Cat-E-Whompus

On Writers Block

2011-12-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

The term ‘writers block’ is one that who has tried to write can relate to. One of the most descriptive—and twisted and warped—examples of writers block is told in the Stephen King’s novel (and visually depicted vividly by actor Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s movie) ‘The Shining.’ We see recovering alcoholic and would-be writer Jack Torrance as he maniacally keys his typewriter in the cavernous Colorado Lounge of the haunted Overlook Hotel, cut off from the world by fierce Rocky Mountain blizzards.

For all his typing, Jack only gets a single word goes on the paper, and it is psychotically repeated line after line, page after page. The word Jack typed was ‘redrum’, which of course is ‘murder’ spelled backwards, and it was the only word that the crazed and increasingly homicidal writer was able to get on paper.

Wanting—needing—to write and being unable to get words down on paper can drive indeed you crazy, and you don’t have to be in a haunted hotel for it to happen to you, either. My experience of it is a result of feeling that I just don’t have anything worth say. However, when I dig deeper, I have always found that my inner censor, that little man who sits on my shoulder and tells me that whatever I might think of writing about has already been ‘done’ by somebody.

Originality is not that difficult to achieve; we are unique individuals who each perceive things in our own unique way. If several people all sat down with the same outline and each wrote a story, you would end up with as many original stories as you had people. Each person would write from that outline in a uniquely different way. That’s not to say that any of these hypothetical people would produce a story you would really want to read, but at least they would manage to write it differently and it would be original.

So, worrying about originality is really a pretty poor excuse for a writer not writing. In my experience, I think my biggest cause of writer’s block is just plain laziness. Writing takes effort, just like exercise in a way. When you write you exercise your powers of concentration (and your fingers) in a very particular way, and it takes effort. The better you want to write, the more effort you have to expend.

Being a creative person is pretty easy; to do that I (or anyone) can just hang a label on myself saying ‘Creative Person-Kick Here’. But actually being creative—actually writing something you think someone else might like to read and find worthwhile—is a lot harder, because you have to reach down inside yourself and find the energy to tap into your muse and then actively do the writing itself.

Writing is not a state of being, it is something you actively do. Note to self: remember this and act accordingly.

How We Get To Be That Way

2011-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, the importance of perseverance was drummed into my head by my parents. I vividly recall wanting to join my high school's band, but being rebuffed by my folks as not being ‘industrious’ enough to merit their spending the money for a musical instrument for me to play. They were afraid, they said, that they would spend the money for a band instrument for me (I fancied the trumpet as I recall) only to have me drop out of the band program because I found the practice and other work was too demanding. I tried hard to persuade them that wouldn't happen, but they wouldn’t budge.

I was not a stellar student in elementary school or high school, but, to this day, I really don’t know what caused the ‘rents’ to take that position with me. I hadn't been a quitter, and my grades were 'OK'. It was true that I had considered ‘going out’ for varsity football, but had decided against it (looked too painful to me), which the ‘rents’ knew, so maybe that played in to their reaction. Whatever their real reason, denying me that opportunity for the reasons they gave was deeply humiliating to this bookish (the term nerd hadn’t been invented yet) newly minted high school freshman.

But, because of the kind of kid I was, and because they were normally pretty generous and protective with me, I did believe that somehow I deserved the response I got from them, even though I didn’t really understand the ‘why’ of it—and still don’t.

That incident loomed quite large in my young mind at the time, and so I was imprinted in a way that would continue until the current day, over a half century later. I deeply internalized the idea that in order to be industrious, you had to be willing to stick to things and that meant through thick and thin. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” You can’t be industrious and be a quitter. Therefore, I had—indeed still have—the notion that ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ isn’t just a great virtue to have, it is an absolutely essential one. In the course of a forty-three plus years in the corporate/business world, my being willing to stick it out and keep going through adverse situations has paid off in a big way for me more than once.

However, as my life experience has increased over the years, I have found that some things we believe to be our virtues can in some situations act as double-edged swords. In my case, I have found that my ability to persevere has a dark ‘flip side’; sometimes I stay too long in a situation where I would actually be better off embracing change.

As the ‘Serenity Prayer’ says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

More of all three of these, please, but the third one is the one I need the most!

December 7, 2011 - Thought For The Day

2011-12-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Seventy years ago today the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; "a date which will live in infamy” in the words of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt actually spoke those famous words to the nation the day after the attack--December 8, 1941--and within one hour after he concluded his speech, Congress voted to declare war with Japan.

For many years after Pearl Harbor, just the mere mention of the date itself—December 7—had the same significance to most Americans as the mention of September 11 has today. We memorialize days like December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 and November 22, 1963 because the events that occurred on these dates were so psychologically vivid and traumatic that they are engraved—indeed scorched—into our minds and memories to remain there as scars on our psyches for the rest of our lives. For as long as we live, we hear or read the date and in true Pavlovian fashion we remember all to vividly the tragic events that occurred.

I can’t escape the feeling that we might be better off as a species if our minds were wired a bit differently. We remember tragedy all too vividly, but the good days—maybe not quite as much.
But, we also experience days that are memorable for their goodness, for the happy emotions we felt. Mostly these good memorable days are personal to us: the day we graduated from school, they day we met the love of our life, the day we got married, the day or days our children were born or were adopted, the day our child won an award or achieved recognition. But a few—a very, very few—of the ‘good days’ we experience get enough media attention to also be writ large on our collective memories. July 21, 1969, comes to mind; the date when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

As I get older, the ‘good days’ and the dates associated with them are the ones I want to remember as vividly as I can and to memorialize. The tragic, ‘bad days’—not so much.

Remembering

2011-09-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, American’s will mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Ten years have elapsed since that day—ten not always very kind years, I reflect as I look back on them.

I was working at the headquarters of a large technology company in the Bay Area on 9/11, and I remember that day and the immediate days following vividly. There was confusion in the office the morning of 9/11 when I arrived. One of our co-workers had become a national hero that morning, helping overpower the terrorists on United Flight 93, but none of us knew of his heroism as we arrived at work that morning. All of us were shaken to our very cores, and we weren’t sure if the office really should be open, but there was a sense that most of us had that a giant enterprise like ours, with offices and operations all over the world, really had to keep on functioning, at least as much as we could. And, so for the balance of the day of 9/11, we did just that.

A few days later—on the second or maybe the third day after 9/11, I don’t remember exactly—the company announced that at approximately ten in the morning, employees would voluntarily gather outside on sidewalks around the saltwater lagoon that our company’s campus buildings cluster around on three sides) for a moment of silence in remembrance of the fallen.
At that time, the company I worked for had somewhere between eleven and twelve thousand people working at the headquarters campus. On that day, with a clear blue sky and the sun brightly shining overhead, all of these people—I was just one of very many—rode the elevators and walked down the stairs to the ground floor, and out into that brilliantly beautiful sunshine.

As we exited the buildings, we passed by volunteers handing out small American flags you could hold in your hand. We filed around the placid lagoon, surrounding it completely, five, six or even seven rows of people deep on all sides. At least ten thousand people—enough people to fill a college football stadium—every one of us with an American flag in our hands. We were silent except for our footfalls as we took up our places; there was none of the usual greetings, banter that occurs when people get together. There was no joking or small talk, no debates, no arguments.

Some employees like me were US born and raised in the US, but many others—a majority actually—were from India, China, the Philippines, Iran, Japan, Israel, Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, and all over the world. Our gathering had representatives from all the major world religions: Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, atheist and agnostic. We stood next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, sad, and respectfully silent. Each of us held one of those small American flags in our hands.

That day we were, regardless of race or national origin, Americans.

At least ten thousand people, janitors, administrative assistants, cooks, security guards, software developers, marketing people, accountants, mid and top level executives, and the company’s founder and CEO, who for a brief time had been literally ‘the richest man in the world’, all stood together on that beautiful, sad, sunny day, all of us holding an American flag in our hands.

Over ten thousand people—married, single, gay, straight, lesbian—all stood sadly, respectfully, shoulder to shoulder on than brilliantly sunny morning, united in our sense of loss, our sadness at what had just happened, with an American flag held in each of our twenty thousand hands.

That day took place under that azure sky in September 2001. Here we all stood, over ten thousand men and women strong. A more diverse group you could scarcely imagine coming together in place, but on that day, there was no partisan rancor, there was no ideological or racial or religious division, or disrespect for anyone's sexual preference. In that moment we were united in our solemnity, and in the love and respect we all had the country that we all lived in together. Our ten thousand small American flags quietly fluttered in the light breeze; there was a sea of red, white and blue everywhere I looked.

The memory of seeing of all those people standing so quietly, so respectfully, unified in emotion and in purpose is a sight I will take with me all the rest of my life. I’ve never been so proud to be an American, and at the same moment never so sad to be one as I was on that day.

Mitt Romney: Corporate People Person

2011-08-14T12:21:00.001-07:00

Mitt Romney is personally worth over $200 million, so it is no wonder he doesn't want to raise taxes on the rich. He's very happy to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits to preserve the Bush rich-people's tax break given in 2003, which has been shown to be the largest single cause of the nation's deficit.

Romney recently stated in public that he wouldn't raise corporate taxes either, even though several multi-national corporations--GE being a notable example--in fact pay zero federal income tax. He justified his unwillingness to make corporations pay more taxes this to a hostile audience, by saying "Corporations are people, my friend," using the 'my friend' phrase in the gratutious, derisive, dismissive manner of John McCain.

Here are a couple of Democratic ads that take on Romney's "Corporations are people" statement head on. Check 'em out.

Mitt Romney and the Luckiest People In the World

People

WWJD - What Would Jesus Do?

2011-08-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

We’ve been having considerable debate in our town of late about the homeless population here. A local organization has been trying repeatedly to find a property that can be built out as a shelter for the homeless, and repeatedly, they have been frustrated in their efforts, both by NIMBY people and a city council lacking--at least on this issue--both guts and compassion.

The other day, an op-ed piece appeared in the local paper that I really like. Among other things, the writer of the column said, referring to the homeless population:

“We know that ours is very competitive culture, offering great rewards for the winners, and precious little to those less able to compete. I for one am weary of this life's battles, not because I want, but because of the basic inhumanity by continually pitting one against another.

Why can't we just choose to see the good in each other and return to a focus of building a nation and community of brotherhood, rather than finding fault, casting blame, and hurting one another?”

Wow! Not much I can disagree with there, I thought.

When his column went up on-line, though, it was only a few hours before some local Ayn Rand-ian, uber-Capitalist types really went after him. You can follow my link and read both the column and the comments, but except for one supporter, those commenting sneeringly derided his column and to an extent even him personally. One of them even called him a Marxist for saying what he did.

This got me to thinking. WWJD: What would Jesus do? Now, I don’t go to church except when somebody dies, and I don’t profess to call myself a Christian. However, I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover several times, and my memory of what I learned is still intact.

Jesus spent almost all of his time on earth with the 'homeless' of his day--the poor, the downtrodden, the lowest of the low. He healed them, He taught them, He cast out their demons and He generally ministered to them. No one that Jesus ever came in contact with was too poor or too socially inferior for him to associate with or to help. Jesus didn’t own anything, didn’t accumulate stuff, and he his stated view of economic prosperity was this: “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.” Luke 6:20.

Jesus wasn't a fan of a lot of affluence. In verse 24 Jesus said, “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.” And in verse 25 he says, “Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.” In Matthew 19:24 he says, "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

If Jesus were alive today, I don't think he would found in any churches anywhere that I can think of, and I damn sure don't believe he would be attending any Tea Party meetings.

You know what Jesus would be doing? He would be sticking up for and helping the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, and the down and out. What would he look like? Just like the people he is ministering to.

There would be onlookers, some friendly and some not, and of the latter at least one would be hectoring him as a 'collective socialist' and a 'Marxist'.

No More All Weiner, All the Time

2011-06-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

I bet you that the Faux News guys are crying in their beer tonight.

We will soon no longer have to listen to all the television talking heads blathering on about (about to be former) Congressman's Anthony Wiener's wiener. Further, when yet another porn-star or other minor celebrity comes forward with the news that she has been receiving dirty text messages and photos from the Congressman, it won't automatically be first page news after today.

The Wiener story is not that big of a deal really. After all, as far as we know, Congressman Wiener didn't have a love child with these women like a certain former Governator of California did. Actually, if the news is to be believed, Weiner never laid a wiener on any of them, he just sent adolescent pictures and sex texts.

Wiener did do one right thing; he resigned--finally. When a network is as biased against 'lib-tard' Democrats as much as Faux News is--and has 24 hours a day 365 days a year of broadcast time you need to fill with anti-Democrat propaganda--the Wiener resignation has gotta be a big downer.

After all, covering the self-inflicted travails of Anthony Wiener sure beats covering the shellacking the GOP is taking over their utterly unconscionable Voucher-Care plan the have been touting that they want to use to burn down Medicare with.

Oh, how silly of me. Faux News won't cover that. They only covers news they think make the Democrats look bad.

Ayn Rand and the Death of Capitalism

2011-06-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

Back in my college days, I remember studying about Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist and intellectual parent of the philosophical movement called 'objectivism'. I tried reading a The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged but found them to be far too dry and dull to be of interest to me. I did learn from my classes that Ayn Rand was an radical atheist who opposed any form of religion, and that she was a fairly rabid anti-Communist who testified as a 'friendly witness' in front of the 50s' House Un-American Activities Committee which led by Senator Joe McCarthy which conducted witch hunts for supposed communist sympathizers.

Later on, at least philosophically, she found an admirer in Alan Greenspan, and today she, or more precisely, her ideas of completely unfettered and unregulated lazzis faire capitalism has found much favor by ultra conservatives such as Congressman Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann, and many others.

Today I saw a great article on www.marketwatch.com about Ayn Rand entitled Ayn Rand's 'Death of the Soul of Capitalism'.

This article written by economist and well-known financial markets columnist Paul Farrell talks about how Rand's ideas are being taken to extreme by her current day adherents., and are inconsistent with the Christian fundamentalism almost all of them espouse

Rand once said, “Altruism is immoral and selfishness is good. Moreover, there isn’t a problem in the world that laissez-faire capitalism can’t solve if left alone to perform its miracles.”

That precept stated by Rand herself makes her 'philosophy'--so beloved of today's ultra right wing--a very strange belief since in fact Christian principles like charity and reverence of God are considered enlightened and are unwelcome in the ideal world as Rand envisioned it.

A Small Change of Direction

2011-03-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

Since I last posted on Cat-E-Whompus, I’ve had several readers gently mention my lack of posting activity here and they have let me know that they wish I write and post more often.

One reason I’ve been neglecting Cat-E-Whompus is the quandary that I’ve felt about what kind of material I want to work on to post here. I started off posting politically oriented pieces, fairly right wing oriented if I am truthful, that focused on what I at the time felt were premature efforts to end the Iraq war. Later, I jumped the fence politically, and began to post more and more pieces written from more a left-leaning perspective. In no small measure, this came about because of a book that I read: "Conscience of a Liberal" by Nobel winner Paul Krugman, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

However, in the more immediate personal side of my life, and inspired in no small measure by my lovely bride, I learned that right here in far-northern California we have all kinds of wonderfully talented artists: painters, photographers, sculptors, ceramicists, videographers, actors, theatrical directors, and yes—writers.

Writing is my first love as an artistic outlet. I love visual images and I very much enjoy creating them, but the truth is that I feel my real talent is more as a writer than as a visual artist.

Since I was a boy, I’ve had the dream—mostly a very back burner sort of dream—of being a writer for pretty much my entire life. Not writing as a journalist, nor writing news stories, nor as political columnist or blogger, but rather as a teller of stories. If I ever do actually grow up, I want to write plays, screenplays, novels, short stories, and perhaps as non-fiction book.
Recently, in a flash of insight into the obvious (love how those happen) I’ve come to realize that a writer is not something a person is, writing is something a person does.

I’m not entirely sure where this is going to take me, or where it will take my posts on Cat-E-Whompus, but it’s definitely leading somewhere. I've started work on an adaptation of a classic story short story as a radio play. That work is currently in its third draft, and I've got ideas for both a play and a novel that I've done a little work on. As this progresses, I intend to let my Cat-E-Whompus readers and followers know about it. Meantime, I will make a concerted effort to post here more often.

And I won't completely forsake writing about politics here either.

An Old Friend Passes

2011-02-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

I just heard last evening from my old high school debate coach and dear friend, Willie Bilbrey, that John Roberts of Livingston passed away last Sunday. His funeral is today, February 9, 2011.

John was a young, twenty-seven year old lawyer when the father-figure in my life(my Grandfather Maxey) passed away back in January of 1964. John had liked my Granddad, so after his death, John took me under his wing for the next few years and, in many ways, he was like an older brother to me.

I will forever life be grateful for John' selfless interest in, and mentoring kindness that he lavished on this young sixteen year back then. Among other things, like me John loved to hunt and shoot guns,so we had something in common right off the bat. It didn't hurt that he came to own one of the original Ford Mustangs, which made John just that much cooler in my young eyes.

John used to take me hunting, and he also taught me to shoot a pistol and shoot trap with an exquisitely crafted twelve gauge Browning semi-auto shotgun that he owned. I can recall the delight I felt when under John's watchful tutelage I began to knock down clays with that gun, and how I would proudly favor my right shoulder bruised all to hell from the recoil of twenty, thirty or sometimes fifty rounds of twelve bore shot shells through the gun.

John Roberts as I knew him back then was always optimistic and always full of fun. He loved to talk, and to my teenage ears was uproariously funny when he would regale me with stories from when he was in high school (we had shared several of the same teachers). I recall literally laughing until I cried listening to John's stories.

I enjoyed every minute of John's company that we ever spent together.

In later life, after I graduated from college and left Livingston, John and I lost track of each other. During my adult life, I've been worse than most people I think at keeping in touch with old friends, and I consider that to be one of my greatest character flaws. (There are others.)

However, I understand that John went on to have two daughters (neither of whom I have ever met), and as time went by, his legal career blossomed. In the 70s, John become a General Sessions Judge in Livingston, and then later on in the 1990s he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Middle Tennessee District by President Bill Clinton, a very noteworthy honor.

My Granddaddy Maxey, who had been practicing law in Livingston for years when John began his law practice there with his father, Hillard Roberts, thought highly of John as a young lawyer. I know he would have been delighted to know of John's high accomplishments in his legal career.

My condolences go out to John's family and to all who cared about him. The world was a better place with John in it, and he will be missed and remembered both by his family and friends, especially this friend.

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

It’s Christmas Day 2010, the day after the evening that Santa Claus comes, and all through the land, children are waking up with the keen desire to discover what gifts Santa has brought them this time. Christmas is not a day I celebrate as a religious holiday, although I know that many people do. I believe that that the extent to which Christmas is celebrated as a religious holiday depends on the tradition one was brought up in as a child.

Christmas for me is always engenders a bit of mixed emotion. On the one hand, we have a truly excellent day on tap for this Christmas Day of 2010: Gifts being opened with Daughter Number one and then my wife’s traditional Christmas morning breakfast of eggs, bacon, and wild rice from her home state of Minnesota. And then, we hop in the truck and head north to Redding for more gift openings and Christmas dinner with Daughter Number Two, her husband, his children, and our very own grandson. The latter, at just over age two and a half, is just coming in to his own ‘Santa season’, so both of us are looking forward to that. Christmas is, after all for kids—and for their doting parents and grandparents.

This is all happy, happy stuff, the kind of thing that memories are made of, and making memories is exactly what I want to do with this day.

The mixed emotions for me come from the fact that Christmas always brings back memories from my own childhood. I remember being a child myself and my family gathering to open presents and sit down to visit around Christmas dinners of a half century and longer ago. I remember faces and voices of people I loved—my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, great aunts and uncles—who loved me and who celebrated and delighted with me as I discovered the new treasures Santa had brought for me. Faces and voices from whom I have long been separated by the years and years that have passed since their passing. That’s the sad part; at Christmas, even though they have been gone almost fifty years, I remember and I miss my mom and those other dear family members who left this life so long ago. And, I miss my life with them as it was when I was a child, carefree, nurtured and loved.

But that is the natural cycle of life. Birth, life, the passage of time, and death are natural rhythms and have been since time immemorial. They affect us all in the same way. I find that as I get older, that thought is actually somewhat comforting to me.

Today I celebrate the life I have now; the wonderful wife I love with all heart and my daughters and my sweet adorable grandson. I’m hoping to help lay down some memories of today for them that will some distant future day be as dear to them as the ones I have from my own childhood.

Merry Christmas to all.

War Stories

2010-10-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I always hated about elderly people was their propensity for living in the past. In my experience, this manifested itself in the form of the elderly person telling stories about bygone episodes in their life. Usually, very, very bygone episodes.

Now that I’m eligible to eat off the senior menu myself—and I must confess I have been eligible for some years now—I’ve found that I myself have that same propensity to tell boring old stories that I so disliked in older people when I was younger.

I justify it this way. You see, I’m almost 63 years old, and by use of elementary math—and using even the most optimistic of assumptions—I have already lived way over half my life. Yes, I might conceivably continue to live thirty or so more years, but any more than that is just not going to happen short of some really miraculous medical breakthroughs.

