Well, if they are moving out on the bypass, they won't have as far to go to cherrypick. Those "non-existent" quotas just went up, up, up....
Don't bother to say there aren't any; I've seen the memos on the board at the barracks.
One of my pet peeves is that you never see them during rush hour when people are trying to kill you with cars, but go on the bypass in off-hours and there's one at the bottom of every hill with a gun and a pad of tickets.
I don't speed, so this is not sour grapes, just real observation from someone who drives a LOT. Given the ways and times that they choose to enforce the laws, they cannot be doing anything but revenuing.
Ok, now I jus' gotta put on Radar Gun, by The Bottle Rockets, and calm down....
Friday, February 8, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Red-Neck Pickup Truck Drivers....
Three days a week I drive route 33 west from Athens to Columbus. Every time, I see at least one of these guys. Heck, you might be this guy... and if so, I want to let you know what I see when I look at him.
He is driving a four-wheel drive pick-up and it usually has a NASCAR sticker in the back window.
He has the right to get to work faster than the five-hundred people in front of him.
He pulls up in back of me in the passing lane. I am already going 65+ mph, in the traffic flow with approximately four (not enough) car lengths between myself and the car in front.
There are probably a hundred or so vehicles in front of me and the right lane is bumper to bumper.
He starts by tailgating while swerving back and forth. He flips his brights on. I reach up and adjust my mirror so that the lights are out of my eyes, trying to find a place in the other lane at 65 mph. Meanwhile, this idiot is waving the finger out of his window.
I finally ease my Jeep over into the right lane and the redneck begins his assault on the next car. He usually gains about four places by cutting off drivers and multiple lane changes between the time he passes me and when I catch up with him at the slow-down between Carroll and Hamilton Road.
If you drive route 33 then I am sure that this might sound like your morning, too.
While he does elevate my blood pressure, I do want to thank the Red-neck pickup truck driver for making me feel so superior.
And sometimes I find myself hoping, Lord forgive me, that someday, when he is alone on some two-lane country road with deep run-off ditches, he'll have a blow-out.
He is driving a four-wheel drive pick-up and it usually has a NASCAR sticker in the back window.
He has the right to get to work faster than the five-hundred people in front of him.
He pulls up in back of me in the passing lane. I am already going 65+ mph, in the traffic flow with approximately four (not enough) car lengths between myself and the car in front.
There are probably a hundred or so vehicles in front of me and the right lane is bumper to bumper.
He starts by tailgating while swerving back and forth. He flips his brights on. I reach up and adjust my mirror so that the lights are out of my eyes, trying to find a place in the other lane at 65 mph. Meanwhile, this idiot is waving the finger out of his window.
I finally ease my Jeep over into the right lane and the redneck begins his assault on the next car. He usually gains about four places by cutting off drivers and multiple lane changes between the time he passes me and when I catch up with him at the slow-down between Carroll and Hamilton Road.
If you drive route 33 then I am sure that this might sound like your morning, too.
While he does elevate my blood pressure, I do want to thank the Red-neck pickup truck driver for making me feel so superior.
And sometimes I find myself hoping, Lord forgive me, that someday, when he is alone on some two-lane country road with deep run-off ditches, he'll have a blow-out.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Traffic Cameras in Ohio....
Before Big Brother gets even more out of control, with every little municipality wanting a slice of the Revenue pie, the people of Ohio should be pressing for a State Law that limits the use of fine money collected from violators caught by these cameras to only be used by a program or programs like the Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE).
That program is only a suggestion, but if there are going to be cameras (bad idea), then let's limit the ability of cities to become the "Video New Rome" of Ohio, and keep the collection agencies out of it. Also, by limiting the money to an exact use and away from the General Fund, it keeps the politician's grubby hands out of it for the most part.
Each camera would have to be backed by an ODOT study and the fines would be collected by the State - NOT the city and a collection agency that takes a big cut. No fine money would go into ANY General Fund or individual city coffers.
That would keep predatory collections by the cities down and actually result in LESS cameras, but in the places they are needed most, and with and end result of helping the people who need help the most, making the most needy Ohioans more employable.
That program is only a suggestion, but if there are going to be cameras (bad idea), then let's limit the ability of cities to become the "Video New Rome" of Ohio, and keep the collection agencies out of it. Also, by limiting the money to an exact use and away from the General Fund, it keeps the politician's grubby hands out of it for the most part.
Each camera would have to be backed by an ODOT study and the fines would be collected by the State - NOT the city and a collection agency that takes a big cut. No fine money would go into ANY General Fund or individual city coffers.
That would keep predatory collections by the cities down and actually result in LESS cameras, but in the places they are needed most, and with and end result of helping the people who need help the most, making the most needy Ohioans more employable.
Monday, January 28, 2008
State of da Onion, errrr... Union.
Well, right now I'm listening to a man who is trying to be all things to all people. I guess most SOTU speeches are the same.
Problem is, he's the (Gasp!) President of the USA, he's not an Apostle.
It might have been my selective hearing, but I thought I just heard "We're gonna give 'em Democracy if we have to shove it down their throats and blow it out their behinds."
"And, oh yeah, we're gonna print some more money we don't have and throw it down the well to Timmy. He can use that worthless toilet paper for a rope."
534 applauding Horses' Ass and One Honest Man, Ron Paul.
Problem is, he's the (Gasp!) President of the USA, he's not an Apostle.
It might have been my selective hearing, but I thought I just heard "We're gonna give 'em Democracy if we have to shove it down their throats and blow it out their behinds."
"And, oh yeah, we're gonna print some more money we don't have and throw it down the well to Timmy. He can use that worthless toilet paper for a rope."
534 applauding Horses' Ass and One Honest Man, Ron Paul.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Remove money and power from 'auctions,' er, I mean elections....
By Dave Baird -- Reprinted from The Athens News
Ah, it's election time again. The great American sport.
Sadly, for a lot of folks it's a spectator sport. We tell our kids that with freedom comes responsibility, but ignore that ourselves.
Many of our forebears shed blood to give us the right of the vote. Now our sons and daughters are shedding theirs partly because we have not taken that gift seriously. We are not informed, and are swayed by appeals to our fears, bigotry and emotions rather than by reason.
I get a chuckle every time I hear that we are killing folks to bring them the blessings of democracy when we have made such a muck of it here.
Hey, gang, our government is for sale. We don't have elections; we have auctions. Both parties are crowded around the trough. If you want special treatment, lower taxes, larger subsidies or just to be heard, you don't pay taxes, you give money directly to the politician. (Pardon me, contribute to them...).
The system is stacked to make this almost a necessity in order to get the job. Even the "good" ones rationalize selling out in order to "do some good." Everyone knows it. Most don't like it. But what is going to be done about it? Good question. Ask your party officials and you will get a runaround or they will treat you like a simpleton: "You just don't understand the realities of the system."Well, THEY do. Money is power and power is the name of the game.
Fixing it would be fairly simple, at least in concept, the devil being in the details.
1) Caps on campaign spending tied to inflation.
2) Limit contributions to $50 for an individual and $500 for an organization (be it a business or a union or a knitting club). Provide public funding up to 50 percent of the cap.
3) Part of the license for media would be to provide free time and space for debates and pro/con discussion of issues. And no paid ads within a week of the election (except for a rebuttal).
4) Make it illegal to indulge in negative and personal attacks (that includes so-called surrogates).
5) Make any organization that makes baseless charges subject to libel laws (like the Swift Boat gang). Fines would be imposed in votes, not money.
6) Establish a code of conduct for candidates and fine them for breaking it.
7) Train our kids in critical thinking and encourage, nay, REQUIRE debate of issues in our schools.
8) Voting should be encouraged and protected. Voting days should be either on weekends or made a holiday. Perhaps some penalty for not voting or at least an incentive to vote (maybe a discount on traffic tickets or taxes).
