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Tuesday, December 25, 2012
SHOOTOUT AT THE O.K. GRADE SCHOOL A quick follow up on the post below. "And suggesting that more guns in the hands of more people will cut down on gun deaths is sheer madness." That was the penultimate sentence of the fifth paragraph of what I wrote on December 20. It was and still is the belief of the putative representatives of the nation’s gun owners that more guns in the hands of more people makes for a safer society - but now the National Rifle Association has taken the madness one step further. Their solution to prevent the next Newtown or Columbine, as voiced by Wayne LaPierre, is to put an armed cop in every school in the nation. It’s impossible of course. The cost alone would be prohibitive. But think of what is being suggested - turning our seats of learning into armed camps. I think we all knew that the leadership of the NRA were zealots in defense of everyone’s right to own firearms and have been for years. Think of Charlton Heston holding a rifle aloft at the NRA convention in 2000 and letting the world know that the only way anyone could wrest it away from him was "From my cold dead hands." I think of the late actor as a Second Amendment zealot but I never doubted his sanity. LaPierre strikes me as one who has lost touch with reality other than that created in his own mind. According to LaPierre, the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The sort of thing you see in western movies. No Mr. La Pierre, the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a bad guy with little or no access to the kind of gun that can kill 26 people in a matter of seconds. I know it will be hard to get anything changed when it comes to gun ownership in America and you can get an idea of how hard it will be when the opening salvo from the leading voice for gun freedom in this country is to call for more guns in more places. You’d think that bit of nonsense would be struck down without a second thought. If we took it seriously, what would come next, armed guards in every movie house, in every shopping mall, at every sports event, on every fire truck - on every street corner? But of course some will take it seriously and moves are already afoot to legislate armed protectors in our schools. I don’t know how many efforts are underway to make LaPierre look less of a madman or to at least provide him with enough company to make him look no more mad than some others, but at least one legislator has jumped on the idea of putting guns into schools. Bob Marshall, a Virginia State Representatives plans to offer a bill that that would require that at least one person in every school in Virginia to be trained and to carry a gun - ready to fire at invading bad guys. As I write, President Obama is enjoying Christmas in Hawaii and Members of Congress are spending the holiday break in their home districts. I hope they return to Washington mentally and physically refreshed because they’ll need to be to deal what will await them. Forget about the "fiscal cliff." Think SANITY CLIFF and how to prevent the country from following the leadership of the National Rifle Association over the edge. Thursday, December 20, 2012
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOWERING THE FREQUENCY OF COLUMBINES AND NEWTOWNS Since this blog is devoted to commentary on the passage of history, I cannot, difficult as it is to face such a gut wrenching task, choose not to comment on the horror that took place in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. There are no words to describe the mixture of anger and sorrow that overtook my wife and I upon hearing of this monstrous act. We both watched and listened to the memorial service and the President’s remarks with tears in our eyes. How could such a thing happen? How could anyone, however disturbed, look innocent young six and seven year olds in the eye and pump bullets into them again and again, one after another? There is of course no answer to such a question. There can be no explanation that makes any sense. Yet if we are not to descend into a maelstrom of hopeless surrender to inevitable acts of madness, we must try to do what can be done to at least slow down their inevitability. The argument is already raging, as it does after every one of these insane acts, about the role of guns. You know the defenders of the gun culture - the "Guns don’t kill people, People kill people" crowd. But people without guns can’t as easily commit mass murder in a matter of minutes as people with guns. And yes I know, crazy people can plant bombs, but that’s not the issue here. Unless we do something, the ticking time bomb that will likely result in another Columbine and Aurora and Newtown becomes closer and closer to exploding - the explosive material being the easy access to all kinds of guns and ammunition - and the fuse a troubled mind. I remember when I first came to the United States as an adult - I was here as a child younger than the Newtown victims but grew up in England - I was struck by what I sensed as the potential for violence in so many people. It was like an exaggerated expression of the American right to say and do whatever one pleased and not be interfered with - something akin to the rugged individualism of life in the old west. There were times when I felt uncomfortable in some social situations. The feeling faded away as time went by and as I became more "American" but I was still aware - as I am to this day - that violence is more so a part of our culture than it is in any other industrial nation. I don’t know what the murder rate was when I arrived decades ago, but I have seen it grow year after year to the point where, if we had a summer weekend in Chicago without a murder, it would call for at least a small headline in our local papers. Perhaps the nature of our society and the tendency for many of us to resort to violence to resolve real and imagined problems and inequities can’t be easily changed, but surely we can do something about the easy access to weapons that can swiftly kill from across a room, a street or a school yard by someone mad at some other person or at society - or just mad. There have been calls for some measure of gun control before, most strongly after incidents similar to the one we have just witnessed and they have gone unheeded. But there’s a feeling that this time it’s different, that there will be less resistance from those who see any gun regulation as an attack on their freedom - even from the NRA. There will of course be the argument put forward for the right to own something akin to a machine gun for the purposes of "self defense." Those arguments are usually from those who think of self defense in terms of defending their "freedoms" against government intrusion or a U.N. takeover of our society . There is a slightly more legitimate argument for the ownership of a handgun or rifle to defend against a criminal who might want to inflict bodily harm in the course of a robbery or some other kind of assault or property invasion, but the problem with that argument is that honest citizens don’t usually walk around or sit in their homes with a gun in their hands, the safety catch off and a finger on the trigger, while the criminal against whom they’re proposing to defend themselves is likely to be doing just that. There are occasions when one might be ready to defend as described. That’s when the "one" is a street gang member and those against whom he would be defending, other street gang members, similarly armed and ready. The restrictions now in place are worthless. A "background check" isn’t going to reveal dangerous criminals. They already have their guns, acquired in one of many ways available to them. Similarly, background checks aren’t going to turn up dangerous psychotics. We’ve seen how guns have been obtained legally and with all the checks and balances in place by madmen who use those guns to commit mass murder. We can’t put armed guards in every school in the country as some are suggesting, nor does it make sense to arm teachers, which is also a suggestion. And suggesting that more guns in the hands of more people will cut down on gun deaths is sheer madness. So what can we do? The first thing that can be done is to ban the sale of all weapons to the public other than rifles and hand guns that carry a certain maximum ammunition clip and that can only fire one bullet at a time. No weapon that can fire continuously with a single depression of a trigger should be available for public sale. This doesn’t take care of such weapons already in people’s hands so the law would have to ban the possession of those weapons with a grace period to turn them in, say, six months in exchange for reasonable compensation - making their possession beyond that period a felony. The sale of high capacity gun magazines - say anything beyond ten bullets - should be banned immediately, as should their manufacture or importation. There should be no vague description of weapons such as "assault." A simple description of their fire power should be enough to identify them. Every weapon allowed under whatever law is passed should be required to have an imbedded identification and accompanied by a "title" similar to that required for automobiles and their sale should be registered at some central agency. Buyers should be required to take and pass a test for each kind of weapon purchased and would be issued a firearms license that would need to be renewed periodically like a driver’s license. A sale of a weapon from one owner to another would need to be registered and the title transferred to identify the new owner. And the number of guns that anyone would be allowed to purchase at any one time or within a given period of time would be restricted. All of these should be Federal laws. Leaving them up to the states would result in uneven enactment and application with a crime committed in one state not being recognized as such in another. None of these restrictions would infringe upon gun ownership rights that already exist other than to limit the types of guns that can be purchased. Requiring sellers to create a title, buyers to qualify for a gun license and the other ideas suggested, would make buying a gun a more regulated process but would not restrict basic ownership or other gun rights. For example, a court has just ruled that Illinois, the only state that does not permit concealed carry, must change its law and join the rest of the nation in permitting gun toting citizens to roam its streets. I don’t hold out much hope for these laws to be enacted, despite the feeling that the efforts to do something will be met with less resistance than in the past. While we mourn the loss of those little children and feel the agony of the parents who are burying them day after day, we are still a nation in love with guns and that believes the second amendment to the Constitution applies to all citizens for all time and all "arms." The best we can hope for is the ban on the sale of some weapons and perhaps high capacity gun magazines. Citizens would still be able to own guns and carry them almost anywhere, but perhaps their killing capacity would be reduced and the time it would take to cause multiple deaths increased. For the sake of the children who could be the next victims of some crazed gunman and out of respect for the memories of those who died in Newtown, I pray that we can accomplish that much in my lifetime. Friday, December 14, 2012