When you live as long as I have, you live through a lot of stuff. Stuff that the twenty-something or thirty-something crowd have only read about in the history books.

I can remember the overcast November day when Ike was elected President for the second time in 1956. I remember the political conventions leading up to JFK’s election in 1960, and watching on live black and white TV as he stood—wearing a top hat that was still worn at inaugurations at that time—making his inaugural address. Then in late 1963, a very young version of me sat sadly watching another black and white TV picture, this time of seven gray horses drawing the caisson carrying his coffin down Pennsylvania avenue followed at a short distance by a rider less, caparisoned horse.

I remember Vietnam and nightly –now broadcast in color—TV images of the dying and wounded in south-east Asia. Neal Armstrong landing on the moon, the near-disaster of Apollo 13, bombing Hanoi and Cambodia, Nixon and Kissinger traveling to China, images of helicopters depositing Vietnamese refugees on the decks of Navy carriers only to be pushed overboard into the South China sea to make room for the next wave, and … and…I’m only up to about 1973, there were lots more big important events—desegregation, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Woodstock, the Beatles, and many, many more. Just a tiny fraction of what I can remember in sixty-three years.

Recently, I visited an old friend at her home in Davis for dinner, and one of her other guests was a retired professor emeritus at UC-Davis. This delightful gentleman—I’ll call him Dr. G—is a few years older than me. As we got acquainted, we began to reminisce about what it was like when we were growing up. Almost inevitably it seemed, the shadow of the Cold War and the insane but coldly logical doctrine of MADD—mutually assured destruction crept into our conversation.

As I talked with Dr. G that evening, it was clear to me that even though we had just met, we had a bond of shared experience. We hadn’t just read about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis in some history book, we had lived through it! We each personally experienced the intense, overwhelming, almost paralyzing fear that was everywhere at the time. As a young airman in the Air Force, Dr. G recalled how he had been ordered to standby in readiness to deploy civil defense gear in the event of a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US; I recalled how as a young high school student, I had been afraid to go to sleep for fear that nuclear war might begin in the middle of the night.

I suppose that it is the remembrance of how it felt to live through these events that makes elderly people bore their kids, grand kids, and younger colleagues with old war stories.

We older people can tell the younger ones about the history that we have seen and lived through, but the challenge is to get them to feel it. We tell ‘war stories’ in the vain hope that we can get the younger generations to feel in their gut what we felt in ours about events that we lived through.

For the most part, it’s a futile exercise. The younger people may listen to us out of politeness, but they can’t understand how it felt to be alive then. How silly and naive of us older people for feeling we can get them to.

You had to be there.

Roadrunnin'

2010-09-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

A million miles of vagabond sky
Clocked up above the clouds
I'm still your man for the roaming
For as long as there's roamin' allowed

Mark Knopfler – ‘All the Roadrunning’

After several decades of oft-times intensive short, medium, and long-haul business travel, I was fairly certain when I left my last employer in 2003 and moved to Red Bluff to open my own business that I would not be called on to make any more long-haul business trips. I didn’t really want to travel like that anymore, especially since 9/11. Been there, done that, and bought numerous tee-shirts.

But as soon as we think we are done with something in our lives, God, the universe, or whatever we care to call our higher power has a way of winking and nodding in our direction. That cosmic joke may be on us.

In 2007, the economic crisis came along, the real estate market tumbled, and my small business—tied to real estate as it was—fell right along with it. Unlike many who were less fortunate people, I had the good fortune to find a small but growing company in the local area that needed my skill set, and they hired me over three years ago. It’s been a good match, and the job hasn’t entailed much travel. At least it hadn’t until my employer was acquired by a much larger China-based firm last month.

The good news was, the new parent company intends to keep our local unit running and so our jobs are safe—at least as safe as jobs really can be in today’s world. However, I, along with several other people at work, was told to get ready to travel to China. Our new parent company had much to show us, and much for us to learn.

So, last week, I traveled to mainland China to visit our new parent company’s headquarters and then returned. It was a total distance of over fifteen thousand miles and over thirty hours spent airborne, and a bunch more hours spent sitting in airports waiting for my next flight.

Never say never; don’t even let yourself think it. The universe may have plans for you that are beyond your ability to foresee.

I’m a Mark Knopfler fan from way back in his Dire Straits days, so it was only natural that I had some of his music on my new Apple iPad purchased for my trip. Flying home, sitting in the cabin of a 747-400 with the window shades pulled down somewhere high over the trackless Pacific Ocean, I passed the time listening to music. Mark and Emmy Lou Harris harmonized melodically in my headphones as they sang Knopfler’s song ‘All the Roadrunning.’ In that moment so far away from home, the lyrics of that song and their performance spoke to me in a special way.

I reflected back on my roots growing up so long ago now in Tennessee, in a tiny little town named Livingston in the foothills of the Appalachians. Sixty plus years later, and Livingston is not much bigger than it was when I was a boy.

Sitting there on that Cathay-Pacific 747-400 jet as it powered eastward towards California and home, I recalled my youthful frustration that my family never traveled or went anywhere to speak of. Other people I knew travelled and saw wonderous things far far away. Would I ever get to set foot out of Tennessee I wondered; would I ever see what was ‘over the next hill.’ In those days, it seemed like I had never been anywhere, and had no prospects of ever going anywhere either.

As my life has worked out, I can now look back and say with no exaggeration, ‘boy did I ever see what was over that hill!’ Out of fifty states, I’ve been in all but three: Hawaii, Idaho, and Vermont. I’ve set foot on four of the world’s seven continents: North America, Europe, Oceana/Australia, and most recently Asia. Almost a million life-time miles in the air travelling to a host of places: Helsinki, Turku, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Geneva, York, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Anchorage, Juneau, San Juan, Caguas, Nassau, Hong Kong, Hangzhou.

In reality, I am beginning to get a little long in the tooth to do too much of’ ‘road running;’ it takes more out of me physically than it used to. But sitting there last week on that airplane crossing the vast Pacific ocean yet again, and listening to those lyrics, it struck me that that the love of travel to faraway places is in my blood; it’s in my DNA.

“I’m still your man for the roaming, for as long as there’s roamin’ allowed.”

Co-Opting the Legacy, Dishonoring the Memory

2010-08-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday--Saturday, August 29, 2010--Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin stood on the steps of the National Mall in Washington DC in front of an almost completely white crowd and told them that they want to return America to its ‘traditional values’ and ‘restore America’s honor’ and also claimed to want to honor Martin Luther King, who from the same spot occupied by Beck and Palin made his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963.

The reality is that the traditional values that Palin, Beck, et al want to return us to bear no resemblance to the values advocated by the civil rights movement and by Dr. King. In fact, these ‘conservative values’ are the same as they were in 1963, and these values. Indeed, it takes no rocket scientist to figure out that the choice of yesterday’s date for Palin and Beck’s rally is clearly and obviously a cynical attempt to co-opt the symbolism of King’s speech for their own political ends.

In so doing, Palin, Beck and their many adherents dishonor King and everything he stood for.

Here is what Martin Luther King himself had to say about ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater (recall Goldwater’s famous quote: “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”), one of the ideological progenitors of today’s Tea Party ‘movement’ who ran unsuccessfully for President in 1964 against Lyndon Johnson.

The quote is taken from the 23rd chapter of ‘The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.’ To update the quote to current day, just substitute your favorite Tea Party hero/heroine for ‘Barry Goldwater’ in the text below.

It was both unfortunate and disastrous that the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater as its candidate for President of the United States.

In foreign policy Mr. Goldwater advocated a narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude that could plunge the whole world into the dark abyss of annihilation.

On social and economic issues, Mr. Goldwater represented an unrealistic conservatism that was totally out of touch with the realities of the twentieth century. The issue of poverty compelled the attention of all citizens of our country. Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated.

On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal. While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand.

In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.

While I had followed a policy of not endorsing political candidates, I felt that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented.

The So-Called Mosque Controversy

2010-08-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

Who has not heard all the controversy about building a Mosque within a few blocks of ‘Ground Zero’, the site of the World Trade Center attacks. Even the President has gotten himself in hot water over this issue, and the media is full of opinions both pro and con.

In this unsavory stew of huffing and puffing politicians, pundits opining, and media reporting about how ‘het up’ people have become emotionally about this issue, there are a few facts that are worth considering.

To begin, the proposed Mosque would be built two city blocks away from the WTC property line, and over five blocks away from the site of the North Tower, which was the closer of the two towers to the proposed mosque site. If the former WTC site is to be treated as ‘hallowed ground’, then what is the area a few blocks around the site, but not on the site itself to be treated as? ‘Semi-hallowed’ ground? Hallowed ground ‘buffer zone? ‘zone of respect’ for the hallowed ground? Or what?

How far away does this almost-but-not-quite-hallowed-ground zone extend? Two blocks? Five blocks? How far? Who is going to decide that question and how are they going to decide it? Is their decision going to be enforced in zoning laws, which is normally how these things are done?

There are many, many other buildings in this zone besides this one (we are talking about Manhattan here). So in creating this ‘good taste no one gets offended’ buffer zone, what else is going to be excluded from being there? Would a synagogue be OK? How about an Episcopal church? How about a Baptist Church? How about a Bahá'í temple? Is this to be a 'religion free zone' (hmm, I'm pretty sure that's not legal) or just a 'Moslem free' zone (pretty sure that isn't legal either)?

Two more things. At the site of the proposed new mosque, located and 45-51 Park Place, there is currently a building formerly occupied by a Burlington Coat Factory retail store that is—and has been for some time—now being used as a house of worship by Muslim. The reason they are using that facility is because their main house of worship, the al-Farah mosque is sometimes too crowded and so they use the old Burlington Coat Factory store as spillover space.

The al-Farah mosque is located at 245 West Broadway, around twelve blocks from the Ground Zero property. Coincidentally, there is also another mosque, the Manhattan Mosque that is located only five blocks away from Ground Zero.

What do Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Scott, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and the rest who are fulminating and foaming at the mouth about the project to build this new mosque want to do about this really, besides cynically cater to the xenophobic persons among their ‘base’?

I mean, seriously, practically, and respecting the United States constitution and having some semblance of staying within the law : what do they want to do exactly? What about the mosques and Muslims that are already there and were there even before 9/11?

90 Years Ago Today

2010-08-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today, August 18, is the 90th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which cast in constitutional stone the right of America’s women to vote. It only took forty five years from the time the 19th was introduced as legislation in Congress until it was finally ratified by the last holdout--my home state of Tennessee--on August 18, 1920. Think of that: forty five years for this amendment to finally be ratified. For many who lived at that time, forty five years was an entire lifetime or even more.

There’s a lot of written history about this event, and you can learn more about it here at Ourdocuments.gov , a web site run by the National Archives. This web site presents information about the 100 documents deemed by the ‘milestone’ documents in American history by the Archives.

I like dramatizations of history, and there is an excellent movie that was produced in 2994 by HBO starring Hilary Swank in the role of Alice Paul, a very noted suffragette of the period. The film is entitled “Iron Jawed Angels” and occasionally runs on HBO even now. It is available on Amazon in DVD form and probably on Netflix as well.

Swank is excellent in the film, which is an eye-opening depiction of the obstacles thrown up by insensitive and outright hostile and abusive use of government power against the women’s suffrage movement that women like Alice Paul overcame on the way to obtaining the right to vote.

Having seen the film and read up on the history of the 19th Amendment, I cannot help but be struck by the parallels between the suffrage movement and the gay rights movement of today. Just as those women of years ago were denied a most elemental right of a citizen which is the right to vote, now here in California, a misguided majority has been manipulated into voting for an unconstitutional and abusive use of government power in the form of Proposition 8.

It may or may not take the LGBT community forty five years to win the basic elemental right to marry, but I am convinced that ultimately they will prevail, because quite simply, right is on their side.

For now, the successful ratification of the 19th Amendment is proof that oppression of the legitimate rights of minority—rights the exercise of which cause no harm and hurt no one—by a narrow minded majority need not endure in America.

The Bad News About Bad News

2010-08-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

We live in a time when the sun and moon and the stars, not to mention our economy, our climate, and our politicians have all converged and coalesced into a negative, stomach-churning stew. With the unending stream of more bad news—more bad news about the economy, more bad news about climate change, more bad news about healthcare costs, more bad news about unemployment, more bad news about the Iranian nuclear program, more bad news about political polarization, more bad news about pretty much everything—all of us can be forgiven, I think, if we sometimes want to turn off our TVs and computers, and cancel our newspaper subscription.

As an inveterate news junky who is being inundated—like everyone else—in an onrushing tsunami of incoming bad news, I struggle oftentimes to find even a single particle of something to be happy about. But I have found that a bit of perspective lets me cope with the bad news.

How do I get this sense of perspective? The short answer is, but analyzing how we get news, and how the media profits from reporting it us in negative ways.

Media outlets who bring us bad news have found that bad news sells more newspapers, it gets better TV news show ratings, and it gleans more internet hits than good news. As a result almost all news anymore, even if it is good news at its core, is generally reported in the most negative, scary terms possible.

The most recent fad in news reporting is to focus on emotion more than facts. If some poor person is murdered, notice how the focus of the news broadcasts is far more on the anguish of the grieving family of the deceased, and far less on the facts of the case.

Today we live in a time of near instant news: cell phone video cameras, and the ability of almost anybody to upload a video they just shot to YouTube videos in hopes that it will go ‘viral’. Pictures of any form, and especially video, are more emotionally charged. Print magazines and newspapers are almost obsolete (and also almost out of business).

If I read in a newspaper about some tragedy—say a nightclub fire—then I take note of the fact that it happened, and maybe how many were killed and injured, and whether the fire marshal thought that arson was or was not involved. Overall I’m sorry to hear about it, but I’m not especially involved in emotionally.

However, if I see a video on YouTube that shows patrons of this night club running screaming from the burning building with their hair and clothes on fire, that it makes a much more visceral impression.

And my last point; the 24 hour news networks—CNN, Fox, MSN-NBC, etc—have a lot of time to fill. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, in fact. So, when we have news content being created by ‘citizen journalists’ in the form of uploaded videos or digital still shots of current events, followed by endless hours of supposed experts on the 24 hour news outlets endlessly replaying the same clip and feeding us a news diet that is 95% speculation, rumor, and innuendo and about 5% actual fact.

There is a reason there is so much bad news today. Bad news is as bad as it is in large part because that is the kind of content that media has found keeps them in business.

Have You Ever Known Someone Who...

2010-08-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever known someone who was just downright mean-spirited and really nasty? Someone who is contentious, who is always divisive, who stirs up trouble, who complains about everything, who makes snide critical comments about everyone? Someone who can be counted every time on to be the rain on anyone’s parade? Someone who always wants everything their way, who is greedy and grasping, and who could care less about anyone but themselves?

Someone whom other people wouldn’t miss (and might even draw a sigh of relief or even dance a guilty little jig or high-five each other), if that person just plain up and died?

I imagine all of us have had the misfortune to know someone like this. Probably, if we have lived long enough, we may have had the misfortune to know more than one such person, although knowing only one is one too many.

I know one such person, who shall of course go nameless here. But take my word for it; this person lights up the scoreboard on every point I just listed. Mean-spirited? Check. Complains about everything? Check? Greedy, grasping, and all too willing to trample the rights of others? Check.

The list of character flaws and ugly behaviors for this person just goes on and on.

What I would like to know is what makes a person like this. My experience of getting older is that I am more sure of who I am and what I am, but as a corollary, I know what I’m not and what my limitations are. My entire life experience has taught me that it is better to get along with people and generally give them some benefit of the doubt. It has taught me that to err on the side of generosity and kindness.

And, it has taught me that there really is such a thing as good karma and bad karma, and that what goes around generally does come around at some point.

I really don’t want to treat people in such a hateful manner that they do everything possible to avoid me at every while I’m alive and dance a little Irish jig when they hear that I’m dead or even just moved away.

Time to Reboot Cat-E-Whompus

2010-08-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve been avoiding writing for this blog for some considerable time—months and months actually —not because I had nothing to say but rather because I’ve become increasingly aware that almost anything worth writing about or talking about on the subject of politics and political issues is already being written about and talked about ad nauseum by others. In many cases, I feel the others who write about politics and who advocate political positions are much better at doing so than I, even though my writings reflect strongly held beliefs and emotions about issues.

In many other cases, and particularly here in the North State, we have a group of wanna-be political pundits who masticate and regularly regurgitate the ideas of others, rarely adding an original thought of their own, and succeeding mostly in being simply boring and irrelevant. Their endeavors to influence North State readers will not benefit from my participation or input. Put another way, if I get down in the mud and wrestle with a pig, I get dirty and the pig loves it.

It is time to ‘change the subject’ of Cat-E-Whompus. There are many other topics besides politics that afford the opportunity for me to be more original in writing about and hopefully more appealing to readers as well. So, while I still may write about politics occasionally, and while I may sometimes advocate or lobby on certain issues that are politically charged, those topics will no longer be a major focus of the Cat-E-Whompus blog.

With this goal of diversification of topics in mind, let me briefly explain how I intend to go about ‘re-booting’ Cat-E-Whompus.

First, Cat-E-Whompus has a new look. Google has made available a new set of templates for Blogspot, the blog hosting service I use, and in general they are much more attractive and 'now' than the older templates. So I have chosen a brand new look that is intended to be more in synch with where I am now in authoring this blog.

A second major step I have already taken down many of my older posts. Many of these were on topics of yesterday’s news items that no longer are newsworthy enough to line the bottom of a bird cage. Quite a few of these pertain to the Iraq War and the Bush era, and to be very honest many of them reflect ideas and positions that I now feel very differently about than at the time I wrote the posts. As I re-read them, I found them tiresome, and so they are gone.

There are a few posts that have received a lot of interest as reflected in the hits they have received on the web, and for the most part, I intend to leave those up. But, the ranks of the older posts will be dramatically thinned.

From this point you will find new postings to be very different both in style and substance.

The Double-O Decade

2009-12-31T20:34:00.001-08:00

Its Been a Killer
Those who read Ian Fleming or who are fans of James Bond movies know that the agents with ‘Double-O’ numbers in those stories were licensed to kill. In a lot of ways, the decade ending at 12 midnight tonight with all its ‘00’ years has been a killer in its own right: a presidential election with hanging chad that was contested to the Supreme court, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Middle East wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a meltdown in the nation’s economy that rivaled the scope and scale of the ‘Great Depression.’

Sitting down to write this, I reflected that this New Years is a decadal one, and since decades last ten years, we only get to experience a few decadal New Years in our lifetimes. Ten are a couple more than most of us live to see. I feel indeed fortunate to be around for my seventh decadal New Years eve. My sixth one in 2000 went by, I confess, distressingly fast.

Remember Y2K?
Ten years ago tonight as midnight approached, the world was holding its breath waiting to see if all the worlds’ computers were going to seize up due to a Y2K glitch in their programming. Sensational media stories abounded about the bad things that could happen—power outages, planes crashing, radio and TV stations abruptly shutting down, cars stranded unable to start on the freeway—when computer clocks rolled over at midnight on December 31.

Fortunately, midnight of New Years Eve in 1999 came and went, with lots of celebrating and computer clocks that kept on ticking. Worldwide telecasts of special Y2K lighting and pyrotechnic celebrations went off as planned, at the Eiffel tower in Paris, at the harbor in Sydney, Australia, and in Times Square in New York that year.

An Era of Bad Feeling
All the good feeling of New Years Eve in that year Y2K didn’t last long, however. In the fall of 2000, we found ourselves in the midst of the terribly unfunny joke that was our presidential election that year. That election and its outcome infuriated many—yours truly included—but it was just a harbinger of what was to come.

On September 11, 2001, our nation was attacked by a shadowy group of Islamic religious extremists. Unlike the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, this attack targeted ordinary citizens, working (or travelling) while doing ordinary jobs, taking care of their families.

The 9/11 attacks had a huge impact. The airline industry in the US was decimated, and has yet to recover almost nine years later. The economy, already declining due to a severe stock downturn as the dot com bubble burst, now tumbled headlong into recession that the nation didn’t emerge from until 2004. Daily, we were bombarded by our government with code orange terror alerts, bellicose rhetoric about the threats. The Bush administration unleashed our war
machine on the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then in April, 2003, on Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army.

Bellicosity and Missed Opportunities
Our nations fine young men and women in the armed services quickly rolled up the Taliban’s organized resistance in Afghanistan, and soon had Osama bin Laden himself trapped—like the rat that he was and still is—in a cave in remote Tora Bora mountain region that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Iraq. But then our tough talking President and the leadership in the Pentagon and US Army Central Command did an unthinkable and the almost unforgivable thing.

Having tracked Osama Bin Laden to his lair, our Bush, Rumsfeld, and four star general General Tommy Franks held our American soldiers back from the fray, instead sending in poorly trained, inept and none-too-loyal Afghani substitutes. As a result of this totally missed opportunity, Osama bin Laden managed to steal away into the darkness, where he remains to this day—still at large.

Tough on terror is as tough on terror does.

