Taking stock... counting blessings... returning to center.

I know I’ve way overused the “I just read this in Esquire” premise for a post, but you can’t pick on a guy for where he finds his inspiration.  Well, actually you can, and most people do, frequently, but I’m not going to let that stop me.

 

David Granger, the magazine’s editor, writes a column every month called “This Way In” by way of introducing and setting up each issue.  Yes, I actually read them, most of the time anyway, and most of the time they, at the very least, demonstrate why he holds the post he does with that organization.  He is insightful, unafraid of expressing unpopular opinions and an accomplished writer.  His vision for the magazine is clear in its continuous reach for something new while maintaining its traditions.

 

Every now and then though, Mr. Granger exceeds that standard and contributes a piece that outshines, or at least rivals all else that follows that first or second page.  This month’s is one of those times.

 

His was a simple message, to be clear, but in a time when the redundant and pedantic “now more than ever” has been added to every proclamation from Twinkies ads to rationalizations for illegitimate wars, it can’t be stated enough.

 

His message is this:  For most of us it’s not that bad so man up, count your blessings, and quit yer whinin’!

 

He establishes this as an undisputable truth with reasons dear to my heart.  I’ll lay a few of them out here and then add a few of my own as a means of justifying my own existence:

 

1. every generation wants theirs to be the best and the worst of times so we tend to exaggerate our situation – I knew a guy in college who ALWAYS noted this about Buffalo, NY

(Granger invokes HALF of the classic Dickens first line and a hypothesized editorial response to it from the European poor to illustrate the repetitiveness of this truism)

 

2. even if it were as bad as Al Gore says, and we did everything he suggests, we’d only, by the most generous predictions, succeed in reducing global warming by .3 degrees by the year 2100.

 

3. the current economic crisis, while nothing to sneeze at, means it’s easier to:

            - get a seat at great restaurants and most offer value priced specials!

            - unhinge our economy from the volatile futures market where it never should have been

 

…all things that should have happened long ago!

 

To Granger’s list I’ll add:

            - buy cheap real estate

            - catch up on that degree you abandoned

            - change careers (we all need different kinds of motivation, for instance: being fired)

            - buy cheap stock in companies you KNOW will be around in 10 years

            - vacation in Cuba and bring home legal cigars (OK, maybe not quite yet, but…)

 

I guess what hits home most to me about Granger’s advice or observation is how it applies to politics.  Trying times cause us to take stock.  We should do that more often.  While I’m happy that the American political trend seems to be a resurgence of the voice of the largely moderate electorate, I think we should take a little more notice of it.

 

The extremes from both poles have had the floor for far too long.  I truly do not begrudge Rush or Billo for making a career out of this.  In fact, if anything, I’m a little jealous.  Not so much of their “success” as of their ability to fool the rest of the media into believing they matter more than they really do.  Actually, that’s a misstatement as well.  If they didn’t actually matter, the last three elections would have been vastly different.  We would have discussed issues that really matter in a rational, reasonable manner.  WE didn’t, hence Rush and Billo matter.

 

The Air America crew – and I’ll go ahead and put names to them:  Al Franken and Janene Garafolo, (the only ones I can recall) were no better.  Though I obviously lean slightly more in their direction than in Fox’s, I’m just as disgusted with their extremism as I am with that of the other side.  In fact, maybe even more so for their lack of ability to pull off a successful campaign already modeled for them by their polar opposites.  Perhaps they didn’t go extreme enough.  Or, as I like to fool myself into believing on occasion, perhaps it’s just that their FAR LESS extreme/FAR MORE reasonable content simply doesn’t sell (watch the talk shows and the news if you doubt my theory)  But even I have to admit that they tried to be just as extreme, they just weren’t as good at it as the right.

 

The point is, these folks don’t represent US.  They represent extremes and while America might be extremely greedy, extremely shortsighted, extremely forgetful, and a lot of other adjectives to the extreme, as a nation, we tend to chug along with a high degree of stability, which is to say, overall moderation and reasonability.  We’re really not bad neighbors to have most of the time even if we tend to be a little boring once the extremes are ignored.  And in spite of ourselves, we’re still the best hope in the world for the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants.

 

We provide the best opportunity to rise out of one’s born class regardless of color, creed or even competence.  We take care of our own (most of the time) better than just about any other group of people on the planet and when we falter in that, we’re the first to admit it even if we fight over the best way to fix it.  At least we fight about it and allow for the fight/discussion to happen instead of repressing all opposition!

 

We could get better at that fight and I believe we have in the past year.  Rush and Billo have proven themselves to be exactly what they are: shock value entertainers with no concern at all for what they’re spewing aside from the ratings and cash it gets them.  Al Franken has put his money where is mouth was and opted to do something about it rather than just talk and make money.  Like him, more Americans have taken a true interest in politics than we have in a long, long time, but there still remains a lingering doubt.

 

This doubt is reinforced each time I hear someone say something like “I hate all parties and all politicians.  You just can’t trust any of ‘em anymore.”

 

On the one hand, it’s refreshing to hear this from people who formerly spewed party politics rather than contemplate a thought of their own for more than the time it takes to pop the top on a beer.  On the other hand, this is exactly the attitude Granger is railing against.

 

Opting out is not an option.  Politicians are what they are and have always been.  They’re no worse nor better in our time than they ever were.  Ditto the media, education, communication, technology, the economy, religion, guns, abortion, etc. and so on.   Dropping out of the participatory process that is America in general and our political process in specific is just a lame excuse for your laziness. 

 

It’s the dropouts who allow the extremists to take control in the first place… and only after watching them run away with everything great about our world are we finally drawn back into not just the polls, but the process itself.  Party extremists can get people to the polls, but it took a campaign like Obama’s to actually get folks back into the process.  If he hadn’t mustered up the now famous high-tech grass-roots campaign, pulling people in as volunteers and campaigners, he never would have gotten folks to the polls.  Moderation was his stance.  The only extremism came via his oppositions accusations.

 

Suddenly people are shocked to hear that he, like Clinton, is actually a moderate.  Welcome to mainstream America.  Don’t believe the extremist hype.  Jump in the pool and discover that the water, scarce as it seems to be growing, is actually rather fine.

 

Does this mean we shouldn’t strive for that .3 degree reduction in global temperatures Al Gore’s less optimistic critics say we can achieve?  No.  Does it mean we should continue to artificially inflate rapidly self-destructing American companies rather than letting the market run its course?  No.  Does it mean we should abandon the workers through whose efforts those company’s helped establish American dominance and make it the great place it is and continuously tries to be?  Of course not.