MY GOVERNMENT AT WORK - HELPING ME WITH PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS I was no great fan of Ronald Reagan and not particularly amused by any of his allegedly humorous quips. But when I look at what has been passing for governance for the past several years - at the national and local levels, one of his lines comes close to having a ring of truth to it. On July 28, 1988, in remarks to representatives of Future Farmers of America, he said: "The ten most terrifying words in the English language are: Hi, I’m from the government and I'm here to help."I was reminded of that quip after I got a couple of letters from my Congressional Representative Jan Schakowsky last month. The first, dated November 15, was a letter thanking me for contacting her about agricultural subsidies and childhood obesity. It was very nice of her to thank me, except that I didn’t contact her about either of these subjects. Maybe it was intended to let her constituents know how focused she was, because my letter was addressed to the full name, including initials, under which I’m registered to vote - a name that I never use in personal correspondence or in any other aspect of my life. But I guess I can excuse the error. After all, it didn’t do any harm except waste postage - and if that was the worst money wasting activity of members of Congress, we’d be celebrating Christmas in July - and every other month of the year. But then I got a second letter. On October 24, 2012, with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, I sent the following e-mail to The Federal Reserve: Whoop-de-doo. A big fat $1.38 interest just got credited to my checking account. Now my wife and I - both of us seniors - can really get this economy going again. Sunday, December 09, 2012
"MISTAKES" THAT SHOULD NOT BE "PARDONED" I am not someone who necessarily agrees with those who have declared the English language to be dead and I am certainly not ready to conduct a funeral for it as one English clergyman did earlier this year. But I do get disturbed when I hear people assign meanings to English words that cannot be found in any English language dictionary. One that I have been hearing of late is the use of the word "mistake" as a substitute for something that’s almost the opposite of what the word means. If you were to look up mistake in the dictionary of your choice, I can guarantee that you will not find the word "murder" as one of its meanings. Or "grand theft" or "lie" - or any number of meanings that have nothing to do with the generally accepted understanding of what is meant by mistake. Adding six and five and two and writing down 27 as the answer is a mistake. Murder and grand theft are not. Politicians often make mistakes. Some people believe everything certain politicians do is a mistake. They are usually extreme partisans who consider that the very philosophy of political parties other than their own is a mistake or even criminal. Then there are politicians who break the law. The last two governors of Illinois are serving jail time for their "mistakes" which law enforcement officials and two juries decided were crimes. The mistakes, if they existed, were getting caught.Now we have two more politicians - or actually ex-politicians - who are in a peculiar way connected, citing "mistakes" as a substitute word for, in one case, two crimes for which convictions were obtained and in another, for what appears to be a crime or crimes for which the ex-politician is negotiating a plea agreement. The latter, as you might guess, is former Congressman Jesse Jackson Junior, who resigned from Congress citing poor health and "mistakes." The former, one of many seeking to replace Jackson as the representative from Illinois’ second congressional district is one Mel Reynolds, who was the Congressman from that district but resigned after being convicted for having sex with an under age campaign volunteer and later for fraud and served time for both crimes. He was succeeded by Jackson and now he wants the seat back, admitting that he "made mistakes" but pleading that it shouldn’t be a life sentence. To a certain extent, you can understand the use of the word by politicians who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I don’t know of any politician accused of a crime who freely admits his or her transgression when they know they’re caught dead to rights. What I think they do by referring to their crime or crimes as mistakes, is find a way to concede their guilt in as face saving a way as possible - perhaps with thought, as in the case of Mel Reynolds, of making some kind of a comeback. But there are some cases where the use of the word is deceitful and immoral and insults the intelligence. Such is the case with NBC News. George Zimmerman, who has been indicted on a charge of second degree murder for shooting Trayvon Martin and is out on bond awaiting trial, is suing NBC, claiming defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. As just about everyone blessed with hearing and vision knows, the killing of Martin took on racial overtones when authorities in Sanford, Florida initially declined to bring charges against Zimmerman, with Civil Rights advocates and cable news stations accusing them and Zimmerman of being racists. To this neutral observer, the hue and cry was exacerbated in no small measure by the reporting of NBC News. The Zimmerman lawsuit alleges, accurately, that NBC edited the recording of Zimmerman’s 911 call describing what he believed to be the actions of a suspicious character to a police dispatcher. The complete recording - just as it happened, was available to all news organizations. All or part could be played by radio and television stations or a transcript of the recording printed. NBC decided to doctor it for reasons as yet unknown, giving aid and comfort to those accusing Zimmerman of being a racist. During the Today Show on March22, 2012, several clips taken from the 911 recording were played, the first of them as follows: ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black. 911 DISPATCHER: Did you see what he was wearing? ZIMMERMAN: Yeah, a dark hoodie. A quick reading of the actual recording shows that NBC took bits from different parts of the recorded conversation to portray Zimmerman as a racist. The "he looks black" comment was in answer to the dispatcher’s question "O.K. and this guy is white, black or Hispanic?" Caught with its corporate pants down, NBC apologized to its viewers, calling the doctored tape "an error made in the production process" and has now responded to the lawsuit saying that the edited tape was a "mistake" and that they intend to "vigorously defend" their position in court From what I’ve been able to gather, researching this issue on the Internet, there were several airings of doctored versions of the original recording, not all of them the same and a couple of NBC reporters lost their jobs - presumably for "making errors inn the production process." What utter garbage. The reason this story grabbed my attention is because I have considerable expertise in the matter of the kind of "production process" that NBC says was where a "mistake" was made. I produced, recorded, edited and distributed a variety of audio products over a period of forty some years. I could take conversations or speeches or any kind of voice recordings and make people say almost anything I wanted them to say, and indeed I often did, but with their knowledge and approval. One can make errors when editing audio tape, but making people say something that differs from what they originally said in a way that changes their meaning is a deliberate act. I’m in no position to judge Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence in the death of Trayvon Martin, but he has every right to sue NBC for making him sound like he was a racist and I hope he wins - if for no other reason than to expose the hypocrisy of calling the deliberate creation of a lie a "mistake" - as it is for politicians to use the word to describe their breaking the laws that they are sworn to uphold and may have even voted to enact. Maybe their colleagues will one day pass a law to make people or corporations criminally liable for such fallacious language usage. Misdemeanor Mistake, Felony Mistake, Aggravated Felony Mistake, even First Degree Mistake. It probably won’t stop them though. They’ll just go the Thesaurus and start working their way through what they find there. It’s a long list so don’t hold your breath waiting for a raft of truth in politics and advertising. Sunday, December 02, 2012