9) It should be illegal for an employer to interfere with the voting or votes of his or her employees, or for that matter even ask them how they voted. That goes for unions, too.
10) Make it illegal for employers to require political contributions.
11) Enforce the strictures on non-profits involving themselves in politics (including churches and religiously based media empires).
12) Can the computer-based voting machines. They have been shown to be open to rigging and hacking. And there's no way to tell if they have been.
13) Last but not least, get rid of gerrymandering by either party. One way would be to require each district to be equal (roughly) and drawn on county lines only, no splitting urban from rural by dividing counties. The process of doing this would be under control of the Census Bureau and the judiciary.
Most of these suggestions would be shouted down by special interests as an infringement on their free speech, which is hogwash. Their concern is expensive speech, speech that only they can afford and feel free to abuse.
Having said that, I'll add that freedom of speech for the many would need to be aggressively protected. One way of doing that would be to enforce the anti-trust laws (remember them?) as it applies to the various forms of media. Individuals and groups should be able to criticize the government without pressure or penalty but should stick to the issues rather than "Candidate A" saying a bad word or having hang nails. And if we vote for someone, it should be on the basis of how he or she is going to affect your family and community (or for that matter, the rest of the world). Not because they hate the same people you do.
Am I whistling in the wind here? Maybe, but it is becoming obvious what the results are of lots of people shirking their civic responsibilities. We see the effects of corruption of the system by moneyed interests, the concentration of power and wealth in fewer hands, and their control over the political life of this country.
Obviously, money and politics must be separated. Church and state need to stay separated.
We are the ones who have to start taking this whole business seriously. The fact that 30-second sound bites can sway an election should be unthinkable. Power still rests in the hands of the people (theoretically). We should be ashamed of the fact that George Bush is sitting in the Oval Office with only 18 percent of the electorate voting for him!
Have a happy and involved New Year.
Editor's note: David Baird, a self supporting craftsman, and his wife, Roberta (better craftsperson), live in the fortunately not burgeoning community of Mud City, in the still beautiful Athens County.
Ah, it's election time again. The great American sport.
Sadly, for a lot of folks it's a spectator sport. We tell our kids that with freedom comes responsibility, but ignore that ourselves.
Many of our forebears shed blood to give us the right of the vote. Now our sons and daughters are shedding theirs partly because we have not taken that gift seriously. We are not informed, and are swayed by appeals to our fears, bigotry and emotions rather than by reason.
I get a chuckle every time I hear that we are killing folks to bring them the blessings of democracy when we have made such a muck of it here.
Hey, gang, our government is for sale. We don't have elections; we have auctions. Both parties are crowded around the trough. If you want special treatment, lower taxes, larger subsidies or just to be heard, you don't pay taxes, you give money directly to the politician. (Pardon me, contribute to them...).
The system is stacked to make this almost a necessity in order to get the job. Even the "good" ones rationalize selling out in order to "do some good." Everyone knows it. Most don't like it. But what is going to be done about it? Good question. Ask your party officials and you will get a runaround or they will treat you like a simpleton: "You just don't understand the realities of the system."Well, THEY do. Money is power and power is the name of the game.
Fixing it would be fairly simple, at least in concept, the devil being in the details.
1) Caps on campaign spending tied to inflation.
2) Limit contributions to $50 for an individual and $500 for an organization (be it a business or a union or a knitting club). Provide public funding up to 50 percent of the cap.
3) Part of the license for media would be to provide free time and space for debates and pro/con discussion of issues. And no paid ads within a week of the election (except for a rebuttal).
4) Make it illegal to indulge in negative and personal attacks (that includes so-called surrogates).
5) Make any organization that makes baseless charges subject to libel laws (like the Swift Boat gang). Fines would be imposed in votes, not money.
6) Establish a code of conduct for candidates and fine them for breaking it.
7) Train our kids in critical thinking and encourage, nay, REQUIRE debate of issues in our schools.
8) Voting should be encouraged and protected. Voting days should be either on weekends or made a holiday. Perhaps some penalty for not voting or at least an incentive to vote (maybe a discount on traffic tickets or taxes).
9) It should be illegal for an employer to interfere with the voting or votes of his or her employees, or for that matter even ask them how they voted. That goes for unions, too.
10) Make it illegal for employers to require political contributions.
11) Enforce the strictures on non-profits involving themselves in politics (including churches and religiously based media empires).
12) Can the computer-based voting machines. They have been shown to be open to rigging and hacking. And there's no way to tell if they have been.
13) Last but not least, get rid of gerrymandering by either party. One way would be to require each district to be equal (roughly) and drawn on county lines only, no splitting urban from rural by dividing counties. The process of doing this would be under control of the Census Bureau and the judiciary.
Most of these suggestions would be shouted down by special interests as an infringement on their free speech, which is hogwash. Their concern is expensive speech, speech that only they can afford and feel free to abuse.
Having said that, I'll add that freedom of speech for the many would need to be aggressively protected. One way of doing that would be to enforce the anti-trust laws (remember them?) as it applies to the various forms of media. Individuals and groups should be able to criticize the government without pressure or penalty but should stick to the issues rather than "Candidate A" saying a bad word or having hang nails. And if we vote for someone, it should be on the basis of how he or she is going to affect your family and community (or for that matter, the rest of the world). Not because they hate the same people you do.
Am I whistling in the wind here? Maybe, but it is becoming obvious what the results are of lots of people shirking their civic responsibilities. We see the effects of corruption of the system by moneyed interests, the concentration of power and wealth in fewer hands, and their control over the political life of this country.
Obviously, money and politics must be separated. Church and state need to stay separated.
We are the ones who have to start taking this whole business seriously. The fact that 30-second sound bites can sway an election should be unthinkable. Power still rests in the hands of the people (theoretically). We should be ashamed of the fact that George Bush is sitting in the Oval Office with only 18 percent of the electorate voting for him!
Have a happy and involved New Year.
Editor's note: David Baird, a self supporting craftsman, and his wife, Roberta (better craftsperson), live in the fortunately not burgeoning community of Mud City, in the still beautiful Athens County.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
A Republican in OZ. So what do you do?
So here you are: a Republican in Oz. What do you do?
If you are a Romney or Guiliani supporter, the Neocons at National Review probably love you and the Devil owns your soul: you either want a car salesman or a crime lord (former US attys make the best crime lords) to be President. Great, send them some money and see what you bought.
So, here we go, the old test. Leave your wallet, your girl and your car with:
The rich boy/car salesman type who never looks anybody in the eye when he’s answering a question and tops his waffles with waffles, or
The wife-cheater/one issue candidate who you are pretty sure owes big-time to the wrong people and has bad wingman judgment, or
The experienced old soldier, who loves and serves the best interests of America as he sees them but who makes compromises and can be swayed by special interests who may be smarter than he, or
The former preacher and crunchy-con, who you are pretty sure will do better in a debate then all-of-the-above, but who you know will be anti-big business and pro-big government, which really puts you off…
Both Thompson and Paul are pretty much gone, but hopefully Paul (by far the best man in the race) will at least be able to affect the platform at some level.
Ok, which one?
If you are a Romney or Guiliani supporter, the Neocons at National Review probably love you and the Devil owns your soul: you either want a car salesman or a crime lord (former US attys make the best crime lords) to be President. Great, send them some money and see what you bought.
So, here we go, the old test. Leave your wallet, your girl and your car with:
The rich boy/car salesman type who never looks anybody in the eye when he’s answering a question and tops his waffles with waffles, or
The wife-cheater/one issue candidate who you are pretty sure owes big-time to the wrong people and has bad wingman judgment, or
The experienced old soldier, who loves and serves the best interests of America as he sees them but who makes compromises and can be swayed by special interests who may be smarter than he, or
The former preacher and crunchy-con, who you are pretty sure will do better in a debate then all-of-the-above, but who you know will be anti-big business and pro-big government, which really puts you off…
Both Thompson and Paul are pretty much gone, but hopefully Paul (by far the best man in the race) will at least be able to affect the platform at some level.
