Web Log Archive, April 20th through May 3rd, 2008

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008                            Happy Birthday, Vic!

This, courtesy of my baby sister: 

Harpocrates is the Greek name for the Egyptian child-god Horus, the personification of the dawning of each day and often depicted with a finger to his mouth...giving a signal to be quiet.
Cupid, the son of Mercury and Venus, is the Roman counterpart to Eros, the Greek God of sexual love. 

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

"Tomorrow, we mark the fifth anniversary of the now infamous 'Mission Accomplished' speech, which was delivered by President Bush on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Five years ago, I took issue with the President’s choreographed political theatrics because I believed that our military forces deserved to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.
The President’s declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' and the 'end of major combat operations' proved wildly premature and dangerously naïve. The complete lack of foresight and planning by the President for what lay ahead became tragically clear in short order. Our nation continues to pay the price every single day. More than 97% of the more than 4000 Americans killed in Iraq lost their lives after the President’s flashy declaration of victory.
Years from now, I expect that history books will feature the sorry 'Mission Accomplished' episode as the epitome of this administration’s reckless and
arrogant foreign policy, which has reaped disastrous consequences for our nation and the world. We have seen a President who is eager to use American troops for a political backdrop, yet is seemingly indifferent when it comes to providing them with the equipment they need, quality health care, or a real plan for ending the war.
President Bush has said that history will judge him on his decision to go to war in Iraq. I say that history is already delivering its verdict. It is evident in the strains of the long and multiple deployments that are wearing down our mighty military, and in the suffering of the American people as they bury their fallen heroes. It is evident in the fear and distrust with which the rest of the world views us, and in the instability wracking the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the Bush policies. President Bush has recklessly squandered more than 200 years of American leadership, good will, and prosperity. If that is what he was aiming for when he took office, then he can claim 'Mission Accomplished.' "
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, speaking yesterday on the Senate floor.

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Just because I never heard of Healthways doesn't mean that they (it) don't (doesn't) mean somethin' to somebody. Near as I can tell, it's some kind of an industry consulting conglomerate (with a Doctor Senator Bill Frist odor about it)...some kind of a 'think tank'...specializing in issues of 'health' (broadly defined). 
Anyway...whoever or whatever they (it) are (is) just paired up with the Gallup Organization to create something called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Here's some of what that Index tells us about life here in the States:

One in twenty-five of us (4%) is (are) downright fucking miserable! Forty-seven percent of us are 'struggling'...with things like being broke, being old, being sick, being bored...or being married. So...by the very narrowest of margins, most of us are bummed! The other (let's see) 49%? Well...we're 'thriving' (fer the luv uv Jesus)!
According to Princeton Professor Emeritus Danny Kahnerman (a windy old trout), "Unmerciful disaster follows fast and follows faster." To which Nobel Laureate Professor Gene Higgins (Danny's coffee buddy at DC's Woodrow Wilson School in DC) adds the startling observation that "...illness increases feelings of stress, sadness and worries about money." In addition, the Index reveals that two thirds of us are fat or very fat and two thirds of us are sick or very sick. 
Finally (and don't say you weren't warned): although you and I won't be around all that much longer, Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton has threatened to keep doing this Well-Being Index for at least the next hundred years!

PS: Before you hang yourself, try moving to Denmark, where the Index reports that 83 percent of folks are thriving and only one percent are miserable. Can't afford the plane ticket? Then console yourself that you don't live in Cambodia, where only two percent are thriving and everyone else is too busy scaring up  something to eat to take part in the survey! 

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Class Distinctions

By now, we all know the difference between a Harley and a Hoover: it's the location of the dirtbag!

But how many know the difference between a porcupine and a BMW? Give up? OK...see, with a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside!

Monday, April 28th, 2008                           Happy Birthday, Gail!

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

"Labels give satisfaction. We are worshippers of words and labels. By calling ourselves this or that, we ensure ourselves against further disturbance, and settle back. One of the curses of organized beliefs is the comfort, the deadly gratification they offer. They put us to sleep, and in the sleep we dream, and the dream becomes action. How easily we are distracted! And most of us want to be distracted; most of us are tired out with incessant conflict, and distractions become a necessity, they become more important than 'what is'."


Jiddu Krishnamurti, (1895-1986)

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

I just finished watching Lions For Lambs. From all I have heard over the years, Robert Redford is one helluva guy! He's got all the 'right' opinions (on the environment, for example) and, for two generations of movie-goers, he has been the person that every white guy has, at one time or other, wished he could resemble. Ya know, we mortals would say stuff like (in reference to some other slob whose looks we did not admire), "Gee...he makes me look like Robert Redford!" Or (in reference to a different slob whom we wished to compliment for something other than his looks):  "Well, he won't be mistaken for Robert Redford but..."
Yet, for all his enviable attributes, Robert Redford cannot act, never could and it is not clear that he has ever even tried. Lions For Lambs is a Redford-bankrolled-and-directed anti-Iraq War project and, word is, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep both accepted major roles in this 92 minute yawner out of 'respect' for Mr. Redford. Yes. I believe that they were motivated by something other than money or artistic satisfaction. Cruise probably shot all of his scenes in one day. (He appears in only one setting and in only one set of clothes.) Streep might have needed two days. 
Almost all of this movie consists of didactic dialogue. It's faintly insulting, actually, because one is given to wonder whether Mr. Redford has deliberately dumbed-down his 'pitch'...or if he himself actually is such an intellectual welterweight.
Robert, born eleven days before John McCain, will be seventy-two this year. He is not once filmed walking (or even standing up) but the makeup crew was tasked with making him appear to be not-a-day-over-sixty for this amorphous role as a soon-to-retire Political Science professor mentoring foul-mouthed twenty-year-olds. The (visual) result is less like The Sundance Kid and more like a figure on loan from the Hollywood Wax Museum...after the air conditioning had been out for a few days. 