The Menace That Wasn't
But Bush, Rumsfeld, and the rest told us in no uncertain terms that OBL, as he had come to be called, had been so marginalized and isolated that he was not worth worrying about. Soon a media blitz by the Bush Administration, along with speeches at the UN by Bush and Colin Powell that indicted Saddam Hussein as a menace to the world. Unfortunately, almost everything that was communicated, and the decisions that were taken, relied on what turned out to be incorrect and false ‘intelligence.’ This intel was intended to convince us and the UN that Saddam Hussein had or was about to obtain ‘WMDs,’ weapons of mass destruction, that he would give to the terrorists, unless our military stopped him.

And so, in the spring of 2003, we bombed the living hell out of Baghdad, and other target areas in Iraq. Some six weeks later President Bush was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier deck decked out in a leather flight jacket, telling us and all the world that ‘major combat operations in Iraq are over’.

Bush was right in the sense that the easy part of dismantling the inept and poorly organized Iraqi military was done for, but he was very wrong about combat operations, as these wore on for almost all the rest of the double-o decade. As time went by, it turned out conclusively that reality was that Saddam had had WMDs only in his dreams.

Justice Is Done
After much searching and many failed attempts, U.S. soldiers located that great dictator unkempt, unshaven, dirty, and wild-eyed, cowering in an underground ‘hidey-hole’ in the backyard of one of his minions. He was taken into custody; the new Iraqi government eventually tried him for his many crimes and brought him the justice he richly deserved at the end of a hangman’s rope.

The Cost, Oh the Cost
The Iraq war ground on and on, longer than all of World War II, and coffins containing the bodies of precious young men and women, soldiers all, each loved by someone, arrived home in flag draped coffins. In a PR sleight of hand move, the Administration forbade the media from photographing them as the big C-5 transport planes carrying them arrived at Andrews AFB.

Medical care for battlefield casualties had improved markedly since the last big conflict in Vietnam, and many soldiers survived horrific wounds—mostly from explosive IEDs, an acronym for ‘improvised explosive devices.’ These wounds would have killed them outright thirty five years ago, but now in the double-o decade left them alive but with horrendous, missing body parts replaced by prosthetics, and all to often, with deeply and perhaps permanently wounded psyches.

If all the carnage and the wounds resulting from the Iraqi war wasn’t enough to turn our collective stomachs, we also witnessed the spectacle of a few of our soldiers graphically humiliating and mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison—Saddam’s infamous former torture and execution center. While the entire truth about the Abu Ghraib story has yet to be made public, there is considerable circumstantial evidence that the troops who performed these acts were acting, if not under official orders, at least under official ‘encouragement’. Some of these soldiers went to jail for their misdeeds; one cannot help but strongly suspect that there were higher-ups in the government—indeed some very high higher-ups—who ought to be doing time for the Abu Ghraib fiasco as well.

Tally
In 2007, the Iraq war at long last began to wind down after controversial and politicized ‘surge’ of troops along with an underlying change in military tactics. Now, at least, our soldiers can now come home from this unnecessary, miserable and probably useless war without carrying the stigma of defeat that lingered over soldiers returning from Viet Nam. When all is said and done, we have lost 4,357 casualties in Iraq and 936 in Afghanistan, as of this New Years Eve. They were all alive in 2000 and now they are not, along with the 2,973 civilians, firefighters, and police who died in the 9/11 attacks. (Some add in the 19 hijackers to the 9/11 total, but I will not combine a count of murderers with the count of innocents who died in that event.) In addition to these deaths, there are counts of Iraqi deaths that considerably exceed 100,000.

Our national treasury spent somewhere north of a trillion dollars of our national treasure on this war. If someone knows what our nation has received for all this blood and treasure besides sadness and loss, please let me know. I haven’t been able to think of anything.

Our Attention Turns
In the fall of 2007, fuel prices spiked and the real estate market began to tank in earnest. This was followed in 2008 by the most devastating disruption of global financial markets since the Great Depression. Many—indeed most—of us saw our home values and retirement accounts decimated, if not destroyed outright. During those scary months, no matter what one was invested in, except for cash or cash equivalents, the value of the investment plummeted.
As the crisis unfolded, it became obvious that much of the blame lies with Congress and with federal regulators. They had allowed financial institutions to make trillions of dollars of bad mortgage loans, and then package these bad loans along with a few good loans into deceptive investments. The Wall Street geniuses didn’t stop there; they wrote hundreds of billions of ‘credit default swaps’—insurance policies—against losses by the investors and institutions who bought these so called investments.

Rottenness Exposed
Like the corrupt house of cards that it was, this rotten financial edifice came crashing down, its structure mortally wounded when the air all went out of the real estate bubble. As happens sometimes when structures are suddenly catastrophically torn down, ugly unsavory denizens who normally keep out of sight in dark hidden places are exposed to bright lights. They blink, they stammer, and they look guilty as hell. Remember Bernie Madoff.

Repulsive as Madoff was, the sight of our high government officials in the Treasury Department and elsewhere doling out hundreds of billions in bail out fund to institutions that were deemed ‘too big to fail’ was even more disgusting. And to add insult to what was already an outrage, the government mostly looked the other way when unconscionably large bonuses were handed out to the very perpetrators of this greatest debacle of our time.

Misery Has Lots of Company
The last two and one half years of the double-o decade have been really miserable for a lot of people, and really, we the citizens had every right to have taken to the streets. Job losses that ran into the millions and an unemployment rate exceeding 10%; entire neighborhoods, and in some cases almost entire communities were abandoned, empty, decaying, and dying due to foreclosure. Our most needy citizens were stripped of needed resources, teacher ranks were decimated, libraries and other essential services for children have been shuttered by state and local governments. All this was due to lack of tax revenue.

And even worse, transient tent communities sprung up occupied by foreclosed, unemployed, the desperate people.

Through it all, however, the Wall Street fat cats mostly got even fatter.

A Little Healing
Only in the last few months of 2009 have we begun to see some healing seem begin, and very slowly. In some cities, house prices have actually gone up a bit, as have sales. The economic metrics that tell such things show that our economy is finally growing again, at least a little. Unemployed workers are claiming benefits at a lower rate, and if you left your retirement fund invested rather than pulling it out, the stock market has managed to rally back approximately sixty percent of its loss since it bottomed in March, 2009.

We aren’t out of the woods yet, but finally things do appear to be looking up. We have a President now who actually can talk and chew gum at the same time, and who seems to have learned to listen some before he starts talking. We have a badly needed healthcare reform bill; its not all that I or a lot of people wanted, but it is a start.

Moving On
I’m not sorry to see the killer double-o decade come to a close. On a personal level, against the backdrop of all the national ‘sturm und drang’ that I just outlined, I had several wonderful things happen in my life, including marrying my beautiful and wonderful wife and moving to my beloved North State California. But I’m ready to move on and begin my seventh decade.

Always the optimist, I like to think of the possibilities.

Blog Comments and the Lack of Civility

2009-08-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

A word to those wishing to comment:

I just deleted another snarky, 'anonymous' comment that was left sometime back. To roughly paraphrase, the comment said: "You're a total blithering idiot. Somewhere but not here there is a village that needs you." It went into more sarcastic detail. The language used wasn't profane, but it was mean spirited, condescending, and generally disrespectful. And like practically all the comments that people leave, it was signed 'Anonymous.'

Here's where I stand on comments. I WILL delete any comment that I don't feel adds something to the thoughts expressed here. I don't expect commenters to always agree with me; in fact I hope they don't. I had a debating scholarship when I was in college, and I love to debate. But debate is done by rebutting the points made by your opponent, and making your own points--not by trying to belittle or disrespect the person you are debating with. The essence of debate is overcoming another's points with your own better thought out, more logical, and better presented points.

Comments left on this blog need to address the issues I have raised, or raise new issues relevant to the discussion. Also, comments must be civil in both language and tone. Otherwise, the commenter is wasting key strokes and can save themselves the trouble.

Will I EVER post a comment here from someone who is 'anonymous?' The answer is yes, I will, and I have provided the poster had something of substance to say and is civil in their manner of saying it.

But I am amazed at how uncivil, disrespectful, sarcastic, snarky, and downright hateful people get under the cover of being 'anonymous.' It isn't just this blog; check out the posts against articles on any newspaper's web site and you will see the same kind of disrespectful incivility in a huge number of comments that people leave.

If anyone reading anything here this feels compelled to tell me that how stupid my opinion is, and/or that I am a fool for daring to expressing it, and/or that my mother drove a beer truck, or other disrespectful or hateful things, you should know this:

You will impress me a lot more--and come a lot nearer having your comment see the light of day instead of being lost forever in my bit-bucket--if you sign your real name.

A Changing Viewpoint - Part IV

2009-06-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

In my previous post in this series, I began by saying that if I was rich, I would be a Republican. Let me explain why I said that. Here's my income disparity chart that I introduced in Part III:

If you examine the statistics at the end, you can see what I mean. Since 1981 when the statistics really start, until 2006 the United States was governed for eight years by Reagan, four years by Bush the elder, eight years by Clinton, and then six years of Shrub--I mean Bush--the younger. Of course, Bush the younger finished his term two years later. In twenty-five years of rule, we had Republican Presidents for all but eight of them.

What about Congress? The following chart shows that.

As you can see, the Republicans had majorities in the either the House, the Senate or both during much of those years.

One of the major mantras of conservatives in general, and therefore Republican politicians, is that small government is good, big government is bad, and that taxes can always be cut further. During the period from Reagan's election until Barack Obama took office earlier this year, the disparity of income between the lower incomes and the higher incomes became greater and greater.

Let's take a look at what happened to tax brackets. The data below is taken from Wikipedia; you can view the entire history of tax in the United states including these years here.

A Partial History of U.S. Federal Marginal Income Tax Rates Since 1982
Applicable Year	Income brackets	First bracket	Top Bracket	Source
1982-1986	12	12%	50%	IRS
1987	5	11%	33%	IRS
1988-1990	3	15%	28%	IRS
1991-1992	3	15%	31%	IRS
1993-2000	5	15%	39.6%	IRS
2001	5	15%	39.1%	IRS
2002	6	10%	38.6%	IRS
2003-2009	6	10%	35%	Tax Foundation

As you can see from looking at the data, the top tax brackets dropped in 1987, and have stayed low ever since. The lower brackets dropped too, but no where nearly as much. The effect: under largely Republican rule, the rich paid a lot less tax as they got richer while the poor paid about the same to marginally less tax.

It's obvious from the data (and I am a data driven person) that if someone is rich, they have a big economic incentive to vote Republican. But if you aren't, why are you voting with them if you are? Here's my theory on that:

Conservatives have 'co-opted' several so called social issues. Their cornerstone issue is that of 'right to life.' Opposition to a woman's right to choose to have an abortion has garnered conservative Republicans many voters who economically have no reason to voter the GOP ticket but will do so because the GOP politicians are almost all -- in public anyway -- anti-abortion.

Another issue that the conservative Republican party has tried to co-opt is that they are stronger on national defense than the Democrats. I admit, I fell for that one for a long time. I stand here before you, chowing down on crow.

But as is now obvious, what the Republican Bush Administration did in reality was to monger fear after 9/11 well enough to convince the country and the Congress to go to war with a country that--despicable as its rule was--we didn't need to go to war with, and to sacrifice individual liberties in the interests of 'national security.'

They are still doing that; just listen to any of Dick Cheney's recent utterances. They are all calculated to instill fear in the voters that Democrats will let their guard down and the terrorists will attack again.

Nope, I haven't pulled down my old posts from 2005 and prior. I call it the way I honestly see it at the time I see it that way. Unlike some, I am not so filled with pride that I cannot admit I made a mistake. I'm not running for office!

So to sum up here, for the reasons stated in Parts I, II, III, and now Part IV, I have come full circle. With a little help from my wife, and a lot of help from Paul Krugman's book "Conscience of a Liberal", I am happy to report that I am fairly well divested of most of my 'right wing' tendencies. However, I am still Cat-E-Whompus.

I'm still an unapologetic a card carrying member of the NRA. Fortunately, most of the Democrats seemed to have dropped gun control as an issue due to losing elections over it. That's good, because I'm a lot more passionate these days about the need for universal health coverage than I am about guns.

So Much For Compassionate Conservatism

2009-06-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

As this AP story about the California budget impasse shows, the Republicans in the legislature are in line with their party's objective of eliminating the 'welfare state.' The Repubs figure if the can starve it out by not funding it, that will get the job done.

Reagan started it, but they can finish it. Small government, that's what we need. Capitalism uber alles.

Unfortunately, the Republican ideal for government entails taking the social safety net that exists at both the federal and state levels and blowing it to smithereens. It really doesn't seem to bother most of them that the spending cuts they want to make come to a large extent out the benefits that the poor and mentally ill receive in California.

If the Republicans can continue to obstruct in California, everyone who depends on that social safety net will be KMAC-YOYO. In case you're wondering, that's an acronym. It stands for "Kiss My A** Kid, You're On Your Own." There's your compassionate conservatism for you. A bit anemic in the compassion department, don't you think?

Guess what happens if the Republicans get their way. If you think we've got homeless problem in this state now, just you wait. Oh, and lets not forget about crime.

The solution for the budget crisis in California is found in simple medicine that works but tastes bad. We are going to have to raise taxes and cut spending, but with a scalpel rather than the meatcleaver approach that our governator and the Repubs in the assembly are showing.

Cut spending intelligently and raise taxes. Its the only way out of this mess.

In this country and in the state of California, the term 'compassionate conservatism' is an oxymoron. It's a very bad joke.

A Changing Viewpoint - Part III

2009-06-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

If I was rich, I would definitely be a Republican.

Prior to the Great Depression, the United States was a country of 'haves' and 'have nots'. The period from the late 1800s to 1932 is referred to as the 'Gilded Age' and was the time of the industrial and banking tycoons like JP Morgan, Henry Ford, Cyrus McCormack, and many more. During that time, there was effectively no middle class; you were either rich, or you were a 'working stiff.' If you were the latter, life was hard. You got whatever your employer deigned to pay you.

There were no benefits like health insurance. If you tired of backbreaking labor for pennies and hour and sought to better your working conditions by seeking to join a union--or if you wanted to organize one, or worse, go on strike--you found that your employer would bring in platoons of armed goons to beat and intimidate you, and if that didn't make you back down, he would ask the government for help. The government was quite willing to send in soldiers to beat you, arrest you, and perhaps even to shoot you.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published his novel "The Jungle" that while a work of fiction, exposed as Sinclair called it ""the inferno of exploitation of the typical American factory worker at the turn of the 20th Century." It immediately became a best seller, and is still in print 103 years later.

Sinclair vividly described conditions in the meat packing industry of that day. One of his most famous descriptions was of meat industry workers who had the misfortune of falling into rendering tanks being cooked in animal fat and shipped to consumers shelves as 'Durham's Pure Lard." Sinclair was able bring these conditions to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, and the subsequent investigation led to passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assumed office as President. At the time, the economy of the United States had quite literally gone to hell; unemployment was 25%, banks in 37 states were closed, and few people had any money. Some cities and towns were issuing their own scrip money because there wasn't US issued 'legal tender' currency available due to bank closures. The quality of life of the average American was either zero, or in negative numbers.

Roosevelt acted to begin a large number of programs aimed at bringing the country back from economic disaster; as most anyone over age sixty knows, these programs were called the New Deal. Many of these programs still exist including the FDIC, FHA, TVA, the SEC, Fannie Mae, and of course--Social Security.

During World War II, Roosevelt's New Deal policies were opposed by Republicans and a few powerful conservative Democrats in Congress. This group was called the New Conservative Coalition. After Roosevelt died, Harry Truman took office. In 1947, he addressed the NAACP--the first sitting President to ever do so. During that speech, Truman said "Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in the making of public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court." Truman's program became called the Fair Deal, and included the first attempt to pass national healthcare legislation in this country.

In his blog entitled Conscience of a Liberal, and in his book of the same title, Nobel economist Paul Krugman says the following:

"The middle-class society I grew up in didn’t evolve gradually or automatically. It was created, in a remarkably short period of time, by FDR and the New Deal...income inequality declined drastically from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, with the rich losing ground while working Americans saw unprecedented gains. Economic historians call what happened the Great Compression, and it’s a seminal episode in American history."

As Krugman points out, the New Deal itself and the wage controls imposed during World War II brought the relative income difference between the 'haves' and the 'havenots' much closer. This situation persisted until well into the 1970s as the following chart will show.

As the above chart of Congressional Budget office data shows, between 1979 and 2006, incomes for the lowest 5th, (lowest 20%) of US workers based on income data only rose 11%. However, incomes for the top 5th (grew by 87 percent. If you look at the top 1%, of earners, their incomes grew by a staggering 256%.

Krugman calls this period we now live in where once again we have seen the income growth of the wealthy far outstrip that of the middle and lower class the Great Divergence.

How does this income disparity get this way, and how does it contribute relate to the recession we are experiencing in 2009? We need look no further than when it started: the election of of the icon of conservative Republicans, Ronald Reagan.

More in Part IV

A Changing Viewpoint - Part II

2009-06-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

In August 2007, I began working for my current employer. Since my job entails a lengthy commute, I found that I had plenty of time to listen to the news on the radio. My vehicle is equipped with satellite radio, so I began to listen to financial news in particular--specifically, Bloomberg Radio and CNBC, whose audio track is broadcast on Sirius, my satellite radio provider.

I had not been working at my new job more than a month before I was hearing a great deal on the radio about the looming 'subprime' mortgage crisis

I already knew the real estate market was tanking; my own real estate brokerage had itself become unprofitable, resulting in my closing it and returning to the corporate world once more--something that I had not expected to do.

Subprime loans were not a new topic either; during my time in real estate, I had heard many a lendor pitch their no down payment, 'no doc' (in other words, no proof of employment or income) loans. We had stayed away from those lendors and from using that kind of loan in our real estate sales because we thought they were too risky for our clients and ourselves as agents, but we knew lendors were making a lot of this type of lower quality loan. And, we were aware that all loans--including subprime loans--were 'securitized; ' in other words, they were packaged and sold to investors.

However, until the late summer and early fall of 2007 as I listened to the radio on the way to and from work did I begin to learn what that securitization had entailed.

I listened to stock market analyts and money managers interviewed on the radio who openly worried about the extent of damage to banks, financial institutions, consumers, and ultimately the US economy as a result of mortgages going bad. Most felt we might be facing a recession in this country, but expected it would be a relative short recession with a quick recovery because the problem was confined to the United States.

A few, like noted stock market 'bear' and fund manager A. Gary Schilling appeared on the broadcasts and were far more pessimistic. Schilling, I recall, predicted an implosion of the stock market and the US economy caused by consumers who could no longer afford to spend due to reduction in their home value. At the time, Schilling was so much more pessimistic than almost all the other money managers and analysts who I heard speak each day that I felt his predictions were much more dire than the situation called for. Most analysts called for a mild recession; what Schilling predicted sounded much more like a financial and economic Armageddon. I felt that Schilling was just an alarmist trying to drum up investors for his Prudent Bear Fund.

As the calendar pages turned into 2008, the situation worsened.

It became increasingly obvious that the dire scenario that Gary Schilling was envisioning was coming largely true.

On January 24, 2008, the National Association of Realtors, of which I was still a member, issued a statement that 2007 had produced the largest decrease in existing home sales in 25 years, and "the first price decline in many, many years, possibly going back to the Great Depression."

By March 10, 2008, my IRA along with those of millions of others had decreased substantially in value as the Dow Jones Industial average for stocks had fallen 20% in a mere five months.

On March 16, 2008, investment banking house and stock broker Bear Stearns, one of the oldest and most respected firms on Wall Street, was forced by the Federal Reserve to sell out to JP Morgan for $2 per share in order to avoid a 'sudden death bankruptcy.' The culprit--excessive risk taken and fraud committed by Bear Stearns fund managers, some of whom were arrested by the FBI a couple of weeks later.

On July 11, 2008, Indymac Bank failed and went into receivership. Indymac had been the lendor for a client of ours who had been forced to short-sale a house he and his wife had constructed.

Then, on September 7, 'Government Sponsored Entities' Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who owned about half of the morgages in the United States, were taken over by the government.

A week later, on September 14, venerable stock broker Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America in another sale engineered by the government to prevent Merrill from going into bankruptcy.

One day later, on September 15, Lehman Brothers, another venerable Wall Street firm was hung out to dry by the Feds and went bankrupt.

By now there was a full fledged financial crisis, coupled with an economic downturn, of a scale that had not been seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. It was worldwide in scope.

The week of October 6th provrd to be the most devastating week to investors in 75 years; the Dow lost 22 percent in that single week, and the S&P 500 index list 18 percent. The broader of the two indexes, the S&P was now down 42.5 percent from its all time high reached on October 9, 2007. Many peoples retirement savings had been savaged; home prices were still plummeting; consumers had sharply reduced spending.

As October went on, the government attempted to calm the markets and stop the bleeding, intervening in ways that had never been tried before. The Federal reserve lent the staggering sum of $900 billion to banks to try to shore them up. The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP as it was called, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Bush.

In November, 2008, Barack Obama was elected President. I voted for him.