Ok, which one?
Oh yeah, Edwards is the only Dem in the race with original ideas and the ability to win a populist election.
An addendum to this post:
Someone said that this test is flawed:
"... Your test is flawed. You could have trusted Hitler with your wallet, car, and girlfriend. Or Castro. Or Mao. Or Stalin. The real scary people don’t care anything about those kind of things."
I have to say that the test in no way is flawed!
Each one of them would have appropriated my car and my wallet for the good of the community, and then thrown my (Jewish) much, much better half in a "detention" camp.
Friday, January 11, 2008
The "Bradley Effect": Vote fraud, liars, or both....
It seems that the exact thing happened in the '08 New Hampshire Democratic primary that happened in the '04 Ohio Presidential Race.
In the first, the effect was possibly fear of race. In the second, the "National Security Question".
That 13% N.H. swing was enormous, BUT, do you hear the Demo's screaming Fraud?
Here are the choices, and feel free to add to the list or contest it:
13% of the voters lied. Or,
Young voters, for some reason, just didn't show up. Or,
The system (machines or reporting) were compromised (hacked or programmed to report falsely). Or,
An astounding 13% of the LIBERAL voters entered the Booth and decided (at the last minute, it the privacy of their hearts and heads) that they would rather see ANY white woman than a Black man win the LIBERAL nomination for President. This has been identified as "The Bradley Effect". Look it up.
The last choice would mean that everything the LIBERALS say they stand for was repudiated and replaced with latent and now realized racism.
What's your choice?
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Toast ag'in. We just love the abuse....
Well, the blame goes mostly to our O-line, BUT...
The Vest and his minions got roundly out-schemed, out-thunk and just abused.
Both LSU's O-cord and D-cord were just having fun dialing up all kinda stuff once they realized the Bucks couldn't hang.
If there is one thing I take from this, it is that Tress seems to have three or four plays he goes back to time and again. Their D is adjusting and if the O-line can't hang we're toast.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd bet my (un)lucky Buckeye that LSU ran nearly 3 times as many different plays as OSU. I know for sure they had 3 times as many offensive looks. Are their players THAT much smarter?
Tress needs a good O-cord, but that ain't gonna happen.
The Vest and his minions got roundly out-schemed, out-thunk and just abused.
Both LSU's O-cord and D-cord were just having fun dialing up all kinda stuff once they realized the Bucks couldn't hang.
If there is one thing I take from this, it is that Tress seems to have three or four plays he goes back to time and again. Their D is adjusting and if the O-line can't hang we're toast.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd bet my (un)lucky Buckeye that LSU ran nearly 3 times as many different plays as OSU. I know for sure they had 3 times as many offensive looks. Are their players THAT much smarter?
Tress needs a good O-cord, but that ain't gonna happen.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Ohio's vote is gonna be screwed up again (and again)....
Ohio is going back to Optical Scanners.
For a local overview, check out the Crabby Fat Guy here: http://www.crabbyfatguy.com/?p=896
I remember “some people” who told us to “trust the technology”, and “it’s a lot better system than we used to have”, and “the way things are set up, there’s no need for backup paper trails”.
There is only one reason NOT to provide a system with a verifiable secure check, while protecting voter identity, and it IS doable.
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6430
As a conservative, it bothers me that the Repubs are the ones who almost always oppose efforts to safeguard the vote, to make it more transparent, securely verifiable and less easy to tamper with.
I’m not the first to note that Diebold, along with other voting machine manufacturers, are Repub contributors.
“…McCarthy & Company, part of the McCarthy Group that is one of the currentowners of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), which itself resulted from the merger of AIS and Business Records Corporation. ES&S is now the largest voting machine company in America. One of its largest owners is the ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company.”
I’m against unwarrented government spending as much as the next taxpayer, but it really bothers me that we seem to put corporate special interests ahead of individual rights over and over.
In a Democratic Republic, I would think that the MOST important thing is getting the vote right.
But it’s bad to spend money making sure the vote is correct????
For a local overview, check out the Crabby Fat Guy here: http://www.crabbyfatguy.com/?p=896
I remember “some people” who told us to “trust the technology”, and “it’s a lot better system than we used to have”, and “the way things are set up, there’s no need for backup paper trails”.
There is only one reason NOT to provide a system with a verifiable secure check, while protecting voter identity, and it IS doable.
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6430
As a conservative, it bothers me that the Repubs are the ones who almost always oppose efforts to safeguard the vote, to make it more transparent, securely verifiable and less easy to tamper with.
I’m not the first to note that Diebold, along with other voting machine manufacturers, are Repub contributors.
“…McCarthy & Company, part of the McCarthy Group that is one of the currentowners of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), which itself resulted from the merger of AIS and Business Records Corporation. ES&S is now the largest voting machine company in America. One of its largest owners is the ultra-conservative Omaha World-Herald Company.”
I’m against unwarrented government spending as much as the next taxpayer, but it really bothers me that we seem to put corporate special interests ahead of individual rights over and over.
In a Democratic Republic, I would think that the MOST important thing is getting the vote right.
But it’s bad to spend money making sure the vote is correct????
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Additional notes on Taxes and Bribery of Congress....
We have a Fed that abuses States Rights.
The Commerce Clause has been interpreted and liberally extended by Liberals to hold states hostage for their own money in many ways that violate the 10th Ammendment.
Congress uses lobbyists to write law, and the lot of them (Lawmakers and Lobbyists) should be indicted for bribery.
'Nuf said.
'Nuf said?
Mebbe not.
The Commerce Clause has been interpreted and liberally extended by Liberals to hold states hostage for their own money in many ways that violate the 10th Ammendment.
Congress uses lobbyists to write law, and the lot of them (Lawmakers and Lobbyists) should be indicted for bribery.
'Nuf said.
'Nuf said?
Mebbe not.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Today's gripe: Taxes....
I don’t pay my taxes “voluntarily”. I don’t know anybody who does.
We pay because of fear of being audited, jailed or fined; and if you don’t believe that you are either an IRS employee, a liberal elite who is drinking the kool-aid and thinks that we should all live on a government stipend, or you are a fool.
The tax system is backward. My money should go to my county and city and then to the state and the feds should have to ask my state for money.
Why should I have to hope that my representatives “bring home the bacon” and thus contribute to the vast corrupt beaurocracy of it all? My damn bacon should stay right here!
We pay because of fear of being audited, jailed or fined; and if you don’t believe that you are either an IRS employee, a liberal elite who is drinking the kool-aid and thinks that we should all live on a government stipend, or you are a fool.
The tax system is backward. My money should go to my county and city and then to the state and the feds should have to ask my state for money.
Why should I have to hope that my representatives “bring home the bacon” and thus contribute to the vast corrupt beaurocracy of it all? My damn bacon should stay right here!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Happy Christmas....
Regarding the Christmas Season as it is, not as it should be:
Let's stop chucking The Baby under the chin and bow before The Savior of mankind.
And on a kinder, gentler, amazed at the Grace of Our God note:
Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe
- Bruce Cockburn
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A Couple of Quotes from Ben Bryant....
I really like these. They are so unfortunately true.
"... When we're all working at Wendy's, Wal-Mart, and Big Lots, who's going to be able to afford to shop at Wal-Mart and Big Lots and eat at Wendy's?"
"There is no such thing as a service based economy."
Bush has "... set the Presidential bar so low that we are considering people like Hillary, who wouldn't normally have a chance. Most of us would vote for a goat with a necktie right now."
-- Ben Bryant
Ben recently ran and lost a City Council race here in Lancaster. He is a young man, and hopefully will continue to rage against the machine.
