the radio the other day between Al Franken, who broadcasts daily for Air America Radio, and Richard Perle, one of the architects of the Iraq adventure. Franken was asking Perle to comment on the views of many military experts that we simply began the invasion and occupation with too few troops to do what was required of them - and Perle’s divorced from reality response was that we had ‘captured" Baghdad in three weeks. How could anyone say that we didn’t put in enough troops if we could reach and subdue Baghdad in three weeks? Now it’s three years later and we’re getting daily stories of massacres in the streets reported as routine events - "honor rolls" of the names of our service personnel killed in the conflict broadcast on the PBS News Hour whenever a few names and pictures have been accumulated - and a weekly ‘honor role" of the dead on the Sunday ABC news program with George Stephanopoulos. And we don’t seem to know what we’re doing there except staying there. We may have defeated Saddam Hussein’s military force and reached Baghdad in three weeks, but we have not been able to pacify that city or the country. To do that, we would have needed the kinds of troop numbers that Colin Powell and Eric Shinseki said we would need and we would have had to impose the kind of order that existed under Saddam Hussein. Despite the "good news" and the "progress" that the administration tries to spin, the Iraqis don’t want us there. We didn’t bring them "freedom" by deposing Saddam Hussein, because, as we can see on a daily basis, what the Iraqis have in the wake of our incursion is chaos - and our continuing presence does nothing to alleviate that chaos. It’s more of a contributing factor. But still we stay. There’s talk of bringing a few thousand troops home - perhaps in time to attempt to influence the November elections - but such a minuscule withdrawal offers no rhyme or reason. If it happens, it will be a slight deviation from the routine reporting of Iraqi news - the car bomb explosions - the discovery of executed bodies - the "honor rolls" of our fallen troops - but it still will be part of the general background noise of news - part of the mix on the network newscasts and the daily newspapers - along with the Dow Jones Average, the NBA playoffs and the Barry Bonds home run count. I lived through a period of war - World War 11, when the daily conflict was THE news of the day and when there was a clear end goal - the defeat of the enemy and a return to normalcy - a state of non-war. That is not possible in Iraq. We cannot achieve the desired clear end goal for the Iraqi people.. That’s up to them - and as long as we stay there it isn’t going to happen. What will instead happen will be what is already happening. Our presence will continue to be a routine part of their and our existence - with violent events relegated to a minute or less field report in the middle of the evening network news or to the inside pages of our major newspapers We’ll acknowledge the stories as they are reported and shake our heads sadly or mutter an expletive under our breath - and then carry on as though it isn’t really something that affects us or that we have to deal with every day. And the more it goes on like this - the harder it will be to bring it to an end.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
THE DRUG BENEFIT PROGRAM - RUBE GOLDBERG WOULD HAVE BEEN PROUD I’m one of those many millions of seniors who did not sign up for any part of the Medicare Drug Program by the May 15, 2006 deadline. That would be the deadline for signing up without being penalized with increased costs. I didn’t sign up for a variety of reasons - at least one of them being that it strikes me as something that was conceived by graduates of the Rube Goldberg School of Complicating Everything. In case you’re not familiar with Rube Goldberg he was the cartoonist known for creating the most complicated of machines for performing the simplest of tasks in the most convoluted way possible. How he would have loved all 393 pages of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act. There are three basic things that are wrong with the program. It was put together by government grunts. It’s a for profit enterprise for insurance companies. And pharmaceutical companies will be making their usual obscene profit on every prescription filled. As I’ve mentioned here before, I have a brother who lives in England and has private health insurance courtesy of the company he worked for for a lifetime - but who also has access to that country’s national health program - a conceptual anathema to those in power in this country. He on the other hand, thinks our healthcare system is run by the inmates of an asylum - and he would point to the complications of the so called senior drug "benefit" program as a scheme to get as many as possible of the over 65 crowd to join the inmates in their madness. His "complicated" drug benefit program works more or less as follows. A National Health Service doctor writes a prescription for a particular medication. He takes it to his local pharmacy. They fill it. No money changes hands. Hopefully, the medication cures whatever ails him. Our Rube Golbergians must have looked across the pond, shaken their heads and said - something like that will never do. Our seniors would never understand it. O.K. I’ll quit joking around. I don’t know all the details of the "benefit program" except that it offers a variety of plans and urges we seniors to choose the one that’s "right" for us. And it says if we don’t sign up NOW, it will cost us more if we want to sign up later. Let me comment first on what’s wrong with that concept. I currently have prescription drug coverage. I have it through the insurance plan that covers my wife and myself through her employment. She’s a few years away from retirement age, so that coverage will continue for some time. It makes no sense for me to sign up for the Medicare program now. It would cost me money for no additional benefit. There may come a time however, after my wife retires , when - complicated or not - the Medicare Drug Benefit program would be worth joining. But by that time, there would be years of penalties that would have accrued for me - perhaps enough to render the program worthless. The geniuses who dreamed up the program apparently didn’t consider that possibility. That seniors who would be eligible for the Medicare program might be enrolled in some other program that would cover them for several years beyond the age of 65 but would at some point expire - at which time they would then wish to avail themselves of the Medicare program. Just as seniors reaching Social Security age might continue working for a number of years before retiring and applying for Social Security benefits - and indeed are encouraged to do so by the Social Security Agency. The later you retire - they tell us - the larger your benefit. But if you don’t join Part B or sign up for the Drug program the minute you hit 65 - it’ll cost you big time if and when you do!! Then there’s the choice of "multiple plans" and the encouragement to "choose the one that’s right for you." Here’s the drug benefit under my current insurance coverage. Three classes of drugs are covered. Generic, for