By March 2009, it was estimated that 45 percent of all the wealth in the world had been wiped out by the financial crisis.

How could a crisis of this magnitude happen? What led all of our nation to this point? Who is responsible?

To be continued in Part III

A Changing Viewpoint - Part I

2009-06-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

To my loyal readers--only the very hardcore remain--let me say that I am still on the 'right side of the dirt.'

I have been absent for several months. Probably the major reason has been that at my work, I have been working on an intense company-wide project that has increasing amounts of my time and energy for many weeks, leaving me with little to say and even less energy to write about it. It didn't really help that this project had to proceed in extreme stealth for competitive marketing reasons.

As of June 1, the results of this effort were announced publicly and since then, I and my co-workers have been riding a bucking bronco due to the company's customers reacting. We are not out of the woods yet, but I do now see daylight at the end of the tunnel; at least I hope that's what it is.

It's time to start posting again, so you can expect to see a bit more from me than you have.

* * *

In the last few months, I have undergone somewhat of a transformation in my thinking.

While long ago when I started this blog, I stated that I had chosen the name Cat-e-whompus for the blog because my thinking doesn't follow the lines of any party very well, and that's really whats meant by the word catywhompus. However, many a reader has been offended--and a few cheered--due to my stout support for the Iraqi war and my condemnation of the Democratic party for their unpatriotic opposition to it.

A major part my support of the war was due to my reaction to 9/11. Prior to 9/11, I was voting Democratic and voted against Dubya in 2000 and was appalled at how he 'won' the election, and I was appalled at his appointment of John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld to the cabinet, both of whom I detested, and still do.

I was just as disgruntled as anyone over the fact that Bush was elected in 2000 and stayed that way right up to 9/11. Any day right up until that fateful Tuesday, I would have voted against Bush in a heartbeat.

9/11 for me changed a lot of things. First of all, I saw the attacks both as personal and as an outbreak of war against the United States. They were personal in the sense that I had flown two of the routes and airlines that were attacked frequently from 1996 until 9/11, so I felt I was targeted. That feeling was reinforced by the fact that a colleague from Oracle--where I worked at the time--was Todd Beamer, who uttered the famous words 'lets roll' to his fellow passengers as they rebelled against the hijackers of United Flight 93. I had had some contact with Todd prior to that day because he worked in sales for Oracle, and my job brought me in contact with Oracle sales people all over the world. I didn't know him well, but his death in the attacks really had a considerable impact on me.

After 9/11, I looked at Bush differently. I viewed him as President of a United States at war. Regardless of my previous views, I felt he now deserved everyone's support.

When we bombed and then invaded Afghanistan, I cheered. So did many others.

Later, when Iraq came along and the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction was brought to the fore, I bought in--hook, line, and sinker. I remembered the 91 Gulf War; I had followed Saddam Hussein and his satanic sons in the years hence. I had read about his nuclear program, about how he had gassed the Kurds and the Iranians during the long Iraq-Iran war. It was not a stretch at all to believe he had WMD's, nor that he would willingly cooperate with our enemies by giving them these weapons to use against us.

We plunged into the war, and I expected we would quickly end it, depose Saddam, and come home. It didn't work out that way. Our troops got stuck in Iraq. Saddam proved elusive and difficult to capture. I remembered the debacle when some of our troops in Somalia were killed and their bodies dragged through the street. I remembered Vietnam, and my high school friend who was as nice a boy as you could have wanted to meet, whose parents were deaf-mutes with two completely normal sons, whose name I found and touched and spilled tears over at the Vietnam Memorial.

As the opposition to the Iraq war mounted, I saw Vietnam all over again. I never wanted the troops in Iraq to come home the way troops in my generation came home from Vietnam.

I dug in my heels and supported Bush, supported the war, and wrote about it--heatedly and passionately at times--here on Cat-e-Whompus.

So where's the transformation, you say.

It started with Terry Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina.

The spectacle of all the Republicans rushing to Washington to pass legislation to force poor brain-dead Terry Schiavo's husband to keep her on life support against her own express wishes reminded me of the low esteem I held Republicans in prior to 9/11. And Hurricane Katrina, where the Bush Administration proved the low esteem it held the poor, black people of New Orleans in was more than I could swallow.

Another factor was the lack of evidence of WMD's in Iraq. I held out for a long time that they would be found, but it is of course obvious now that they didn't exist. I can no longer dispute that the pretext for the United States to invade Iraq was false, and I now believe it was fabricated for political purposes.

However, I did not and would never want American troops to be committed to battle and then prevented from acheiving their mission. The troops who have fought and died in Iraq didn't decide to go there; they were sent. They, and subsequent generations who will serve their country should never be allowed to go down in defeat.

Thanks to General David Petraeus, they didn't do so in Iraq.

Also, by mid-2008, it was obvious to me that the war in Iraq was already won; at least as much as it ever could be. The surge had worked, violence was down, Saddam hanged, Zarqawi the terrorist killed. I began to feel it was time to start bringing our boys and girls home from there. They had really gotten the mission accomplished, long after Bush had prematurely declared it accomplished on the aircraft carrier in 2003. I still feel that way, only now, even more so.

However, the biggest part of my transformation came in the fall of 2008 and winter and early spring of 2009 as our economy fell into the deepest and most severe recession of my sixty-one years.

I read some books and a lot of stories and articles about the causes of this recession. By the fall of 2008, I had begun to take a hard look at who I thought would be the countries best choice for president to succeed Bush; I voted for Obama.

Stay tuned for Part II.

I Think We're In Real Trouble Now

2009-03-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just watched a TV special thats been sitting on my DVR for some time. The program was "The Day The Levees Brok e, " a documentary by director Spike Lee about Hurricane Katrina. I followed Katrina closely on the internet at the time, and this program documented in great detail what I had managed to already glean: in the days after Katrina, the citizens of New Orleans--who are also citizens of the United States--were treated abominably by the Federal government, and in some instances by the state and local government. Forget WMD's...those who wished to impeach George Bush really needed look no further than his handling of the Katrina tragedy to find just cause. Anyone watching this program would have to made of stone not to be emotionally affected by it.

Americans didn't impeach Bush, but they did get fed up and voted in a Democratic majority in the House in 2006, and in the Senate in 2008--along with a Democratic President. I have for a long time contended that Nancy Pelosi is the worst Speaker of the House ever to serve, but I voted for Barack Obama because I believed the country really did need change. I still believe that we do, and I still support Obama generally, and especially on reforming health care.

But a great and grave injustice is being done even as I write this by our elected Congressional representatives and Senators, with supporting rhetoric from Obama. That injustice that I am referring to is the so-called 'outrage' over the bonuses paid to AIG employees.

As this story from the Washington Post will attest, all of this public outrage--including proposed punitive tax legislation already passed by the house is being directed at employees of AIG who were not the people who caused the financial disaster, as the real culprits have long since left the building there. The people who Senator Grassley said should either resign or commit suicide are the lower level people who were retained by the company to undo the complicated transactions that comprised the 'toxic assets' that everyone is so angry about.

As things stand, these AIG employees (they are people with families, not devils)--the very ones that are being so reviled by Congress and Obama, the ones who stand to be punitively (and very likely unconstitutionally) taxed by Congress, the ones who are now receiving death threats due to the incessant media coverage of all this...these people are the only ones with the knowledge to undo the hundreds of billions of dollars of transactions that remain. If these employees--if these people--leave AIG (and who could blame them for doing that, only utter masochists would stay now) we taxpayers stand to be on the hook for a lot more money as we taxpayers have an 80% ownership stake in the company.

These are stay bonuses, not performance bonuses, paid under contracts written to induce these people to continue to stay on for some agreed to period of time.

Yes, I know...how can, you ask, these people be worth the large amounts of stay bonus money? The answer is simple. You and I may not like it that some of these people make so much more money than we do, but the fact of the matter is that their skills command a very hefty sum. And if they are not going to be paid by AIG, why should they stay if they have a valid job offer from somewhere else at--to me and you--an insanely high salary. We can get real about this ; these are not burger flippers, but highly trained and experienced professionals with very marketable skills even in a recession.

As it turns out, Congress knew---hell, Dem Senator Christopher Dodd inserted language in the recently passed stimulus bill--that bonus payments like this would not be subject to restrictions. He's now claiming that the Treasury Department--read between the lines Sec. Treas. Tim Geithner, appointed by Pres. Obama--made him do it.

But the real truth is that they knew about it, or certainly could have known about it if they had asked the right questions, especially of the Federal Reserve, who had known about it for months. However, sensing that when the news of the bonuses became public, members of Congress along with the President were tripping over each other to pick up the first stone to throw at the the employees of AIG. Not the decision maker culprits who are long gone, but the worker bees who are still there under Federal Reserve regulator supervision trying to wind the bad business 'book' down.

Aside from trying to score political points in a most cynical and hypocritical fashion, Congress, the President and the Treasury Secretary appear to hoping that we the public will be so absorbed in watching the unseemly spectacle they are putting on that we won't notice the hundreds of billions that AIG paid out under contractual obligations they had to banks, including a bunch of billions to foreign banks. When the government made the decision that AIG was too big to fail and had to be bailed out, they knew who the money was going to go for. They quite literally hope that the American people are too stupid and too glued to their wide-screen TV's to notice where the real money has gone.

Could it be that that this economic crisis--as bleak as it is portrayed--is actually far worse and more threatening than we the people are being told?

In ancient Rome, as the empire deteriorated and degraded, the emporers put on blood spilling displays of gladiators battling and Christians being eaten by lions to distract the Roman citizenry from what was really going on. Could it be that our leaders with their farcial AIG 'outrage' are trying to do the same thing? I fear that they might be.

Only by confronting the facts of whatever brutal realities face us and addressing them with nothing held back do we have any chance of recovery.

* * *

As a sidebar to this post, I would like to point out that the passage today by the House of the legislation that will tax the AIG bonuses is on its face unconstitutional. Article 1 of the US Constitution states that Congress shall pass no 'bill of attainder' and no 'ex post facto laws.' Bills of attainder are laws that arbitrarily single out one group of people for punishment for doing what is legal for other people to do...e.g. accept bonuses. Ex post facto laws are laws that retroactively punish people for doing a thing that was legal at the time the thing was done. This punitive tax legislation violates both provisions of Article 1. (For a more learned exposition of this, click here.)

If the Senate passes this utterly stupid bill and the President signs it, the AIG employees will have a field day with the government in court, and will more than likely win many times the contested bonus payments in the form of damage awards.

Do All We Can Where We Are With What We've Got

2009-01-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

Is anyone besides me not surprised that within just a few days after hearing how our financial system is 'regaining some stability' that today word comes out the Citibank is going to break itself up and that Bank of America--having gobbled up Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch last fall--is not having such terrible indigestion that it is likely to take more of that green $$ 'medicine' from the government to get them over it?

How do you spell "DEEP DO-DO"!

That is what I fear--no, that is what I KNOW--that this country is in right now. Our government is blowing through hundreds of billions trying to 'fix' this recession/financial crisis thing and there is no end in sight. If anyone says they see light at the end of the tunnel, beware...odds are that its not daylight but a train coming straight at us.

Just a couple of weeks ago the government pooped out 14 billion or so for General Motors and today we had Rick Waggoner, the CEO of GM, talking about how the company was most likely going to go bankrupt anyway.

The only ones who would be surprised at that are the idiots in Congress who voted to give GM the money. It has been obvious for a long time that GM as we know it is burnt toast. But our government used our money as butter to spread around on that toast.

Honestly, the American people should be up in arms! We should be out in the street marching! The fact that our government--our elected representatives who led us into this disaster--are now being so ineffectual about leading us out should have us worried.

While there will be many who will blame this on George Bush, its not all his fault by any means. What is happening now got started in the 1960's and has been building up. Don't believe me? Read "The Great Inflation And Its Aftermath" by noted economist Robert Samuelson. He lays out the whole long, sad story of how we got where we are.

The bottom line: Bad government fiscal policy promulgated by both parties and then compounded over years and years and years!

I do very sincerely hope that Barack Obama has got all the greatness and leadership ability that it is going to take to get us out of this mess. I really would like to retire sometime before I'm eighty, but the odds of that happening have been looking worse every day .

It's a good thing Obama is going to be using Lincoln's Bible for his swearing-in next week. He might want to try to see if he can find Roosevelt's Bible and put his other hand on it while he's at it. With the mess we're all in, Obama's going to need all the help he can get.

Brothers In Arms

2009-01-13T22:31:00.001-08:00

I'm a huge Mark Knopfler fan, and have been for 30 years, ever since I first heard his Dire Straits hit 'Sultans of Swing.' Damn--I still love that song!

On my evening commute this evening, I had three of Mark's CD's loaded up into my changer. As I drove through the darkness of the early evening, a song came up called "Brothers In Arms."

I've heard it many times before, but both the music and lyrics are so hauntingly beautiful that I always enjoy it. This song does not glorify war in any way. But...the final verse of the song makes a point that I have made here with regard to the trial of the Marines who were accused (and all but one acquitted) of the so-called Haditha massacre in Iraq.

Here's the lyrics to "Brothers in Arms" as found via Google:

"These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

There's so many different worlds
So many different sounds
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

Now the sun's gone to heaven
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms.

Thank you, Mark. Love the singer, love the song, love the thought.

24's Season Premier

2009-01-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

Jack Bauer came back for two hours on Sunday night and two more last night. All four episodes where good; the first hour was a crackerjack.

If you aren't a fan of the program '24'--it has run on Fox for 6 seasons to date--then you aren't going to know what I'm talking about here. But if you have watched every episode like we have or most episodes then you know the premise of the show and the characters.

Jack is a counter-terrorism specialist who in prior seasons worked for a fictional government agency called CTU, short for Counter-Terrorism Unit. He has faced numerous enemies of the United States who have attempted to kill American civilians in lots of creative ways--dirty bombs, biological agents, nerve gas--the list goes on.

One thing that Jack--played by Kiefer Sutherland--has never been shy about is getting the bad guys to talk. The scripts have called upon Jack to use all kinds of coercive techniques that make water boarding a suspect seem like taking them for a walk in the park.

Sunday night's episode opened where last season left off; CTU had been shut down by the politicos who had gotten squeamish about their methods, and Jack had been subpoenaed by some Senate subcommittee. As the program opened, Jack was at the witness table being lectured by a sanctimonius Senator--who seemed like a composite of Jack Murtha and Harry Reid--about his involvement in the illegal 'torture' carried out by the defunct CTU. Jack listened for a few moments, and then responded to the Senator to the effect that he wasn't at all sorry for what he had done, that it had been done to protect American's, and that the American people should be the ones to judge what had been done, not a bunch of hypocritical stuffed shirts in Washington.

It was at that moment that a very attractive but tough looking FBI agent entered the room, broke into the proceedings, and presented a document stating that Jack was required to accompany her to the FBI's office on a matter of utmost national security. The Senator huffed and puffed and spluttered but Agent Renee Walker ended up the winner of the exchange, and off she went with Jack to FBI headquarters where he instantly was up to his eyeballs in defending the country against the latest terrorist plot. I won't spoil the rest of it for you; suffice it to say that the first four episodes are back to the classic 24 formula and the action comes at you hard and fast.

'24' has gotten a lot of criticism in the recent past from the bleeding hearts about how the treatment of the baddies has been scripted. It pleases me to no end to see that the producers (Kiefer Sutherland is Executive Producer) have not been cowed or intimidated into changing the way they script the action portrayed in their shows. Indeed there was one scene in the second episode when one of the baddies was being interrogated by the FBI and basically told them to buzz off until his lawyer got there. Then Jack got involved and the bad guy talked in literally 30 seconds. A sharp pencil poised to go into your ear will do that.

Now I realize that '24' is purely fiction and highly improbable fiction at that. But I emphasize the word 'improbable.' 9/11 was improbable too, but it was not, as we found out all too painfully, impossible. The much more recent attack on Mumbai India was improbable too, except it happened. The news recently reported that the perpetrators of that attack had an open cell phone line to their leaders superiors in Pakistan. They were sent to specifically kill as many Jews, Americans, and Europeans as they could.

Like Jack Bauer, I think the American people need to know what has to be done to defend us from those--and there are many of them still--who want to kill us. The press, many of our elected representatives, and far too many of our population have forgotten the truth that George Orwell spoke long ago: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

'24' is thankfully pure fiction, but the show makes Orwell's point very well.

History In the Making

2008-09-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

Today was an historic day. The question of the hour is whether we made good history or set ourselves up for some very bad history.

According the President, the Treasury Secretary, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, our banking system is in some very deep doo-doo. Banks won't lend to each other, and won't lend to us. The net effect is that house prices continue to crash down because too many people can't get credit to buy the (now much cheaper) inventory of homes on the market. Indeed, there was talk that there might be 1933 style 'runs' on banks on a massive scale if Congress didn't pass the bailout bill that the Administration had presented last week and that Congress had modified over the weekend.

When all was said and done, the bill failed. It wasn't just Republicans that sunk it, it was Democrats as well. Nancy Pelosi--in my opinion the worst Speaker of the House in my lifetime--had her finger prints on the failure of the bill to pass. She had done two things.

First, she made a speech immediately before the vote where she laid the entire fiasco in the financial markets at the feet of the Bush Administration in particular, and the Republicans in general. Secondly, and additive to her indulgence in the blame game, was the fact that she never gave instructions for the Democratic members to get 'whipped' in to shape by the majority whips. Pelosi's plan was to let her members off the hook and have the bill pass as a Republican measure. Her thinking is obvious; the Demo's could then use the line that the Repubs passed this very unpopular bill to benefit the fat cats and save fix the mess that they created.

Unfortunately for Pelosi--and perhaps for the country as a whole--the Repubs didn't fall for Pelosi's partisan ploy, to be led like sheep to a political slaughter. They dug in their heels and balked. And in so doing, they joined with the Demos who weren't voting for the bill. It failed.

So there you have the political calculus. The question is: how genuine is the threat to the country of the current financial 'crisis'? Are we looking at a reprise of the Great Depression?

Nobody knows. Maybe we are and maybe we aren't. One thing is for sure, though. While the market dropped more today than it has in 21 years, and while the VIX 'fear index' hit levels not seen since 9/11, tonight the country is still moving. As far as we know now, my paycheck and yours will cash tomorrow.

But a crisis and a mess we do have. Boy, do we have one! It has been caused by a lot of things, but most especially by a failure by our elected government to govern the country properly that spans multiple administrations and almost two decades.

Today, our government may have really let us down. On the other hand may be not. All we can do is take the stance of the old Zen master.

The Zen Master says, as he often does in situations fraught with unknowables: "We shall see."

Paul Newman

2008-09-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

I just saw this story about the death of Paul Newman who just died of cancer at age 83.

Every movie that I have seen that Paul Newman was in I have enjoyed. He was not only iconic in his handsome good looks; his acting abilities were also superb, even as he aged. To my knowledge, he never made a movie where his performance was not acclaimed.

Born in Cleveland Ohio, Newman was an actor I always admired--even if I disagreed with some of his politics--both in terms of the roles he played, and his personal life. He married Joanne Woodward in 1958, and was still married to her at his death. He drove race cars, but he was well known for channeling tens of millions of dollars to charity via his food company. He managed to so enrage Richard Nixon that he landed on Nixon's notorious 'White House enemies list.'

Last, but not least, his food company made an excellent salad dressing marketed under the name "Newman's Own" that I have enjoyed down through the years. I hope it will still be available now that he has passed on.

The story linked to above recounts how in the spring of 2007, he said he had given up acting for good, saying that ""I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to. You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed book for me."

I admire the fact that Newman knew when it was time to quit, and got out while he was still on top of his game. He entertained a lot of people during his life, and helped a lot of people too. He was by all accounts an honorable man who lived an honorable live.

He could have done a lot worse. Most big stars have not done nearly so well as Paul.

Rest in Peace, Paul. I'm just one of millions of your fans and admirers who will greatly miss you.

A More Perfect Union (Updated)

2008-03-18T23:04:00.000-07:00

Once in a while I find I have misjudged someone. It is rare that I feel that way about a politician, as they normally disappoint me, and then disappoint me some more. As a result, my opinion of most of them is cynical in the extreme.

But today I find I must make an exception—a big exception to my cynical attitude towards politicians.

And I specifically mean Barack Obama.

Until today, there was no way that I could see ever voting for Barack Obama. He is soft on the war on terror, ready to lead us to defeat in Iraq, mixed up with an indicted Chicago businessman, Tony Rezco. Obama’s wife Michelle at age 40+ only just now found something to be proud of America about. Obama won’t wear a flag on his lapel, won’t hold his hand over his heart when he says the pledge of allegiance, and goes to some church where his black minister makes radical, inflammatory statements like ”God damn America” from the pulpit.

Until today, I felt there was no way I could vote for Barack Obama. Sometimes--once in a great while--I find I have reason to change my mind about a person--even politicians.

I now think I may have been too harsh in my opinion of Barack Obama.

I do my best not to let other people, the media, radio talk show hosts, or campaign propagandists tell me how to think or how to vote. I do my best to evaluate—for myself—what each candidate's record is, and I work to form the most objective and unbiased opinion as I can about them.