 

What it means is it’s time to STAY involved.  It’s time to remember to count our blessings and realize it’s not that bad, or at least that we can make it better.  It’s also time to remember that it’s worse for some, better for others.  It’s time to do what we can for ourselves and for others so they can make it better for themselves as we strive to make it better for ourselves.  These goals aren’t mutually exclusive and the vast majority of us are glad to share them as common goals.  That’s not socialism, it’s America.  There will always be folks content to do the labor, earn the meager wage, buy the products and live their lives firmly in a comfortable, anonymous middle class.  Without them, the big wheels have no customers, no one from whom to make massive fortunes and remain or arrive among the elite, no one to build or deliver their products.  But those elites must also remember the contributions everyone makes along the way.  Elite (in terms of wealth) does not equal better or worse.  The measure of one’s success or contribution isn’t always monetary.

 

Granger points this out expertly with his “unhinging our economy from the banks” idea.  The nation of Bhoutan takes it even further by dropping the notion of Gross National Product in favor of Gross National Happiness – wherein they spend the nation’s cash not on that which returns the most cash, but on what returns the most happiness for their citizenry.  Now that’s extreme, but somewhere between what they do and what we do, there’s a far more acceptable and realistic solution.

 

Now that those of us who comprise the middle of the bell on that famous curve have come back into power, let’s keep it that way by vowing to never return to those extremes again.

 

Expect more from your government by remaining an active participant in and customer of it.  Don’t give up and let the extremes on either side shape the future for you.  Don’t be the “no voter” who never proposes any solutions but rather constantly criticizes the solutions someone else proposes.

 

 

 

 

  

Limbaugh's Assassin Logic and Lapsed Memory

It's no surprise that Rush Limbaugh's memory is short. In his battle against our "welfare state" he forgets that he once received public assistance. In his battle against Obama's "bastardization of the Constitution," he quotes the Declaration of Independence but cited the (either misquoted or paraphrased) words (depending on whether you think he’s a gas bag or a genius) as part of the Preamble to the Constitution, and in his battle against anything Democratic, he seems to have quickly forgotten that the President of the United States is OUR president, the nation's president, not just the president of the people who voted for him.

It wasn't too long ago that Rush was reminding liberals of this. Rush seems to have forgotten that outside of the campaigns very few but those who are as extreme in their views as Rush, ever want any president to fail.

Rush seems to have forgotten that while many of Bush's policies seemed doomed to failure from their inception, simply pointing that out is a far cry from actually rooting for them to fail. I'm not telling anyone anything new when I say I wasn't a big fan of the war in Iraq. It's never been justified. It's never accomplished anything and the cost will never be recouped. BUT not only did I, a card carrying liberal, NOT want it to fail, I actually participated in it at MY commander in chief's request even though I thought it was a stupid idea and I didn’t vote for that commander in chief. That’s what Americans do. I hoped, with that eternal optimism that many Americans have, that I’d discover something in Iraq that aligned with what Rush and Cheney and Bush were telling us back home… that some shred of logic might make it all clearer to me. I was disappointed, but I did my job and made it home.

What did Rush do? He ran his mouth in support of the war, forgot that it hasn’t panned out as predicted, then quickly abandoned his false patriotism to publicly wish for the failure of the man elected by Americans to lead America.

In my weakest moments, I too was pretty disrespectful to my commander in chief. I regret that I let my frustration get to me to that extent. I have no excuse. Unlike Rush, I was never under the influence of prescription pain killers that weren't prescribed to me. While I voiced my opinion about who the NEXT president should be, often invoking the actions of the current administration's all too public failing policies as evidence in support of what I believed, I never hoped that the current president would fail at anything. I simply wanted to replace him the next time around because of the failures no one else could even conceive. That’s what Americans do.

Unlike Rush, I realize that our leaders, as representatives of our nation, set the course of our nation. Though Rush tried to mitigate this throughout his 90 minutes of blather to C-Pac last week, there's no getting around the basic idea: root for the nation's leaders to fail and you're rooting for the nation to fail.

It doesn't surprise me that Rush feels this way. He's supported failed national policy for most of his working career. In fact, if it weren't for applying false logic, oversimplification, and yelling louder than anyone else in the room in defense of failed policy, he wouldn't have a job. No one would know who he is.

What surprises me most about the speech is how closely it ties the Rush mentality with the American presidential assassins described in Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. In this humorous travelogue/autobiography of all sites associated with three president killers, Vowell provides a glimpse into their lives, their thoughts (through diary entries and other museum displays) as well as the lives of the presidents these men killed, the lives of the presidents that took over, their opponents and supporters, and the stereotypical American. (You know by now that I’m no history buff, but this is the kind of book that is an interesting character study that just happens to make the history come alive in the process only because its subjects just happen to be historical figures. You know what, that’s not even entirely accurate since Vowell and her many traveling companions are not historical. OK, so I’m not a literary critic.)

Anyway, two weeks ago, comparing Rush to America’s presidential assassins would have been purely to elicit response... nothing more than my own, misinformed opinion spread over the Web as the Web allows and begs, but Rush has given my comparison teeth with this latest media charade. Using not only a well covered semi-political event, but also Fox TV's coverage of it as his forum, Rush made clear that he is an ungrateful, childish, disrespectful and extremely arrogant hypocrite... just in case anyone was still wondering… who actually believes his own dogma. He demonstrated that the only thing he even pretends to honor from the greatest nation in the world is his ability to pull large amounts of cash out of its bleating lambs. This is all to say, somewhat more frighteningly, that he seems to have an awful lot in common with John Wilkes-Booth, Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgolsz.

Jealousy, you say? Perhaps a tinge on the surface, but Rush is actually my motivational example that money and fame generally aren't worth what one has to give up for them.

There was a time when Elvis was a hero of mine, but the fat sweaty guy in bedazzled, oversized collared, fringed jumpsuits who eventually died on his toilet was a quick lesson for me about what a hero is. These days, when someone famous shows up on an infomercial, or on one of those "Where are they now" or "Celebrity Rehab" shows, that same lesson is learned all over again. But good old Rush has saved us the trouble of wondering when it will happen to him. Instead, he's made the leap on his own with one last dying gasp broadcast on his beloved cable channel. Naysayers might argue that he's always spewing attention-worthy drivel clearly intended to capitalize on the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" theory for achieving fame, but this new low has "grand finale" written all over it.