THE ISRAEL/HAMAS CEASE FIRE WILL LAST ONLY UNTIL IT’S BROKEN I stay away from commenting on the world around me for a couple of weeks and when I sit down in front of my computer to resume, it’s hard to pick something to write about from the wealth of material that has accumulated. Egypt elected a president and he turns out to be a dictator. The Republicans still don’t get it. Romney’s chief campaign strategists thinks he really won except for the people who don’t really count who voted for the other guy. Someone by the name of Charlotte Allen writes what seems to be a brilliant sit-com treatment in the Chicago Tribune about Sarah Palin being the best GOP pick for 2016 - only it turns out to be serious argument. Palin for President in 2016. Jesse Jackson Junior resigns from Congress and may be on his way to the Big House - and among the crowd clamoring for his seat is former Congressman Mel Reynolds who has already spent time in the Big House. I could go on and maybe I’ll come back to all of these topics - but right now I have to say a few words about the latest piece of alliterative nonsense - War and Peace in the Middle East! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about Israel and when I have written, it has been a frustrating exercise. Sane people I am sure do not want to live in a state of perpetual war and I am reasonably sure that sane Palestinians want peace as much as sane Israelis. Yet for 64 years, madness has prevailed and shows no sign of abating. And when the recent violent eruption of that madness was destroying lives and property, the Arab world was quick to condemn Israel for being the "aggressor" while the United States and other western countries supported "Israel’s right to defend itself." And now we have a cease fire. And those of us who’ve lived through decades watching this madness await the next salvo of missiles I have no personal expertise when it comes to the decades old conflict, but I have personal interests. My oldest grandchild was born in Israel and is married to an Israeli, though they live in the United States. And I am old enough to remember the U.N. vote that led to partition of what was left of Palestine after 70% of the land was shaved off to create Jordan. One Jewish and one Palestinian Arab state on a sliver of land about the size of Maryland. And the chicken and egg history of blame and madness and violence began. I won’t bother to try to recount the past history of the conflict, which, as you can see from this timeline, goes back a lot further than 64 years. But I have an opinion on the current state of affairs. Some people view the cease fire as some kind of hopeful sign. I see it as another moment of madness in what has been a history of madness. There is an ongoing war. This cease fire, like all that have preceded it, official and unofficial, is just a momentary pause on the fighting on one of the several fronts of that war. There is nothing particularly hopeful about it. In the chicken and egg history of this conflict, you can pick any point in time to support your particular point of view of who is to blame and/or who started what. The Palestinian Arabs would probably pick what they call Disaster Day - the day that Israel declared its independence. From their point of view, the very existence of the State of Israel is at the root of the entire problem and in a sense, I would agree with them. Violence between Arabs and Jews had been going on a long time before the partition decision and the declaration of independence - but it’s that last thing - the official arrival of a Jewish state on a fraction of the Biblical Kingdom of Israel, that instigated what has become a never ending conflict - never ending because enough crazy Arabs refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. I’m not saying that the Palestinians have always been in the wrong and Israel in the right. Israel has made its share of bad moves that have thrown roadblocks in the way of achieving some sort of rapprochement with Palestinian Arabs, most of them since 1967 - a year which many Palestinian sympathizers around the world seem to think was when the conflict began. But I place most of the blame on the Arabs who rejected every opportunity for peace up to and including 1967. Of course Israel could have unilaterally withdrawn from the areas captured during the ’67 war, but that wouldn’t have brought peace - not without an agreement with the Palestinians. I agree that the settlements in areas that would become a Palestinian state if agreement between the two antagonists could ever be reached are a problem - but the continued occupation of these areas only came about because of the "Three No’s" of the Khartoum Declaration - No Peace, No Negotiations and No Recognition of Israel. Yes, despite that declaration, Israel was eventually able to make peace with Egypt and Jordan, but as long as there are Arab leaders who insist that Jews have no historical connection to the land and as long as a member of the United Nations continues to call for Israel’s destruction and its Hezbollah client stands ready to rain down thousands of rockets on Israel and as long as leaders of Palestinian factions declare that their aim is the destruction of Israel, any "cease fire" is little more than a cruel joke. There can be no movement toward a meaningful settlement as long as the bulk of what is described in the foregoing paragraph continues to be the case. Israel cannot negotiate a peace treaty with an enemy whose opening and continuing proposal is that Israel should cease to exist and all its Jewish citizens murdered. Their is no point in trying to reach an agreement with the faction of the Palestinians that might accept Israel’s right to exist while another faction continues to wage war. The cease fire allows Israeli citizens who live within range of rockets launched from the Gaza strip a chance to return to some semblance of normal life. For the rulers of Gaza, it allows time to restock weapons - as indeed they have publicly stated they plan to do, before resuming rocket fire. Frankly, I am tired of hearing about peace processes and so called peace activists trying to break the sea blockade of the Gaza coast and all of the condemnation of Israel for its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. I have nothing but sympathy for those Arab s who want only to live in peace who have to put up with check points and other hardships and indignities. But as long as the crazed people who live only for Israel’s destruction or whose negotiating positions are know non starters are a substantial part of the group with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate and make peace, the chances of it happening are zero. Those who were involved in arranging this last cease fire are talking and will continue to talk about it offering a chance to break the stalemate. While they’re waiting for this miracle to take place, I’ll be waiting for the next group of rockets to land in southern Israel and beyond. Maybe one day there’ll be a majority of sane people from both sides who can negotiate with each other who’ll leave pipe dreams outside of the meeting rooms and not make ridiculous demands of each other and actually find a way to live in peace and understanding. I hope I live long enough to see it, but I probably have a better chance of winning the next Powerball lottery - and you know what those odds are. Friday, November 16, 2012
WHY OBAMA LOST THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION It wasn’t supposed to be a public forum but you know how it is nowadays. Someone always has a smart phone or some other recording device. I was watching a re-run of "The Truman Show" the other night with various images of the Jim Carey character being transmitted to a world wide audience via cameras as tiny as a button. That’s about the way it is everywhere today. Life isn’t just imitating art. It’s validating it. So there he was, Barack Obama explaining to his big backers why he lost to President Elect Romney. Those in attendance included the heads of every major U.S. union, agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, George Soros , at least three Black Panthers, Barbara Streisand, Oprah Winfrey and the entire Chicago Bulls Roster. The recording reveals the President telling them that while he was trying to convince voters that his ideas were the ones that would move the country forward and provide for a brighter future, he just wasn’t able to compete against Romney’s promises to give things to people. For example, by promising to eliminate all federal taxes for people with incomes in excess of $500,000, he was able to pull in a lot of rich white males. When he proposed quadrupling the tax deduction for moving companies overseas, he pulled in a lot of very rich white males. When he made his so called joke about their being no doubt about where he was born and nobody asking to see his birth certificate, he gave a poorly disguised nod and a wink to the birthers and pulled in a lot of nutty white people of both sexes.. When he stood smiling to receive the endorsement of Donald Trump, he pulled in a bunch of crazy white people. When he promised to get rid of "Obama Care" on his first day in office, he pulled in a bunch of delusional white people. He was just able to pull together a coalition that was hard to beat. We tried, the President said, to explain that the kind of entitlement society being proposed by Mr. Romney, could propel us down the road to disaster - with national expenditures going through the roof and revenue falling close to zero. The President said he tried to explain that there was no way that the middle class and the poor could support government all by themselves - but when so many people become dependent and are comfortable being dependent on the government giving them the kind of things that George W Bush started giving them, and with Romney promising to give them more and more of the same - that was a force that was difficult to overcome. But the most important reason that he was unable to beat Mr. Romney, the President explained to his financial backers, many of whom had donated more than $127.50 on at least four occasions, was mathematics. It was clear going in that 53% of the public were going to support Romney. Most, if not all of them actually paid federal income tax - and a good many of them paid more that 14%!! We knew our only hope was to chip away at that 53%. It was technically possible. After all, if we could just get 3% to come over to our side, we’d be even and if some kind of miracle happened - say something like a devastating storm that caused unbelievable destruction of property and loss of life so that we could look Presidential responding to it, we could well pick up that other point that would put us over the top. Well, as you know, the President continued, the storm did happen and we were able to look Presidential but Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh explained to their vast audiences that we had arranged the whole thing just so we could look Presidential - and there went that three plus one percent. But the news wasn’t all bad, the President concluded. He had learned his lesson. In order to win the presidency, he had to reach out to rich, white, mostly middle aged males and promise them things!! But, a Black Panther member asked him, isn’t it too late to change campaign tactics after you've already lost the election? Not at all, the President answered with a smile. I’m talking about 2016 when I’ll be running for an interrupted second term. The camera got switched off right after Hillary Clinton fainted and they needed to use the smart phone to call 911. This has been a What’s All This Then exclusive report. Saturday, November 10, 2012