which our co-payment is obviously the least. "Preferred" brand name drugs - those that have been on the market for some time and that either don’t have a generic equivalent available or are called for specifically by the doctor writing the prescription. And more recent brand name drugs. There are different co-payments for the three classes. And there is a "by mail" benefit for sustaining drugs which furnishes three months supply at a time - again with the three tiered co-payment but at a lesser cost than buying one month at a time from your local pharmacy. Within the insurance coverage of that plan, there is no choosing "what’s right for you." Everyone covered by the plan has the same drug benefit and pays the same co-payments for their medications - not matter what those medications are. It’s a simple concept. You have drug insurance. It consists of you paying a standard co-payment for the class of drug involved and the insurance company paying the rest. What would be wrong with a plan that offered seniors a similar, uncomplicated choice? Not a variety of "plans" to wade through to find the one that’s "right for you" - but a single plan that’s "right" for everyone. Pay a monthly premium and that entitles you to get your prescription medication - any prescription medication - for a co-payment - the size of which is dictated by the class of drug involved - from generic to the latest to come onto the market. It’ll never happen of course, until this country comes to its senses and enacts universal health coverage that removes the profit motive from any aspect of health care other than for actual health care!! We’ll continue to have the most convoluted of programs - one after another - for dealing with the health care needs of our citizens. Some in government will fight against the convolution as Carl Levin did when the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act was being formulated in 2003. He lost big time. And I’m afraid it will go on like that until we come to our senses. Unfortunately, I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
YESTERDAY’S QUESTION At the end of my comments, was - "can we hang on until then?" "Then" being the 2008 Presidential election. Shortly afterwards I heard the story that had been posted by ABC’s Brian Ross on his blog about his and other reporters' telephone calls being monitored to root out confidential sources. They don’t just want to know if anyone here is calling an Al Qaeda buddy overseas. They want to know who reporters call when they’re working on a story. A scary piece. And then this morning, I read the following letter in the Chicago Tribune. I’m reproducing it here rather than inserting a link to it because it - and the Ross story - provide a chilling emphasis to my question. I am an attorney and I represent one of the men held at Guantanamo. I have represented him for more than six months. I have not been allowed to visit with him. I have not been allowed to speak with him. I have not been allowed any communication with him. I do not know what he is charged with (neither does he). I do not know what evidence, if any, the government has against my client.When I asked the question "can we hang on until then" yesterday - I did it sort of tongue-in-cheek. I still have great faith in this country and it’s hard for me to believe that it can’t survive the term of any President. But as more and more information about what the Bush administration is doing is revealed - as we get more and more peeks behind this government’s own version of an "iron curtain" - the doubts and the questions become less and less tongue-in-cheek. For the lawyer representing a Guantanamo captive, there's nothing tongue-in-cheek about her inference that we're beginning to look a lot like the former Soviet Union. I'll take it one step further. Until we abandon Guantanamo and the policy that it represents - we are already no better than our former cold war enemy. __________________________ A YEAR WITHOUT MY CODY  It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since I posted the obituary - of our wonderful dog Cody. Her memory is still so fresh in our minds that I find myself talking to her - reaching under the table with a treat in hand for the gentle teeth and tongue that are no longer there - turning over in bed to wrap my arm around a furry sleeping companion whose ashes sit in a lovely wooden receptacle on our living room coffee table, adorned with two pictures of her beautiful face. Even in death - she is still with us, as are her wonderful predecessors Poolie, Cassie and Waldo. As readers of this blog may know, I am an atheistically inclined agnostic. I hesitate to say that I’m a flat out atheist because while I’m someone who doesn’t believe in God or an "after life" I’m also someone who would like to be wrong. And in my view, one of the strongest arguments that theists can present is the existence of dogs. If there is any creature that can be thought of as a heavenly creation, it is man’s best friend. I don’t know quite how to explain it - but when I look into the eyes of a dog I can come close to believing that there is a God. I don’t know whether or not we’ll get another dog. It’s not that there could never be another Cody. Of course there couldn’t. Nor could there ever have been another Poolie or Cassie or Waldo. All dogs are unique. But the ravages of my advancing age make it more and more difficult to give a dog all the privileges to which he/she would be entitled as a member of our household. My sciatica, which an operation in January did not cure - and which in fact left me in worse condition - would prevent me from taking any four legged companion for his/her rightful walks. And the saddest thought of all. It is likely that a young dog will outlive me - a thought with which I cannot quite become reconciled. So the thought of another dog is in abeyance. At the moment, my thoughts are with the dog that I walked and carried and teased and played and wrestled with - and who I lost a year ago today and who I will miss for ever. I love you always Cody Monday, May 15, 2006
CHIPPING AWAY AT FREEDOMS IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY Speaking of polls - as I was last Friday - it seems that the initial poll on the NSA creating a data base of all our telephone calls was a little premature. A later poll almost reversed the results of the first with two thirds of those responding being unhappy about the whole affair. Perhaps it had something to do with the way the questions were worded. Perhaps it needed time for the idea to sink in. Perhaps people are asking questions. I know I didn’t have that strong an opinion one way or another when I first heard about it, assuming that it was legal under some statute or other - even if it’s scent was distinctly malodorous. I know that in times of war, even the most free of democracies can and do enact strict controls and keep close tabs on their own citizens. For example, I was in England for part of world war two and thought nothing of having to carry a national identification card. The government thought it was needed and there was little resistance because the citizens trusted the government that was in power. But why would this government need to have