Even I didn't believe he would ever sink this deep into the smelliest mud... actually voicing his desire for the nation that made him rich to fail. I'm surprised he didn't offer himself up as an example of what's wrong with us these days. That would have been the final nail... the Kool-Aid stains on his chin.

So anyway, how does this link Rush to the likes of Wilkes-Booth, Guiteau and Czolgolsz – killers of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley - you ask? On the most basic level, they, like Rush, they truly believed they would be greeted as heroes for their courageous acts by a grateful nation. They were arrogant SOBs who believed they were divinely called to right the wrongs under which the entire nation suffered. Wiles-Booth thought himself a pillar of the Republican party. Guiteau believed that as well and that he deserved, and was even qualified to be the U.S. Ambassador to France. Czolgolsz, well, he was just an anarchist so maybe there’s no real link… no, wait, anarchists want government to fail so that in its absence, life will be beautiful. That’s more like Rush than I thought. Isn’t anarchy just the logical extension of the notion “that government is best which governs least?”

It’s also no coincidence that Roosevelt, who stepped in for McKinley, was a centrist who brokered revolutionary deals that, while not necessarily pleasing to both labor and industry, addressed both of their needs in a rational manner void of politics and partisan patronage. It’s almost as though, as Vowell puts it, he stopped being a Republican. (her words, not mine) I’m sure the pundits of the day felt Roosevelt was driving the nation to ruin with such revolutionary ideas as rational discussion, compromise, and trying to understand several perspectives before pronouncing policy.

But back to the arrogance of the assassins…

In the context of a joke, Limbaugh actually told his C-pac audience that God is jealous of him. Even in his attempts at self-deprecation, Limbaugh redefines arrogance. The only thing those assassins had over Limbaugh is their willingness to fully commit their egos, and their lives to the final task. Limbaugh, comfy in what he takes from our nation – at least until his wish comes true and the nation is no longer, won't go that final step/bite the hand that feeds him/prove his hypocrisy, but what he told his audience and the Fox viewers, was that he fully supports the thinking.

Wilkes-Booth believed that he spoke for both the North and the South and that his actions would not only heal a bleeding nation, be lauded, seen as justified, praised even, but, more specicically, that he could save the Republican Party from what Lincoln had done to it. He was shocked and almost suicidal when he learned this was not the case.

Czolgolsz must have been shocked when, while standing in line to shake President McKinley’s hands/shoot McKinley at the World Fair in Buffalo, he was actually tackled and beaten by a cop and a citizen who had been in line behind him. McKinley, bleeding on the floor of the convention hall, actually told the cop who joined the citizen to go easy on his assassin. Proving that those who actually rise to leadership rather than just lobbing arrows at their leaders from behind, can put personal desires aside and do what’s right rather than what will make them rich and famous. That’s a hard job to have. Rush’s job is much easier… so much so in fact, that I do it for free!

Charles Guiteau's trial was known for the entertainment value provided via Mr. Guiteau's nonsensical tirades. Though he made it clear with the speeches that he had lost his grip on reality, he undermined his own defense team's insanity plea by actually putting together entertaining speeches, even poetry about how wonderful he is and how God told him to kill President Garfield... that, in fact, the murder would save the Republican party.

The only difference seems to be that back in those days, folks had enough sense to laugh at Guiteau, not with him. They came to the trial to hear what kind of goofiness he would spew next, NOT to hear the "truth" about what's best for our nation.

Luth,
Out

Milestones and stumbling blocks

Finally!  America has, once and for all, put behind us that ugly racism that has held us back, distracted, disrupted, halted progress, shed blood and generally drained energy and resources since our very beginnings.  

With the election of the first black president, it has finally dawned on ignorant boneheads that the self perpetuating crap they've believed all their lives is just that: crap.  People all over this great nation are starting to realize they've been lied to by their friends and relatives about stereotyping and generalizing. People finally realize they no longer have any excuses for their lots in life outside of their own performance.  Women suddenly own land and a majority of seats in leadership commensurate with their numbers of the population.  People of colors and cultures different from our euro-blanco norm finally are judged not by their accent or skin color, but by their individual traits, character and ability.

Finally after eight years of President Bush being caricatured as a monkey in weekly political cartoons, the guy can get out of the spotlight and rest and the new president can safely be caricatured as a monkey without any hidden agendas or underlying meanings being associated with it other than pure, journalistic license invoking the close relationship between humans and apes... humans of any color, of course.  The subtle joke being, obviously, that while we have evolved from, and share the vast majority of genes with that slightly lesser species, we still share many many traits.   Thank goodness we've left race behind us so we can get on to the real problems that face us even if we still share too many of those lesser traits.

After all, we do still resort to violent outbursts on innocent victims even if those victims are close friends of the ones who have cared for and fed us all our lives.  Sometimes these outbursts are the results of unrestrained emotion and pass as quickly, and without permanent damage as a mild spring storm.  Sometimes the outbursts are the concerted effort of an entire nation resulting from fear, intolerance and ignorance, and the damage is ongoing and irreparable.

We still succumb to the innate drive to reproduce, sometimes at irresponsible and alarming rates even though we've eliminated most of the threat of predators and competition for food and shelter that used to justify having twice the amount of offspring that we expected to survive.  In fact, we succumb to that particular instinct even with no intention of reproducing or, more often, with the clear intention of NOT reproducing.  In fact, there's another milestone:  thank goodness that in our present state of evolution, we've managed to disassociate the myths, traditions, emotions and even the biological purpose from the pleasurable act that can, but doesn't have to result in reproduction!! Separating out the baggage from the process will surely lead to more responsible behavior like longer lasting marriages, more responsible parenting, and an overall awakening when it comes to relationships and sex.

We still willfully deceive each other for little more reason than because we can, and we still, perhaps rightfully, are suspicious of each other because, after all, as the higher species, we are not only capable, but all too ready to use these distinguishing traits simply because we can... as if to prove that we have taken that step beyond the last, less developed form of ourselves.  Many of us have even evolved to the point of being able to justify these deceptive behaviors as a practice in a skillful art that were it not practiced might be lost, as though we might DEvolve if we don't cheat, lie, steal and manipulate regularly... or better still, that the cheating, lying, stealing and manipulating is justified as a means to some end that better serves all of humanity... you know, like Blago was trying to do for the people of Illinois... by any means necessary.