MULTIDIMENSIONAL VIEWS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULT The election was four days ago and I’m still trying to figure out what happened, which is the reason I have withheld comment until now. As a member of Romney’s forty seven percent, I fully expected to be preparing myself for four years of a Romney administration, the abolition of all taxes, the renaming of the Supreme Court to the Tea Party Court, the reintroduction of the draft in order to beef up the military which would be called upon to pursue the war against Russia which would be declared on January 22, 2013 and which would be paid for by selling off four of the poorest performing states to Bain Capital, which in turn would break them up and sell the parts at a several thousand percent profit. I was never very good at math at school and when new math came along later in life, I pretty much gave up trying to understand it. But I could always add and subtract, so when I learned that we voters were divided 53 to 47 percent - the 47 who would vote for Obama and the 53 for Romney, I couldn’t understand why the television networks kept "calling" states for Obama and eventually declaring him a winner. How could 47 be greater than 52? T’was indeed a conundrum. So I turned to Fox News for enlightenment - on election night and on four subsequent days. And the answer was revealed. Obama had not won reelection. Evil forces had conspired to foist him on an unsuspecting public for the next four years. For some time now, scientists have been investigating the concept of String Theory which, among other things visualizes multiple dimensions - way more than the three - four if you count time - that we are aware of and live with. Well dear readers, the era of speculation is over. String Theory is a reality. Multiple dimensions exist and at least one of them can be found on Fox News and another most certainly on the radio waves that carry Rush Limbaugh’s voice to an adoring though mindless audience. From the Fox News dimension it soon became clear to me that there is a newnew math which explains everything. From the view of the world available from - what we’ll call the "Fox Dimension"- I learned that the Democrats had engaged in voter suppression. They did this by "demonizing" Romney - accusing him of being a vulture capitalist who paid a smaller percentage of taxes than the average voter, even before he was the official nominee.(Remember, during the selection process that took place inside the Republican primary dimension, there was a moment in space/time when Newt Gingrich announced that he was the "Nom-inee.") Anyway, those early attacks on Romney, according to the Fox News department of extra dimensional punditry, scared many of the 53% voters away from the polls. But that wasn’t all. Romney voters also became fearful when they became aware that "this" was not "their United States." In fact, looking at the election from within the Limbaugh dimension - the United States had become LOST! But seemingly, only lost to the 53 percent while the 47 percent crowd mysteriously were able to find their way to some part of the country to vote, even though many were forced to stand in line for hours to exercise that privilege. Evidence of String Theory and multiple dimensions wasn’t confined to the field of broadcasting punditry. On November 7, 2012, the Chicago Tribune, the paper that I read seven days a week, informed me that the election was the "cleanest" in HISTORY. This despite voter suppression by the Democrats and the theft of the country by 47 percent of us. If that’s "clean" you have to wonder what is dirty in the Chicago Tribune dimension - I think that’s the seventh dimension. Well, actually, they tell us. It’s attacking the other guy’s religion. It’s "swift boating." And a few other things. You can read them here. Lies on the other hand and a wink and a nod to the Birthers by Mr. Romney, are just playful political jousting. Meanwhile, back in the three dimensional world in which the rest of us live, I think many of us who applaud the election results , view the post election reaction of right wing punditry with dismay. They have been speaking of changing demographics which they failed to recognize as the reason for their loss, while at the same time insulting the people populating those changed demographics by continuing to speak of those who voted for the President as people who want "things" and look to government to provide them. They continue to speak of "their" America which someone has taken away and they want it back. Not from a political point of view. The losing political party is always determined to win the next election. But from an ownership point of view. I know it’s an easy throwaway phrase to mock such people as living in "another world" - and that was certainly my reaction listening to four days of right wing post-mortem - but while it may not be another dimension as postulated by String Theory scientists, it was and is a refutation of Barack Obama’s insistence at the 2004 Democratic convention that despite being sliced and diced by pundits into red and blue states we are all "one people." It sounded good when he said it, but it isn’t true and I’m sure he knew it then and knows it now. After 236 years, becoming one people is still a work in progress and this election and the reaction of those who lost it, proves that there’s still a great deal of work left to do. Sunday, November 04, 2012
CHICAGO TRIBUNE QUOTE ACROSIC ANSWER FOR NOVEMBER 4, 2012 A fairly simple puzzle today, compiled by Pat Cohen from the words of the late, great George Carlin with a most appropriate punch line as you will see. There is one thing I know for sure. Deep down in my heart I am most definitely not an atheist and I am also not an agnostic. I guess I am just an acrostic because it is all an incredible puzzle to me.You’re welcome. Saturday, November 03, 2012
BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT I have already voted for president and while I was and never have been influenced by newspaper endorsements, I was glad to see the paper that I read seven days a week agree with my choice for president and, atheist as I may be, it pleases me to visualize Colonel McCormick rotating in his grave. Not that I think Barack Obama has been a perfect president. Like so many people who voted enthusiastically for him in 2008, I am somewhat disappointed at the lack of change that we hoped would take place. Part of that lack can be blamed on partisan politics that got in the way almost from the moment of his inauguration. If you can believe the account in Robert Draper’s book - it did indeed begin that day when key members of the House and Senate met and devised a plan to block the President’s agenda at every turn. But Obama disappointed in other ways. I won’t dwell on them because those of us who supported and campaigned for him know what they are - just as we know the good things. And we still support and will vote for him for a second term. His opponent is a man who I believe the Republicans chose with reluctance as the best of a bad bunch. He will get the votes of millions of Americans, which doesn’t astonish as much as it saddens me. How anyone could cast their vote to elect this man as the leader of the free world is beyond any sense of reason or understanding. Any one who reads this blog with some regularity knows that as far as I’m concerned , Romney’s infamous car trip with his dog confined to a cage strapped to the top of his vehicle was enough to remove him for consideration for any kind of elective office and most assuredly for the presidency. Some might think of this as a frivolous reason to vote against him, but I believe that how humans treat animals in their care, reveals much of what there is to know of their character and indeed of their humanity. On this issue alone, Romney fails badly. But putting this issue aside, which as I have indicated, will likely not resonate with millions as it did with me, there are many other reasons why I could not vote for this man to be president but to avoid rambling too much, I’ll confine them to just seven. Perhaps the first reason is that the man seems to have wanted to be president for years - almost as though he feels he is entitled to the mantle of the office. Although his official quest began in 2006, one gets the impression that he’s been running for a much longer time. Ann Romney I believe made clear how what she and her husband believe. "It’s our turn." Second, the famous or infamous flip flops, begging the question - which Romney is running for office? When considering who to vote for in a presidential election - unless one is a blind partisan or a single issue voter, you’d want to know the candidate’s beliefs and opinions and ideas on a variety of topics. That’s certainly something you get with Romney - as the saying goes - in spades. However the problem with trying to get a handle on what those beliefs, opinions and ideas are is that voters are faced with - to quite the late Ted Kennedy on Romney - a multiple choice candidate - or to use my own words, a political chameleon . Again for the sake of brevity I won’t try listing all of his contradictory positions here. They are easily found on the Internet. And they reveal a man who is whatever you want him to be at any given time and at any given location. A man without any core beliefs other than the belief that it’s his time to be president. Third is his claim that he "knows how the economy works." The trouble is, he doesn’t explain which economy. He certainly knows how his economy works - the economy of making money as a vulture capitalist. A little research on line will show how he and Bain Capital made their money - and you can see that it had nothing to do with his other claim, that he knows how to create jobs - except maybe in China. Knowing how to make money by investing in companies and pulling as much profit out of them in as short a time as possible , often at the expense of ordinary working men and women, does not qualify Mr. Romney as a "job creator." Fourth - and this is related to my first reason, is the arrogance that Romney and his wife displayed with regard to their income tax returns. There is no question in my mind that if the way he made his money over the past eight or nine years was to be revealed, his poll numbers would drop like a bomb. Ann Romney complained that if more tax returns were made public, they would be picked over to make them look bad. Certainly they would be picked over by experts, who would be the only people who could make sense of them. But we’ll never see them. Again, as Ann Romney put it - "we've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our lives." You people. You know who you are. Stay in your place. Fifth, the total lack of compassion and understanding of people who are not of "their class." That’s "you people." Romney can try all the gimmicks he likes to show that he can relate to ordinary folks. He could even get film crews to follow him checking out blue jeans at a Target store or rip off the price of a half a dozen grocery items. But when he had a real chance to show that he’s someone who cares, someone who wants to keep jobs in the United States and not have them shipped off to China, he showed who he really is - someone who doesn’t give a damn about ordinary people. The workers at the Sensata Company in Freeport, Illinois, have asked Mr. Romney to intercede on their behalf with owners Bain Capital, which