"... When we're all working at Wendy's, Wal-Mart, and Big Lots, who's going to be able to afford to shop at Wal-Mart and Big Lots and eat at Wendy's?"
"There is no such thing as a service based economy."
Bush has "... set the Presidential bar so low that we are considering people like Hillary, who wouldn't normally have a chance. Most of us would vote for a goat with a necktie right now."
-- Ben Bryant
Ben recently ran and lost a City Council race here in Lancaster. He is a young man, and hopefully will continue to rage against the machine.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Boo, Hissss... I Crap on the Top-Ten Lists.
... See, that rhymed.
I like it when my favorite music is all a non-mention in the year-end lists of your more hoity-toity music mags (Re.: Paste Magazine).
It's a sign of an almost "Bushian" combination of ignorance and self-confidence that these non-mentions make me feel both superior and privileged to the rewards of a secret knowledge that makes the highest audit level of Scientology seem a cheap investment.
In short, it makes me look down on you critics like I look at Amway salespeople.
My listening habits, like our President's reading habits, are a tad narrow, and actually spending time telling these people what I like would be self-defecateding my superioritedness.
Sufjanifice it to say that although Mr. Henry is a hell of a writer, and though you did blind squirrel it through to the everybodyfields pick, Tommy Womack's "There, I Said It" is the best record of 2007.
I like it when my favorite music is all a non-mention in the year-end lists of your more hoity-toity music mags (Re.: Paste Magazine).
It's a sign of an almost "Bushian" combination of ignorance and self-confidence that these non-mentions make me feel both superior and privileged to the rewards of a secret knowledge that makes the highest audit level of Scientology seem a cheap investment.
In short, it makes me look down on you critics like I look at Amway salespeople.
My listening habits, like our President's reading habits, are a tad narrow, and actually spending time telling these people what I like would be self-defecateding my superioritedness.
Sufjanifice it to say that although Mr. Henry is a hell of a writer, and though you did blind squirrel it through to the everybodyfields pick, Tommy Womack's "There, I Said It" is the best record of 2007.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Nothing will change....
... and that's what's wrong.
The Mitchell Report on use of HGH and Steroids.
Nothing to say here on the details.
One observation that is hardly original:
Baseball is America's Sport. It is a microcosm of our society, and as such the mirror tells the tale.
Nothing will change. We'll keep on making money. We'll keep on breaking records that shouldn't be able to be broken. We'll do it because we have to. Otherwise the Americans who watch us will no longer watch us, pay the freight and propel the economy of the American Sport.
America has sold whatever soul it had. This is just another fall-out.
Maybe I'll watch baseball again someday. I doubt it, but maybe when players start looking like humans again, I'll think about it.
The Mitchell Report on use of HGH and Steroids.
Nothing to say here on the details.
One observation that is hardly original:
Baseball is America's Sport. It is a microcosm of our society, and as such the mirror tells the tale.
Nothing will change. We'll keep on making money. We'll keep on breaking records that shouldn't be able to be broken. We'll do it because we have to. Otherwise the Americans who watch us will no longer watch us, pay the freight and propel the economy of the American Sport.
America has sold whatever soul it had. This is just another fall-out.
Maybe I'll watch baseball again someday. I doubt it, but maybe when players start looking like humans again, I'll think about it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
We Can't Make it Here
"We Can't Make it Here"
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore
That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore
See the pallets piled on the loading dock
Just gonna set there 'til they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts 'round the square
There's a needle in the gutter - glass everywhere
Don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore
The bar's still open, but man it's slow
Tip jar's light and the register's low
Bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day
Some maxed out their credit cards
Some 're working two jobs and livin' in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof,
Won't pay for a drink if you gotta have proof
Just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far $5.15 an hour'll go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore
....
Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No, I hate the men who sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the a f***in' little war
And we can't make it here anymore
Will work for food, will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
As the working poor fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans, let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore
And that's how it is, that's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind if you're listenin' at all
Get out of that limo, look us in the eye
Call us on the phone, tell us all why
In Dayton, Ohio or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That done closed down along with the school,
The hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore
Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore
That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore
See the pallets piled on the loading dock
Just gonna set there 'til they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts 'round the square
There's a needle in the gutter - glass everywhere
Don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore
The bar's still open, but man it's slow
Tip jar's light and the register's low
Bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day
Some maxed out their credit cards
Some 're working two jobs and livin' in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof,
Won't pay for a drink if you gotta have proof
Just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far $5.15 an hour'll go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore
....
Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No, I hate the men who sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the a f***in' little war
And we can't make it here anymore
Will work for food, will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
As the working poor fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans, let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore
And that's how it is, that's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind if you're listenin' at all
Get out of that limo, look us in the eye
Call us on the phone, tell us all why
In Dayton, Ohio or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That done closed down along with the school,
The hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore
Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Economic Fall-Out Hits Home....
More fallout:My company has decided to "restructure" salaries throughout -- although I am sure that "throughout" is a very subjective term.
I'll find out tomorrow whether this is something I can live with.
The problem is that when you voluntarily accept a pay cut and the company lets you go a few weeks later, any Unemployment Compensation is figured on the lower salary.
Maybe I can get them to agree to a better release package (extended health insurance?) for signing on with the lower salary.
Not holding out much hope, though.
This comes at an inconvenient time, as I am learning to cope with a larger group of responsibilities than I have ever had in my life. Now it looks like I'll be learning to cope on a much lower salary.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Myth Of Rising Drug Prices....
I do not understand the furor.
Actually, in my neighborhood, drug prices seem to be very reasonable. Now the quality ain't so good, but with a dealer in every rental in a four-block area, the competition is driving prices down.
They're almost as easy to pick up as the Mickey D's bags scattered over the lawns by the white-trashers across the street.
Actually, in my neighborhood, drug prices seem to be very reasonable. Now the quality ain't so good, but with a dealer in every rental in a four-block area, the competition is driving prices down.
They're almost as easy to pick up as the Mickey D's bags scattered over the lawns by the white-trashers across the street.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Rublev's Dog: The One-Nation Nonsense....
Hard for some of us to hear, but Rublev's Dog said what needed to be said.
I had to link this. Here it is:
http://rublevsdog.blogspot.com/2007/11/one-nation-nonsense.html
I had to link this. Here it is:
http://rublevsdog.blogspot.com/2007/11/one-nation-nonsense.html
Sunday, November 25, 2007
My "complimentary" magazine....
My much, much better half received a "complimentary" copy of "Ode" - the magazine for Intelligent Optimists (What a crock.).
I'm still waiting on my copy of "Poo" - The magazine for Stupid Pessimists.
But as usual, I'm not holding out much hope....
I'm still waiting on my copy of "Poo" - The magazine for Stupid Pessimists.
But as usual, I'm not holding out much hope....
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The scheduled SCOTUS review of the 2nd Amendment....
I guess this goes in the "Mark my word" category.
And yes, I know it is technically NOT a review of the Amendment itself, but if the Court upholds community gun bans, the practical effect will be the SAME.
Combined with the ever-expanding Patriot Act influence and interpretations and the SCOTUS 2nd Amendment review scheduled for this spring (the Pro-Gun Rights Lobby will be sooooo surprised with the ruling), it is all setting up for a take-away of every single American right. The one-world Federalists in the guise of the Neocons (and this includes the HC Democrats) might as well say "welcome to the EU".
After the 2nd falls, there will be no need to "review" the 1st Amendment.
And yes, I know it is technically NOT a review of the Amendment itself, but if the Court upholds community gun bans, the practical effect will be the SAME.
Combined with the ever-expanding Patriot Act influence and interpretations and the SCOTUS 2nd Amendment review scheduled for this spring (the Pro-Gun Rights Lobby will be sooooo surprised with the ruling), it is all setting up for a take-away of every single American right. The one-world Federalists in the guise of the Neocons (and this includes the HC Democrats) might as well say "welcome to the EU".