But at least we've left the racism behind us.  On Abe Lincoln's 200th birthday (and the state of Ohio's 206th!!), nearly 150 years after the Civil War, almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act was signed, and after a history of sacrificing our sons to defend the basic rights of others around the globe we have finally arrived at a point where nothing is valued higher than ensuring those basic rights, freedoms, and fair treatment for every citizen in our own nation.  We have evolved beyond race.  We have turned the page on that dark chapter and left it behind us once and for all.  As our first black attorney general so eloquently pointed out, America is ready to move on now that we've fully, completely addressed and left behind the "awkward, painful" race issue.  Man, am I glad that's over with.

Luth,

Out.

I got yer stimulus package right here!

I don't really have a stimulus package, but as you may have guessed, I have an opinion on the president's and here it is:

I'm as mixed about it as I was about Super Bowl XLIII.

I was raised better than this, but I just couldn't commit to hating the Steelers.  During the Browns' missing years I gained a new respect for the Steelers.  I began rooting for them just to spite Art Modell but in the course of that it occurred to me how similar the two towns and the two teams really were...or are...or were. Whatever.  Once I got over my upbringing (a deeply ingrained hatred of the Black and Gold and all they represented) it got easier and easier to root for this hard-nosed team built around The Bus, one of the last true franchise players in pro sports, and a lot of other pretty cool guys who played Browns-style football (only Pittsburgh was actually good at it). 

In addition to that, I get pretty annoyed with the typical Browns fan's hatred blinding them to the logic of rooting for one's own division in the big game.  If a neighboring high school team knocks your team out of the state semi-finals, don't you root for the neighbor in the championship?  Don't you still want your region to represent? C'mon!  How far do you have to go to prove your loyalty/hatred of the rival?  Besides, that hatred should be reserved for the Ravens these day anyway.  I just can't buy the escalating hatred for Pittsburgh long after the Browns season was over.

OK, now that I've cleared that up, I have to admit that I, like most of America, have fallen for Kurt Warner's story as well.  What a guy, even more so for disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald's "no second acts in American lives" theory.  And the Cardinals?  One of the original NFL teams, still owned by the orignal family (who arguably has held the team back for most of those years) and with the longest running drought since a championship second only to that of the Chicago Cubs. (and thank God for that or what would Browns fans have to prop us up?!)  That was American Hero Pat Tillman's team, for the love of Bob!!  It was Cuba Gooding Jr's team in Jerry McGuire. These poor guys probably still don't know where they'll be playing next season.  How can you not love 'em.  AND they were the underdog.  What's more American than rooting for the underdog?  Unless, of course, you have to put money on the game, and then we're back to the Steelers.

So anyway, yeah... I was a little torn about that game.  As it turned out, I solved the dilemma by rooting for offense.  Even here I was a little torn.  I love watching Akron native and NFL defensive player of the year, James Harrison,  as well as the throw-your-body-into-the-train-wreck antics of Troy Palomalu.  Offense may sell tickets, but I LOVE defense.  Still,  I had to do something so I just rooted for offense and so I was thrilled when the Cards managed to grab the lead late in the fourth.  Then I was pushed to the limits of football ecstasy when Ohioan Big Ben Roethliswhatever engineered that last drive throwing not just one, but two perfect passes to both corners of the end zone for Buckeye alum Santonio Holmes to catch.  (NOTE for the record that Holmes only managed to catch ONE of those perfect touchdown passes!! and was still named MVP over the guy who threw both of them - and they were both PERFECT passes)

Torn... that's how I feel about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 too.  I can't quite bring myself to argue against education funding.  (or anything else in the package for that matter but...) It truly disgusts me how much Americans expect out of public education but how little we're willing to give for it.  Worse, how we sacrifice class after class's education experience to shave a few cents off our tax bill year after year.  Only in public education do we expect folks to work for near-poverty wages but be more educated than the majority of the working population, take over most parenting responsibility, be the model of integrity and professionalism, subject matter experts, counselors, cops, cheerleaders and friends.  How is it that the business model doesn't apply to teachers wherein the best and the brightest are attracted to the job with the biggest salaries? We talk about teacher accountability all the time, but rarely about accounting for their services, devotion and professionalism the way these traits are accounted for in almost every other profession - with cash!  Ditto for administrators who run some of the most efficient corporations in the nation with the smallest budgets in existence.  Think of the Superintendent of a large city's school system.  This guy (or gal) is the CEO of an organization with hundreds of facilities and thousands of employees.  Name one other corporation in American like that where the CEO doesn't make MILLIONS and yet we argue that low six figures is too much to pay the suprintendent and we expect far better results.  Nope, I won't argue against finally spending a tiny fration of what education is worth...

BUT, there's a time and a place for everything and I'm just not sure now is the time to finally deploy the long overdue funding help that public schools need from the state and federal level.  I can't help but wonder if that part of the package shouldn't be put on hold for a year until some other parts of the plan have begun to work their magic.

Speaking of that magic, wouldn't it be great if part of this package provided needed goods and services while at the same time creating jobs, upgrading the nation's aging infrastructure or even converting the nation to more sustainable power, fuel etc.  Now that's stimulus.  Even if you're among the minority of economists who don't believe that increased government spending at a time when the rest of the country has finally decided to save/not spend acts as a stabilizing force, you have to realize that putting people and companies to work across the country repairing those bridges before they fall into rivers, upgrading the power grid before more rolling brownouts, and building new sources of energy and alternative fuel infrastructures so we never have to worry about OPEC price adjustments ever again is not only a great idea, but one that also supports the mom and pop diners near the construction sites, the Red Wing shoe stores, the materials suppliers, the banks, the Caterpillar factory and dealerships, the gas stations on the way to work... and on and on and on.  That's stimulus.  Those are the kinds of investments that should top the list of spending in any stimulus package.

But alas, the biggest part of the Obama plan doesn't go to that kind of stimulus.  Nor do the second or the third or even the fourth biggest chunks.  The true "stimulus" portion of Obama's proposal comes in fifth among the categories of spending, after tax cuts, education funding, healthcare and welfare programs.

I will say this again:  I cannot bring myself to argue against increased federal education funding. And I'm not suggesting there will be no return on investment from educational spending - there will, exponential return... over time...

BUT, shouldn't we maybe generate a little revenue first? Get some people back to work? In fact, I'd even argue that the tax cuts should fall lower on the list, after all, taxes are one of the few things that have remained stable in this economy!  We're all used to paying them at the current rates and if you're unemployed now, your taxes are cut anyway, so why cut 'em... but that's another argument for later.  