is shipping the entire company - a highly profitable company - to CHINA. Romney wouldn’t lift a finger. Does any more need to be said? Sixth, the lies. Unfortunately, lying and distorting has become a regular part - if not the central part of political campaigning in the United States. Both sides do it. I could list all the lies and distortions uttered by the candidates in this election, including those uttered by or on behalf of the presidential candidates. But even with political lies, there has to be a limit. Mr. Romney has stepped beyond it a few times, but now he has distorted that limit beyond recognition. In a desperate attempt to woo voters in Ohio, he is polluting the atmosphere with claims that Chrysler is moving its Jeep production to China and General Motors is also shipping thousands of jobs there. This evoked the extraordinary scenario of two major American automobile companies using euphemistic language to call a presidential candidate a liar. Finally, the Supreme Court. It is highly likely that the next president will make one, perhaps two Supreme Court appointments. In so many ways, the Supreme Court exercises more power over the affairs of the nation than does the President or the Congress. Appointments by Romney could shift the court farther to the right than the current alignment. That could not only mean the reversal of Roe v Wade but even greater power in the hands of the super rich. Citizens United would recede into history as the tip of an iceberg that sunk the ship of state as we have come to know it. I could list many more reasons why I believe Mr. Romney would be the wrong choice for the United States - including his ideas on taxes, which, if he had his way, would make the rich richer, the poor poorer and the middle class disappear - and his concept of foreign policy diplomacy, which we saw displayed in London during the Olympics and in his citing of Russia as our number one enemy in the world. But, if you’ll pardon a religious reference from an atheist, the seven deadly sins I have mentioned should be more then enough reasons to reject this man. Monday, October 29, 2012
CHICAGO TRIBUNE QUOTE-ACROSTIC ANSWER FOR OCTOBER 28, 2012 The quote is from the late Bennett Cerf and the puzzle compiler is Robert O’Neill, probably the trickiest of the group of people who create these puzzles. O’Neill is fond of one word clues that can have more than one meaning or can be either nouns or adjectives - "close," "supplement" and "clown" for example- are three that appeared in this week’s puzzle. He also comes up with some strange clue answers. Again, from this week’s puzzle - "shoehorn" for the clue "squeeze" and "eat up" for "adore." Anyway, here’s the rather odd quote, with the title of "Show Cases." "Ask some questions" demanded the judge to the dumbstruck attorney Chico Marx, opposed by Groucho. He stammers "what large animal has four legs with a trunk?" "That’s irrelevant" screams Groucho. "Correct" agrees Chico.You’re welcome. Saturday, October 27, 2012
POLITICS AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF - AN UNHOLY MIX Readers of this blog know that I am an atheist. Nonetheless, I believe that belief in a deity has value for the human condition. It helps billions of people deal with the knowledge of their own mortality - that by the time we get the hang of this thing called life, it’s close to being over. But if we believe that it isn’t over, that we continue to live in some other form and in some other place after we die, the senselessness of so short a life doesn’t seem senseless at all. It’s like an opiate that keeps us from going mad while we indulge in the madness that is that belief. And that’s really not a contradiction of terms. The flip side - the evil of deism and the religions founded to deal with it - is everywhere. Nations whose governance is in the hands of religious leaders with religious laws rooted in centuries old ignorance. Nations where religious madmen rain down death and destruction on those they deem insufficiently religious or who are breaking their insanity induced religious laws. Religious fanatics who revere death over life because death is the passport to paradise. And then there are the Richard Mourdocks of the world and those who are afraid to condemn them to the obscurity they so richly deserve. Richard Mourdock wants to become a member of the United States Senate and help to pass laws under which we all have to live. But Mr. Mourdock believes that nothing happens on this earth that is not dictated by God. Thus, a pregnancy resulting from a rape, according to Mr. Mourdock, should not be aborted because that pregnancy is something that "God intended to happen." If Mr. Mourdock is elected, we should therefore not expect him to use his judgment to help fashion laws, since it could be construed as defying or questioning whatever "God intended to happen." Using Mr. Mourdock’s logic, we can assume that it was "God’s intention" for the Holocaust to have taken place as it is for murderers to murder, for wars to be fought, for planes to crash and for rapists to rape. This is more insanity than it is religious belief - even for those of us who think of religion as being an insane practice. You would think that Mitt Romney, who has endorsed Mourdock for the Senate and has appeared in a television ad supporting him would be breaking world speed records getting as far away from this madman as possible. But all that we have heard from Mr. Romney on the question of rapists and their progeny being something that "God intended to happen" is that "it doesn’t reflect his views" but he still supports the man. Hate the sin but love the sinner. So what is going on here? In a rational world, a man who would be president of the United States would want nothing to do with anyone expressing such crazed notions - and wouldn’t hesitate to condemn the person expressing them. So why is Romney still supporting Mourdock for the Senate? The simple answer of course is that with the election only a few days away, the last thing Romney wants to do is help the Democrats pick up the seat that Dick Lugar will be forcibly surrendering at the end of the year. But that would just mask the details that would very likely apply under similar circumstances a little further removed from election day and the details, as we all know, is where the devil resides. Why else would a presidential candidate support someone like Mourdock? We could of course look to Mr. Romney’s own religious beliefs. All religions have their complement of nuttiness and Mormonism is as nutty as they come. Still, most deists go along with and are reasonably comfortable with their religions and don’t let them dictate their lives But Romney isn’t your run-of-the-mill Mormon. He’s been a Bishop and had other leadership positions in the church. He’s deeply into it. So it isn’t hard to assume that he holds beliefs that are as nutty as Mourdock’s and maybe thinks it’s unreasonable to condemn someone for a religious belief as nutty as some of his own - even though, obviously, he doesn’t think they’re nutty. But maybe there’s something else going on here. Anyone running for high office in the United States knows that he or she has to tread very lightly when dealing with religion or religious beliefs. Presidential candidates in particular have to establish their religious bona fides very early in the game. I would imagine that there have been men and women running for national office who in private pay no more than lip service to the religions into which they were born or who may actually be atheists, but there is no way that they would ever be disrespectful or critical of religion in public. Not if they want to be elected. And in the case of Mr. Mourdock, apart from Mr. Romney’s desire to have another Republican - any Republican - fill Dick Lugar’s seat, there is the obvious difficulty of criticizing an expressed bit of religious nuttiness that may be shared in some generic way by millions of voters. Not that they agree with Mourdock’s specific ideas about abortion but they too believe that God has a direct influence on what happens in their lives. In just about every national election we hear about the so called evangelicals and how important it is to appeal to voters who have religious beliefs as deeply rooted in their being as is Islam in madmen who commit horrendous crimes in the name of their religion. No candidate hoping to corral the votes of such people would dare to condemn acts or expressed beliefs of religious nuttiness. But I suspect that the concern goes beyond evangelicals - that despite our tradition of there being an accepted separation of church and state - the church, in the form of the various Christian religions to which a majority of Americans belong, are part and parcel of "the state" as manifested by the unwritten rules governing U.S. elections. It may not bother most people, but left unchecked, if increasing numbers of candidates with Mr. Mourdock’s views continue to run - and worse, get elected to Congress and maybe even to the White House - look over your shoulder because a budding theocracy may be catching up to you. Monday, October 22, 2012
WITH ENOUGH LIES AND DAMN LIES - WHO NEEDS STATISTIS? Not being a lawyer or having any particular legal knowledge, I’ve been searching the Internet to learn about our libel and slander laws. I know we have them but I find it difficult to understand how and when they can be used by those claiming that they’ve been libeled or slandered and what it takes to achieve a successful outcome. I wasn’t particularly interested in the general description of the laws - just in whether they could be or ever are applied to what politicians say or write about opponents during elections. What I found was pretty disturbing to put it mildly. Members of Congress can’t be sued for anything they say in the House or Senate. As far as I’ve been able to determine they can lie with impunity about anything or anyone and they’re protected from legal action as long as they’re speaking in their official capacity. What they or Congressional wannabes can say without consequence during national elections is not that clear. Campaign opponents do occasionally sue each other for libel or slander or defamation of character but it’s hard to find them or their outcomes on the Internet. It would seem that in most political campaigns for national office, the privileges of protection for things said in the halls of Congress extend to those seeking reelection and their opponents. It’s a conclusion one has to reach because or what we see and hear on television and radio every day during the campaign season. Anyone following only the media advertising of the candidates in this election would have to conclude that those representing us and wishing to represent us in Congress, particularly