After the 2nd falls, there will be no need to "review" the 1st Amendment.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Ol' Lefthander, rounding third and heading for home....
Joseph Henry Nuxhall
July 30, 1928 - November 15, 2007
As a child in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, I grew up listening to Marty and Joe.
Here is a part of the only piece of writing I have that references Joe Nuxhall.
Go on Joe, "Get up! Get up! Get outta here!".
Depression Era (Ref. Robert Herrick)
Scouting pottery
South, out of Zanesville
Shawnee, Corning
Down Route 13
What I do Saturday,
Sunday afternoons
Sneaking beer from the cooler
Hot stove league on the radio
Marty and it used to be Joe
I don’t collect myself
and don’t know much
But find what I can
and take it home to my Sweetie
.... (the rest at www.jackscrow.com)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The SCHIP Veto. Not just bad choices -- Stupid-Bad choices....
The SCHIP veto in a wide-screen view:
You know, if this President had any history at all of vetoing spending bills and trying to hold down budget overruns and debt, I wouldn't react to his veto here....
In reality, President Bush is just obeying his masters. Corporate healthcare and Big Tobacco supported Senators are the ones pulling his strings.
So taxes ARE bad... so is overspending Government, which Bush has been cheering on for seven years now, and you can't have a spending spree without taxes to match -- Well, you evidently can, but at the cost of our economy and any smoke-and-mirrors value the dollar might still have.
Am I to believe that it's ok to tax the middle class (what there are left) and not tax tobacco OR more importantly, hedge fund managers?
This Administration has been nothing but stupid-bad choices. If we survive it, it may still be the death of any chance at anything resembling a National consensus among Conservatives. Conservatives may survive on a local level, but from now on every time a Real Conservative runs for National office, all the Libs will have to say is "Bush".
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
It's not ok to be President and Commander-In-Chief. Or so President Bush says....
Hummm... I just don't get this one:
"You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time," Bush said, describing a telephone call with Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "I had a very frank discussion with him."
Wait-a-sec... isn't our President the Commander-In-Chief?
So he's telling Musharraf that a double-standard is ok?
Is somebody in his speechwriting corps handing him bad lines on purpose, or is it just totally out of control?
One of the MANY things our President needs to start doing is checking his notes before he talks....
"You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time," Bush said, describing a telephone call with Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "I had a very frank discussion with him."
Wait-a-sec... isn't our President the Commander-In-Chief?
So he's telling Musharraf that a double-standard is ok?
Is somebody in his speechwriting corps handing him bad lines on purpose, or is it just totally out of control?
One of the MANY things our President needs to start doing is checking his notes before he talks....
David Foster Wallace -- This is important....
David Foster Wallace
Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive.
But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive.
But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Dark Side is trying to do away with the Electoral College again....
It's that time again: The Democrats making the big push to do away with the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is A Good Idea. It's part of the Federal design of the government, and means that the States, not the people, elect the President.
Here's a good expose' on the matter.
http://www.willisms.com/
Messing With The Electoral College.
Messing With America-
You may have heard earlier this year about plans to change the way California (and other states) award their Electors to the Electoral College. California, with its 55 Electoral Votes, went 54% for Kerry and 45% for Bush. And all 55 Electors were awarded to Kerry. The same goes for nearly every other state. It's winner-take-all. It encourages Risk-inspired conversations like, "we're gonna take Wisconsin this year, which will leave the Democrats vulnerable and force them to defend Oregon and Washington."
In Nebraska and Maine, however, Electoral Votes are awarded based on a district-by-district basis. That's their prerogative. It was also once the prerogative of Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Let's just say that every state adopted the district-by-district plan. How would that have impacted elections over the past half century, and how would it impact future elections?
Generally, the winner, regardless of party, would do worse:
President Bush, interestingly, did much better in "blue state" Congressional districts than Senator Kerry did in "red state" Congressional districts.
Now, clearly, campaign tactics might have been different under these plans. There are plenty of toss-up districts in solidly partisan states (like California and Texas) that would have seen advertisements, volunteers, and other campaign resources considered a complete waste under the winner-take-all rules. Who knows what could have happened under a national district-by-district system.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in California over the next year. It has certainly been declared dead emphatically enough by lefties, and resuscitated by serious enough people on the right, to warrant some attention. In 2004, California would have been worth more than the equivalent of Illinois, Ohio, or Pennsylvania to President Bush under the Congressional District plan:
If California wants a more "progressive" system of awarding Electors, more power to them. If a handful of other states want to join them, fantastic. If anyone wants to impose this on every state or otherwise undermine the Electoral College and replace it with a direct vote, however, they are crossing the line.
The Electoral College actually prevents a lot of election fraud, number one. Imagine how much more meaningful those dead and other fraudulent voters in Chicago and in other political machine cities would be to a national popular vote. Instead of a few hanging chads in Florida, we would have had "missing" votes suddenly found all over the country in 2000.
Secondly, the Electoral College helps maintain America's federalist nature. Ultimately, we're a nation of states. While the states have ceded quite a bit of power and responsibility to the national government (the Civil War had a lot to do with that), there's a reason the Founders established this nation as a Federal Republic. Indeed, there is a big reason why Federal Republics protect liberties better than direct democracies. The Electoral College is a safeguard against the tyranny of the mob.
The Electoral College also forces candidates to have more than mere regional appeal; it demands some consensus-building.
As candidates assert their cross-partisan appeal and pundits debate the merits of reforming the Electoral College, one can't help but laugh at some of the transparent partisan reasons people support or oppose these changes.
Ultimately, as long as the rules in place before the election are adhered to after the election, and as long as each state determines how it will award its own Electors to the Electoral College, I am not sure that the California plan, applied nationally, would have significant consequences one partisan way or another over the long run. Indeed, in 2012, solid "red states" will gain Electoral Votes at the expense of solid "blue states" due to reapportionment following the 2010 Census. Regions change. Suburbs change. Inner cities change. Political realities change, domestically and internationally. Crises happen. Economies boom and bust. Parties change.
Projecting out to 2012, 2016, 2020, and beyond, it's difficult to imagine a national district-by-district plan helping either party. In 2008, however, California making the move alone would give the GOP nominee a bit of breathing room in his cruise to victory.
The Electoral College is A Good Idea. It's part of the Federal design of the government, and means that the States, not the people, elect the President.
Here's a good expose' on the matter.
http://www.willisms.com/
Messing With The Electoral College.
Messing With America-
You may have heard earlier this year about plans to change the way California (and other states) award their Electors to the Electoral College. California, with its 55 Electoral Votes, went 54% for Kerry and 45% for Bush. And all 55 Electors were awarded to Kerry. The same goes for nearly every other state. It's winner-take-all. It encourages Risk-inspired conversations like, "we're gonna take Wisconsin this year, which will leave the Democrats vulnerable and force them to defend Oregon and Washington."
In Nebraska and Maine, however, Electoral Votes are awarded based on a district-by-district basis. That's their prerogative. It was also once the prerogative of Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Let's just say that every state adopted the district-by-district plan. How would that have impacted elections over the past half century, and how would it impact future elections?
Generally, the winner, regardless of party, would do worse:
President Bush, interestingly, did much better in "blue state" Congressional districts than Senator Kerry did in "red state" Congressional districts.
Now, clearly, campaign tactics might have been different under these plans. There are plenty of toss-up districts in solidly partisan states (like California and Texas) that would have seen advertisements, volunteers, and other campaign resources considered a complete waste under the winner-take-all rules. Who knows what could have happened under a national district-by-district system.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in California over the next year. It has certainly been declared dead emphatically enough by lefties, and resuscitated by serious enough people on the right, to warrant some attention. In 2004, California would have been worth more than the equivalent of Illinois, Ohio, or Pennsylvania to President Bush under the Congressional District plan:
If California wants a more "progressive" system of awarding Electors, more power to them. If a handful of other states want to join them, fantastic. If anyone wants to impose this on every state or otherwise undermine the Electoral College and replace it with a direct vote, however, they are crossing the line.