My perception of a candidate's character is the most important criteria I have.

Earlier today, Barack Obama made one of the best speeches of our modern day; indeed it may have been one of the best speeches ever. He was eloquent, utterly honest, and also heartfelt that, in this day of 'sound bites' and 'political correctness,' this speech may prove transformative. You can read the entire text of the speech here, and for however long it stays alive, there is a link to video of Obama delivering the speech.

In his speech, Obama talks candidly and forcefully about race relations in the United States today. He talks from the heart about growing up as a black man in the United States. And he most eloquently talks about how we are all interconnected--all us--black and white. He explains how he personally feels about his own personal heritage as a black man and also how he sees the black community in America today.

Here is an excerpt:

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.”

There is a lot more to this speech. Here he talks about his preacher, Reverend Wright.

“Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Barack Obama has a black preacher—who he acknowledges is his friend—who has said some racially inflammatory things that Obama doesn’t agree with. In his speech, Obama said that he wishes his preacher hadn’t said these things. But he also points out that the reality is that right or wrong, whether we white people like it or not, there remains a great deal of resentment by black people for their treatment by whites.

Obama talked in this speech about reality. About the way things really are in race relations today in the United States. I felt he made it clear that he personally doesn't support the attitudes that blacks like the Reverend Wright express, but he also made it clear that they are his people--warts and all. He may not agree with Reverend Wright, but the Reverend is still his friend.

To underline this point, he mentioned that his own white grandmother had said things about black people that made him cringe. He didn't disown her for that either.

Folks, what Obama is talking about is tolerance. Tolerance is what this speech is all about. When we have tolerance, we accept the totality of a person's character; in so doing, we consider both the good and the not so good. Tolerating is not the same thing as condoning. Tolerating means recognizing and respect the rights, beliefs, and practices of others (even if we don't agree with them). The word tolerance has another meaning, too; it means to put up with and endure.

What Barack Obama is saying is that as a nation we need to tolerate those in the black community who resent us, fear us, and criticize us and our country, even when those criticisms are not always justified. All Americans of all racial backgrounds need to come together and unite; the only way this will happen is if we are tolerant.

No other national politician has spoken this way in a long time. Obama on this subject is unique and refreshing. I may or may not vote for him for President--right now I'm still supporting Clinton--but we need more rhetoric that unites us rather than divides us. That is exactly what Obama has done.

Being Open To The Possibilities

2008-02-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

As some readers know—and anyone can figure out from looking at either of our links—both my lovely bride and I each write our own blogs. I have from time to time written about The Secret, a book and DVD that popularize a very old idea called the Law of Attraction. A day or so ago, she wrote a post on her blog, Old Musings, about The Secret, and the post promptly drew a comment from a guy who basically blasted The Secret as “fraudulent self help.”

Never at a loss for words, my spouse—who helps us earn our living as a freelance writer and was once called the “snake oil lady” on account of her ability to spin the marketing copy she used to write in a previous live—has responded to the comment both directly and in a separate blog post which I urge you to read if this subject interests you.

Frankly, from reading her post, I think she may have gotten just a little bit indignant about the comment. I can relate to that myself, but perhaps for a different reason.

The commenter lumped The Secret into a broad category of “self-help” and then disparaged it along with the category. This guy may be from the school of those who take the poem Invictus literally. Remember William Ernest Henley’s poem "Invictus" from high school? Here it is; it’s pretty short:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years Finds,
and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

When I read this in high school, I really related to the message in it. This was how as a young adolescent I wanted to see myself. The master of my fate. Captain of my soul. Bloody but unbowed. Unafraid of the menace of the years. Oh, how this appealed to my young—and at that time—unbloodied and unbowed ego.

I recall that my English teacher urged us to take a more conservative view of this poem than I was inclined to. She said that while the poem is considered great literature, we needed to read the poems as literature and not a prescription for life. We are not really, she said, masters of our fate. We live in a society that has rules and laws. We live in a world where there are people and ideas and forces greater than ourselves, all of which life gives us no choice but to respond to, react to, and adapt to. Those weren’t her exact words of course—we are talking over 40 years ago—but you get the drift.

Thinking back, I realize now that she was concerned that we not permit Henley’s poem to lead us into the sin of hubris.

As I experienced life all the long years since that day in a classroom situated in a school building long since torn down and rebuilt somewhere else, I have found that my teacher was much more on point about "Invictus" than I ever thought. In the sense that we are responsible for our actions, we are--to a degree--the master of our fate. But there are larger things and larger forces in the world that impact our fate; some good, and some bad. Total mastery of our fate and any sense of having a true “captaincy” of our soul eludes most of us—at least it sure eludes me.

Some of us become really bad captains for our souls. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, chose to read "Invictus" as his "last words" before he was executed at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in 2001. I've never felt the same way about the poem even as literature after that.

Hubris. Big time hubris.

Sometimes we can achieve really substantial things with a little faith and positive thinking. The Secret is not really about self help; its about a adopting a spiritual posture for ones life. Its about visualizing what you really want and need; its about asking the Universe, God, your higher power--whatever you want to call him/her/it but I am referring to a power that is greater than ourselves--for what we want and need, and then opening ourselves up to the possibilities.

I have discovered there are a lot of people who are very negative toward the secret, as was the person who posted on my wifes blog. These nattering nabobs of negativity scorn The Secret, and in so doing, they scorn the spiritual power that makes The Secret work.

"Don't need no stinking Secret," you can hear them thinking

A bit of hubris, I say.

The Secret won't work unless we are open to it. And to be open to it, we have to recognize and embrace the notion that there is a benevolent force for good--a power--in this world that is bigger than we are and that is willing, able, and indeed wants to help us.

The spiritual power inherent in The Secret requires that we seek it out and be open to its operation. If hubris blinds us to the power of the Secret, we can never benefit from it.

* * *

My wife and I write about The Secret from time to time because the principles of it--as written in its forerunner, the Little Red Book--have worked in a positive way in our lives. We are testifying to the fact that it has worked for us in the hope that some readers may beneficially share in our experience.

Take it or leave it. After all, you are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.

Attitude of Gratitiude

2007-11-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

The Secret and Thanksgiving
Recently, I wrote a post about Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret that described how using the law of attraction had worked for my wife in our lives over and over.

Applying The Law of Attraction
Applying the law of attraction entrails doing two main things and NOT doing one main thing.

I recently saw a movie entitled The Pursuit of Happiness that recounts the real life story of a young black man named Chris Gardiner who was down on his luck in San Francisco. While caring for his small son, Chris made not-much-of-a-living as a salesman; he and his son were basically destitute and homeless much of the time, and often had no recourse but to sleep in the shelter that Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco provides. But as down and out as he was, Chris--wonderfully portrayed by Will Smith in the movie--was totally dedicated to caring for his young son. Chris had a vision of what he wanted--to become a stockbroker--and in the movie as in real life he arduously and painstakingly managed to get an internship with a big brokerage in San Francisco, realized his dream of becoming a full fledged stock broker, and went on to become a wealthy man.

What We Must Do
I don't know if Chris Gardiner ever read The Little Red Book which was the first book to really talk about the law of attraction but I do know that he practiced one of its key tenets which is to visualize every day what exactly it is that you want. In Chris Gardiner's case, he visualized becoming a stock broker all the time, every day; such visualization is a mainstay of the law of attraction and The Secret.

The second affirmative action that you must take to put the law of attraction to work in your life is to have an 'attitude of gratitude'. You have to think about what you have to be grateful for--even if it is meager--and take the time to actively feel grateful for it. In the DVD special features for The Pursuit of Happiness, the real life Chris Gardiner expressed his gratitude towards the people of Glide Memorial--in particular pastor Cecil Williams (who played himself in the movie.) From my time in the Bay Area, I believe that God is in regular attendance at Glide Memorial.

And What We Must Not Do
Which brings me to the one thing that Chris Gardiner did not do and you and I cannot do and have the law of attraction in our life. We cannot afford to adopt an 'attitude of victim hood;' it will stop the operation of the law of attraction in our lives dead in it tracks.

Our media and so much of what passes for liberalism in American politics glorifies and enshrines the idea of people as victims. It has reached the absurd point where the bleeding hearts want us to feel sorry and see as 'victims' people who have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death row, or for terrorist scum who are locked up in Guantanamo. And certainly, if the bleeding hearts can make us actually feel sorry for Sheik Khalid Mohammad--one of the key architects 9/11 who also has confessed to sawing off journalist Daniel Pearl's head on video--because the United States 'tortured' him by 'water boarding' him to make him talk, then how easy is it for them to make us feel sorry for ourselves. It is much easier to sit around and feel sorry for myself, to feel that I am oppressed by some one--the government, large corporations, my boss, the cops, fill in the blank--to feel that I have been victimized, than to it is for me to feel grateful for what I have, actively visualize what I need, and get out and do the hard slogging work that is necessary to achieve it.

I Have Much To Be Grateful For
Today is Thanksgiving Day, 2007. Today should be a day of gratitude, so here are a few of the things I have to be grateful for today:

For my most wonderful wife and companion,Beth, who encourages me and supports me in everything I do. (You can read her take on things--much different from mine--here). Without her, I would be and have nothing worth having.
For our health; so far it is good, and we are both so grateful for that.
For the good old US of A, that for all its faults is the best place in the world to be. Long may Old Glory fly!
For the men and women of this country who by their most honorable service in our armed forces are keeping us safe from forces of the very evil and substantive evil that exists in the world. And most especially I am grateful to men and women who may be required to step directly into harms way today or any day to safeguard our freedom. There is no greater gift they can give, and no higher calling they can have!
For like Cecil Williams and the members of Glide Memorial, and other churches and institutions that don't just preach the gospel, but also practice it a and thereby make a real positive difference in people's lives.
For my family and children and my many good and dear friends who are spread out seemingly from sea to shining sea who lift me up just by their caring. And while there are friends who live closer and who I get to visit with more often, I treasure the friends dating back to my youth. I was reunited with a couple of them this past summer after more than forty years; it was a moment to treasure and be grateful for always.
For the men and women Livingston Grade School and Livingston Academy who put up with me and tried to teach me something in school as a child and as a teenage, and who taught took an interest in me and encouraged me. I had the distinct pleasure of being reunited with one of them, my high school debate coach Mr. Willie Bilbrey, this past summer. Mr. Bilbrey is still taking a personal, abiding interest in his students--now in his seventies, he still actively works with and mentors student teachers--just as he took a personal interest in me back in 1963-64. I honor him.
And last but not least, for our 'kitty-boys', our cats McMurphy and Cheswick, who share our house and life with Beth and I, and who add so much to my life by allowing us to dote on them.

A Little Gratitude Each Day
I could go on--there is so much more I have to be grateful for--but there are Thanksgiving Parades to watch, and I need to remember that I have tomorrow and the rest of the days of my life to be grateful. I need to remember to use a little of each one of those days to be grateful.

The Real Secret

2007-11-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

One of the best read posts I ever did on Cat-E-Whompus are about The Secret, the book by Rhonda Byrne that was popularized by Oprah Winfrey on her television show.

Not All The Press Was Good
In my post in February of 2007, I was somewhat--hopefully gently--critical of Byrne's book for mostly for its commercialization of the subject matter. However, since then, I have seen numerous articles and blog posts about The Secret, most purporting to debunk it, and others simply disparaging it. That's too bad, because it just proves there are a lot of people in this world--too many--who lack vision and who can't believe in something they can't 'prove'. Some people wrote that the ideas in The Secret would make people 'even more consumerist' than before, whatever that means. Another wrote that it was 'pernicious drivel.' One writer, Tim Watkin of the Washington Post said of The Secret that it is "a disturbing little book of blame."

A Personal Story
Quite a few years ago, I worked for a company that laid a large number of us off one day; we received 'out placement services' to help us find new jobs. They had offices that us now surplus and laid-off mid level executives could go to every day and use as you looked for a job. I soon figured out that if you really wanted to find a job, you didn't want to hang around those offices. There were plenty of middle aged, unemployed guys and gals hanging around there alright, and you never saw such a bunch of losers. These people sat around and had 'ain't it awful' conversations with each other all day. Some had been there for months with no end in sight. I never felt so much concentrated negative energy in one place in my life.

I made a decision: I worked on my job search from home. At least my attitude and energy wouldn't be destroyed by all the nattering nabobs of negativity that were hanging around the outplacement office.

Nattering Nabobs
As far as the Secret is concerned, these so-called journalists can write all the negative stuff abotu the book and pooh pooh the ideas behind it all they want. Those doing all the 'trash talking' about The Secret wouldn't understand the law of attraction if it jumped up and bit them. In reality, just like the loser-losers at the outplacement office, they send out such negative personal energy that the secrets of The Secret could never, ever work for them. When people find that principles like the law of attraction found in It Works and The Secret are actually making a positive difference in their lives, in every case it is because they first opened their heart and mind to believe that the ideas might actually work for them. As they say in twelve-step programs, "first I came, then I came to believe..."

Somebody Moves Our Cheese Again
When I posted about The Secret, I described how Byrne's book popularized and commercialized a fundamentally spiritual idea that is not new at all; it was originally published in a small red booklet called It Works. The point of my original post was that that ideas underlying The Secret--in particular the law of attraction--actually do work, and that both my wife and I can personally attest that they do. From reading It Works many years ago, these essential principals worked for us in our lives long before Rhonda Byrne's The Secret was published. And they worked again this spring--after my post about it--when we were forced by circumstances to ask again the question that Spencer Johnson--a long time favorite author of mine--made famous in his bestselling book: Who Moved My Cheese?

You see, when we moved to our town here in Northern California we had decided to our buy and run own business. However, after several years of relative success, we found the market conditions that had buoyed and supported our business in the past had unexpectedly changed. Our cheese had moved, and it was time to look at a plan B. But what?

Simple Principles Too Little Used
Again, we used the principal--the core idea--of It Works and The Secret: the law of attraction. We began to visualize and think very specifically about what we wanted and needed in order to find our cheese again. We made it as concrete in our minds as possible. We opened ourselves to the possibilities of finding it, and we avoided as much as we could putting out negative mental vibes about it. Positive attracts positive; that is the essence of the law of attraction.

The It (The Little Red Book) Works Again
It took a few months, but it worked. The universe, God, the higher power...whatever you wish to call him, her or it, answered us by placing a wonderful new career opportunity in our path. We explored it, thought long and hard about it, worked at it, and finally were able to seize the opportunity and make it our new reality.

Its not miraculous and its not otherworldly. Boiled down to the utmost, all you have to do is ask for what you need, and believe--truly believe--in your heart of hearts that you can obtain it.

We found our cheese again, thanks to the secret of the power of being open to possibilities and believing they can happen for you.

Jack Won't Be Back For A While

2007-11-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

Writers Strike - '24' Production Halted
It appears that Jack Bauer of TV's '24 isn't going to be back in January after all due to the writers strike. You can read the New York Times story about it here.

But, that isn't the big news. The really big news of course will be the change in the story line of '24 and Jack's character in the new season.

When Production Resumes - A New Story Line
President Obamarama has been elected President and he is UPSET! Jack and CTU make make Blackwater look like Sunday school teachers. The new Prez and his Democratic buddies in Congress have made it clear will no longer stand for any inhumane treatment like Jack and CTU have been dishing out to terrorists season after season. After all, as these new leaders keep reminding us, they were all elected with a mandate for change!

President Obamarama says we are going to negotiate with the terrorists and their state sponsors. Heck, they are just people, man. If we just talk nice to them, stop all our hostile rhetoric that the neocons in past seasons have been spewing, and send them a few billion dollars worth of foreign aid, everything is going to be just ducky!

Episode One
So, the new storyline goes, President Obamarama has called up Jack on his cell phone and laid down the law. Terrorists are criminals, and need to be afforded all the same rights as all our regular garden variety scumbags. We are going to give them the same rights we give US citizens. That means that CTU is going to give these poor underprivileged terrorists the full protection that they are entitled too under the constitution.

No More Neo-Con
Jack has been to several multi-culti sensitivity training classes in the off season and he has GOT the message. And he knows, if he doesn't mend his ways, a fate worse than death will descend upon him: Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink!

So, in this season--whenever it gets started---when the terrorists plant those suitcase nukes around shopping malls in Los Angeles, or those vials of deadly bio-weapons, or whatever they happen to be using this season, Jack won't be using any nasty,illegal, benighted Bush/Cheney/Gonzalez era torture tactics on these poor terrorists. No, no, no!

Jack Follows the Geneva Conventions
As the bomb ticks down on split, Jack will follow the Democratic and p0litically correct procedure of informing the captive terrorist suspect of his rights and then calling a lawyer for them. If they happen to be Muslim, he will ensure that the terrorist has a copy of the Koran handy, and a prayer rug for their spiritual life. Jack will ensure that the terrorists have access to the mandatory foot-washing basin they need so that they can experience their spirituality to the utmost.

I Can Hardly Wait Till This Episode Screens...
Then, and only then, with about 5 seconds left on the red numerals ticking down on the bomb's detonator clock he will ask them, "Please, please, Mr. Terrorist, I am your friend. I am here to talk to you. Please tell me where the bombs are hidden and what the codes are to disarm them."

Five...four...three...two...one....

Sounds like a pretty good show doesn't it? I'll bet there will be a surprise ending, too. suspenseful, too.

The National Debt: Much Ado About Nothing

2007-08-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

One of the things that is near and deal to liberals hearts is their talking point that the Bush Administration has piled up ruinous debt that is grown at such a rate that it will eventually kill the US economy. Just yesterday, a letter from a local resident was published in our local paper that stated that the n ational debt is over $9 trillion dollars and growing. In her letter, she worried that an 'economic hurricane is poised on the horizon and headed in our direction.'

She's not alone. I've had any number of people I've talked to who dislike--even hate--the President who have said similar things to me. In each case, they have hurled out words to the effect that the President has run the country into the ground by running up the national debt. Sometimes they sound like Moses (played by Charlton Heston) telling Pharaoh to let the people go.

"RELEASE MY PEOPLE FROM THIS OPPRESSIVE DEBT!!!!"

There is just one little problem. The lady who wrote in to the local paper and my other liberal friends haven't got their facts straight. They don't understand the national debt.

To begin with, let us point out that the government is running at a deficit, but it is sharply lower this year. The Federal government took in $2.13 trillion in revenues for the budget year that began last October 1 and spent $2.27 trillion. According to this AP article, the Congressional Budget Office thinks the deficit will end up at the 'lower end' of the $150 -200 billion range. That's a substantial improvement from $239.6 billion the year before.

But liberals like to talk about the national debt, so lets look at that. The problem with the $9 trillion debt number is that it is meaningless to talk about it unless you have something to compare to. If a man weighs 230 pounds, is that too heavy? Without some other data, we have no way to say. If he is five foot eight, then yes he's too heavy. But if he is 6 foot six then it doesn't sound so bad.

Professional economists look at the national debt as a percentage of the GNP. What is GNP? It stands for gross national product, which is the total output of the US economy. GNP consist broadly of three things: Consumption (which is the sum of all goods and services bought and sold), Investment which is the total of all savings and investments that take place in the economy, and Government, which is the sum of all government spending.

Now interestingly, the national debt of the United States when measured as a percentage of GNP is basically on a par with Germany and France, who are hardly alarmed over their national debts.

Let's look at the the history of the national debt as a percentage of GNP. As of 2005, the national debt ran 64% of GNP. But back in 'the good old days'--1950, it was 87% of the GNP. I was born before 1950, and I haven't had to personally pay off any of the national debt yet!

"But...but.." the liberals fume, "think of the massive debt we are going to saddle our children with...its just not right to do that to our future generations! We should get rid of the national debt for the children...."

That statement sounds really dramatic--my goodness, we don't want to saddle our children and grandchildren with astronomical debt, do we--but it isn't a reality based statement.

The national debt of the United States isn't like yours or my mortgage. If we don't pay the mortgage on our house, the lender forecloses and we lose our house. But in the case of the national debt, fully 75% of the debt of the United States is internal. Half of it is one branch of government borrowing from either another branch of the federal government or from state and local government. Approximately 25% of the national debt is owed to--guess who--United States citizens and corporations. The bottom line is that 50% of the national debt number is 'funny money' meaning the government has borrowed from itself, and 25% is owed to people in the United States who are the very ones liberals vehemently argue have to pay the debt back.

Well, liberals argue, what about the Chinese, the Europeans, and all the other foreigners who lent the US governement the remaining 25% of the National Debt? If they call that debt in, our country would go down the tubes.

Well, no, thats not true, either.

You see, the Federal government doesn't borrow money and then not pay it back. The debt is issued in the form of financial instruments much like CDs that have maturity date. The government ALWAYS pays these instruments off on time, with interest. If anyone takes their government issued debt security and demands to be paid to day the government will tell them to take a hike and wait until the maturity date when they will get their money. The government just sells a security to someone else to pay off the securities that mature. Whatever foreign nations own part of the US National debt will get their money and they very well know it.

Now, in fairness, there are some things about deficits and the national debt that concern economists, but these things are not the silly talking points that liberals like to rant about and worry folks like the nice lady who wrote to our local newspaper.