a data base of every phone call made by everyone making calls from the USA domestically and internationally? Surely there are ways of keeping track of calls between a telephone in this country and suspicious numbers in countries where terrorists are known to operate This "let’s check everybody" approach reminds me of a felony investigation that took place some time ago. For the life of me I can’t remember where it was or the nature of the crime. Maybe rape. Maybe murder. What I do remember is that they were pretty sure that the suspect was a black male and someone had the bright idea to ask all the black men in town to submit to a DNA test. The idea died the swift death it deserved - but there is a chilling similarity between it and the NSA’s approach to looking for bad guys who might be planning to do us harm. Let’s check the phone calls of every last person in the USA who uses a telephone! You have to run the thought through your mind a few times to let the enormity of that proposal sink in. It’s particularly galling when you recall that this was the administration that came into power with a know- it- all attitude and didn’t want to listen to any Clinton leftovers. And so it became the administration that ignored warnings it was given of an impending AlQaeda attack. This was the administration with an incoming national security adviser who demoted the terrorist expert who had worked for four Presidents and who, for eight years, had had direct access to the outgoing President. In the Bush White House however, he would have to work through her if he wanted to hang onto his job. He told her what was coming. She ignored it - and it came. Of course in all kinds of later testimony she absolutely denied that she or anyone else in the Bush administration ignored anything. They were on top of their game. Richard Clarke was out of the loop. What did he know about how prepared they were? And yet this is the administration that continues to get high marks for "national security." It amazes me. This has been the most astonishing five years in memory - since the attack of 9/11/01. We went to war against a country that hadn’t attacked us. We turned a financial surplus into the largest deficit in history - still growing in leaps and bounds. We have a President who reminds us that "we’re at war" every time he has a drop in the polls. (Now of course, nothing he says can help his poll numbers.) And he continues to do something that no President in history has had the gall to do - enact tax breaks for the richest Americans while we remain - as he keeps telling us - "at war." And to top all that, he has overseen the growth of many of the ingredients that are needed to establish a police state. A neutral observer, knowing nothing of our history, could easily conclude that that indeed was his objective!! I guess we should be grateful that the two term limit for presidents was enacted following the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who’s rein was virtually that of "president for life." Had he lived, he most likely would won a fifth term. With the end of Bush’s second term there will be an opportunity to change the direction that we have been traveling under his alleged leadership and I have no doubt that it will be changed no matter who wins in 2008 - Democrat or Republican. The only question is - can we hang on until then? Friday, May 12, 2006
BEWARE THE POLLS YOU DEMOCRATS - THE JAWS THAT BITE - THE CLAWS THAT CATCH My apologies to Lewis Carroll. Back in 1988, Michael Dukakis kicked off his campaign for the Presidency with his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, telling America that: This election isn't about ideology. It's about competence.Sound familiar? Democrats calling Republicans incompetent ? Dukakis was talking about the Reagan administration and Republican Presidential candidate Bush senior. Now it’s G.W. Bush . And it’s the developing theme that we are hearing more and more from increasingly confident Democrats. Perhaps not as much from elected officials as from pundits on the left. To whom I say - watch out. Don’t lull voters and Democratic candidates into a false sense of security. This mid term election is no slam dunk. I’ve heard one of those pundits say the other day that there are three political parties in Congress. Republicans, Democrats and Appropriators - with the latter having power over the other two. But I think it’s more like Republicans, Democrats and Incumbents. We keep hearing these dismal poll numbers for the President - and not any better for Congress. And we keep hearing that Republicans are running scared and that Democrats can smell the meat a’cooking. No doubt a majority of likely voters are fed up. They want to see changes. They want us out of the mess in Iraq. They’re sick of waking up to the "scandal of the day." (That’s the scandal de jour for sophisticates.) And they know the way to do it is to turn the rascals out. To get some new blood in the halls of Congress. But how many of these disgruntled voters think of the problems in terms of "their" Congressman or "their" Senators? Will they come to the realization that the only way to change things in Washington is to change the balance of power - and that means defeating Republican Representatives and Senators - even our Republican Representative or Senators!! No matter how bad the polls may look for Republicans, the last thing Democrats should do is believe that they represent victory for their party in November. The seats in Congress have to be turned over one at a time - and it’s not going to be easily done by crying "incompetence" while the other side cries "values" - even though they have demonstrated again and again that their "values" amount to voting the interests of their party over the interests of their country. The Republicans aren’t going to concede power that easily. If the Democrats aren’t careful - if they wallow to much in their delight over the Bush poll numbers - they could be blindsided by a campaign that could make the Swift Boats strategy of the last election look like the march of the sleep deprived tortoises. Perhaps today’s poll numbers about the NSA building a data base of millions of our phone records will deliver a dose of reality to those of us chomping at the bit for change. A majority of us are still willing to buy into the idea that surrendering parts of our freedom will help to protect us from further terrorist attacks. After all, they say - those that think this sort of thing is O.K. - we haven’t been attacked since 9/11 so the things the government is doing must be working. They don’t ask why we had years without terrorist attacks when there was NO secret monitoring of phone calls and Internet use and Lord knows what else USA Today or The New York Times may reveal tomorrow about other parts of our lives that are being watched night and day. The November election will present Americans with as important a choice as we may have ever been asked to make. Those who want to persuade voters to make the right choice, need to use the message that the polls deliver to frame a campaign that will catch fire with those voters and to be prepared to counter whatever version of a "Swift Vote" attack that you may be sure Republican strategists are already working on. Poll numbers might make some of us feel good - or bad, depending on our political beliefs - but they’re not going to elect anyone next November. Thursday, May 11, 2006