So here's my plan:  We keep the spending categories Obama has proposed, and we keep his numbers, but we put the numbers to the categories like one of those matching tests from high school where you have to draw lines to connect the word with the definition.  Take the biggest chunk - the $275 billion in tax cuts - and connect it to the Upgrade the Infrastructure category... after all, this one is the one that will literally put people back to work and better still, they'll be working on fixing shit that's been falling apart due to lack of funding for far too long.  I'm willing to give in a little on some mortgage tax breaks to help homeowners and (groan) the banks, but not much.

Then let's take the second biggest chunk o cash - the $142 billion for education -  and connect it to the alternative energy/fuel/power transmission infrastructure improvements which also immediately puts people back to work and better still they'll be working on breaking the Middle East's grip on us and creating sustainable, clean sources of energy allowing us to remain rugged individuals each with our own 4wd vehicles and air conditioned homes with heated driveways well into our grandkids' and their grandkids' generations.  

After that you can rearrange the remaining categories - the healthcare spending, the welfare spending, and the tax cuts - however you want... hint: I'd connect the next biggest chunk o cash with education, but that's just me.  I could be swayed to move it to healthcare too.  In fact, if we'd fix healthcare, just about everyone with employer-paid insurance would probably see a $500 to a $1000 per month raise right away anyway.

I could even be persuaded to leave education off the first-year phase of the plan as long as it appears again in next year's phase with similiar numbers... adjusted UP for inflation, of course.

So anyway, yeah, I'm critiquing the Democrat now, but I'm a little torn about it.

Next dilemma:  Who's the bigger menace to society: 

A) a pot-smoking Michael Phelps or 

B) a woman with no partner in her life with 7 kids already and no way of supporting them who then takes fertility drugs and has 8 more ?

Luth

Out

Gross National Happiness

In Eric Weiner's The Geography of Happiness he talks of the nation of Bhutan, its efforts to maintain its history and culture, but mostly of its policy of Gross National Happiness.

 

The first two words in that phrase should sound familiar enough.  Even if you don't know what  they mean, Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product should be phrases you've heard before.  Often, the terms are used to describe not just the wealth, but the overall health of a nation. Bhutan has a different take on this.  Instead of measuring their worth, their government's worth, and their national policies by measure of what they produce (and, of course, by association, what they consume) they've chosen to rate themselves on a policy of national happiness.

 

"But," you think to yourself,  "you can't measure happiness." 

 

"Why not?" says Weiner and a growing number of phsychologists, sociologists, magazine editors and jounalists.  In a recent Business Week survey, Bhutan was rated the eighth happiest nation in the world.  It made Weiner's list of places to check out because he had seen the survey and was familiar with the work of a psychologist from the Netherlands who spoke of it, and because he wanted to find a place that was relatively poor by most standards but still made everyone else's lists of happy places.

 

What intrigued me about Weiner's description of the place was the fact that the underlying idea behind Bhutan's otherwise VERY idiosyncratic methods of achieving Gross National Happiness was the idea that living within one's means virtually guarntees the policy's success. Before having a local explain this to him directly, Weiner notices a road sign on which the following is hand painted:

 

When the last tree is cut

When the last river is emptied

When the last fish is caught

Only then will Man realize that he can not eat money

 

Ok, ok, so they're all tree huggers?  Well, not really.  Some of their dedication to preservation, at least in the form of preventing littering, comes to them much more honestly... via superstition or faith, if you prefer.  Weiner relates the story of three hikers walking past a lake into which they've thrown their trash.  Without warning a dense fog enveloped the area and caused the hikers to get lost.  Only one of them was ever found.  Legend has it that the spirit of the lake took the other two hikers as punishment for their "sins."  Folks in Bhutan don't litter now.  And sure, they're not above animism, but it's not the ONLY reason they believe in sustainability.

 

When he finally manages to track down a government official who is initially "too busy" to be interviewed for the book, Weiner asks him why he has just seen graphic footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a presentation the official has just hosted.  The official's response sums up the policy:

 

"I truly believe that a country that is committed to happiness cannot be bellicose; if we don't pursue a sustainable way of life, we will be fighting for resources.  Not just for oil and not necessarily between nations.  It might be a fight for water between San Diego and Los Angeles."

 

While this official's answer doesn't exactly address the footage about which Weiner inquires, it does represent the essence of Bhutan's policy:  they're frickin nuts!

 

Just like every era-marking idea in the history of man.

 

Only when someone, somewhere, has the balls to say or think or try something totally nuts is history made.  Only when the common thinking is challenged in a way that allows a new idea, a new way of thinking, a completely different view of the world to gain some traction are problems we've never foreseen on the verge of being solved.

 

In the case of Bhutan, an entire nation has bought into this madness.  According to Weiner, they owe much of their current thinking to an ancestor who came along about 500 years ago named Drupka Kunley.  Natives sometimes call him the Divine Madman.  Weiner compares him to Woody Allen and Howard Stern.  He was a bit of a drunk, a womanizer, apparently had what some might call a flatulence problem, and he laid down the ideals for a nation that now places the happiness of its people above the wealth of its people.

 

The Bhutanese have done this in some strange ways, not all of which sound all that great, but doesn't every plan run into some roadblocks?  While they still keep a very strict limit on tourism, forgoing potential millions, they have added cable TV, hospitals, schools, and even a few "roads" if you use the term loosely.  Men are advised (but not forced) to meditate at some point in their lives for three years, three days and three months and not too long ago, the government ran power lines up into the Himalayas to provide a village just for this meditation.  There's no profit involved.  It doesn't cost anything to go and meditate there, and there's little financially to be derived from any phase of the ordeal, but that wasn't a consideration.

 

I'm leaving out many of the details, but you can read Weiner's book (it really is interesting and it looks at  a lot of other places in the world while doling out digestible chunks of data driven "happiness research" along the way) or you can just Wiki Bhutan for yourself.  My point, and I do have one, is that regardless of how nutty this particular nation of people may be, the fact that they still exist, and by most standards are doing just fine, seems to indicate that the time has come for their crazy idea to be recognized by others.

 

This means a shift in thinking.

 

Nietzche says something like this in Daybreak: 

 

"It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it.  That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that sounds like folly."

 

Plenty of smart people have told us for a long time that money can't buy happiness, that it's not a true measure of wealth or health.  That nations cannot be measured solely by it and yet, for the last twenty years of my life and long before, I suspect, every indication of where we are and where we are going as a nation has been in terms of the mighty dollar.