in the House, are thieves, scoundrels, villains and generally a bunch of blackguards who would only do us harm if elected or reelected to Congress. I don’t have the time or the patience to list the hundreds if not thousands of examples that are permeating the air waves, but I’ll describe the attack ads of one Illinois race that likely typifies what is going on around the country. The newly drawn eleventh district of Illinois pits 13th district incumbent Judy Biggert against Bill Foster a former incumbent who represented the 14th district for one term ending in January, 2011. According to the campaign advertising of these two opponents, neither should be allowed within one mile of the DC Beltway. Foster, a physicist and highly successful business man sent jobs to China according to a Biggert ad. Foster runs ads saying that he creates jobs and competes with China. But Biggert, he says, awards companies that send jobs to China. Foster, on the other hand, got an inside briefing in Congress just before the bottom fell out of the stock market and sold stocks before prices fell. This of course according to Biggert or whoever is running this ad, who was also in Congress at the same time - so how come she didn’t get the same inside briefing? (Actually, National Republicans admit that they have no proof of this allegation. They just go ahead and allege it anyway.) Foster says Biggert voted for the Ryan budget which gives big tax breaks to millionaires and will probably kill Medicare. And Biggert says…well you get the idea. Distortion after distortion and lie after lie. These people know they are lying about each other - but nobody sues anybody. It’s the way our politicians try to persuade us to vote for them because the other guy or gal is a monster who should really be in jail. And what does this say about how they regard American voters and what does it say about voters themselves? It would seem to me that neither of these people or any politician who runs attack ads full of lies and distortions, has any respect for voters - or at least the voters at whom these ads are aimed - so called "low information" voters. Who else could they be aimed at? Of course a lot of thoughtful voters throw their support to these candidates in spite of the attack advertising. We just wish there was some way they could campaign without using these horrible methods. It’s not going to happen of course because these attack ads work. Maybe even on some of us who don’t think of ourselves as low information - and that’s a horrible thought. Another reason that we’re not likely to see an end to this kind of campaigning is that there is no apparent fear of repercussions. You can accuse your opponent of being a terrorist sympathizer or a devil worshiper and the chances of such accusations becoming the basis for a law suit seem to be slim and none. In the world populated by the rest of us, attacks of this nature would have the courts struggling to keep up just with the paperwork. You have to wonder how we ever allowed our political system to sink this low - to allow our politicians to do what the rest of us could never do without serious consequences. Across the pond they have a more rational way of dealing with politicians who lie about their opponents. They have something called the Representation of the People ACT 1983 which makes lying about a political opponent illegal. It doesn’t happen often but a couple of years ago, a cabinet minister was kicked out of Parliament for just that reason. Can you imagine the effect if such a law was to be applied here? We wouldn’t be able to elect anyone. But what the lack of such a law here - or even some reasonable voluntary code of conduct for election campaigning says about us is that we are incapable of having honest elections. There must be lies - and that’s as sad a statement as may ever be posted here.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
CHICAGO TRIBUNE QUOTE-ACROSTIC ANSWER FOR OCTOBER 21, 2012 Here’s the quote from Bette Davis - compiled to puzzle us by Jay Engle. A couple of tricky clues - "cream or point" - the answer to which of course was VANISHING and I learned that a name for a "bed canopy" was TESTER and thaf "fossil footprint study" is ICHNOLOGY. But all in all, not too difficult a puzzle There are words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.You’re welcome. Friday, October 19, 2012
THE NEW REPUBLICAN REALITY - CHANNELING BILL CLINTON I was in my car for a couple of short trips the day after the second presidential debate - and that’s the only time, when I’m driving, that I get a chance to listen to some right wing radio pundits. I get glimpses of their television counterparts by switching from station to station when whatever program I may be watching pauses for a commercial break or otherwise gets a little boring. But it’s only with my push button car radio - something I wish I had on my radios at home - that I can get to hear Rush Limbaugh. I don’t stay long when I punch in the local station that carries his nonsense, but long enough to get the drift of his nonsense of the moment. From the couple of minutes I listened, I gather he was unhappy with the idea, shared by a great many people that Obama had "won" the debate. "If Obama won the debate" said the mouth that fouls - "why is everyone talking about Benghazi today?" I may not be quoting him verbatim and I didn’t stay long enough to hear why discussing Benghazi on Tuesday contradicted Obama’s alleged debate victory on Monday - but he did provide me with a springboard for these comments. Indeed there was a lot of post debate punditry about the back and forth exchanges about the attack on the US Consulate in Bhengazi. That punditry persists to this day and likely will for some time to come with folks on the left applauding moderator Candy Crowley’s real time fact checking and the right wing chorus deploring her un-journalistic intervention and insisting that she and Obama were wrong to say that he had called the attack "an act of terror" the day after it happened. What I believe happened during the debate is that Romney confused the day after statement with the subsequent changing statements about what kind of attack it was - culminating with a yet to be totally confirmed conclusion that it was a planned and organized attack that perhaps would have happened on the anniversary of 9/ll whether or not there had been protests over an Islamic insulting video playing on the Internet. It had been generally assumed in the world of punditry, that the events in Benghazi would be pounced on by Romney during the debate to deliver a knock out blow to the President - but as we all know, what was delivered by Mr. Romney was a self inflicted wound - from which point on the efforts of the right to repair the damage have become sillier by the hour and reminiscent of a famed bit of silliness during the Clinton administration. There isn’t any question that during his Rose Garden statement the day after the attack that killed four Americans he used the words " act of terror." But the right wing defenders of Romney insist that the statement was a generic reference to terrorist attacks and not a specific description of the Benghazi attack. Romney was right they say and Obama and Candy Crowley were both wrong. It wasn’t that long ago when Romney stood next to Bill Clinton and had nothing but nice things to say about him. You have to wonder if that inspired the defenders of the indefensible to take a leaf out of the ex President’s instructional manual on convoluted legal argument. Remember his answer to the Grand Jury about his sexual relations (or non sexual relations) with Monica Lewinsky? "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Now John Sununu, Ed Gillespie and others are applying the same illogic to what Obama said in the Rose Garden on September 12. "It all depends on what "act of terror" means. There is of course room for legitimate discussion as to whether we should have been prepared for this kind of attack and no doubt the question asked but not answered during the debate about the request for more security that apparently was denied will surely come up again in next Monday’s third and final presidential debate. But we need to understand the obvious - that no amount of US security could have warded off the kind of attack mounted by the terrorists. That kind of security is the responsibility of the host country, not the occupants of an Embassy or Consulate. Can you imagine an armed attack against - say the Egyptian Embassy in Washington - being repelled by those inside and not by the DC police and whatever other force that might be needed? But what took place during the debate was an exercise in silliness that makes our presidential election process look ridiculous to the rest of the world. As if who used what words in what context on what day is a matter for voters to give serious consideration when deciding which candidate can best steer this nation for the next four years. But then our standard method of campaigning for any national office is to run as many attack ads as possible about ones opponent, hoping that voters will be persuaded to vote in a certain way - the same way Madison Avenue strives to make us believe that one cereal is more healthful than another or that every auto insurance company in the country has cheaper rates than every other auto insurance company. I’ll have some comments on those ads and what they do to the fabric of this nation in a future post. Meanwhile, one can only hope that the debate on foreign policy will include a minimum of silliness - but I’ve heard some of Mr. Romney’s views on the subject and I have family members who watched him up close and personal during his London Olympics visit, so I’m not holding my breath. Sunday, October 14, 2012
CHICAGO TRIBUNE "QUOTE-ACROSTIC" ANSWER FOR OCTOBER 14, 2012 Here’s this week’s Quote-Acrostic answer, which you shouldn’t need to be looking for if you’re a true word puzzle enthusiast. It’s a comment by John Tirman, presumably from one of his books. War, we are often told, is a last resort, yet war enhances presidential power. It always has. It has an almost irresistible allure, especially for those faltering as a result of other political shortcomingsYou’re welcome. Friday, October 12, 2012
COLUMNIST JJ GOLDBERG ON WHAT WE WILL BE CHOOSING ON NOVEMBER 6 This morning I received an e-mail with links to articles in the October 18, 2012 edition of The Jewish Daily Forward, including one titled "MORE THAN MITT" by editor-at-large JJ Goldberg. After reading it, I had two reactions. Damn this guy writes well - and this needs to be read by a lot of people. It’s not possible to link directly to this article from the e-mail I received, so I am reproducing it here and hope that you will agree with me that it is well worth reading.