CAN A FOREIGN NATIONAL ACCUSED OF A CRIME BE ASSURED OF A FAIR TRIAL IN THE US? SOME PEOPLE DON’T THINK SO I’m not sure which side I’m on in the Gary McKinnon case.. He’s the nitwit who thought it was perfectly O.K. to sit at his computer back in 2001 and 2002 and break into US government and military computer networks, causing several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage. I made known my view of hackers and what should happen to them if and when they are caught, back in August, 2003 - and the title of my comments then was Hang All The Hackers. I didn’t mean it literally, though there are times when I think it may be the only appropriate punishment for these cyberspace criminals. Specially when they hijack MY computer to send out junk mail, causing my service provider to temporarily block my outgoing e-mail. So why am I equivocating about "which side I’m on?" Only because McKinnon is an Englishman and while his hacking was done over here, he was in England when he did it. So there is some question about where he should be tried for his crime. The US has requested extradition and a British judge has now ruled in favor of that request - having received assurances that McKinnon won’t finish up in Guantanamo as an enemy alien fighting on behalf of anti-American terrorists. McKinnon is appealing that ruling. He wants to be tried in the UK and he has a lot of support - including a "Free Gary" blog and other assorted supportive web sites. I suppose it isn’t that easy a question to decide. The crime was committed in England - or at least originated there - but it was a crime against networks in the United States. There isn’t any question about guilt. McKinnon did the dirty deed. But there is some argument about how much of a crime it was and what kind of punishment might be imposed by an American court as opposed to legal authorities in England. Obviously, those who are supporting the hacker seem to think that he’s less likely to get a "fair" trial in the United States and that he’s more likely to receive a greater punishment here than if he were to be tried and found guilty in the UK. I have no sympathy for hackers - and this one is no sympathetic figure as you might gather from this report of an interview published in the Guardian last July. He should absolutely get slapped with a jail sentence and there should be as much publicity about it as possible in publications that computer nerds read - either the print kind or on-line sites that they visit. They need to know that the Internet isn’t a toy for them to play with and that my computer is private property. If you come in without an invitation and cause mischief - that’s breaking and entering and you’re a criminal. But while I have interest in this story because it’s a hacker case and computer hacking is a form of terrorism that needs to be fought with as much vigor as we fight against violent terrorists - what drew me to the story was the sub text - the image that that the United States projects to the rest of the world today as a place where an accused criminal can no longer be assured of getting a fair shake. It’s Guentanamo - and what the name stands for. In times past, there would be little chance that an Englishman accused of committing a major crime in the United States could successfully resist an extradition request. But times have changed. Fear of being spirited away the moment one sets foot in the country - being "tried" by a secret court - or not tried at all - and then disappearing behind the barriers of a Guantanamo Bay detention center - or some other prison facility - not to be seen or heard from in years - gives jurists in other countries pause. In McKinnon’s case, the English judge needed assurances that he wasn’t a candidate for the Guantanamo treatment. He still faces the possibility of as much as 70 years - a sentence that amounts to life - but the judge was O.K. with that possibility - as long as it was the result of a legitimate and fair trial. It was the specter of the Guantanamo approach that gave the judge pause. What does that say about what has happened to our country? That our closest friends are reluctant to submit one of their citizens to our justice system without guarantees that they will be tried in one of our recognized and open courts - and not be subjected to our "new" way of handling people we think don’t like us or wish us harm - open ended detention without charge, trial or representation!! Much as I consider computer hacking a crime that should carry some real punishment and not a slap on the wrist - I’m leaning in the direction of hoping that the British Home Secretary denies the extradition request and orders McKinnon to be tried in a British court. That’s how much faith I’ve lost in our system of justice under the Bush administration. Wednesday, May 10, 2006
MY RADIO IS SCARING ME TO DEATH Here’s something that doesn’t happen too often - if indeed it’s ever happened since I began writing this blog. The radio station that I listen to on weekdays up to about 8 in the morning- inspiring blog commentary two days in a row. That would be WGN - with which powerhouse - as I noted yesterday - I’m on an equal footing, courtesy of the Internet. I listen to the station basically to get local news and weather and because the format is one that I can tune out when I’m reading my paper. And O’Dell - though some of his repetitious stuff tends to be juvenile - is rarely annoying - which is hard to say about most of the other radio hosts that I punch in while driving around the city and figuring how much of a mortgage I’ll need to take out on my house to keep up with these gasoline prices. One of the regular features of O’Dell’s show is a current events quiz. I think he does it about once a week - and today was the day. People call the station and if they get on the air while the segment is running, he asks them a single question. I heard two people get through this morning and here are the questions he asked them and the answers they gave. Person number one. Who is David Blaine? Now obviously David Blaine is not a household name. You wouldn’t put him on the same page with George Bush or Dick Cheney in terms of recognition. But he has been in the news for the past few days - in newspapers and on television. I think there was a one hour show devoted to his latest antic the other night - something that I think I’ll comment on in a moment. But if you don’t know who he is, unless you live in isolation, totally cut off from the society around you, you should know who he isn’t!! This quiz contestant’s answer? "Isn’t he the new head of the CIA?" I suppose you can’t totally condemn such a person to eternity in Hades. He did know that someone had been nominated to take over the CIA - and though he didn’t know who Blaine was, you have to believe from his answer that he at least knew that Blaine was a name in the news. The second person was posed a related question. Who is Porter Goss? His initial answer? "Gee, I knew all the other (previously asked) questions." Then after a mental