There are lots of web sites and pundits breathing fire and brimstone about the evils of the US National debt. However, the reality of the national debt is that it has existed since shortly after the American revolution and will be there long after we are all dead and gone. In 200 years, no generation has gotten 'stuck' with the national debt, and our children are not going to either.

The liberal rhetoric over the national debt is full of sound and fury, but it signifies nothing.

The Chosen: Part 2

2007-07-28T08:57:00.001-07:00

My wife and I have noted in that the two felines mentioned previously who live inside our house sometimes manifest behaviors that we feel go a little bit beyond “the normal.” We have no idea that either of our kitty boys could duplicate Oscar the hospice cat’s newsworthy feats, but our boys have their moments.

When they choose to be, cats can be almost preternaturally quiet. Some people find the stealth capabilities of cats to disconcerting—even disturbing—as cats can move without a sound when they want to. They are, after all, accomplished predators, and it is hard to be an effective predator if you can’t stalk quietly. Our cats can—when they want to—leap up on a table top, the top of a dresser, or a window sill without so much as a sound, and they can depart the same way. Our cats, however, are sometimes quite noisy, as when they are romping through the house chasing each other. When they dash full tilt, as they frequently do, across the portion of our home that has wooden floors, they make a sound we refer to as “the thundering paws.”

In our experience, cats show that they “know things” that we don’t understand how they know. And not only do they know things, but they are glad to tell us about them, too.

Out in the country where we live, we have raccoons, skunks, possums, and other varmints in abundance on our mini-ranch. At twilight one recent evening, we spied a large boar raccoon clambering down the trunk of the largest tree on our property—an old blue oak—where we believe he has been living up high in a large knot hole.

The raccoons are pesky, and they frequently visit our front porch in the evening to rob our outdoor kitties (we have several outdoor cats, too) of the cat food we keep in a dish on the front porch for them. We have tried various tactics—keeping our porch brightly lit, enclosing the food dish in a three sided wire cage intended to intimidate the raccoons, dashing out of the front door yelling bloodthirsty yells to scare them off, and several unsuccessful attempts on my part to send them to raccoon heaven through the offices of my trusty .410 gauge.

So far, no raccoons have been injured in the making of this small essay, although no one could accuse me of failing to try. For their part, the raccoons know an easy mark when they see one.

It so happens that our now grown-up gray indoor tabby, McMurphy, (yes, he that I found abandoned in the parking lot by the railroad track) almost always alerts us when the raccoons come a-thieving on our front porch. We have outdoor kitties too; they live on our covered front porch and it is their job to keep the area around our house rid of mice, gophers, and other such that might serve as attractants for rattlesnakes.

One evening, Beth noticed that Mac, as we call him, had begun meowing in his throaty Siamese voice that he has the days for no apparent reason. He was pacing, and generally seemed agitated. Beth wondered what could be causing this; glancing out a window with a view of our front porch, the large furry, black-masked answer became obvious. A large raccoon—looking as big as a medium sized dog and quite visible in the light of the outdoor lamps that illuminate our front porch at night—stood on our front porch like he was owned the place, enjoying a free meal from our outdoor cat’s dish. With shouts calculated to curdle the blood of ring-tailed interlopers, Beth charged out the front door and sent Mr. Raccoon hauling butt into the night, but not before he ate half the cat food that was on the porch.

From this experience, Beth figured out that we don’t have to watch for the raccoon to come by; if we just listen to McMurphy, he will almost always tell us via a combination of feline vocalization and body language that we have a raccoon visitor. We have noted with some interest that he does not have to see outside the house to know the raccoon is there. Perhaps Mac can smell the raccoon—that is, after all the obvious answer—but in our house, we use an evaporative cooler. This pulls air into the house from its perch on the roof, and then pushes air out the windows and doors on the living level As a result, there is positive air pressure that would seem to preclude the scent of a raccoon on the front porch from entering the house. We aren’t sure how Mac knows when the raccoon is come to our front porch for his ill-gotten repast, but he does. And he tells us about it; all we have to do is listen to him, and he will tell us.

The Chosen: Part 1

2007-07-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

This story about Oscar the cat was all over the news media and the internet yesterday.

It seems that Oscar, a Providence, Rhode Island nursing home ‘hospice’ cat, has an uncanny ability to predict which elderly nursing home resident will die next. On twenty five different occasions, Oscar has curled up next to a patient who died in just a few hours. Apparently, this behavior on Oscar’s part attracted the attention of the nursing home staff because generally, Oscar—in typical cat fashion—is fairly aloof from the patients. He makes rounds, going from room to room checking on the patients, but does not normally curl up next to them. But every now and then, he jumps up on a patient’s bed and stays there. These are almost invariably very sick patients; Oscar stays with them until they have passed on. The staff says Oscar is better at figuring out which patients are about to die than they are.

It’s a little eerie on the one hand, but comforting on the other. The cat appears to be comforting the patients. Some of them have no relatives and Oscar becomes the one to see them through their final hours.

The news media reporting on this story make Oscar seem like a feline marvel. I don’t want to diminish Oscar in any way; his abilities are remarkable. But, as a cat owner who lives with two cats—and this is not to take anything away from Oscar—I was not surprised to read this story. In fact, my experience with kitties leads me to believe there are probably a lot more Oscars out there than we might think.

Before I had cats, I had had dogs, and considered myself a dog person. Dogs could be taken to obedience school, they could be trained to be seeing eye dogs, search and rescue dogs, or police dogs. Dogs love you, and look at you with big loving eyes, and slobber all over you. You have no doubt that your dog loves you, as dogs are exceedingly demonstrative. They show you they love you every day.

The stereotypical image of cats—at least the stereotype I had before I was ever owned by a cat—was that they are very aloof, selfish, unfriendly, essentially untrainable, and not really all that intelligent. Cat sees mouse; cat pounces, cat eats mouse. Cat sees bed, cat jumps up, lays down, get hair all over bedspread. Cat sees human; cat hides under the bed.

Cats; who needs ‘em? Dogs; they love people. It’s the old domesticated wolf around the campfire thing. Everyone knows that.

* * *

Back in 2004, I was chosen by my cats. I did not pick them; they chose me.

At the time I was rehearsing for a role in a play in our local community theatre. One hot summer evening just as the sun went down, I emerged from the building where our rehearsals took place and walked towards my car. As I drew near, I spied a tiny gray tabby kitten sitting there, just next to the driver’s-side door. He was no more than six weeks old, and looked as if he were way too young to have left his mother, who was nowhere in sight. He had large, luminous green eyes, and he was looking up at my face. A very raspy little meow emanated from his tiny throat. I reached down and picked him up. It didn’t register with me at the time, but I had been chosen.

Glancing to my left, I saw a trash dumpster at one end of the parking lot. There was a brief movement under the dumpster. A second kitten emerged; this one was a tiny little white kitty no bigger than the first. Asking her to hold it, I handed the little gray kitten to one of my fellow cast members who was walking next to me and went towards the white kitten. He too was exceedingly tiny, with silky pure white fur. His eyes weren’t as big as the other kitty, but they were also remarkable: a very pale, piercing, Peter O’Toole-ish blue. Neither kitten was more than two or three inches long from nose to tail. The tiny white kitten gazed up into my eyes, and I bent down to pick him up too. My mind noted that his eyes were just a wee bit crossed.

I had been chosen again.

There was a cardboard box by the dumpster with newspaper in the bottom of it. The box had obviously been used to transport these two baby kittens; they had obviously been abandoned by someone. The railroad track ran by no more than thirty feet or so from where I found them. A northbound freight train had gone by not more than five minutes before I walked out of the theatre. It was a miracle of sorts that these two little cats had not been run over by the train. Fortunately, they were safe.

The empty cardboard box stared back at me. If there were two little kittens, there were probably more. I conferred with my two fellow cast members—one of whom was holding the little gray tabby—who had walked out of the theatre with me. If there were two kittens, there were probably at least two more. We proceeded to search the parking lot area for more little kitties. We searched for several minutes and found none. Gritting my teeth, I handed off the little white kitten to the other of my companions and walked up and down the track, looking for little smashed bodies. I was relieved when I found one; just the usual trash here and there, but no little dead kitties. I was still worried about what might have happened to the other kittens in the litter, but since I could find no others, there was nothing else I could do.

I turned to my companions and asked them what we should do. They told me that neither of them had living situations that would permit them to take a kitten home. I did. There was no way—absolutely no way—that I could leave those kittens where I found them. I asked my companions if they would follow me home as I couldn’t drive and hold two small little squirmy kittens at the same time. They agreed to do so.

My wife, who has had many cats and loves cats dearly, was very gracious about the little foundlings I brought home. I explained why I brought the kittens home and how I really didn’t have any option but to do so, but she ‘shushed’ me and made me understand I didn’t need to explain. She would have done exactly the same thing.

My friends, wife and I visited for a few minutes about how people found homes for kittens in the local Walmart parking lot. There was discussion about how we could take these kittens there and probably find them a ‘permanent’ home in the next day or two. The friends departed, and leaving me and my wife alone with the kittens.

The kittens never have been closer to Walmart than driving by it in our car on the way to the vet. Those kittens already had a permanent home. Those two little feline faces with their big luminous green and blue eyes—so callously abandoned in a parking lot next to a railroad track—looking up at me are unforgettable images that I shall carry with me always. Those tiny little cats—not even mature enough then, it turned out, to even eat solid food—were saying to me—in a soundless but yet perfectly clear and almost audible voice—“Hey mister, we’ve been waiting for you to get here. You belong to us now. Would you please take us home now?”

I had been chosen.

* * *

(More to come on this topic in a future post...)

HBO's The Sopranos: I Already Miss It

2007-06-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday night, June 10, HBO will broadcast what they assure everyone is the finale episode in their hit—and almost historic—drama series, The Sopranos.

To call The Sopranos ground breaking is a total understatement. This show about an Italian-American “business and family” man from New Jersey is arguably the best dramatic series ever to grace either small or big screen TV’s. Quite a large number of us who have watched the show for some period of time have found ourselves totally addicted to the show, waiting—sometimes for over a year—for yet another season to begin. Those few of us who began watching the show when it premiered back in 1999 and have watched every single episode—heck, we own every single episode that HBO has released to day on DVD—are basically nuts over the show.

Beth and I have watched, been entranced by, and lets face it—have become emotionally attached to—a bunch of the most dysfunctional, sociopathic, criminal characters—that you could possibly imagine. Characters with literally no redeeming social characteristics whatsoever; characters who we would never dream of associating with in real life; characters that we would never want to live on our street or in out town. Indeed, a real life association with the likes of any of the characters populating the Sopranos would be our worst nightmare.

But that doesn’t keep us from being entertained by them—as long as they are safely confined to the small screen. These are characters with real human foibles: they lie, steal, cheat, murder, and emotionally abuse each other episode after episode. Mothers abuse their sons, fathers abuse wives, brothers and sisters abuse each other. They routinely use profanity and ethnic slurs that would make even Don Imus blanch. Members of the family love each other—and absolutely despise each other at the same time. Some have drug and alcohol problems and go into rehab and 12-step programs; it can be tough on their AA sponsors though. Sponsors may get a bullet through their brain if their sponsee just happens to say a little too much to them during a relapse.

One key character—Tony Soprano—has been in therapy since 1999; just last week he found his confidence and trust in his therapist has been badly misplaced, when his therapist badly abused their relationship and betrayed his trust.

Some family members get themselves in a jam and snitch to the FBI. Somehow, the FBI never gets enough evidence to indict, but the snitchers inexorably come to a bad end. Adultery is a way of life for the men in family; the headquarters of the family business is in a Jersey strip club called Bada Bing. The women—as Jimmy Carter immortalized back before he won the Nobel price—just commit adultery by lusting in their hearts (say their parish priest, for one.)

The Sopranos world is strictly heterosexual though; the one character with homosexual tendencies who actually does come out of the closet meets a very cruel end at the hands of homophobic business rivals, who as happenstance would have it, are related to him by marriage

And speaking of ends, on this show, characters get killed off. No character is safe—nobody—not even the longest running ones. Anybody can get killed off on this show. The Sopranos characters live lives that epitomize the old saying: “Life is nasty, brutish, and short—and then you die.”

So why on earth, you may ask, why would anybody voluntarily watch what would seem on the surface to be a show likely to be voted “most unpleasant”; a show with unpleasant stories where people do thoroughly unpleasant things to each other (sometime gusting up to cruel and almost unspeakable); a show whose characters feel no remorse for their bad acts, are rude, do dumb, stupid things, and often times speak in illiteracies laced with profanity; a show where even the good guys—the cops and the therapists—are once you scratch the surface--basically despicable and reprehensible.

Why would anybody watch this show?

Because it is, in a word, The Sopranos is totally, absolutely mesmerizing. It is in my humble opinion the most entertaining dramatic show that has ever been shown on television.

This is a show about family. It is about a nuclear family and extended family. Both the extended and nuclear have family values. Some of their values are the same values we all have; there is loyalty (of sorts,) there is affection, there are family traditions, family members attend church, they celebrate Christmas, they have family reunions and get-togethers. If somebody dies, everyone comes and pays their respects. On one level, the live like most of us do, except maybe their houses are a little bigger and they are more affluent and drive flashier cars.

But the fascinating part is that in the case of The Sopranos, these acceptable behaviors and values blend seamlessly right into the character’s ruthless, sociopathic criminal selves. Good when evidenced by one the Sopranos characters is simply the flip side of their inherent evil selves; they shape-shift from their good side to their dark side constantly, effortlessly. Sometimes when, they are doing good deeds, on another level, they are committing a crime. It’s a metaphorical parody of real life actually; by making this a drama about a Mafia family, the dark side of the characters stands in such stark contrast to the good.

The production values, the acting, the directing, the scripts have all come together over a period of years to deliver a riveting, entertaining, and thoroughly addicting television drama. The Soprano’s is what all the great dramatic shows of yesteryear wanted to be but could not because they were on TV paid for by least common denominator advertisers, whereas The Soprano’s are on TV paid for by subscribers who pay to watch HBO.

June 10, 2007 brings it all to a close. The Episode title is “Soprano’s 86: Final Episode - Made in America”. The HBO trailer for the episode offers to clues; unlike all previews in the past, none of the characters say anything in this one. The caption that flashes across the screen (in blood red) says simply “The Final Episode Ever: No More Hiding.” On HBO’s Web site there is a “spoiler” clip too, but it doesn’t actually spoil anything.

I have no predictions about the final episode. Will Tony Soprano survive? Will his wife Carmella and children Meadow and AJ? What will happen to arch-rival and would be murderer Phil Leotardo? Will Silvio Dante wake up from his coma or die? What will happen to Paulie Walnuts?

I fancy myself as an expert on the Soprano’s as I have seen every episode for number 1 through number 85. Beth and I own every DVD that HBO has released. However, I know that actually I’m not really an expert at all; the only real ‘expert’ here is David Chase, the series creator. I know how I might try to write the ending for the show, but it would be my ending, not David Chase’s. This is Chase’s show, it’s his vision, and its characters he created and brought to the screen. Chase has kept us fans of this weird little show enthralled for years. However he has decided The Soprano’s will end will likely to bring us fans some fleeting sense of closure –“I expected that to happen”—but also leave us up in the air wondering what will happen next in Episode 87—except there isn’t going to be an Episode 87.

For my part, I’m ready to have a big plateful of whatever finale Chase is dishing out. I have enjoyed every single one of the 85 episodes I have watched; Chase has done a truly magnificent job with this show.

As for the cast, they are truly a ‘dream team’ of actors who were all perfectly suited for their roles: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Lorraine Braco, Micheal Imperioli, Dominic Chianes, Steve Van Zandt, Tony Sirico, Jaime Lynn-Sigler, Robert Iler, Drea Di Matteo, Steven Schrippa, Aida Turturro, John Ventimiglia, Vince Curatola, Steve Buscemi, Robert Loggia, Frank Vincent, Joe Pantoliano, Frederico Castelluccio, Vincent Pastore, David Proval, Katherine Narducci, Maureen Van Zandt, Sharon Angela, Jerry Adler, Nancy Marchand, Annabella Sciorra, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Funaro, Dan Grimaldi, Joseph Gannascoli, Max Casella, Tony Lip, Ray Abruzzo, Carl Capotorto, and Cara Buono. Hal Holbrook and Sidney Pollack did cameo roles, too.

Thanks to all of you wonderful cast members who have brought me so much great entertainment and thank you to series creator David Chase, the writers, directors, producers, and crew members of what I consider the most entertaining television show of all time.

You are all show people in the finest sense, and you are going to leave me right where you want me: wanting more.

The Essence of True Conservatism

2007-04-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Henry David Thoreau said famously in his essay “Civil Disobedience” that “The government is best which governs least.”

True conservatives—conservatives who are conservative down to the very core of their being—believe what Thoreau said. True conservatives never want more government for any reason. Where government is absolutely essential, it should be as minimal as possible. Less government is always better than more government. Why?

Because, when you get right down to it, government intrudes on people. Government and laws by their very nature force people to do things they don’t necessarily want to do and prevents them from doing things that they otherwise might want—or need—to do.

True conservatives realize, grudgingly, that a little government is actually necessary. We need to be able to defend our country and preserve our freedoms. We need to be able stop—or at least catch and punish—criminals so they cannot prey on us. We need to have a system that arbitrate and settle disputes that arise among us. Those things and things like them are necessary to maintain a functioning society. The constitution written by our founding fathers dealt with the fundamental issues government should address, and is mercifully brief. After all, it does not take many pages to enumerate and discuss the things that government truly should be doing.

Later on the founding fathers revisited the constitution, and amended it with what we call the bill of rights. That was because the founders were afraid that even the constitution as they had framed it might have been too much government for the good of the people, and they wanted to correct any errors they might have made in the original framing.

There are fewer true conservatives around today than in the past. Conservatives as characterized by the press, the media, and the Democratic Party are generally not true conservatives. A true conservative is so convinced of the truth of Thoreau’s statement that the least government is the best, that he or she would never use the government to inflict their own personal moral agenda on other citizens just because they were part of an elected majority and had the power to do so.

In Republican Party, there are today far too few true conservatives. There are many so-called conservatives who may have conservative positions on certain issues, or who may be labeled 'conservative' by the media, but are not actually true conservatives. How do we know this?

Because, when given a chance, they will ignore Thoreau’s principle of good government and pass laws that force people to conform to their own personal and so called moral principles. They will use their elected office to pass laws that take away freedoms that there is no reason to take away or restrain in any way, other than for the sake of these legislator’s personal ‘moral’ agendas.

Here’s the latest case in point.

In Florida, the Republican dominated House just passed a bill—HB 1497—that will require that a woman seeking an abortion to wait 24 hours before going through with it, and would require that in many circumstances that she view an ultrasound image of the fetus prior to the procedure. This bill passed 71-42, which is basically the Republican majority in the House. (It is still pending in the Florida Senate). The provision just mentioned got “tacked on” to another abortion bill which supposedly will ‘help’ judges who are deciding cases involving a minor seeking an abortion without notifying her parents.

The Republicans in the Florida House offered rationalizations as to why a waiting period and viewing an ultrasound in vitro image will be a good law. Generally, the arguments equated their newly passed abortion law with other laws already in existence that require waiting periods, such as buying a gun, joining a health club, or even carrying out the death penalty.

One Republican House Member, Rep Kevin Ambler said, “It doesn't do anything to take away women's right to choose. What it does do is put in place a thoughtful and deliberative process to think it through.''

There is not a single true conservative among the 71 Republicans who voted for this bill. There is no reason for any such law as this to be passed other than to force people to conform to the moral code of the Republicans. A true conservative will and should be outraged and horrified by this bill, and will realize that by its passage, these so called conservative Republicans have given conservatism yet ill deserved another black eye.

This bill is a blatant attempt to force what are inherently religious beliefs of those in power on those who are powerless to stop them. These same Republicans will argue until hell freezes over that the 2nd Amendment gives individuals an inalienable right to own guns and will rail—in my view properly--against those trying to chip away at and erode those rights. But in this case, they have no compunction about trying to chip away at the rights of women to choose what happens to their bodies.

This bill passed by the Florida House is an attempt to take away the right to choose that women obtained over 30 years ago. The Republicans in Florida may be trying to minimize and make seem innocuous in their public statements what their agenda really is, but no one should be deceived about their true intentions.

Democrats at least are upfront about. They make no secret about their intent to take away peoples rights (and tax away as much of their money as possible) in order to force their agenda of so called ‘social justice’, environmental justice, and nanny-ism, all the while transferring as much power and wealth to themselves and their cronies as possible.

These Florida Republicans--and too many of their brethern in other states--pretend to be conservatives, but are all to willing to abridge what should be inalienable rights of others in order to further their narrow moralistic agenda. How many of these same Republicans do you legislate the teaching of ‘Creation Science” in schools?

Those of us who believe in Thoreau’s principal that the best government is the least government today find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma, as there is not political Party willing to follow the philosophical path of true conservatism as defined in Thoreau’s very simple declaration.

Women, however, are in a bit different situation. The right of a woman to choose what happens with her very body has been recently trodden upon by the Supreme Court and now yet again at the state level, with this law in Florida.