The Electoral College actually prevents a lot of election fraud, number one. Imagine how much more meaningful those dead and other fraudulent voters in Chicago and in other political machine cities would be to a national popular vote. Instead of a few hanging chads in Florida, we would have had "missing" votes suddenly found all over the country in 2000.
Secondly, the Electoral College helps maintain America's federalist nature. Ultimately, we're a nation of states. While the states have ceded quite a bit of power and responsibility to the national government (the Civil War had a lot to do with that), there's a reason the Founders established this nation as a Federal Republic. Indeed, there is a big reason why Federal Republics protect liberties better than direct democracies. The Electoral College is a safeguard against the tyranny of the mob.
The Electoral College also forces candidates to have more than mere regional appeal; it demands some consensus-building.
As candidates assert their cross-partisan appeal and pundits debate the merits of reforming the Electoral College, one can't help but laugh at some of the transparent partisan reasons people support or oppose these changes.
Ultimately, as long as the rules in place before the election are adhered to after the election, and as long as each state determines how it will award its own Electors to the Electoral College, I am not sure that the California plan, applied nationally, would have significant consequences one partisan way or another over the long run. Indeed, in 2012, solid "red states" will gain Electoral Votes at the expense of solid "blue states" due to reapportionment following the 2010 Census. Regions change. Suburbs change. Inner cities change. Political realities change, domestically and internationally. Crises happen. Economies boom and bust. Parties change.
Projecting out to 2012, 2016, 2020, and beyond, it's difficult to imagine a national district-by-district plan helping either party. In 2008, however, California making the move alone would give the GOP nominee a bit of breathing room in his cruise to victory.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
On the Pygmy Goat Show at the Fairfield County Fair....
Well, when I was a kid (kid, get it?) we didn't show goats, we showed real Pygmies, damn it.
Yeah, and we didn't buy 'em at auction, either; we went to South America, rounded up our own damn Pygmies, took their little blowguns away, and then trudged through the Rainforest, loaded 'em on boats and brought 'em back to the farm!
Then we put 'em in a pen, fed 'em real good and then put 'em in the pickup, took 'em to the Fairfield County Fair, and showed 'em. Then, of course, we were sad, 'cause dad had'ta kill 'em. But that's what they're for!
Heck, one time, I showed my Pygmies at the Ohio State Fair! Yeah, and Governor Gilligan slept overnight with MY Pygmies!** He said that MaryAnn and Ginger couldn't make it, so in their honor; I renamed two of my Pygmies "MaryAnn" and "Ginger".
They tasted good.
** It's a long-standing tradition in Ohio that the Governor sleeps over in a stall at the stockbarns one night during the run of the State Fair.
Yeah, and we didn't buy 'em at auction, either; we went to South America, rounded up our own damn Pygmies, took their little blowguns away, and then trudged through the Rainforest, loaded 'em on boats and brought 'em back to the farm!
Then we put 'em in a pen, fed 'em real good and then put 'em in the pickup, took 'em to the Fairfield County Fair, and showed 'em. Then, of course, we were sad, 'cause dad had'ta kill 'em. But that's what they're for!
Heck, one time, I showed my Pygmies at the Ohio State Fair! Yeah, and Governor Gilligan slept overnight with MY Pygmies!** He said that MaryAnn and Ginger couldn't make it, so in their honor; I renamed two of my Pygmies "MaryAnn" and "Ginger".
They tasted good.
** It's a long-standing tradition in Ohio that the Governor sleeps over in a stall at the stockbarns one night during the run of the State Fair.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Angry middle-aged man, Neighborhood Vigilante, or....
Or both?
I don't know.
I use'ta think I didn't have anger issues that went past the norm, but....
I just got back from walking over to Krogers East and back to my house on East Chestnut, and every time I see a young jerk in a beater, driving too fast thru my neighborhood, revving it up and pealing out at corners, all-the-while polluting the air with hip-hop junk, I just wanna grab the nearest 2x4, tear the crap outta his car and him too, if he dares get out.
Now, am I reasonable, or do I have issues?
I don't know.
I use'ta think I didn't have anger issues that went past the norm, but....
I just got back from walking over to Krogers East and back to my house on East Chestnut, and every time I see a young jerk in a beater, driving too fast thru my neighborhood, revving it up and pealing out at corners, all-the-while polluting the air with hip-hop junk, I just wanna grab the nearest 2x4, tear the crap outta his car and him too, if he dares get out.
Now, am I reasonable, or do I have issues?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Firing By Lackey. The Without Honor Management Style....
Somebody asked me the other day if I thought I was a "glass-half-full" or "glass-half-empty" guy. They didn't know me like you know me.
Off the top of my head I replied, "Every glass with anything in it at all eventually gets drunk, spilled, or thrown away. So what do you think?"
So the company I work for is getting rid of "dead wood".
And, it's not that they are doing it, it is the chickens**t way they are doing it.
When your company fires one of the original seven employees and the boss tells his lackey to do it by phone, it just brings to light the reality of how firing is usually done by the wrong person.
I think the person making the decision should do the firing. What do you think?
I've had to fire people before, and I've done it face to face, every time.
Most owners or final arbiters talk a good game of "fair", but don't play it....
Off the top of my head I replied, "Every glass with anything in it at all eventually gets drunk, spilled, or thrown away. So what do you think?"
So the company I work for is getting rid of "dead wood".
And, it's not that they are doing it, it is the chickens**t way they are doing it.
When your company fires one of the original seven employees and the boss tells his lackey to do it by phone, it just brings to light the reality of how firing is usually done by the wrong person.
I think the person making the decision should do the firing. What do you think?
I've had to fire people before, and I've done it face to face, every time.
Most owners or final arbiters talk a good game of "fair", but don't play it....
3 Steps to Lowering the Salary Burden at Your Company....
From my new book, "Management by Lackey, The Chickenshit Way To Success".
Three steps to lowering the salary burden at your company.
-Change the job requirements by adding things that your salaried employee has no experience doing.
-Track their performance and then renegotiate their salary down when the new expectations are not met.
-If they refuse to accept a lower salary for more work – fire them for incompetence and fight their unemployment.
Three steps to lowering the salary burden at your company.
-Change the job requirements by adding things that your salaried employee has no experience doing.
-Track their performance and then renegotiate their salary down when the new expectations are not met.
-If they refuse to accept a lower salary for more work – fire them for incompetence and fight their unemployment.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl....
A good article. Thoughtful, without being whiny.
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3641&printview&imagesoff
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3641&printview&imagesoff
Monday, October 1, 2007
Mark my words....
I think I'm going to start a new feature called "Mark My Words".
Here's the first pronouncement:
The Neo-Cons will start a war (Yes, I said "start".) with Iran before the 2008 Election. Probably by next June-July, if not earlier.
That is, if Our Lord does not come first.
It's all setting up, folks....
Here's the first pronouncement:
The Neo-Cons will start a war (Yes, I said "start".) with Iran before the 2008 Election. Probably by next June-July, if not earlier.
That is, if Our Lord does not come first.
It's all setting up, folks....
Sunday, September 30, 2007
A code of ethics for journalists?
An interesting comment on http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/ by someone going by the moniker "Woody". This caught my attention:
"... When you ask some student why he is majoring in journalism, he smugly and proudly responds, "To make a difference," and college journalism professors encourage that rather than teach ethics. If an accounting student gave that answer, he wouldn't have a future in providing objective information on companies. No one should call journalism a profession until it has an ethics code and lives by it."
Why not a code of ethics for Journalism?