struggle that could almost be heard - finally made a connection. "Wasn’t he one of the jockeys in the Kentucky Derby?" Another poor soul that you’d have to excuse from eternal damnation. He knew that there had been a Kentucky Derby and that jockeys would have been involved. So why is my radio scaring me to death? In particular, why was it scaring me to death yesterday morning? It frequently scares me when I voluntarily expose myself to a few minutes of Limbaugh or Savage or Prager - but that’s to be expected. The two quiz contestants that I heard yesterday were, like me, listening to a relatively apolitical radio program. They both spoke with American accents. Not a foreign inflection in a single word. And they both were adults. Beyond the age of consent. Which means that they had the right to vote. Not necessarily that they were registered to vote. But most likely - very likely - that they had that right. One guy who thought that David Blaine was the new CIA Director. Another who thought that Porter Goss was aboard one of the horses in the Kentucky Derby. Both statistically representative of many others with similar knowledge of the world around them. And both entitled to vote. For President. For Governor. For dog catcher. I don’t know about you but it scares the bejeebers out of me!! ___________________________ Speaking of David Blaine….. I recall taking the British to task back in September, 2003 when they didn’t take kindly to his being suspended above the Thames in some kind of plastic box for 44 days. Although I said at the time that I didn’t approve of his "endurance" stunts, I was dismayed at the crowds that gathered to jeer him, throw things at him and at times attempt to do him serious harm. The name for those kind of people is hoodlum. Plural - hoodlums! But three years have passed since then and Blaine is still at it and my attitude towards him is "enough already!!" I still don’t want to see crowds show up at one of his stunts with the intention of doing him harm - but neither do I want to see him continue to do these ridiculous stunts. I’m no judge of magicians - but I thought his "street magic" specials were refreshing and entertaining. It was something new. Here was a magician without any elaborate stage props and mysterious lighting and glamorous assistants - amazing small crowds in the street - sometimes just two or three people. It was the antithesis of the "other" David - Copperfield - and in my opinion, more entertaining. Why he turned to feats of endurance I don’t know. Maybe it was the pressure of being the son of a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother of Russian descent. After all that’s pretty close to Geraldo Rivera’s ancestry - Dad Puerto Rican - Mother Jewish - and look what happened to him!! But where his magic act made him appear warm and friendly and unpretentious - just like "the guy next door" who could do a few magic tricks and was always ready to perform at the drop of a hat -the "endurance feat Blaine" seems like a totally different person -one bent on seeing how close he can come to destroying himself - and wanting the world to see these idiocies as some sort of serious contribution to society. I paid no attention to his latest stunt other than to read about it in the paper. "Drowned Alive" indeed. If he’s that sorrowful a character, let him go and "drown" himself in some good booze and spare the rest of us from being exposed to these periodic acts of madness. Tuesday, May 09, 2006
BLOGGING ON MY MIND I heard some interesting comments this morning by WGN morning man Spike O’Dell. He was talking about blogs and it was interesting to the extent that he was expressing his ignorance of blogs. He didn’t really know too much about them and had done some on line searching and uncovered Globe of Blogs - a site where one can register blogs and find blogs - and he was truly amazed at how many blogs are out there in cyberspace - if indeed anyone knows that number - and the uses to which people put weblogs. O’Dell’s about where I was a little more than three years ago when I first ran across a blog that introduced me to the blogosphere and got me hooked as a participant. The difference between that day and this is the growth that has taken place and continues to take place. I took a look at Globe of Blogs - and their invitation to register my blog - for what purpose and to what advantage I’m not quite sure - but since anyone wishing to register has to select a category that describes the subject matter of their blog, I passed on the invitation. My category, which is broad based and eclectic - simply doesn’t appear in their long list of categories. They do invite registrant wannabes to create their own category - but I don’t think adding "all of the above" to their long list would be acceptable. I’m writing about blogs today because I think it’s healthy once in a while to sit back and muse about this phenomenon of which I’m a participant - but one in total isolation from millions of other participants. Using Internet search engines, it isn’t that hard to track down print publications - those in the general news category and those devoted to a specific area of interest such as a science or a business category. If one wanted to devote the time and energy to doing so, I would imagine you could track down most of the world’s print publications. When it comes to their blog equivalents however, I think you could search forever and not get much past surface scratching. But unlike print publications, blogs can exist and prosper - if only in the minds of the blog authors - without anyone reading or subscribing to them. That isn’t to say that print versions of blogs can’t exist if one has the time and the funds to churn them out - but if you don’t have an active mailing list, what would be the point? I have no idea how many people read my blog. It’s not a large number I know, because I haven’t attempted to draw in readership which one can do in several ways. But I took up blogging almost as a hobby and it really doesn’t matter how many people look in on this site. As I wrote here in April of 2003, I was inspired to take up this hobby by the antics of a fictional television character!! and I’m enjoying myself and creating what I think is a fairly interesting and well put together body of work. And if anyone who stops by finds it interesting enough to dwell for a moment or two, I’m satisfied. I do look in on one or two blogs from time to time. Israpundit, to which I link because I check it on a regular basis - though certainly not every day or necessarily every week. Riverbendblog to get an on the scene point of view from an Iraqi about the situation in Iraq. And local columnist Eric Zorn. Zorn and Israpundit link to me but I seriously doubt if any viewers come to this site through those links. Maybe I’m wrong but I think all those links are there for two purposes. Decorative - and to get a better ranking on Google. And perhaps to get "hits" on their site. And of course a "hit" doesn’t necessarily translate into anyone reading anything. Every once in a while I do some random poking around to see what pops up in the way of blogs - and sometimes a blog will pop up as a news report in response to a search term - as did "wizbang" yesterday. Absent that response to my search for news reports of Jimmy Carter’s latest skewed vision of the never ending Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I doubt that I would ever have learned of this blog’s existence. Yet there it is, claiming a substantial readership and linking to better than 200 other blogs -perhaps three or four of which I’ve heard of. A blog existing in an island of blogs, for the most part separated from the millions of other blogs existing in their island group. Do any of these people who link to each other ever read their blogs? I have a feeling that most bloggers are too busy writing to read the blogs to which they link. I know I have virtually no time to read blogs - and I don’t do that much writing on line. Heck - I can barely keep up with the news - let alone blogs. But some of the "stars" of the blogosphere are posting to their sites all day long. Some far into the night. And most of them have those long lists of links to other blogs. They would have to be cloned several times over to read the material found in the blogs at the end of those links. But still I find it fascinating that there are millions of us out there - from teenagers shamelessly displaying their personal diaries, to newspaper columnists venting without editorial oversight - to self appointed journalists like me, pontificating on everything from the existence of God to political idiocy - never knowing who might accidentally come across my words of wisdom and be affected by them. I note when Spike O’Dell gives his station ID, he adds the phrase "streaming world wide at WGN.com." And I think to myself - big deal. So am I - in a way. I’m blogging world wide at whatsallthisthen.blogspot.com!! Ain’t that a pistol? Me and a 50,000 watt radio station on an equal footing courtesy of the Internet!!! Monday, May 08, 2006
THE KENNEDY LEGEND CONTINUES I haven’t listened to any of the RWRAR’s (Right Wing Ranters and Ravers) lately, so I can’t be certain that they’re still on Patrick Kennedy’s case - but I would be very surprised if they weren’t. I expect this to become part of their repertoire and - if Patrick stays in Congress as I fully expect he will - last as long as Chappaquiddick I don’t know why some people think that Ted Kennedy’s youngest son got "special attention" when he crashed his car the other day and seemed to be disoriented - a little bit like someone who might have had imbibed too much booze. Apparently he wasn’t given a breathalyzer test to see if indeed he was blotto but instead was drive home by a police officer. It seems to me he got appropriate attention. Not just as a Congressman - and members of Congress do get special attention - having their very own police force. But he also got the gold standard of attention following an accident involving an elected official - which was recently established by no less than our illustrious Vice President. There might have been a moment of hesitation by the officers on the scene since Kennedy hadn’t shot anyone in the face - and that, as we know, is the new criterion for not administering a sobriety test to an elected government official. But if they acted on the supposition that Kennedy might have shot someone before he got into his car - or somewhere along the route from his home to House chamber, their conclusion would have to be that he should be given the Cheney treatment. You won’t hear that point of view from the RWRAR’s. They’re too busy making the point that all drug addicts should be thrown in jail without a trial - other than charter members of their own cabal of course. ____________________________________ You’d Think Israel Had Enough Enemies. But Here Comes Jimmy Carter Checking the news on Google as I do at least once a day - if I’m in front of my computer that is, I clicked on one of the sites that seemed to be carrying a report of Jimmy Carter’s commentary on the poor Palestinians in Sunday’s International Herald Tribune and found it to be a blog not that unlike mine and apparently about as old. Unlike my blog however, this one is a true child of the blogosphere because it cites millions of "unique visitors" and has all kinds of bells and whistles that are foreign to me and my limited cyberspace and blogosphere knowledge. But I’m providing this link to the site because it reprints President Carter’s pro-Palestinian and anti everyone else piece, which you can read here or at the wizbang site with includes both the Carter commentary and critical comments with which I find myself pretty much in agreement. I might have worded my disagreements with the Carter viewpoint differently - but wizbang has the right idea and I don’t have that much time to spare today. Jimmy Carter is a bright man. He’s done some good work in his post Presidency days. I usually enjoy hearing him analyze and give his opinion on complicated topics. A former Congressman, judge and White House Counsel once told me that Carter was the brightest among the Presidents that he’d known - and he’d known quite a few Presidents. But no matter what you may think he achieved at Camp David in 1978, Carter is no friend of Israel as he has made clear over the years and just yesterday with this opinion piece. Fortunately his sphere of influence in this country is virtually non-existent and as far as Israel is concerned it needs to stay that way. Friday, May 05, 2006
GAS PRICES - ALSO KNOWN AS THE CONTINUING REIGN OF CONFUSION All kinds of perplexing stuff keeps being written about the rise in gas prices. Typical was an op-ed piece in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune by former editor and publisher Jack Fuller, in which he purported to explain the economic meaning or non meaning of gasoline price gouging. His conclusion about gas prices? High prices good. Cheap prices bad. And government action artificially driving down the price would create a worse situation - shortages, long lines at the pump, people stranded on the highway with empty tanks. I’ve tried to see the whole gas situation from the point of view of oil and gas experts and people well versed in economics - but just about all it does is give me a headache. I tend to look at the whole mess simplistically. First of all - and I’ve said this before - I think we’re talking way too much about the wrong things. What we should be talking and doing something about is the development of a renewable fuel and an engine to run on it. A dual track. Fuel and engine. Not just find something to work in the internal combustion engine using less oil. An engine that runs on a fuel containing no oil derivative. A development plan that acknowledges that oil is a finite commodity. It will run out. We can explore and explore and drill and drill, but the day will come when it will be gone. There should be as much if not more discussion about replacing gasoline to run our cars and planes as there is discussion about conserving our use of gasoline and building more efficient vehicles. Having said that, here’s my simplistic view of oil and gasoline production and "price gouging." The only thing that’s artificial about the whole ball of wax is the price - high or low! As far as I can see, it was "artificial" when it was less than twenty cents a gallon three or four