It’s a wise old rule of the heart, too often forgotten: When you choose a spouse, remember that you’re not just marrying a mate — you’re also marrying into a family. There’s a corollary that’s worth remembering when you enter the voting booth in November: You’re not just electing a president. You’re electing an administration and the party that will staff it up.My thanks to Mr. Goldberg for his brilliant word picture of what we would face with a Romney administration. To which I can only add - my sentiments exactly!! Tuesday, October 09, 2012
COMMENT ON THE POST DEBATE PUNDITRY For someone who was reluctant to say anything about the first presidential debate, I find that I have a lot more to say. However, I am going to restrain myself and not follow in the path of all the pundits who analyzed, dissected and passed judgment on the performances of the participants. Instead I am going to pen a few words about those self same pundits. It was when I was watching some of the post debate news programs that it hit me. Some clips were shown of both Romney and the President making arguments. Not the shots of Obama looking down while Romney was speaking or of the President not responding to a Romney etch-a-sketch statement when it was his turn to respond. Just isolated clips of each man making his case. And the President sounded confident and competent. Specially if one looked away and just listened. And if you did that while Romney was speaking, he didn’t sound as confident and commanding as he looked. And I thought back to Nixon Kennedy and the reactions of those who watched them debate compared to those who only listened on the radio. The watchers thought Kennedy had won while the listeners opted for Nixon. I’m not saying that there is a direct correlation between Nixon/Kennedy and Obama/Romney but obviously how it was seen as well as how it was heard contributed to the overall impression of viewers. But I believe it is not just the debate itself that has moved the polls slightly in Romney’s favor. I’ll admit that the President didn’t do as well as he should have done, but had there been no post debate punditry, less people - maybe far less people - would have thought that he did that badly or that the aggressive attack style of Romney and his sudden etch-a-sketch move to the center was a reason to think of him more favorably than before the debate when who he was and what he believed had been made abundantly clear. (Think 47% ). But the debate was only 90 minutes long and the post debate punditry has been flowing non stop ever since. Obviously I couldn’t watch or listen to all of the punditry. There were too many stations and too many pundits. But the few that I watched from the progressive side - supporters of the President, acted and sounded as though they had witnessed some cataclysmic event. On MSNBC Chris Matthews was positively hysterical in his analysis - and on Current TV, Al Gore and his panel of analysts looked and sounded like they were attending a funeral of someone who unexpectedly had dropped dead at a young age. And I can only imagine the celebrations that are still going on over at the Fox cable channel. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t just the debate that swayed the kind of voters that can be swayed by this kind of a television event , but the pundits who rendered instant judgment and called winner and loser. It made me think of a line from one of the great Allen Sherman’s song parodies - " Al and Yetta" sung to the tune of the French children’s song- Alooette, Gentile Alouette Al 'n' Yetta Watched An Operetta. Leonard Bernstein Told Them What They Saw. And on Wednesday the pundits told us all what we saw and how we should think of it. A disaster. A catastrophe. A stunning victory. A masterful performance. Pick your pundit to discover what really happened. Or maybe do something to surprise the pundits. Pretend they don’t exist. Think for yourself. Monday, October 08, 2012
POST DEBATE OBSERVATIONS I suppose if I want to be true to the stated theme and purpose of this blog - to comment on the passing parade - I can’t not comment on the Obama-Romney debate, much as it pains me to do so. There’s no point in rehashing what happened but of course I, along with most if not all Obama supporters are asking why. Why did he let Romney get away with murder? The two explanations being postulated are that the President was "off his game" - he had a bad night - or that it was some kind of strategy. Let me comment first on the strategy explanation - though as far as I have been able to determine, this isn’t an explanation being offered by the Obama campaign. If there was a strategy going into the debate that consisted of letting Romney "talk himself out" - that would be the verbal equivalent of Mohammed Ali’s "rope-a-dope" - except that after letting his opponent wear himself out, Ali would suddenly come to life and deliver a knockout blow. Again, if there was such a strategy planned by the President or his advisors, they forgot how it is supposed to end. I don’t know what Ali is doing nowadays but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to add him to Obama’s strategy team. The other explanation being tossed around is that the President had a "bad night." That is a more plausible explanation and indeed in terms of his demeanor and body language, I would agree that he was "off his game." He should have known that the cameras would go back and forth between a single shot of whoever was talking and a wider shot of both of them and that being caught looking down and somewhat distant while Romney was talking - while not the "no no" equivalent of Bush senior looking at his watch, conveyed an equally negative impression. And of course, many of the millions watching were not necessarily people who have been following the campaigns closely and able to recognize Romney’s "etch-a-sketch" performance for what it was. Those other people saw and heard the bombast and, mistaking it for knowledge and assertiveness, were favorably impressed. You and I know that if this had been an Oxford Union debate, Romney would have been hauled off the stage in disgrace.A third explanation that I haven’t heard raised by anyone is that maybe Obama isn’t that good a debater - or is a reasonably good debater but not that good on his feet when confronted with a form of debate that he didn’t expect. The aforementioned Mohammed Ali would be able to explain what you do when confronted with an attack that you didn’t anticipate - change your tactics. Apart from a few times when he seemed to wander and was less succinct, I didn’t think Obama did that bad a job of making his case - but in not matching Romney’s aggressiveness, he seemed less convincing. We are hearing that the President will be "changing tactics" for the next debate. I’m not sure what that means. It’s supposed to be a town meeting format with questions from the audience at which Obama is pretty good. Where he may have to change tactics is if Romney continues to repeat lies - his health plan includes covering pre existing conditions or Obama is cutting seven billion out of Medicare.. When he said the latter I was virtually screaming at the television - how many times does that claim have to be refuted by independent experts before you will stop repeating it? Based on past experience, we know that presidential debates can influence some voters who have not carefully followed the campaigns of the candidates and are not fully aware of their positions, but even in "losing" as decided by pundits on both sides, there is something to be gained by the President. This morning I sent an e-mail to his campaign with a suggestion that I should have sent the day of the debate in the hope that someone might actually read it and agree with me. It reads as follows.
I hope he listens. Too many people are easily influenced by style over substance. This election is far too important for it to be decided by such nonsense. Sunday, October 07, 2012
CHICAGO TRIBUNE "QOTE-ACROSTIC" ANSWER FOR OCTOBER 7, 2012 As promised, here’s the answer to this Sunday’s Chicago Tribune Quote-Acrostic puzzle. I’ll get back to some delayed commentary on the first presidential debate shortly.