Too much to hope for, I know, but there are so many so-called Journalists trying to make news, instead of report it. And there seem to be any number of professional (paid) "bloggers" out here that are in the biz of spinning for one side or another.
"... When you ask some student why he is majoring in journalism, he smugly and proudly responds, "To make a difference," and college journalism professors encourage that rather than teach ethics. If an accounting student gave that answer, he wouldn't have a future in providing objective information on companies. No one should call journalism a profession until it has an ethics code and lives by it."
Why not a code of ethics for Journalism?
Too much to hope for, I know, but there are so many so-called Journalists trying to make news, instead of report it. And there seem to be any number of professional (paid) "bloggers" out here that are in the biz of spinning for one side or another.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Islam and Immigration -- James Leroy Wilson
Islam and Immigration -- A country has the right to keep out those whose beliefs are hostile to its laws. By James Leroy Wilson
There are three reasons often given to allow just about anyone into America. The first is that people should have the right to go where they please. The second is that multiculturalism and diversity is good for a country. The third is that even foreigners with widely divergent beliefs and attitudes will be converted by the American way of life and embrace freedom, openness, and tolerance.
Regarding the right of anyone to go where they please: Let's say there's a Marxist rebel army in Mexico. Are we saying that, if they are on the run with the Mexican army in pursuit, they have a right to retreat into America? Can this rebel army cross back into Mexico for guerrilla raids, and then retreat back to their new base in the United States?
Should they be allowed to stay and establish their desired communist dictatorship within the United States itself?
Don't we have a right to keep out not only criminals, but also dissidents with anti-liberal views? Don't we have a right to keep out those who would overthrow our political system and our laws if they could?
On to multiculturalism. There is mounting evidence that the more diverse a neighborhood, the more crime and less community involvment – but let us leave that point aside. Let's instead imagine that a German neo-Nazi is fleeing Europe's hate-speech laws and seeks asylum in the U.S.
Is another neo-Nazi voice something we really need? We may want cultural diversity and differing viewpoints, but must we presume different viewpoints are equal to each other? If so, why not let the neo-Nazi in? Are we to say he can broaden our perspective and enlighten us? While we tolerate intolerant opinions expressed by Americans exercising their free speech rights, how is it helpful to add to their number?
As to converting immigrants to the American way of life. Let's say members of an apocalyptic cult from Japan, India, England, or wherever seek to enter America with the intention of winning more converts before embarking on a campaign to get their leader, who they call the Messiah, crowned King. Would the United States have a moral obligation to welcome in such nut-jobs? Should we assume that, once here, they will see the benefits of liberal democracy and give up their cult?
Such an assumption would be an unfounded faith in the ability of liberal democracy to turn everyone into liberal democrats. All too often, what we see as prosperity and freedom, others see as decadence and blasphemy. Liberal democracy isn't a religion, and "faith" in its laws, systems, and culture won't save it from its enemies.
An English-speaking, highly-skilled immigrant with a clear criminal record may want to become a permanent resident of the United States. Just the same, if his beliefs are hostile to our social systems and our laws – if he would overturn them if he could - it makes little sense to admit him, or others with the same beliefs.
Which brings us to the problem of Islam. Islam is not just a religion, it is a political ideology. As Muslim immigration and birth rates increase their numbers, they are more likely to insist on enforcing their laws amongst themselves. Over time, their numbers could turn into majorities in certain neighborhoods, then cities. With increasing political power, there is an increased likelihood of Islamic law, or Islam-inspired law being enforced upon everyone.
If Islam is a threat to the United States and Western world, the threat comes not from terrorist attacks, because terrorism is not a means of conquest. Indeed, terrorism on U.S. soil is strategic folly, because it would probably create a backlash against Muslims already here and cause a crackdown on further Muslim immigration. It is more likely that if Islam prevails, it will through demographics, through population growth – first in Europe, then in North America.
If Western countries want to keep that from happening, they shouldn't let Muslims move into their lands.
There are three reasons often given to allow just about anyone into America. The first is that people should have the right to go where they please. The second is that multiculturalism and diversity is good for a country. The third is that even foreigners with widely divergent beliefs and attitudes will be converted by the American way of life and embrace freedom, openness, and tolerance.
Regarding the right of anyone to go where they please: Let's say there's a Marxist rebel army in Mexico. Are we saying that, if they are on the run with the Mexican army in pursuit, they have a right to retreat into America? Can this rebel army cross back into Mexico for guerrilla raids, and then retreat back to their new base in the United States?
Should they be allowed to stay and establish their desired communist dictatorship within the United States itself?
Don't we have a right to keep out not only criminals, but also dissidents with anti-liberal views? Don't we have a right to keep out those who would overthrow our political system and our laws if they could?
On to multiculturalism. There is mounting evidence that the more diverse a neighborhood, the more crime and less community involvment – but let us leave that point aside. Let's instead imagine that a German neo-Nazi is fleeing Europe's hate-speech laws and seeks asylum in the U.S.
Is another neo-Nazi voice something we really need? We may want cultural diversity and differing viewpoints, but must we presume different viewpoints are equal to each other? If so, why not let the neo-Nazi in? Are we to say he can broaden our perspective and enlighten us? While we tolerate intolerant opinions expressed by Americans exercising their free speech rights, how is it helpful to add to their number?
As to converting immigrants to the American way of life. Let's say members of an apocalyptic cult from Japan, India, England, or wherever seek to enter America with the intention of winning more converts before embarking on a campaign to get their leader, who they call the Messiah, crowned King. Would the United States have a moral obligation to welcome in such nut-jobs? Should we assume that, once here, they will see the benefits of liberal democracy and give up their cult?
Such an assumption would be an unfounded faith in the ability of liberal democracy to turn everyone into liberal democrats. All too often, what we see as prosperity and freedom, others see as decadence and blasphemy. Liberal democracy isn't a religion, and "faith" in its laws, systems, and culture won't save it from its enemies.
An English-speaking, highly-skilled immigrant with a clear criminal record may want to become a permanent resident of the United States. Just the same, if his beliefs are hostile to our social systems and our laws – if he would overturn them if he could - it makes little sense to admit him, or others with the same beliefs.
Which brings us to the problem of Islam. Islam is not just a religion, it is a political ideology. As Muslim immigration and birth rates increase their numbers, they are more likely to insist on enforcing their laws amongst themselves. Over time, their numbers could turn into majorities in certain neighborhoods, then cities. With increasing political power, there is an increased likelihood of Islamic law, or Islam-inspired law being enforced upon everyone.
If Islam is a threat to the United States and Western world, the threat comes not from terrorist attacks, because terrorism is not a means of conquest. Indeed, terrorism on U.S. soil is strategic folly, because it would probably create a backlash against Muslims already here and cause a crackdown on further Muslim immigration. It is more likely that if Islam prevails, it will through demographics, through population growth – first in Europe, then in North America.
If Western countries want to keep that from happening, they shouldn't let Muslims move into their lands.
Monday, September 24, 2007
In honor of Ken Burns' WWII, on PBS....
I normally don't post my lyrics here, but it's warranted, I hope.
My dad won a Bronze Star and served two tours in WWII.
He taught anti-aircraft accuracy to crews all the way from North Africa, up through Italy and France, to Germany. He invented a remote, automatic firing switch that was used on anti-aircraft guns up through Vietnam. Dad was finally promoted in May.
Know Fear
The young man wore a t-shirt
That said he had "No Fear"
We bumped, I said "Excuse me son"
And sat down to drink my beer
And I saw the beach at Normandy
The trench at Guadalcanal
The jungle just outside Da Nang
And I wondered how
He don’t know fear
'til you feel the knife hit bone
And know the blood is all your own
'til you're starin' down the barrel
Four-thousand miles from home
And you think about your family
And you see them oh-so-clear
You don't know fear
Oh, you won't find it on the weight-room floor
Or on the football field
Pills and booze might by you some
But you need the thought they steal
'til the doctor said she's got bad news
And winter's hand comes callin' near
You don't know fear
'til you feel the knife hit bone
And know the blood is all your own
'til you're starin' down the barrel
Four-thousand miles from home
And you think about the one you love
And you see her oh-so-clear
You don't know fear
You don't know fear
The young man wore a t-shirt
It said he had "No Fear"
© D. Dain, 1997.