decades ago - in that that was the price that those who were in a position to set prices determined that consumers should pay. There may not have been any government action involved - but at that incredibly low price, according to Jack Fuller’s theory, there should have been shortages, long lines at the pumps and stranded motorists on the highways. No matter what the price, the essentials of the business - the pumping of oil from the ground, the refining and the manufacturing of gasoline remain the same. And as long as there is sufficient production to meet the demand, the price shouldn’t affect that condition. As a matter of fact, I heard one expert in the field say, the other day, that supply is exceeding demand at the moment. So why a price per gallon that sure as shooting looks like gouging? The price of gasoline is largely determined by the price of crude oil and that price is being determined on a day to day basis not by the actual cost of its production but by speculators. Fuller wants me to believe that when I call my commodities broker and buy or sell crude oil futures and either make or lose money, I am determining the ebb and flow of the gasoline market and dictating whether or not motorists are waiting in long lines for $1.50 gas or being told to come back the next day or being stranded on the expressway - or pulling in leisurely to their favorite local station and happily paying $3.50 gallon for a plentiful and uninterrupted supply. That may be so, but if so, it confuses the bejeebers out of me!! As usual, when gasoline prices go through the roof, politicians are scrambling to "find out why" and to "do something about it." Fuller decries their efforts and says that anything they do, such as suspending some gas taxes, will only make matters worse. Maybe so - but then we’re left with the usual gobbledygook about the industry that gets put forth year after year by oil and gas "experts" and economists that tries to convince us that there’s real meaning to what they’re telling us about the mystery shrouded world that they control and operate. And the Fullers of the world spread this gobbledygook as gospel to be believed. To which I say as I put another $30 on my charge card for about half a tank of gas - in the words of Ebeneezer Scrooge - I’ll retire to Bedlam!! Thursday, May 04, 2006
MY PERSONAL "RAPORE" ON STEVEN COLBERT AND HIS "RAPORE’ Steven Colbert’s appearance at the White House Press Corps dinner has generated a lot of reaction - some highly favorable - some not quite as favorable - and from some who either didn’t think he was very funny or stepped over some imaginary line of appropriateness. I’ve watched and listened to a video of the performance on line and what I saw was the character he portrays four nights a week on The Colbert Report - someone parodying the likes of O’Reilly and Hannity and others of that ilk. There were a few good zingers but not too many big laugh producers and I did think that he stepped on and over that imaginary line a few times. It’s my feeling that the more successful approach when you’re the comedy act at one of these dinners and blasting the hell out of the President, is to do it in a way that allows him to join with you in laughing at himself. It’s hard to do - to be that edgy and yet to not directly insult the victim of your edginess. In that sense Colbert didn’t succeed. But then he probably had no wish to try. He was doing his "rapore" act - no holds barred - to the delight of those who can’t stand the sight of Mr. Bush. I’m a great fan of the Daily Show. I try not to miss it. Ever. And when The Colbert Report started up, I quickly became a fan of that show too. For the first few weeks, I thought it was pretty damned clever and laugh filled. But somewhere along the way it became less clever and less funny - and I found myself being irritated as much by Colbert’s nightly parody of ridiculous right wing "newsmen" as those right wing "newsmen" themselves. Colbert took on a tough task with the show when he locked himself into portraying the same character night after night and having to approach his topics in the same way. It’s a format with a sameness that simply wears thin after a while. The Daily Show has its same general approach night after night - but Jon Stewart is simply himself and with his crew of "correspondents" avoids becoming an annoying caricature of a caricature. Perhaps becoming something of a cult figure in a short time affected Colbert and the "rapore" staff to the point where they weren’t standing back and taking a critical look at what they were doing from day to day but were sure that they had just the right formula and didn’t need to take stock of themselves. Maybe having "truthiness" become the American Dialect Society’s word of the year was more of a bad thing than good for the show - but I have found myself becoming bored at some of the silliness and clicking away to watch something else - after watching every minute of The Daily Show. Now with "truthiness" - the White House Press Corps dinner and a 60 Minutes profile behind him, I don’t expect there to be any fine tuning of the "rapore" format or basic philosophy - and that’s a shame because I think the show needs it to wean me back and keep me as a fan. And while I sometimes insist that I’m unique, I have a feeling that I have a lot of company in my loss of enthusiasm for The Colbert Report. Wednesday, May 03, 2006
AN OBSERVATION ON CLARENCE PAGE’S DEFENSE OF TONY SNOW I deliberately avoided last Sunday morning’s talking heads after discovering that Condoleezza Rice was the guest on CBS and ABC at the same time. A neat trick - courtesy of videotape of course. I am just sick of the constant spin on just about everything emanating from the White House and its cohorts. I cannot remember an American administration with so many things to spin that it makes it obvious that they are not to be believed on almost any subject. Rice is typical with her lying in concert with the rest of the White House gang about Iraq. Do they really expect us to believe that all of the insiders who have revealed what they know about the lead up to the Iraq invasion were making it all up? For what purpose? Do they want us to believe that documents that have been uncovered, backing up the revelations of the insiders do not say what they say? Apparently so. Well I’ve quit listening to the garbage other than to keep current on the latest twists in the ongoing spins. But even without the benefit of week-end television garbage, I was able to be irritated by the folks writing on the op-ed page of my Sunday newspaper - among them of all people, Clarence Page - who rarely if ever annoys me with his writings or his television essays for the PBS News Hour. Page’s op-ed piece was a defense of Tony Snow, the new White House Press Secretary. He thinks Snow is a good pick and not a member of the goofy right wing populated by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. And so Clarence is unhappy that liberal critics are all over the place attacking Snow and using an item that appeared in his - Page’s - own column. This was a column in which he quoted a 1991 comment by Snow to the effect that when Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was running for