 

Weiner poses a riddle early on in his chapter on Bhutan.  It's as if he's having trouble wrapping his brain around the nation's crazy ideas even though he went there for the sole purpose of grasping them.  The riddle goes like this: 

 

What do the following have in common:  The War in Iraq, The Exxon Valdez, and the rise in the U.S. prison population?  The answer, of course, is that they all contribute to... favorably contribute to our Gross Domestic Product.  In pure economic terms, that makes all three of these items "good."

 

Now look, I'm not saying that Bhutan has all the answers, nor does Weiner.  In fact, he bemoans the lack of a good cup of coffee just about everywhere in the country and notes that many of the "cafes" his tour guide drops him in serve only instant... bad instant. And I'm not saying we could suddenly drop the economy that currently has our nation chugging along so briskly and wonderfully overnight.  But I am saying that the staying power of this idea is a sign that we're ready to evolve as a species into a higher form of managing ourselves and our world.

 

Though plenty of people WAY smarter than me have told us many times before that money isn't everything, we've never been seduced to any alternatives.  We've never been elevated to any new way of thinking about it.  Eric Weiner's book has thrown some sand under our wheels as they spin on the financial ice.  Dr. Ruut Veenhoven, Professor of Happiness Studies and his World Happiness Database in the Netherlands, Positive Psychology programs popping up at Clarmont University in California, and now Penn State, surveys by Business Week, and a whole lot of searching for a better way HAVE elevated us to this idea.

 

It is rarely enough to prove something.  We must be elevated to it.  It must be presented to us as folly, so we are forced to consider it over and over until something about it strikes us as real.

 

The Geography of Happiness speaks this truth as though it were pure folly.  It is entertaining in its most biographical purposes,  pleasantly enlightening  in its dissemination of research, but most importantly, it elevates us to an entire shift in thinking.  It introduces us to guests standing at our doorway who appear a little scary compared to the guests we're used to, but dammit, I think it's time we let them in, offer them something to drink, some good conversation, and just see if we can't enjoy what we have to learn from them for a while.

 

What have we got to lose?

By the way, while cleaning up the 'blog, I found an old post lying around in draft form, realized how overdue a new post was and though it's probably too late, I thought maybe this might remind us all, on the day after a historic inauguaration, that it is in fact time to move on... that and I'm pissed I never got around to posting it when the time was right (when Mary Tillman's book came out almost a YEAR ago!! ) so if you're like the three other regular readers of HorsePoup, and you're jonesing for something else to read while waiting for the paint to dry, click on May 2008 and check out another "new" post full of piss and vinegar over the different treatment of two grieving mothers who lost sons in OEF/OIF.

Luth,

Out

Bailouts

I was digging around the archives looking for a post I thought I'd created, but it must have just been an email I sent to the die hard fans on my mailing list.  It was my proposal for the banking industry bailout and it went something like this: 

If you want my money, these are the rules: (for PUBLICLY OWNED/TRADED COMPANIES)

1.  Salaries of all "c-level" employees (CEO, CFO, CIO...) are not to exceed 20 times the average salary of your full-time employees, or, if you prefer, not to exceed 30 times your lowest paid employee including part-timers.

2.  C-level benefits packages must be available to all full-time employees at similar proportions of their incomes.  

3.  No other form of compensation (options, parachutes, trusts) may be provided to C employees that are not also available to and resonably attainable by all other full time employees.  

4.  You can return to your ridiculous pay structures as soon as you've paid back all principal and interest.  

If you don't like these terms, don't take the money.  Four rules.  Simple as that.

Remember,  it's you bastards who got rich while the rest of us lost our homes and our jobs over the last seven years.  Don't wait too long for us to come to your rescue.

These rules were part of my proposal for publicly-owned and traded companies, but especially for those financial companies who sit at the top of the funnel, up through which all of America's money passes.  

To that I'd like to add that it's time the people on top of that funnel, where the entire nation's wealth is concentrated should be subject to THE MOST scrutiny and REGULATION of any other industry in America.  That's ALL of OUR money up there.  They skim the most of it off and keep it for themselves as it is, and that's fine as long as their practices are sound.  You don't have to be a financial genius to know that naked short selling isn't sound and shouldn't even be legal.  WTF!?

But what pissed me off the most about the whole deal was that these are the same people who call welfare, adequate public education funding and universal healthcare "socialism" but when the money goes the other direction it's "vital to our economic stability."

These bailouts are welfare.  Plain and simple.  The only difference is that the tax money is going straight to the top... as if even the welfare must now trickle down to save us.  Our money just wasn't getting funneled up fast enough -  Bush's plan to sell out middle Amercia to Big Corporate wasn't working fast enough, so now we'll print more money than we have, hand it directly over to those at the top of the chain and put the bill on the middle Americans who actually manage to keep their jobs... and their kids and grandkids.  The dollar goes down, the debt goes up and the guys who got us into this mess walk away with fat wallets, as usual.  That's the only "economy" we're saving.  The pressure and the deadline (fear tactics) for the billions we handed over to the banks came straight out of the "we must invade Iraq" playbook.  And though raising taxes is a horrible idea, every man, woman and child in America is now strapped with an additional 3-grand to pay back at some point... but it's not a tax, so that's cool.  We don't want to raise taxes 'cuz it would kill the economy!

So now we're contemplating bailing out the auto industry as well.  There are certainly a lot of perspectives from which to approach this.  As an Ohioan, whose household income has been comprised in parts varying from 2/3 to 1/2 from the auto industry over the years, it's a tough line to walk.  The funny thing is, the employers providing that income have been either German or Japanese since the early 90's.  Those German and Japanese employers' biggest customers have been Ford, GM, and Chrysler, but they've also made parts for Honda, Toyota, Nissan and a few others here and there.  My wife and my brother both currently work for German companies whose primary customers are the Big Three.  Fortunately for both of them (and me) their companies also supply the OTHER American auto industry, so while their business has slowed with the economy, their fates don't rest solely with the Big Three.

Having lived in the shadow of the Honda Engine plant in Anna, OH, I'm amazed at how many large companies and mom and pop shops spring up to support that operation.  What's so amazing is how so many jobs can be ignored by so large a segment of America.  Whenever I hear someone tell a Honda driver to "buy American" I wonder what they're talking about.  I don't know if it's true anymore, but the Ohio-built Honda Accord was for a number of years the MOST American of any car "made in America."  Show me a car company that has invested more in Ohio jobs in the last 20 years than Honda?  Show me a plant newer than the Marysville assembly or Anna engine plants.  My point is, the auto industry in America, and especially in Ohio, isn't dead, there are just a few new names.