Once upon a time not so long ago in this country, there was slavery, and after slavery was abolished, segregation and discrimination remained and had the force of law in many parts of our country for several years. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. related that he read Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience, and that it influenced his thinking—and the history of this country—considerably.

If women want to continue to have the right to choose what happens with their own body, they would be well advised to read Thoreau’s essay too, and make their voices very clearly and forcefully heard.

Do not accept these attempts to erode and chip away what should be your inalienable rights. True conservatives will support you.

More on The Secret

2007-04-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Recently, I saw a piece here entitled “Oprah’s Secret Could Be Your Downfall” by a lady named Courtney Martin. Ms. Martin has some rather negative things to say about The Secret. Here are a couple of key excerpts:

This:

“But idealism is not all the fast-talking "experts" behind The Secret are dishing out. They are also articulating a dangerous message about conspicuous consumption and distracting people from crippling systemic problems.”

And this:

“I cringe when I think about copies of both the DVD and books flying off the shelves and into debt-ridden, exhausted, and hopeless folks' hands. It is not just the exploitation of their dissatisfaction with their lives that offends me, but the distraction that promoters of The Secret are creating from the very real, systemic issues undergirding poverty.”

And this:

“The book boldly and ignorantly states, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts." Tell that to the 36 million Americans living in poverty. Even worse, tell that to the 3 billion people worldwide who live on less that $2 a day.”

You can read all of Ms. Martin’s piece here.

When I read the “Little Red Book” that I mention in my previous post on The Secret, I too reacted to what I perceived as a materialistic slant at first. But upon rereading, I realized the author wasn’t advocating materialism. He was advocating a specific approach to help people get what they want: first visualizing specifically and concretely what we want and/or need, and second, making ourselves truly open to taking concrete steps to obtain those things.

His point was very simply that when we take these steps, we permit—indeed we attract (this is the essence of the Law of Attraction)—things to come into our lives that can help us achieve our wish.

It is very true that we cannot ‘wish upon a star’ and make all our materialistic dreams come true. But the ‘law of attraction’ as described in The Secret or The Little Red Book doesn’t say that we merely have to wish to achieve. The law of attraction requires that we visualize and then that we make ourselves open to achieving the things we want and willing to take steps to get them.

Many people and liberal politicians have taken—still do take—the position that people who live in poverty are essentially victims. Back in the 1960’s, when Lyndon Johnson was President, he declared ‘war’ on poverty. Since then, all manner of politicians have passed social program legislation aimed at reducing poverty. And yet, in 2007, by Ms Martin’s statistics, there are still 36 million impoverished Americans.

This leads me to conclude that attempts by politicians to eradicate poverty using big governmentally founded social programs and welfare does not work very well. There are many people who have risen above poverty to become successful. Some of them may have been aided by a social program, but in each case it was their own fortitude and vision and proactivity that carried the day.

In America and many other places, it is not politically correct to suggest that people in poverty may be there because of their own inaction or their own choices. Politically, it is much more expedient—meaning it garners a lot more votes—to suggest that poor people are poor because they have been victimized.

This is not to say that there is no place for governmental social programs that assist people in need. There are good programs that help people and I am not being critical of these.

That said, looking at poverty as a victim construct is not very helpful in getting people out of poverty. The ‘system’ will never get an individual out of poverty; only the individuals who live in poverty can get themselves out of it.

There is an old, old saying that if you want to help a poor person, you don’t give them free fish to eat, you teach them to catch fish for themselves. The Secret is just that—it is and should be part and parcel of helping people learn to fish for themselves. The Secret starts by recognizing the power of a dream to move us beyond our current reality. People first have to imagine, then they have to believe, and finally they have to act.

There is power in dreams. Remember Martin Luther King’s most famous words: “I had a dream!”

Because We Exist

2007-03-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

In his book, A Brief History of Time, Professor Stephen Hawking said, "We see the universe the way it is because we exist." Stephen Hawking is a very smart man. It has been said that he is the greatest mind in physics since Albert Einstein. Born in 1942, the 300^th anniversary of Galileo’s death, Hawking is—without a doubt—in the same intellectual league as Einstein, Isaac Newton, Copernicus, and Galileo himself.

Growing up in England as the son of physician father and a political activist mother, he distinguished himself intellectually at an early age. In 1958, Hawking—along with some friends—built a computer that actually worked. To put this in perspective, at that time, all computers then existing were computers were huge vacuum tube affairs that were almost non-existent outside of governments and a few universities.

Later on, Hawking went to Oxford, graduating with honors in 1962 and moving on to Cambridge to take a PhD in Cosmology. He had an interest in black holes in space, which at the time were only a theory postulated by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Stephen Hawking has gone on to make discoveries that advanced man’s knowledge of the cosmos, and was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1979, a post first held by Sir Isaac Newton. In 1988, he wrote a book, “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes” that put his understandings of the origin and workings of the cosmos into laypersons terms. The book was a best seller.

A towering intellect of our time, Professor Hawking is also a striking figure physically, as he is a wizened figure afflicted by ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—disease that confines him to a wheel chair and permits him to speak only through a computerized voice synthesizer. Nonetheless, he is very active and is widely traveled, as his own website describes.

What is Professor Hawking up to these days? Accompanied by medical assistance, he is scheduled to take a zero gravity airplane ride on April 26, 2007 out of Cape Canaveral. Zero gravity rides—humorously called vomit comets due to the effects on the riders they often induce—have been used for many years to acclimate astronauts to weightlessness. Professor Hawking will take his zero-G ride on a specially fitted 727 aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corporation. Hawking says that in addition to this ride, he wishes to fly on Richard Branson’s ‘space plane’ currently being privately developed, which is planned to take paying passengers on suborbital flights to an altitude of 70 miles up in 2009.

According to this science article in the New York Times, Professor Hawking says that “I’m not worried about the zero gravity section, but the high-G part will be difficult.”

For a man totally paralyzed by ALS and confined to a wheel chair for many, many years, the high-G part will no doubt be very, very difficult.

Why would Professor Stephen Hawking, put himself through this. The same Times article quotes Hawking as saying via e-mail that “I also want to show that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.”

Speaking last year, Professor Hawking said “I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space…There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet." He worries about accidental nuclear war, the possibility of mass extinctions of humanity from the release—accidental or otherwise—of a genetically engineered virus, or the consequences of climate change.

Professor Hawking, who has a new book coming out entitled “The Universe in a Nutshell” has been criticized for saying such things by some other scientists—see this BBC article—but it impresses me greatly that he is willing to put his sixty five year old ALS wracked body where his voice synthesizer is: in a zero-G, vomit comet flight that has undoubtedly got to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences he could subject himself to.

Stephen Hawking may very well be the smartest man on earth at this moment in our history. If he believes the survival of our species depends on our ability to get some portion of our population—as opposed to a tiny cadre of highly trained astronauts--into space, I for one take him quite seriously.

My applause to Professor Hawking for taking a serious personal risk to publicize something he believes in. I will be with him on the ‘vomit comet’ in spirit, and if I could afford it, I would go with him on Branson’s plane in 2009.

The Secret

2007-02-08T21:10:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, a friend of ours gave my wife and I a copy of a book—actually a booklet only twenty-eight pages long—entitled “It Works.” On the cover, the diminutive publication referred to itself as “the Little Red Book” that “makes your dreams come true!” By the way, to avoid any confusion, you should be aware that the term “Little Red Book” has been used to refer to several little books totally unrelated to this one. Perhaps the most famous—or infamous—was a little red book of sayings by the Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Tse Tung. I want you to know that my Little Red Book has nothing to do with Chairman Mao—zero, nada, nothing!

Getting back to the “Little Red Book” I read, my reaction at first picking up was skeptical. It didn’t look substantial enough to be a real book; it measures a pocket sized four by six inches, most resembling some pamphlet one that one might bring home from church or the YMCA.

However, opening it, the booklet looked interesting. An intriguing statement appeared on the frontispiece that read as follows: “If you KNOW what you WANT you can HAVE IT.” On the same page the booklet self described as “A concise, definite, resultful plan with rules, explanations, and suggestions for bettering your condition of life.”

We both read the book; it can be read in fifteen minutes or less depending on how fast one reads. I will not quote it here other than as follows (from page 8): “If you are one of these millions of thoughtless talkers or wishers and would like a decided change from your present condition, you can have it; but first, you must know what you want and this is no easy task.” I can personally vouch for the fact that the ideas and plan presented in the twenty eight changes to be exceedingly powerful and life changing. Just as its title claims, “It Works.” Indeed, were it not for “the Little Red Book,” I doubt very much that my wife and I would have the enjoyable and happy life that I have now.

* * *

This afternoon, my wife prevailed on me to sit down with her and watch Oprah. I don’t normally watch that program—it’s a little too ‘touchy feely’ for me—although my wife enjoys it a great deal and watches whenever her schedule permits.

Today, however, Oprah’s program was one that we both wanted to see. It was about a DVD that is out entitled “The Secret”. The DVD, and Oprah’s website, claim that "The Secret"can change a person’s life, allowing one to make money, meet the love of ones life, get out of debt, and even lose weight.

The Secret was inspired by a 1910 book entitled “The Science of Getting Rich” by one Wallace Wattles. Rhonda Bryne, an Australian, appeared on the program and claimed that after her life had fallen apart, in late 2004 she read the Wattles book and it changed her so much that "Something inside of me had me turn the pages one by one, and I can still remember my tears hitting the pages as I was reading it," Rhonda says. "It gave me a glimpse of The Secret. It was like a flame inside of my heart. And with every day since, it's just become a raging fire of wanting to share all of this with the world."

Rhonda went on to say that after reading the Wattles book, she “read listened to hundreds of hours of audio tapes and scoured the Internet for more information.” “The Secret”, she explained is based on “the principle of attraction” which is embodied in the statement “like attracts like”. Rhonda said that we “attract into our lives the things we want, that is based on what we're thinking and feeling," and that consciously recognizing and exploiting this principle to our advantage.

A panel of “experts” appeared on the show with Rhonda: Dr. Michael Beckwith, James Arthur Ray, Lisa Nichols and Jack Canfield. Each of these people had a back story of adverse circumstances that they had overcome by using “the Secret”; now they have affiliated with Rhonda and appear in the DVD. There were also several other guests who had various problems—indebtedness, obesity, and marriage troubles. One couple—the ones with the marriage troubles—claimed to have been greatly helped by the DVD.

Tonight, at dinner, my wife asked me what I thought about the program. I imagine I startled her somewhat, as I wasn’t particularly positive. The ideas presented on Oprah squared up very well with our beloved ‘Little Red Book”, but I was impressed with how something so succinct as this tiny booklet could say so much in so little space.

But Oprah’s show was another matter. The subject consumed her entire hour. Oprah made the statement several times that she had always known ‘the secret’, even before the guests had spoken, and I found her—as I often do--to be tiresome and trite. Also, while Rhonda seemed real enough, the so-called ‘experts’ on the show were a tad too slick, polished, and glib to suit me, and the program seemed to me to be a form of “info-mercial” for the $39.95 DVD which can be had for $29.95 from their website www.thesecret.tv . The website also offers a $4.95 pay per view option, if you prefer not to buy the DVD. I get the feeling that all these people are hoping to improve their personal conditions greatly thru sales of the DVD, pay per views, and probably some derivative products.

Frankly, the ideas in the Secret and the Little Red Book are so simple—so straightforward and easy to understand and implement—that the idea of a panel of self help “experts” teaching it and all the hundreds hours that Rhonda claimed she spent researching “The Secret” seems akin to using a steam shovel to plant a geranium. Sorry, but I am a cynic, I suppose.

That said, the ideas presented in the Little Red Book “It Works’ and the DVD “The Secret—properly applied with the correct attitude—do get results, and truly can change lives in a positive way. So, by all means, buy the DVD if you like. But if you want the ‘real deal’ for a lot less, you can get it for $3.00 at Amazon. Just click this link to find it.

Somehow, knowing my lovely dear bride, I have a feeling we may be owning the DVD as well.

Afterwards, They Broke The Mold

2007-02-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Molly Ivins was a widely syndicated political columnist for many years died earlier this week after losing a long term battle with breast cancer.

I have read Molly’s columns for years. Many times, I had to force myself to read them, because that woman would say things that would make me mad enough to bite a ten penny nail in two. Even so, I kept on reading her columns from time to time, not because I agreed with her (oh, God no!!!) , but because that woman's pen served up the finest, most acerbic, caustic , rude, irascible, sarcastic, peevish, and unkind commentary about George W. Bush and the Republican party that I have ever read. There are lots far lesser talents who from their left wing commie pinko websites rave and rant about the President, the war, the Republicans, etc, but none of them could hold a candle to Molly. Molly was to biting political commentary about Bush as Howard Hughes was to airplanes--they just don't get much more colorful.

Molly Ivins described humor to People Magazine, saying “There are two kinds of humor. One makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That's what I do.”

Molly spent the last years of her life firing one verbal fusillade after another at Republicans in general and holding George W. Bush in particular up to public contempt and ridicule. With Molly however, it was not for entertainment; you could tell that she believed in what she wrote about, and she didn't give a tinker's damn whether you agreed with her. She had a most unique and colorful way of saying what she thought.

It was Molly that first used the noun ‘Shrub’ as a humorous but very barbed euphemism for the name Bush. As nearly as I can tell, she also was the originator of the name “Dubya.” She was nothing if not colorful and creative in her writing. According to Wikipedia, when Molly worked for the New York Times, she got a little too colorful. She worked for them from 197x to 1982, when as bureau chief for the Rocky Mountain section, she was fired for writing in a piece about a “community chicken plucking contest”, referring to it as a “gang-pluck”. After she left, she wrote that the New York Times “is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.”

She didn’t like Texas much either, and according to Wikipedia, described Dallas as “that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David.” In an article on the site “FreePress.org”, there is the following quote about Molly Ivins: “She speaks both French and Spanish, loves to camp, canoe and run rivers and is a semi-famous storyteller and beer-drinker.

She is author of two best-selling books, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? and Nothin' But Good Times Ahead, both collections of essays on politics and journalism. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times and was the winner of the 1992 Headliners Award for best column in Texas.

However, Ivins counts as her two greatest honors that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M.”

My hat is off to the lady political columnist that I loved to hate. Molly, I will—reluctantly and not without some irritation at myself—miss you and your way with words. And, I hate hypocracy and political correctness--two words that no one would ever associate with your name.

Would That It Were So

2007-01-18T19:14:00.000-08:00

My wife and I had lunch yesterday at one or our town’s nicer restaurants with a friend of ours. While we were eating, a lady walked by who is very involved in our local Republican party, and there was some momentary lighthearted banter between our friend and this Republican lady about Obama running for President.

I suppose I realized before this happened that our friend has political persuasions different from mine, but I really had not though anything of it prior to this occasion. I think she is closer to my wife’s views—of the liberal persuasion--than to mine. But the exchange between her and the Republican lady walking by opened up the topic of politics. Our friend told me that she reads both my wife’s blog--called Old Musings that is not political at all—and my blog, too. This was gratifying, as I must confess that sometimes when I look at the relatively few hits I get on Cat-e-Whompus, I do sometimes wonder if it is worth the work I put into it.

At any rate, this comment by our friend led our conversation into a discussion of each of our opinions about the War on Terror, Iraq, the President, Congress, and so forth. While our friend and I probably ‘agree to disagree’ on some, I found her remarkably open and willing to at least listen to my view’s, and I tried give her the same courtesy. Unlike the talking heads on TV who scream at each other, we had a very quiet, polite discussion. When lunch was over, we had expressed our differing viewpoints, but we were still friends. Nobody got upset, there was no yelling and screaming, and nobody called anybody any bad names. We had merely had a friendly, civilized exchange of views.

Interestingly—but not surprisingly given all of our respective personalities—it was immediately apparent that while we have differing and perhaps even opposing views, we were able to easily find common ground as well. For instance, we differed on the necessity for the war in Iraq. I believe the war was necessary and justified, but she felt the US should have concentrated on terrorists in Afghanistan and other places rather than toppling Saddam. But, we were able to find common ground in that we are both very uncomfortable with how the war in Iraq has been run by the government, and that we are concerned about American soldiers going into harms way with the inept management they have been subjected to. And we were able to agree that we both like how California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working from the center—which he now seems to be doing with some success—to try to accomplish things by achieving consensus and compromise rather than polarizing the legislature.

My wife and I have long adapted to the fact that we have very differing opinions politically. We are not as different as Mary Matalin and James Carville—sometimes it seems close—but we respect each other and our right to look at things differently. Our friend has the same paradigm about differing viewpoints that my wife and I do—just because we see things differently, we don’t have to shout or name call, and we can discuss things still get along with and respect each other afterwards.

Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of political discourse in this country and in the world that operates on the paradigm of people advancing their ideas via ‘debate’ that consists saying anything regardless of how stupid or outrageous it might be that supports their point of view. This is certainly true in the national media and the blogosphere., and it is true of many visible people in both political parties. Even our local newspaper--which I happen to think is a pretty good small town newspaper--has its share of over-the-top letters to the editor and op/ed ‘guest columns’ that are just full of this kind of thing.

It is troubling that political life doesn’t attract more honorable men and women than it does. The sad fact is that many—not all, I hope, perhaps too optimistically---politicians deserve many if not most the bad things that are said and written about them. I am OK with someone blasting a politician as long as they have more than just hot air and rhetoric. Years ago on “Dragnet” Sergeant Joe Friday used to say: “Just the facts, ma’am”.

I cannot help but think that if we could--as a nation--get back to more civil discourse, if our national news media could get back to being relatively objective and stop trying to advance their political agenda; if people on talk radio would deal primarily in facts rather than rabble rousing; if people holding political office would start being genuinely concerned with what the overall good of the country rather than saying anything regardless of how preposterous to try to get themselves or their party elected; if we could discuss and discourse respectfully and civilly as a nation just as my wife, our friend, and I did at lunch--how marvelous that would be!

These thoughts are so wishful and utopian I imagine my readers will be chuckling to themselves at my expense about my naiveté. How silly of me. Oh, well. We can have lunch with our friend again.

Jack Is Back

2007-01-16T16:06:00.000-08:00

At our house, we spent the last two evenings--Sunday and Monday--watching the long awaited season opener of '24' (Fox Mondays 8pm central/9 eastern). For us, '24' is almost too addictive; it's a kind of crack cocaine that you watch rather than snort or shoot up.

If you have been on Mars or have been locked up making love not war in some a rural commune somewhere, read no further. You are not going to have a clue what I am talking about. This post assumes that you have watched the TV series '24' at least once or twice. Heck, we know people who go so far as to skip their Monday night bowling league to stay home and watch '24' season openers--we refuse to give up the names of the guilty parties, however. You know--don't ask, don't tell.

Over the last two to three days, I have read about '24' on several websites and blogs. Generally, the people who I have seen write about the show are panning it. Mostly, I think they pan it because they think they sound erudite and cool when they criticize it, but not because there is anything inherently wrong with the show. It is true that 24 does have more plot twists than Bayer Aspirin has pills. Sometimes, the plot twists are a little bit 'out there', such as when Jack-- tied and handcuffed helplessly in a chair while terrorists torture him--uses his teeth to rip out the throat of a hapless bad guy Hannibal Lecter style, steals the keys to his own handcuffs, and escapes.

There are a few other small flaws in the show as well. For one thing, there is an incredible amount of time in each program taken up people dramatically answering the phone.

"Mr President, Jack Bauer is on line 1." "Alright, put him through."

"Mr. Buchanan, its Jack Bauer with a priority 3 call for you."

"Jack, its the President on my cell phone. He wants to talk to you."

"Mr. Buchanan, its the President on line 1. He wants to know what the hell you are doing to capture Jack Bauer."

Jack's cell phone is loud too, and has a particularly obnoxious ring.

And yes--this is one of my wife's personal favorites pet peeves with the show, and she loves it just as much as I do--Jack Bauer always, always, always finds a place to park, no matter which densely populated part of Los Angeles he is in or what time of day it is. My personal peeve was more that everybody, and I mean everybody, drove a Ford--until this season that is.

By the way, the terrorists seem to mostly strike in the LA area on the show. Well, sometimes they strike other places, but Jack is always pursuing the main bad guys in LA. Oh, the President of the moment always seems to be in LA when the action strikes.

During some of the episodes, Jack's 'da man'. The President, CTU, the Pentagon, the entire free world wait with bated breath for Jack to call the President from his cell to report that the bad guys have all been killed or captured and the free world is safe once more---at least until next season. But every now and again, Jack gets himself in the doghouse--and then the White House, CTU, Homeland Security, the Pentagon, and the entire government establishment suddenly want to arrest and imprison or kill Jack faster than Teddy Kennedy wants to impeach Dubya.

Every season so far--until the one that just started; it's still too early to tell if the writers will use this particular plot device this season--the scripts have Jack switching back and forth between being the hero of the piece and being labeled and hunted as a bad guy himself by his own government.