My dad won a Bronze Star and served two tours in WWII.
He taught anti-aircraft accuracy to crews all the way from North Africa, up through Italy and France, to Germany. He invented a remote, automatic firing switch that was used on anti-aircraft guns up through Vietnam. Dad was finally promoted in May.
Know Fear
The young man wore a t-shirt
That said he had "No Fear"
We bumped, I said "Excuse me son"
And sat down to drink my beer
And I saw the beach at Normandy
The trench at Guadalcanal
The jungle just outside Da Nang
And I wondered how
He don’t know fear
'til you feel the knife hit bone
And know the blood is all your own
'til you're starin' down the barrel
Four-thousand miles from home
And you think about your family
And you see them oh-so-clear
You don't know fear
Oh, you won't find it on the weight-room floor
Or on the football field
Pills and booze might by you some
But you need the thought they steal
'til the doctor said she's got bad news
And winter's hand comes callin' near
You don't know fear
'til you feel the knife hit bone
And know the blood is all your own
'til you're starin' down the barrel
Four-thousand miles from home
And you think about the one you love
And you see her oh-so-clear
You don't know fear
You don't know fear
The young man wore a t-shirt
It said he had "No Fear"
© D. Dain, 1997.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Wheel in the ditch....
Alabama -- the State, not the Band -- is using the term "Sweet Home Alabama" in their latest tourism promotion.
Neil would be proud. He needs the pub (not).
I have only driven through a couple of times, but on first impression I am not so sure that Mr. Young, as we alt.country guys refer to him, was wrong, as Skynyrd supposes.
I'll leave that statement by itself, and wait for Chuck's rebuttal -- BUT, in my defense, when confronted by two opposing songs, I'll always go with the one which has the best lyrics, and there is no debate on that....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_en_ot/music_lynyrd_skynyrd
Neil would be proud. He needs the pub (not).
I have only driven through a couple of times, but on first impression I am not so sure that Mr. Young, as we alt.country guys refer to him, was wrong, as Skynyrd supposes.
I'll leave that statement by itself, and wait for Chuck's rebuttal -- BUT, in my defense, when confronted by two opposing songs, I'll always go with the one which has the best lyrics, and there is no debate on that....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_en_ot/music_lynyrd_skynyrd
Personal Debt Lifestyle...
Why is it acceptable to be "in debt" all your life?
I know people who will never own their houses free-and-clear, and will be paying student loans, etc... well into their 70s.
This is the norm now, and I don't think you can convince me it is a good thing. Especially when the collective personal debt of Americans continues to grow, the dollar continues to fall, and the Fed prints more backed-by-nothing money by screwing with rates over and over.
Of course, in these times, I really don't think we need to worry 'bout that, do we....
I know people who will never own their houses free-and-clear, and will be paying student loans, etc... well into their 70s.
This is the norm now, and I don't think you can convince me it is a good thing. Especially when the collective personal debt of Americans continues to grow, the dollar continues to fall, and the Fed prints more backed-by-nothing money by screwing with rates over and over.
Of course, in these times, I really don't think we need to worry 'bout that, do we....
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Guns and Crime....
A wonderfully succinct and, I believe, very accurate editorial from the UK.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2409817.ece
And I just have to repost this comment from a guy in Kentucky....
"Someone suggested that the murder rate in the US is ten times the murder rate in the UK. This is false. The murder rate in the US is three times the murder rate in the UK. That is a change from nine times higher forty years ago, when the gun laws of the UK were less stringent and the US had far fewer states that allowed citizen concealed carry. In the time since, the US murder rate has gone down, while the UK murder rate has gone up, narrowing the gap between homicide rates.
Banning guns or allowing guns does not noticeably affect the crime rate. Crime is a problem of culture. The only statistically significant result of gun bans are a reduced ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against criminals who have no concern what weapons are legal or illegal." -- Keenan, Louisville, KY.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2409817.ece
And I just have to repost this comment from a guy in Kentucky....
"Someone suggested that the murder rate in the US is ten times the murder rate in the UK. This is false. The murder rate in the US is three times the murder rate in the UK. That is a change from nine times higher forty years ago, when the gun laws of the UK were less stringent and the US had far fewer states that allowed citizen concealed carry. In the time since, the US murder rate has gone down, while the UK murder rate has gone up, narrowing the gap between homicide rates.
Banning guns or allowing guns does not noticeably affect the crime rate. Crime is a problem of culture. The only statistically significant result of gun bans are a reduced ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against criminals who have no concern what weapons are legal or illegal." -- Keenan, Louisville, KY.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Quick thought on the "Smoking Ban"....
And to think… I had the chance to get in on the ground floor of the “recycled Altoid box business”.
Another golden, errrrr… burnt ember opportunity missed.
Another golden, errrrr… burnt ember opportunity missed.
Dem Donor on the RUN. But don't worry, though....
... he'll move to Switzerland and after a few years President (Hillary) Clinton will pardon him.
But first, his wife will have to learn how to throw a good party and write insipid pop lyrics.
But first, his wife will have to learn how to throw a good party and write insipid pop lyrics.
-----
On the other hand, guys named "Norman" don't get pardoned very often. And he's not really RICH.
-----
-----
Sigh. It's what makes the world go round.
Follow it.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Buckeyes and Youngstown State, Michigan Upset, Cable Contracts, etc....
It's part of my personal tradition to listen to the Buck's games on the radio, unless it's the UofM game, or a bowl, so the Big-Ten Network crap is just background noise to me. But I do understand the upset. The Buckeyes are our property, they are a state-supported school, so all TV and Radio broadcasts should be free. End of argument.
On the UofM upset:
I was driving into Athens for Shrimp to make a salad for supper (goes really good with Bloody Mary), and I heard that Mike Hart had run them ahead. Then about five minutes later I heard that ASU had blocked the field-goal to win....
Gotta admit, I really loved it. Almost put my fist through the dash-board of the ol' jeep. Gave a whoop or two. Maybe three.
Then I had two thoughts, admittedly a lot for a Buckeye:
First, I hope Lloyd doesn't have a heart attack or stroke. And second, this can't be good for the Big-10.
On the Buckeyes, I was very disappointed with the O-Line and running game. The Power-O formation is about 10 years past it's prime. The running plays take way too long to hit the hole, and they have for several years. Even in the 2002 Championship year, we wouldn't have had any success, were it not for MC's ability to make the first man miss.
Additionally, when we can't push around a 1-AA team's defensive line, we are in trouble.
This worries me.
On the UofM upset:
I was driving into Athens for Shrimp to make a salad for supper (goes really good with Bloody Mary), and I heard that Mike Hart had run them ahead. Then about five minutes later I heard that ASU had blocked the field-goal to win....
Gotta admit, I really loved it. Almost put my fist through the dash-board of the ol' jeep. Gave a whoop or two. Maybe three.
Then I had two thoughts, admittedly a lot for a Buckeye:
First, I hope Lloyd doesn't have a heart attack or stroke. And second, this can't be good for the Big-10.
On the Buckeyes, I was very disappointed with the O-Line and running game. The Power-O formation is about 10 years past it's prime. The running plays take way too long to hit the hole, and they have for several years. Even in the 2002 Championship year, we wouldn't have had any success, were it not for MC's ability to make the first man miss.
Additionally, when we can't push around a 1-AA team's defensive line, we are in trouble.
This worries me.
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