There are plenty of viable automotive manufacturers employing thousands of Americans across the U.S.   They don't need bailed out and sales of some of their models have even increased.  Their business model is slightly different than the Big Threes' models. They anticipate and build to the market (what a novel idea to let the market dictate) rather than just building cars that won't be bought to satisfy ill-advised union contracts accepted when times were good. They pay decent wages in a clean, safe environment, and best of all, they pay taxes.  Their employees pay taxes, and they and their employees are likely to survive this recession. That union part is a whole other post, but the business model is a key part of my plan for the auto industry bailout... so now that I've told that story, I can tell this one:

I will add only one modification to my bank bailout rules for the auto industry and it is this:  auto industry execs need not apply.

Don't patronize me with your $1 annual salary offers.  And don't bother telling me you'll now do what Jimmy Carter warned you about in 1977.  We probably shouldn't have done it for the banks either, but two wrongs won't make it right.

Ford says they can weather this storm, having finally acted on Carter's pleas about 28 years later.  Yep, they started building a more fuel efficient product line about three years ago.  They can meet payroll and suffer through until about 2011 according to them, so they don't need it.

Chrysler already had their chance.  I don't know what their prospects are and I've given up trying to understand how much of it belongs to Mercedes, so someone will have to enlighten me on that, but they're out anyway.

The best thing that could happen to GM is to declare bankruptcy and start over.  I'm not sure what effect that will have on the entire U.S. economy, but it's a long time coming.  This is a company who had a production electric car on the market more than ten years ago.  Do you know how many of those they could have sold had they continued to work on that and have, say 100,000 of them perfected and ready to go last spring when gas prices topped $4 a gallon?  Gas will cost that much again, and how much closer to having that old idea ready to go will GM be? They put their money into Hummers, full-size trucks and SUVs not because that's what they predicted the market would bear next year or five years from now, but because that's what was profitable right here and right now.  Now that moment has passed and they find themselves in a bit of a pickle.  Well, you get what you pay for... and what we've paid for all this time.  Don't ask us for more.

My advice to GM is to stick to the small government manifesto that they preached to congress 30 years ago:  let the market run its course.  (actually, they said what's good for GM is good for the nation, but the point was "leave us alone")  So we should heed that point now.  If your business plan accounts for that market, you'll be just fine.  If not, the market will correct itself and you and in the long run we'll all be better for it.  Maybe they should ask their buddies in Big Oil for some extra cash.

I'm sure it will cause quite a ripple if the big G really fails and I'm not sure how comfortably my household will survive it, but like the evil drill sergeant always said during PT, "you can pay me now or you can pay me later."  Might as well pay him now cuz it sure looks like we're all screwed anyway.  Why prolong it?

It doesn't make much sense to offer loans to a company we know can't pay us back when we can buy a majority stake in that company for about 10% of what they seek in loans.  I was an English major, but that's not tough math.  I have to agree in part with Michael Moore - Detroit born and raised, former UAW employee - when he says the best plan for GM would be for the gov't to take it over, convert its facilities to start retrofitting America for mass transit, and when it turns a profit, pay ourselves back and sell it off the highest bidder.  (I know, I know, his arguments are usually just the left version of Rush Limbaugh's... oversimplified, etc. but hey, why not start up a New Deal kind of CCC - Obama's been talking about it anyway.  As soon as we're done in Iraq, we've got a couple a billion a week to pour into it!)

I've heard the argument that cities like LA, who needs it most, were built before true, efficient mass transit was a real concern and that it just won't work there, but I have only one thing to say to that: Rome.  It may not have been built in a day, but it was around a long time before the first commuter train ever appeared.  There's no reason we can't line every major commuter path in American with light rail, skyrocketing the economy and reducing our dependence on so much oil all in the same public works/GM project.  How many frickin jobs will that create?

All right, it's way past my bed time and I've covered more than enough topics for one post.

Laters

Luth

 

Abortions, movie reviews, big government

Well, you couldn't have avoided it on the news. A baby born in Saudi Arabia was pregnant with the fetus with whom she'd previously shared her mother's womb. The Saudi doctors interviewed for the Pravda article I read weren't sure how common, or uncommon this was, but they were sure it was the first time they'd seen it.

Turns out, according to that same Pravda article, it's more common than we might think. By that, I mean the article listed a few other examples of it happening in the recent past - which makes the phenomenon more common than I thought, anyway!

So the natural question that follows, on this blog anyway, is whether or not aborting this "baby" is murder. It's been conceived already so it's a life, but that's not how the medical experts in the Pravda article describe it. Here's a paragraph from the article:

A fetus in fetu can be considered alive, but only in the sense that its component tissues have not yet died or been eliminated. Thus, the life of a fetus in fetu is inherently limited to that of an invasive tumor. In principle, its cells must have some degree of normal metabolic activity to have remained viable. However, without the gestational conditions attainable (so far) only in utero with the amnion and placenta, a fetus in fetu can develop into, at best, an especially well-differentiated teratoma; or, at worst, a high-grade metastatic teratocarcinoma. In terms of physical maturation, its organs have a working blood supply from the host, but all cases of fetus in fetu present critical defects, such as no functional brain, heart, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, or urinary tract. Accordingly, while a fetus in fetu can share select morphological features with a normal fetus, it has no prospect of any life outside of the host twin. Moreover, it poses clear threats to the life of the host twin on whom its own life depends.

It's alive, but only in the sense that its tissues have not yet died or been eliminated. In addition to posing a threat to its "twin host" it is described as a tumor. Which leads me to wonder... how different is that "tumor" from a single fertilized egg in a normal pregnancy? (alive, in the sense that its tissues have not yet died or been eliminated) How about in a pregnancy resulting from rape... in a 12 year old? It poses very similar immediate physical threats in addition to the lifelong less physical threats of raising the child.

It's been explained to me by some very intelligent Catholics that the miracle of conception is the precise moment at which this mass of cells becomes a life worthy of protecting. That's when the soul is... well, whatever... you need faith, not science to follow that part of the explanation. Prior to conception, no problem, but once conceived, whole new ballgame. So the doctors who saved the pregnant Saudi baby's life are murderers. Likewise the doctors who removed the very human remains from a 36 year-old Indian farmer or the 6 month-old Indian boy noted in the same article... murderers all. Well, actually the farmer was the murderer in that case since his body refused to host his former twin for 36 years. His doctors can only be accused of removing the "still-born fetus" from the farmer's abdomen after he finally complained of stomach pains. But enough about that from me... for now.