In spite of the somewhat less than real world dramatic license that the scriptwriters take, '24' is very entertaining and as I said very, very addictive. Part of the reason is that there is just enough real world stuff injected into the script to successfully give us viewers a basis to suspend our belief for the bits that are outlandish. For example, this is the second season where Islamic radicals have been the bad guys who are smart, well educated, cold, calculating, and speak English well, who intend to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction to kill the largest number of Americans that they can manage. This characterization may not please C.A.I.R. (Council on American-Islamic Relations) very much, but it is real world.

Also, while Jack ostensibly works for CTU, the government's Counter Terrorist Unit, on the show, he is often forced to go 'off the reservation' and work independently and usually illegally because his government employers at high levels are making bad decisions. Sometimes his higherups are traitorous, but often they are motivated by overzealous security concerns, petty ego, and blatant disregard for the public good. Again, this is also real world.

But the thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that no matter how bad the situation looks, and no matter how many ancillary characters get killed off on '24'--some simply disappear from the show with no explanation--by the end of the season, I know that Jack--without approval of the bureacracy above him and without worries on his part about terrorist's presumed rights to due process, political correctness, or what the talking heads on CNN or the editors at the New York Times might say about his actions--is going to knee cap one of the bad guys, or maybe use some other creative method of inflicting severe pain on the hapless terrorist. I am sure Jack's methods would be frowned on by the 'human rights organizations and the UN, but they do very quickly force the bad guy to spill his guts and give up a big clue. Bear in mind that Jack sees his job in a very straightforward way--he is supposed to save America from really nasty bad guys. When thousands--perhaps millions--of lives are at stake, Jack doesn't shrink from getting the job done using whatever methods the situation calls for.

Heretofore, there haven't been any lawyers that I recall on the show--if there were, Jack would probably have to kill them off. Full disclosure: I have NO inside information about what happens in future episodes to this seaon's character--the President's sister--who happens to be a lawyer. But if her zeal to uphold certain people's constitutional rights, continues, she is apt to end up aiding the terrorists and that will get her on Jack's bad side, big time.

Once the big clue has been extracted from the bad guy--or gal--by Jack, Chloe O'Brien (the '24' scriptwriters had BETTER NOT kill Chloe off this show--she's smart, cute, and has the greatest skeptical, doubting, expression on her face whenever one of her bosses gives her another stupid order) is going to position NSA satellites--totally against the orders of her withless bureaucrat higher ups and without a FISA warrant--and zoom in closeup on the big villains as they try to get away. She will give Jack the satellite coordinates of the bad guys location, as well as the decoded secret message on a baddie's hard drive that CTU has decrypted, and he will then track down and kill off the bad guys in appropriately bloody fashion. Thus at the end of season finale, a few of the bad guys probably had their civil right violated a little, but the free world will be safe again--at least until next season.

'24' is entertaining escapism at its best. It requires total suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer, and as entertainment it works great for me.

I only wish wish we had Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien to defend us from our real world enemies both at home and abroad. Unfortunately, we don't.

Update (Thursday, January 18): the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)--mentioned in this post--actually has got their panties in rather a large wad over '24's' depiction of the terrorist villians as Islamic radicals. Read all about it in this Little Green Footballs post.

Denial Is Not a River In Egypt

2006-12-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

Just over five years ago, our country was attacked on 9/11 by Islamic radicals and over three thousand of our citizens who were merely going about their work-a-day lives like they did every day perished. Like millions of others, I woke up that day to watch on television as then unknown persons committed an act of war against the United States.

In the days following, I have never in my fifty-nine years seen the citizens of our country so united. I worked at the time for a large software company in the San Francisco Bay area. I can recall walking through the offices on 9/12, and everywhere, on virtually every office and every cubicle there was a small American flag. Not a few of those small flags stayed up in those offices for months, and some stayed up for years afterwards.

On the third or the fourth day, well over five thousand employees all trooped outside onto the corporate campus in bright sunshine, stood shoulder to shoulder and two to four deep on the walkway around the campus, and almost every person had in their hand an American flag. I have never seen that many American flags in one place before or since, and frankly, given the horrific event it took to instigate this display, I hope I never see that many in one place again.

I remember feeling—probably naively so in hindsight—that in standing there, we were a microcosm of the entire country. That day the entire workforce of our company—and those workers who were not US citizens at least equaled if not outnumbered those of us who were American born—were all completely and totally united in our shock, dismay, grief, and compassion for those who had been killed. To many of us standing shoulder to, the loss of life on 9/11 was personal, as we lost friends and co-workers in the attack. Even though our headquarters were in California, some of our employees died in the Trade Centers and on United Flight 93. I was hardly alone that day in realizing that the terrorists who murdered some of my colleagues that day would have just as happily murdered me or my family members.

It was a sobering thought, and one that ran through my mind as I stood in the bright September sunlight under a silent blue sky—all air traffic into SFO except military flights had been shut down in the wake of the attacks—I felt sad and proud and awed to see the outpouring of support and patriotism that our employees displayed that day. It was a moment that can never be forgotten.

Since that day, I have seen our country has responded to 9/11, and has attempted to stave off others. There has never in my mind been any doubt that those who dealt us such a heavy blow on 9/11 were not finished with us, and would attempt to come against us another day.

Unfortunately, the feeling of solidarity and unification that many of us felt in the days and months after 9/11 has all but evaporated. Today, five years later, our country has so far avoided any further 9/11’s. We have carried the war that Islamic radical brought to our shores back to their homelands, and have deposed the Taliban, driven Osama bin Laden underground, killed dozens of so called ‘senior’ Al Qaeda leaders and thousands of their ‘soldiers’.

We have removed Saddam—the butcher of Baghdad—who murdered his Iraqi subjects by the hundreds of thousands, who constantly threatened our country, who funded and fomented terrorism all over the middle east, who harbored terrorists like Abu Nidal who were know to have murdered US citizens, who attacked our military personnel as they sought to monitor and enforce his compliance UN resolutions, who attempted to have a US President assassinated, who stubbornly clung to his ambitions of becoming a nuclear power if not the actual machinery and materiel of bomb making. By removing this malignant dictator—who sought fervently to do us harm—from power, the United States should be more secure, and I believe is in fact is more as a result.

Except that we are evidently not. As a country, many, many of my fellow citizens do not feel safer and would totally disagree with my two preceding paragraphs. The majority of our citizens appear now to believe that we are in more danger as a result of these actions than if we had not taken them. Our media has unstintingly painted the Iraq war as a failure, the Afghanistan war as a failure, our efforts to track terrorists financially and through their phone calls to sleeper cells in the US as a failure of our civil rights. We have been told that Iraq has become a ‘breeding ground for terrorists’. We are told that our allies now despise us, that anti-Americanism is rampant throughout the world I could go on.

The upshot is that 9/11 and our reaction as a country to it has had the effect of make us as a nation more afraid and feeling less secure. As a result, our overall political discourse, never a high point of the American experience, has descended, since 9/11, to new lows.

The word “denial”—a term popularized in twelve step programs and literature—has now been politicized. We have holocaust deniers and—in my view equally despicable—9/11 deniers. The Republicans were ‘in denial’ about their election prospects and Bush is in a ‘State of Denial’ according to Bob Woodward.

It has become commonplace to see letters to the editor and blog posts bitterly and seriously comparing Bush to Hitler, blaming our problems on Bush, or Halliburton, or the religious right, or on Israel or the Zionist lobby, or whatever. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that there is an external enemy who daily is advancing plots to attack us, in favor of the nonsensical view—at least it is nonsensical to me—that the real enemies are right here at home.

One author who I have recently read has addressed this phenom very directly is Mary T. Eberstadt is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a consulting editor to their “Policy Review” publication. Her piece that appears on Real Clear Politics is entitled ‘The Scapegoats among Us.” Here are some key paragraphs (I highly recommend reading the whole thing):

"Political particulars aside, the ubiquity of that word "denial" is worth pausing over. It connotes that we live in an era of unreality, perhaps even surreality, in which what is said in public is at odds with what is true -- a shortfall invoked now more or less constantly as a feature of political discussion. And so to the obvious question: Why do so many Americans apparently share the sense that we are all being misled, one way and another, about political reality -- and not only about reality in Iraq, but about politics more generally?

I believe the answer to that question is the obvious one: because in some deep sense, it is true. This is not meant to affirm that every current charge of "denial" now circulating is a valid one. It's rather to suggest that the sheer volume of such charges reflects a deeper, underlying truth about the untethering of some current political ideas from firm reality. This is the deeper territory that the ubiquity of that term "denial" invites us to plumb.

One way to begin is to survey the main intellectual and political currents since 9/11, which investigation yields a fact both unexpected and significant. As it turns out, a flight from political reality has indeed been underway on both the left and the right in America in the years since that event, as well as accelerating into more advanced forms in much of Europe. To switch metaphors, in the wake of the 9/11 attack -- and later, related Islamist attacks on civilians, most notably in Spain and Britain -- many Western observers have responded not by absorbing what we now know to be true about our world, but rather by transposing those brute facts into other, safer, more familiar keys.

One result of that transposition, the record shows, has been the creation of a world of political scapegoats for the unease and anxiety that are the unwanted companions now of Westerners everywhere. These scapegoats, perverse non-explanations for what really ails us, can be identified by features common to the breed everywhere: The passion invested in them by their antagonists is disproportionate to any real problem the scapegoat represents; they are invoked to explain more about the world than they do; they capture some part of the truth, i.e., have a degree of verisimilitude without which a scapegoat cannot exist; and -- also like scapegoats everywhere -- they pose no threat of retaliation for their overburdening. They are scapegoats in the classic sense: metaphorical beasts seen not in their own right and reality, but rather as communal vessels carrying a political and psychological weight beyond themselves for reasons of communal relief."

John Edwards: I was Against Wal-Mart Before I Wanted To Shop There

2006-11-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic candidate for VP, has found Wal-mart to be a convenient target of opportunity. In this August 2006 article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Edwards is quoted as saying in a speech as part of a group called "Wake Up Wal-Mart" which is demanding that Wal-Mart pay more in wages and benefits to its workers. Here is part of what Edwards said:

"We want every single consumer in America, every person in America, to know that if they walk into a Wal-Mart, that first of all their tax dollars are subsidizing Wal-Mart employees. Their tax dollars are helping provide health care for Wal-Mart employees, because Wal-Mart's not doing it. Their tax dollars are going to provide housing and food stamps for Wal-Mart employees," Mr. Edwards told a crowd of 400 at Hill House. "What is wrong with this picture?"

Part of "what is wrong" with the picture is that apparently Edwards does not believe his own speeches. Take a look at this press release from Walmart's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters:

"BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Nov. 16, 2006 – Just like the millions of Americans who turn to their neighborhood Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) for their holiday shopping needs, Wal-Mart announced today that former Sen. John Edwards is seeking to be one of the first to get a Sony PlayStation3, one of the most coveted holiday gift items this Christmas season.

Yesterday, a staff person for former Sen. Edwards contacted a Wal-Mart electronics manager in Raleigh, North Carolina to obtain a Sony PlayStation3 on behalf of the Senator’s family. Later that night, Sen. Edwards reportedly re-told a homespun story to participants of a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union-sponsored call about how his son had chided a fellow student for purchasing shoes at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart welcomes Sen. Edwards to visit his local Wal-Mart store and explore the extensive line of home electronics as well the wide array of apparel for men and boys. The Company noted the PlayStation3 is an extremely popular item this Christmas season, and while the rest of America’s working families are waiting patiently in line, Senator Edwards wants to cut to the front. While, we cannot guarantee that Sen. Edwards will be among one of the first to obtain a PlayStation3, we are certain Sen. Edwards will be able to find great gifts for everyone on his Christmas list – many at Wal-Mart’s “roll-back prices.”

Apparently the electronics manager at the Raleigh, North Carolina Wal-Mart--underpaid, exploited, and downtrodden if Edward's public speeches are to be believed--loyally forwarded Edwards request for a Playstation to the company's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters. There, alert PR people put out the press release quoted above.

While it seems that John Edwards and many of his Democratic fellow travelers will bash Wal-Mart at every opportunity, when they think they are out of the public eye, they are evidently not above shopping at Wal-Mart themselves. And, despite his populist 'everyman' rhetoric, Edwards wants better treatment than ordinary Americans get at the same everyday low price.

Edwards elitist behavior here reminds me just a little of the way the now defunct Soviet ruling class--the politburo members--maintained expensive dacha's (villa style summer homes) at government expense in desirable locations on the Black Sea, while their 'comrades'--ordinary Russian citizens--huddled four and five families to the room on collective farms.

Move over, Al Gore. Gore has distinguished himself with his cynical and hypocritical approach to global warming. Now John Edwards is revealing himself to be equally hypocritical and two faced in his public pronouncements on Wal-Mart. The sad thing is how unsurprising all this is.

Religious Intolerance By Another Name

2006-11-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

The Bush Adminstration has appointed Eric Keroack, an OB/GYN from Marblehead, Mass. to head the Office of Population Affairs, a federal government agency that oversees federal funding of programs for teen pregnancy and family planning programs.

Dr. Keroack is from a Christian non-profit called Women's Concern. According to this Associated Press story, Christian Concern runs "six centers in the state that offer free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and counseling. It also works to "help women escape the temptation and violence of abortion," according to its statement of faith. And it opposes contraception, saying its use increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates.

"A Woman's Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness," its contraception policy reads in part."

By appointing someone with an anti-contraception background like Dr. Keroack to a federal post Bush is deliberately trying to bring the same anti-abortion/anti contraception mindset to the Federal agency, but in doing so is delivering a reminder of how out of touch with the mainstream public the President is on several important social issues like stem cells, womens rights, etc.

While this appointment may delight the Christian right, it serves to further alienate many crucial 'middle of the road' voters who just jumped off the Republican ship in the last election and voted for the Dems. Many of these centrist voters voted against the Republicans in part because Bush has again and again allowed his personal religious beliefs to drive his appointments and policies.

Both Congress and the President need to be religiously neutral. The first amendment of the constitution reads in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.." While this amendment speaks directly to Congress, the founding fathers intent with regard to religion is well known.

Thomas Jefferson said "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

The principle of a 'wall of separation' between church and state has guided our country since the days of Jefferson. However, George Bush --in areas of social policy related to reproductive rights --has attempted to inject his own personal religious bias into governmental policy and appointments. In so doing, he has veered sharply and dangerously away from the intent of the founding fathers. Our country is the worse for it.

For a fuller discussion of religious freedom in this country, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance have a wealth of information here.

Thoughts on The Path to 9/11

2006-09-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

We finished watching the program 'The Path to 9/11' that was broadcast on ABC last evening. It was both fascinating and hard to watch at the same time.

As a dramatic miniseries, I thought it was riveting. The performance aspects of the program -- acting, scripting, directing, photography, and production design -- were all outstanding. I thought the way real footage was intercut with production footage was very effective, and the way the program handled some of the most heart rending events such as the deaths of the passengers and crews of the hijacked planes and of central character John O'Neill--the real life FBI guy who as Director of Security for the Twin Towers perished on 9/11 --was tastefully and respectfully done.

My wife -- an accomplished actress who styles herself and 'oldfashioned liberal' and who feels much more affinity for the Clinton Administration than for Bush's -- commented to me immediately after the program concluded that she thought the production did a good job sticking to known document facts, and did not invent a lot of material along the way. Certainly, ABC went out of its way to insure that viewers knew the program was a dramatization and not a documentary. Just as the disclaimer that ABC aired stated, the dramatization used composite characters, time compression, and other dramatic devices. But as a dramatization, we thought the program worked extremely well.

I personally like Harvey Keitel, and thought he did a wonderful job portraying John O'Neill. There were other actors in roles who were very effective. The actor who portrayed Ramzi Youssef was very convincing as a brilliant and fanatical Palestinian master bombmaker who in a flash of awful inventiveness, conceived the basic idea for 9/11 which would be carried out by others well after he was locked up in the SuperMax prison in Colorado.

One of the major things the program did was to depict how we as a country, failed to see the Islamic radical threat for what it really is -- a war on our country declared by people committed to either convert us to Islam or to kill us. One of the best lines in the program was this one:

"War is about killing the enemy and destroying his property. It's not about sitting around in a conference room and covering your own asses."

Fearful of having their role exposed, former Clinton Administration tried very hard to browbeat ABC and Disney into cancelling the broadcast of this program. Novelist Austin Bay had this post on his blog that says it all about both the Clintonista's efforts and those of the Bushies before 9/11:

"I’m watching ABC-TV’s Path to 9/11 — and I see why Clinton is afraid of it. The movie serves as a reminder of all of the terrorist attacks and attempted attacks. Clinton went eight years and Bush eight months playing cops and robbers while Al Qaeda was implementing unrestricted warfare."

As Bay pointed out, there were plenty of misteps and wrong moves by the government failing to detect and stop the 9/11 plotters, and this program did a very good job outlining in broad strokes what these were.

Chief among them, was the goverments approach -- both under Clinton and under Bush until the actual day of 9/11 -- to approach Islamic radicalism as a law enforcement issue. The ABC dramatized how the different goverment agencies were tied up in knots by their own rules, and that the politicians at very high levels like Tenet, Albright, et al. were very reluctant to take risks, or took actions that further emboldened the Islamic radical terrorists. When the Bush Administration took over, it assumed for the most part the same ineffective posture towards Islamic ultra-radicals that it inherited from the Clinton era, and did almost nothing to change things until 9/11 actually befell us.

When military force was used, the program depicted how the Clinton Administration acted timidly and ineffectually by electing not to snatch and render Osama bin Ladin in a commando raid, but rather fire cruise missiles at his training camps in Afghanistan. These missiles failed to kill UBL, as Madeliene Albright's State Department felt it necessary to warn the Pakistani government that the missiles would overfly their territory, and of course someone in Pakistan had alerted UBL allowing him to escape.

Also, the program pointed out that after the bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, neither the Clinton nor Bush Administration ever brought to justice the perpetrators. The overall impact of these strategic lapses was to embolden the Islamic terrorists by making them believe that America would hide behind technology and in the end retreat in the face of their attacks.

And so it came about that the terrorists finally became to ambitious and overreached on 9/11. Their plot and their operational planning was exceptional as the program showed.

But while ABC's drama ended when the twin towers came down, we know the next five years of the story. Very sadly, it cost almost three thousand US lives to get to that point, but America finally was aroused to take effective action in Afghanistan and eject the Taliban and thereby take away UBL's terror sanctuaries. UBL was not captured or killed--as far as we know--but he was driven underground, and is now known throughout the world as the man who stupidly and arrogantly provoked the US to forcibly eject the Taliban--the only then extant Sunni radical Islamic government -- from power. The US also demonstrated for all the world to see that it will not stand by idly when attacked on a large scale such as was the case in 9/11. Finally, terror sponsoring states were given a vivid although overdue demonstration that no Middle Eastern country can withstand -- not even for a single month -- even a partial application of US military might.

What is to me so sad is that it took 9/11 for us to reach that point. Both Clinton and Bush need to own the responsibility for what happened, and to date, neither has done so. However, history will -- whether either of them like it or not -- hold them accountable for their actions and inactions.

Assessment of Ethics in Photojournalism

2006-08-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

David D. Perlmutter, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies & Research at the University of Kansas¿s School of Journalism, has a very honest and fairly damning assessment of the state of photojournalism in the wake of the exposures by various bloggers such as Little Green Footballs of Reuters and AP news photos that were manipulated and or overtly staged by the photographer with the apparent intent of advancing a pro-Hezbollah propaganda agenda.

Here is a key excerpt from Perlmutter's column:

"A few photo-illusions are probably due to the lust for the most sensational or striking-looking image—that is, more aesthetic bias than political prejudice. Also, many photographers know that war victims are money shots and some will break the rules of the profession to cash in. But true as well is that local stringers and visiting anchors alike seem to have succumbed either to lens-enabled Stockholm syndrome or accepted being the uncredited Hezbollah staff photographer so as to be able to file stories and images in militia-controlled areas.

It does not help that certain news organizations have acted like government officials or corporate officers trying to squash a scandal. The visual historian in me revolts when an ABC producer informs me that Reuters “deleted all 920 images” by the stringer who produced the “Beirut double smoke” image and is “less than willing to talk about it.” Can you say “18-minute gap,” anyone?"

The complete column appears in Editor and Publisher Journal here.

What's In a Name

2005-04-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

I had a hard time deciding on a name for this blog. It needed to express the right thing, to have the proper nuance. The name should say something about the author.

If you look in the dictionary, you won't find the word 'cattywhompus' and you especially won't find it spelled 'Cat-E-Whompus', which is what it took to get this name to be accepted as a legitimate name on Blogspot. Yet, most people, when they hear the word, know what it means. When something is cattywhompus, it is skewed, it is out of alignment, and it just doesn't fit in. Since I am a socially mostly liberal and at the same time a neocon when it comes to the military and foreigh affairs, the word cattywhompus fits me like a glove.

I plan to post in this blog on current topics that interest me. You, dear readers, are welcome to send me emails with any reactions to my stuff that you care to share. I may elect to respond to you either in the blog or privately via email. My policy on flames is simple - they will be ignored. If my blog is not interesting or entertaining to you, or if it ticks you off, you should feel free--as they say--to change the channel.