The great enemy of language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. The author of the quote is listed as G - obviously George -Orwell - and the title of the puzzle is "Tired Old Idioms" You’re welcome. Sunday, September 30, 2012
SUNDAY TRIBUNE "QUOTE-ACROSTIC" ANSWER FOR SEPTEMBER 30, 2012 I’m a word puzzle nut - crosswords, acrostics - you name it. I do the puzzles in the Chicago Tribune daily and all the puzzles on the weekend. If anyone wanted to check their crossword puzzle answers or got stuck and wanted to find the answers, there is more than one web site that provides them. But if you get stuck with the Sunday "Quote-Acrostic" in the Tribune, there’s no place to check . You have to wait until next Sunday. I think someone should provide those answers for anyone who gets stuck. I’m too busy to start a new blog with the "Quote-Acrostic" answers myself, but maybe from time to time or even every Sunday if I have the time, I’ll put the answer here. The September 30, 2012 "Quote-Acrostic" answer for example, is as follows. "Monopoly’s copyright included colored rectangular property spaces, distinctive corner space graphics, the chance question mark, waterworks faucet, electric company lightbulb and iconic railroad locomotives." I won’t include the answers to the individual clues. That would make it too easy for a word puzzle enthusiast, but of course you can get all the answers by transposing letters from the answer to the appropriate places in the clues. Let me know if you find this useful. Thursday, September 27, 2012
REFLECTIONS OF A 47 PERCENTER I am one of Mitt Romney’s 47%. I freely admit my belief that I am a victim. For years I have dutifully invested three dollars weekly in the Illinois lottery. Every week. Fifty two weeks a year. For years. Yet the most I have ever won at any one time is three dollars. Three lousy dollars. After spending three dollars a week!! A hundred and fifty six dollars a year!! For years!!If that isn’t being victimized then I don’t know what victimization is. Plus I didn’t pay any federal tax last year. But I’m not sure that he’ll allow me to keep my membership in the 47% club. I don’t think I really pass muster on the tax matter or on the other basic membership requirements. My wife and I are both retired seniors and since a substantial portion of our income comes from that well known Ponzi scheme known as Social Security and as seniors we have extra deductions that we never had before, we aren’t paying any Federal income tax which, according to he who would be president, makes us government supported and subsidized 47 percenters . Except for that annoying thing that Bill Clinton talked about at the Democratic convention. Mathematics. Like a whole bunch of our fellow 47 percenters, we do pay a whole mess of other kinds of taxes, starting with many thousands of property taxes. Peanuts on Planet Romney, but a pretty big chunk in Planet Earth bucks. Add to that sales tax on just about everything we buy and taxes tacked on to things like our utility bills and add to that state and local fees and the total comes to a percentage of income not far removed from what Romney pays in capital gains taxes. But still, not paying any Federal income does at least give us honorary membership as 47 percenters. Except for our lack of other qualifications. To be a real 47 percenter, we would had to have spent our lives looking to government to provide us with food and housing and medical care. Silly me. Many years ago, while Romney was just a young man struggling to get ahead in life, burdened with the disadvantage of being the son of the CEO of American Motors and later Governor of the State of Michigan, I scraped together all the money I could lay my hands on, (no parents to borrow from) and made a down payment on a modest Georgian in a Chicago suburb. And, silly me, not realizing the extent of government entitlements that were available to me had I had a latter day Romney (no pun intended) to explain the advantages of being a 47 percenter, I made mortgage payments for years until the mortgage was paid off. Still, I’m not paying any Federal income tax and , late as it may be in my life, that makes me a 47 percenter. Except for one more thing. I think. Excuse me for a moment while I refresh my memory on key elements of the Romney 47% doctrine Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. Ah yes, health care. A true 47 percenter believes that he/she is entitled to health care and that the government should provide it. And here, both me and my wife come pretty damned close to qualifying for a 47% membership card. Almost. During our working years, we kicked in for Medicare taxes so that now we qualify for free hospital care. Almost. Except for deductibles and usage limitations. Medicare only pays part of the bills and the rest gets billed to us. But there’s no free doctor care so we have to pay a monthly premium for that. And Medicare only pays part of Doctors bills so the rest gets billed to us. So we either dig into our measly retirement income or we buy insurance to cover what Medicare doesn’t pay. Excuse me again for a moment while I make some calculations. Okay. Yeah. We’re chipping in close to six grand a year to help pay for government health care that true 47 percenters consider an entitlement. So all in all, I think my wife and can claim that we are among the 53% of Americans who take personal responsibility and care for our lives. But we don’t pay any Federal income tax and that would put us in the 47% group. On the one hand we bought our own house, pay substantial taxes of various kinds, pay a substantial buck for our health care and generally take responsibility for our own lives. On the other hand we don’t pay any Federal income tax. Help me Tevye. If I was a rich man, I wouldn’t be caught on the horns of a dilemma. Anyway, both my wife and I are clear on one issue. We are not going to vote for Romney. It was a decision we made long before he revealed his concept of a divided America. We pretty much decided that he lacked the character to be the leader of the free world when we heard the dog story. Then his primary rivals kept talking about all the different Romney’s who’ve been running for president for years and I figured the last kind of person we needed in the White House was a multiple choice president. And who would want a president who might decide that it was too stuffy in Air Force One and open a window at 40,000 feet and suck himself and the whole White House press corps into oblivion? And no, I’m not going to make any smart remark here. Just that I’m glad to see what the polls are saying and hope for the sake of the country - for the world for that matter, that they stay the same right up to November 6. Saturday, September 22, 2012
IF IT AIN’T BROKE……. Taking a break from politics and the state of the world for a moment to comment on one of my many pet peeves, amply described by the deliberately unfinished title sentence above. From time to time, a niece of mine in England sends me some brilliant piece of computer animation, often accompanied by a note of a tongue-in-cheek explanation that this is what computer geeks do when they get bored and have time on their hands. . But I think those little prancing stick figures or whatever other animated figures that appear in these amusing productions are showing us just a glimpse of one half of the geek mind - the Dr. Jekyll half if you will, designed to lure us into a state of complacency while the Mr. Hyde half is busy designing far less benign computer surprises, I swear designed to send we poor ungeek types into a state of frustrating confusion. I’ll cite just three examples - the first discovered when I resumed writing for this blog after a four month lay off. Writing here used to be simple. That is to say, once I decided on a subject and had in mind what I wanted to say about it - all I had to do was type it on a Microsoft Word page as I would type an essay or a letter, adding the occasional basic codes that I’ve learned to indicate bold or italic type or a link to some other web site - check my spelling, go to Google’s Blogspot, hit "new post" - paste in what I’d written - - hit "publish" - and voila - another masterpiece hit the Internet. But when I started posting new commentaries a few days ago, I was greeted by a new "improved" Blogspot with a "new" look which to this blogger is little more than some visual juggling and making everything I do at this web site more difficult and slower - such as not being able to hit "publish" and have anything appear the way I typed it. Which is about my experience every time something on the Internet is "updated" to make it new and better. I have a PC with Windows XP installed and Outlook Express for my e-mail. Geeks would call my OE my e-mail "client." I’m not sure to whom or what the "client" refers - me or Outlook Express - but then we’re dealing with the Geek language which bears little resemblance to English - or any other language for that matter. Any way, I have always found Outlook Express a logically and neatly laid out program and easy to use. Users of OE know what I mean. On one page, the derfault mail boxes are shown on the left of the screen, In Box, Out Box, Sent, Deleted and Drafts - to which you can add any number of subject specific boxes to store. At the top of the screen is the simplest and most logical of toolbars which includes places to click to create mail, reply, reply all and forward. Even the most ungeekiest among us are/have been able to use this e-mail program without adding gray hairs or growing ulcers. So what happened? Of course Microsoft decided to improve/upgrade/better/elevate/refine /enhance and generally frustrate millions of we non geeks by dropping Outlook Express and including, with later versions of Windows - a less understandable and more geekish default e-mail program. So on my laptop with Windows 7, I do not have nor can I download Outlook Express and I along with my fellow frustrated non geek millions would like to know why. OE wasn’t/isn’t broken and thus did not need fixing or replacing, so why did they do it? I’m pretty sure I know why. Microsoft and all the other Geek companies have to be shown as constantly moving forward with "new and improved" versions of programs and products that are working just fine - and in some cases, dump them altogether for something new - partially to sell more stuff to geeks and non geeks alike - the former already programmed to buy anything advertised as "upgraded" and the latter afraid that they’ll be left behind in an outdated cyber wilderness and partially, maybe mostly, because this is what geeks do, and there’s really no way to stop them. I know that’s a hell of a long sentence but I try to fight the geeks with whatever weapons I can muster. And finally, for this complaint session, because I have a laptop with Windows 7, I have been exposed to a new geek attack launched without warning against the non-geek world. I, along with the millions referred to several times above, have been "programmed" to automatically accept announcements of Windows "updates" and to blithely click away to install whatever protections or improvements Microsoft is sending to us without cost or obligation. But with their most recent "update" unbeknown to we non-geeks was an "update" or complete change of our versions of Internet Explorer. My laptop was suddenly changed from a user of Internet Explorer 8 to Explorer 9, changing the look of my home page and eliminating all of my carefully created and preserved favorites. I immediately rushed to the great and all powerful Google to learn how to rid myself of the unwanted intruder, but none of the solutions offered worked, so I, having learned a few things during my dealings with the world of Geek - clicked on System Restore, picked a date that preceded the last "update" and through the miracle of computer time travel, Explorer 9 was gone and good old Explorer 8 was back in business. None of these things were broke and none needed fixing but you can be sure that the Geeks will continue to try to persuade us that broke or not, they need to be fixed. All I can say to my fellow non-Geeks is be aware - keep your old programs because they’ll never be available again - and remember, time travel is possible on your computer. |