MOVIES

Took a break from Christmas shopping/holiday travels to see Four Christmases with the Mrs. Luth this weekend. This in spite of a review that said something like: "their difference in height far surpasses their chemistry" referring to Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon's characters. This kind of blather is exactly why I continue to spew my nonsense here. At least I don't expect to be paid for it. While I will agree with that particular reviewers 2.5 of 5 stars overall, I have to wonder if the the reviewer even watched more than about ten minutes of the movie.

Initially, the two main characters offer little more dialogue than the practiced lines about why they've been together for three years but have no plans to get married or have children. They've delivered the practiced lines so many times that it's clear neither of them really believes them anymore. They're just reading from the anti-marriage script and flaunting their selfish crap about not wanting to get bogged down in the legality or the labels. Mistaking that for a lack of chemistry was a pretty clear indication to me that this reviewer didn't know what he was watching.

Two of the four Christmases portrayed could have been shortened considerably, but they had their moments and the other two were downright funny. One in particular relied too heavily on a ridiculous send up of a mega church Christmas eve service. (the warm up music was Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll part 2) That's only funny if you don't already find all that pomp and circumstance ridiculous to begin with. Vaughn is the guy you expect - funny, vulnerable, macho, stupid, clever, tough and wimpy at the same time. Witherspoon is pretty much the same character from Legally Blonde without so much over-blondeness, which is to say, mildly attractive and funny too, so what else did you expect or want from them?  I mistakenly assumed Jon Favreau cast himself in a larger role than usual in the movies he directs, but he was hilarious as the not quite professional cage fighter brother in two of the Vaughn family Christmases.  The scene where he and his equally red-throated wife dominate a game of Taboo was a highlight, but the actual director was Seth Gordon, who, unlike Favreau, resisted the temptation to insert himself as a character.

As a break from the holiday hustle and bustle, it was well worth the money and it made for an enjoyable and rare night out without the kids. I'm not sure it would have fared too well had it had any real competition though. I wasn't really surprised to hear that it took in nearly 40 million in its first weekend, beating out only a kids movie and a vampire movie.  Although it did manage to top a James Bond movie and a third installment of Transporter!! for the weekend take anyway.  

We went, partly to see if it might replace National Lampoons Christmas Vacation among our holiday traditions, but alas, Vacation remains unseated at the top of the Luther Family Christmas traditions.  This reviewer's recommendation: it'll entertain you, but it'll wait for the DVD too.

BIG GOV

My boss is retiring. While cleaning out her office, she ran across the summary report Al Gore prepared for Bill Clinton before they left office that detailed their efforts to reduce, revamp or eliminate government positions, agencies and in general both the size and the scope of federal government. Backed by OBM dollar figures and OPM body counts, it was a pretty amazing look at the party of big government's largely successful efforts resulting in a budget surplus and the smallest gov't since well before the Reagan years. Which begs the question, on this blog anyway, how in the heck can anyone claim to be a Repub these days because they want smaller, more efficient government? I'll try to remember to dig around for a link to the summary report somewhere cuz you have to read it for yourself. But given the cost of gov't over the last 8 years, the price we paid in interest rates, unemployment and inflation after the Reagan-Bush years, and the numbers in the report, it has to be obvious to anyone not blinded by party loyalty that, just like the Party of Lincoln, the roles and goals of the parties have changed quite a bit over the years.

It's stuff like that that helps me justify true independence. I may be liberal, but liberal ideas can be found on both sides of the aisle if you're willing to look with your eyes open. Allowing them to be closed by the blinders of strong party affiliation is what, IMHO, has led us into the quagmire politics has become.

I want better. If they're gonna hook me for 25% of my income, dammit, I want better. I don't care what party brings it as long as it gets brung.

Luth

Out

Illini

It's been over 20 years since I've been in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. Or is it Champaign-Urbana? Either way, it was about what I remembered... overcast, cold, windy. But it was a lot colder in Memorial Stadium for Illini fans on Saturday since the Buckeyes stomped them to win back the Illibuck (a wooden turtle substituted after the live one expired)(oh yeah, and the Illini juniors won't actually hand it back to their Buckeye counterparts until next year... kind of a weird trophy/ritual, eh?)

Anyhoo, had I given much more thought than I did to this trip when I first learned I was invited back in September - when it was still quite warm and the 5-hour bus ride after my 3-hour drive to Sidney was still months away - I probably would not have gone, but it turned out to be pretty cool.

I went with two brothers- and a father-in-law and though we were all rather tired after beginning the bus trip at 5 am, and all pretty much passed out by (some of us, like me, well before) 9 pm Saturday night, it turned out to be a good time thanks to the Buck's victory and that team from up north's loss. A hatred of that team up north seems to be universal throughout the Big 10 as the entire stadium cheered in unison when the Northwestern score appeared on the scoreboard.

There were at least as many people in scarlet and gray on our side of the field as there were in orange and blue, and most of us were civil, even cordial with each other throughout. There's always that one fan though... and this poor guy got paid back in spades when he left with 2:30 left on the clock. He had just announced loudly an Illini fumble recovery for a huge gain, but when the play was reviewed, overturned, and the ball returned to Ohio State so we could just run out the clock, he and his buddy (who apologized for this guy's behavior all day) got up and left as though no one would notice. That was the loudest the crowd got throughout the game. Cracked me up... the guys next to me too, and they were Illinois fans! I really didn't think the guy was being that obnoxious. I was entertained, but apparently he'd pissed off a lot of others and they were glad to return the favor when he left.

Anyhoo, it was a great game, the rain held off, there was beer for breakfast supplied by our hosts on what was billed as a "non-alcoholic trip," I got my picture taken with a Woody Hayes impersonator, I slept for about 12 hours before the long ride home Sunday morning, and life was, in almost all respects, good.

Except for one thing that's bugging me. I hear Obama has made it clear that he won't support so-called "sagging pants ordinances" like those made famous in Florida. He considers them a waste of time at a time when our nation has bigger fish to fry.

I'm disappointed in his judgment. If we as a nation won't enforce laws upholding common decency, it won't be long before everything goes to hell in the old basket. There will be guns, drugs, crime, unemployment, witches and all kinds of evil overrunning us. For the love of Bob, man do something about the PANTS!

Luth,
Out