governor in Louisiana, he was talking about things that concerned voters - "high taxes, crummy schools, crime ridden streets, welfare dependency and equal opportunity." According to Page, Snow was trying to explain why Duke had won an estimated 55% of the white vote in the Louisiana governor’s race and in making the case had said "You can’t write off Duke’s voter’s as racist." Apparently Page agrees and is unhappy that Snow is being attacked because of that statement - particularly because it appeared in one of his own columns. I know nothing about Snow. I’ve never seen him on television nor read anything he may have written so I’m not one of those who will attack him for making the statement. But I think it was silly comment to make and about as far off base as a reasonable observer of the political scene could get and I’m surprised that Page doesn’t see it the way I do. There’s no question that there are people registered to vote who shouldn’t be allowed to do so. People who can’t find New York on a map or name the sitting President. There are such people. Some of them might vote for a David Duke because of campaign rhetoric without having full knowledge of who he is, what he stands for and why he’s spouting that campaign rhetoric. But anyone with a sixth grade reading ability and some knowledge of this nation’s racial history, would be able to recognize that David Duke is a racial bigot who uses whatever tools he can get his hands on to advance his cause. One advance he wanted to make was to ascend to the Louisiana governorship. Snow’s point was that not all those who voted for Duke were necessarily racists. Very likely true. But apart from the group described above that shouldn’t be allowed to vote, the rest of them knew that Duke was an avowed racist and so they were knowingly and willingly giving their votes to an avowed racist. I guess I could concede that voting for Duke doesn’t automatically make them them racist - but at least it makes them sort of racist by proxy. If Baron von Munchausen were alive today, he would have been better able to describe the syndrome than I. I gather that Page had talked to Snow about the comment because in his column he says that Snow "wanted him to know" that just as attending Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March didn’t necessarily translate into endorsement of his ideas of black supremacy or anti-Semitism - neither did a vote for Duke make one necessarily a racist And I might go to watch Farrakhan perform on the fiddle or even listen to one of his nutty speeches. But I wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher let alone governor knowing what he is and what he stands for. And I suspect - no, I’m damned sure - neither would Clarence Page. Maybe Snow will be an improvement over McClellan but it wouldn’t surprise me if he carried on in the McClellan tradition of handing the White House press corps a daily snow job - perhaps just with a little more sophistication. ____________________________ Too many things happening to keep up with comments on all of them - but I’ll try to make brief note of as many items of the "passing parade" as I can. I didn’t think Bill Frist could top himself when he signaled an end to his elective career by diagnosing a comatose patient as being less than comatose by watching a videotape of her grimacing and moving her head. The Terry Schiavo case of course. How anyone could take Frist seriously after that ridiculous episode is beyond me. But I guess when it comes to our illustrious leader of the Senate, there is no low mark which he cannot top - or rather sink beneath. How much lower can you go than coming up with the idea of sending everyone a hundred bucks to help defray the high cost of driving? I heard him say that the idea was dead this morning - and I think I heard him say that it was a shame that it wasn’t going to happen. I honestly don’t know how to comment on this latest bit of idiocy - other than to express a measure of pleasure that Frist doesn’t plan to run for the Senate again. Of course this guy is so out of it, he may actually believe that he’s Presidential material and make a run for the nomination. That’ll give me and every pundit in the country - fodder enough to fill a special edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. ___________________________ The National Anthem in Spanish? What are these folks thinking? This isn’t a popular song that can be adapted from one language to another. It’s O.K., to have English version of something like the Jaque Brel classic Ne Me Quitte Pas because the literal translation from the French wouldn’t rhyme at all. So it became "If You Go Away" in English. But Oh Say Can You See was never meant to mean "Jose - can you ? Si!!" All right, those aren’t the Spanish words, but the recording that has been cut apparently was done with words that aren’t even close to what Francis Scott Key wrote for the Star Spangled Banner - even if they do try to convey patriotic feelings. It isn’t hard to learn any short piece of poetry or prose phonetically - in any language. If Hispanics living in the United Sates want to express there devotion to the country by recording the National Anthem - that’s what they should do. If they don’t speak any English - at least take the trouble to learn the words phonetically. Doing what they’ve done conveys the opposite impression. At least to me. And I would suspect to a great many Americans who otherwise sympathize with their cause to become recognized as citizens or citizen candidates. ____________________________________ Another candidate to add to the American Olympic team competing for the gold if Exercise In Arrogance should ever become an Olympic sport, is the temporary - snuck in under the cover of darkness - US UN Ambassador John Bolton. Previously appointed to the team by me were Don Rumsfeld - an automatic choice - and former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond - he of the jowls and the four to five hundred million retirement package, depending on which way you want to figure all the components. After watching Bolton testify before a House Committee on C-Span last night, I would elevate him to team leader. I swear I have never seen such arrogance publicly displayed by a government official. After watching him perform, I can understand why so many people with whom he had worked in the past were vehemently opposed to his nomination to the UN post and why President Bush didn’t try for the advice and consent from the Senate and instead made a recess appointment. As congressman after congressman tried to get him to answer questions, he instead pontificated on things he wanted to say - and lectured his questioners on their lack of knowledge and understanding of the issues under discussion. At one point, the chairman of the committee asked Bolton if he had any time problems or if he was able to stay to answer some more questions. With a broad grin, he responded that he could absolutely stay. He was, he said, having fun!! I can just imagine how much fun he must be having at the UN, telling all those stupid delegates from all those inferior nations how ignorant they are on so many matters. That’s really going to help as we look for consensus regarding Iran!! |