Friday, April 25th, 2008

About eight years ago, I had an Internet pen pal from Alabama. I surprise myself now to admit that I don't, for certain, any longer remember her name. I think it was 'Liz' (or some such). She was recently separated from her husband of many years by whom she had two daughters. I was in a not-dissimilar situation at the time and so Liz and I had lots to write about...and compare. She was at least fifteen years younger than I and, although I no longer firmly recall even her name, I DO recall one thought-provoking assertion she made in the course of our months-long cyber-correspondence. She said that she believed that 'anyone could get along with anyone else...if they had no choice'. Recalled in this form, the assertion seems tautological but I believe it was (and is) quite deep. Her point was made in reference to any husband/wife type pairing...but one can extrapolate.
I was reminded of this long-ago exchange when I spotted a news piece about a study just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  The Journal article is about consumer choices in the marketplace but, like Liz's assertion, it can be applied more broadly. One researcher sums up the study this way: "The presumption is that self-determination is a good thing and that choice is essential to self-determination, but there's a point where all of this choice starts to be not only unproductive, but counterproductive:  a source of pain, regret, worry about missed opportunities and unrealistically high expectations."
It's not really such a 'new idea'...this 'too many choices' phenomenon. Most of us have reflected on the myriad life choices faced by someone in 2008 that had yet to be imagined by anyone in, say, 1908. Even today, in much of the world, marriages are pre-arranged and there's simply not enough money (or whatever form wealth might take) to allow for much, if any, choice in diet or living situations. There are tens of millions of people who subsist almost exclusively on rice, for example. Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for dinner and bedtime snack. Put another way, choice is not a necessity though nearly everyone craves variety (in spite of lice). 
And what became of Liz? I could probably find out! I do have a choice, after all: I can fire up the hard drive on my old Pentium II and perhaps then I'll remind myself of her name...and where she lives now...if she lives now. Perhaps I'll look her up on Zabasearch...or the SSDI.
And why did I stop writing to Liz? Well...because I had that choice! See...I soon came across a younger...and prettier Internet pen pal...from Texas! 

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

What America demands in her black champions is a brilliant, powerful body and a dull, bestial mind.
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
Too much agreement kills the chat.
I had seen that face [Robert F. Kennedy's] so many times before—hard, bitter, scurvy—all those things I had seen in his face on the bodies of nighttime burglars who had been in prison for at least ten years. [Quoted by Ross Douthat in The Atlantic.]

Eldridge Cleaver, (1935-1998)

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008               Erf Day

So this guy seated next to a little girl on a transcontinental airline flight turns to her and says, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.' 
The little girl, who had just opened her book, closes it slowly and says to the guy, 'OK. What would you like to talk about?' 
'How about nuclear power?' says the guy...with a smile.
'OK', she says. 'That might be an interesting discussion, but let me ask you something first: a horse, a cow, and a deer all eat grass. Yet a deer excretes pellets, a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?' 
The guy, surprised as much by the girl's erudition as by her scatological interjection, replies, 'Hmm, I have no idea. I've never thought about it.'
To which the little girl replies, 'I don't see how you can be prepared to discuss nuclear power when you admit that you don't know shit! ' 

Monday, April 21st, 2008

"I tell you, between gasoline prices and the mortgage foreclosures, people are hurting. And you know who finally noticed this? John McCain.  He changed his position on people losing their homes from his original “Drop dead” to a new policy called “Go Fuck Yourself-Plus.” 
They had hearings this week about Iraq with General Petraeus and McCain had another senior moment where he couldn’t remember who the Sunnis are, the Shiites…I’m beginning to worry about this guy. They asked him afterwards if this would affect his presidential campaign, and he said, “I’m running for president?”
 Bill Maher

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

"Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image — static — instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead.
When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on “Meet the Press,” it’s pure farce.
Lou Dobbs, the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying “we don’t need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead.” Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he’s Harvard ’67.
Mrs. Clinton, not content merely to piously feign shock about Mr. Obama’s San Francisco soliloquy ('bitter, clinging to guns and religion'), couldn’t resist presenting herself as a macho, beer-swilling hunting enthusiast. This is as condescending as it gets, topping even Mitt Romney’s last-ditch effort to repackage himself to laid-off union workers as the love child of Joe Hill and Norma Rae."
Frank Rich

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