Spitzer Take

Good lord. What a toad. No wonder he needs prostitutes. (Isn't it funny that "tit" is in the word "prostitute"? That's so cool!) You'd think he'd at least put in his teeth for the picture. And that prostitute he's with. Don't want to be unkind, but speaking of teeth, isn't she a little long in one of them? We can't turn back the clock, but aren't guys supposed to like the young chicks? Spitzer paid this old lady nearly five thousand dollars? For one visit? How many vaginas does she have, to make it worth all that cash?

But seriously folks.

We hardly need to have an opinion about it. He'll resign, this Dem governor of NY. He'll use his resignation as a bargaining chip. His wife will stay with him the way not-gay former Sen. Larry Craig's beardly wife stayed with him, if she did. Politicians' wives must have learned to play the game -- the self-interest game -- early on. Like politics itself, being a political wife is all about compromise.

We don't need to have emotions. If we want principles, we should go to church. Maybe we'll find it. We won't find it among the self-promoters and hucksters who set up their tents along any of the beltways. Cynical? I don't think so. There is a place for hope. What makes us cynical, what makes us lose hope, is when we want bureaucrats to be messiahs. How terrible, the crash. Let's call it rather a process of education. We put our false hopes in false messiahs, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, bill clinton -- who will remake America or reshape the human heart -- who will bring light to a dark future -- integrity, vision, whatever watchword stirs our young souls. Then they lose or get killed or prove to be incompetents or corrupt.

You understand that even Heaven has a government. I don't suppose that, for all that the New Jerusalem is a sort of sanctuary city, it has free heroin needle programs and midnight basketball programs and Gay Pride parades. Government isn't, or shouldn't be, about facilitating or reshaping human nature. The streets of the City of God may be paved with gold, but the potholes still need to be filled. Somebody has to prune all those trees of life lining the boulevards. That's what government is for. A certain amount of self-governance is assumed. Any transformations from the old man to the new must be handled on a level more subtle than anything we'd get from standing in long lines.

So we need not be dismayed or even disgusted by the corruption revealed in Gov. Spitzer's character. That's what laws are for -- to deal with corruption, in places both high and low. It is assumed that Gov. Spitzer will be prosecuted as a misdemeanant for his consorting with whores. It is assumed that he will leave public life for a time. It's even possible that such a chastening will be of benefit to his character. That's not our beeswax. We are not his priest, minister, rabbi, imam, shaman or other such spiritual adviser.

We hope in the vague way that we do hope that this stranger will find some sort of peace or similar platitude. But the only issue we have any reason to care about is his competence as a public official. Part of his duty is to obey the laws that are enforced against us. When we find misconduct from high officials, of course the punishment should be somewhat harsher. Greater power, greater responsibility, greater privilege. That privilege extends to manifest material benefits, not to impunity.

Thus, when we find corruption, we are not pleased, but we do say good riddance. Any emotion in the matter is just an indulgence. And we've seen enough of that for the week, eh?


J

Items of Value

Seventy-three year old Gloria Steinem, foundress of Ms. Magazine, says in her stump for Hillary that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." Tell that to some oppressed color-minority, or our differently-documented habitués, or our gays. Well, maybe gay is a gender ... and also a minority -- but it does sort of seem like Ms. Steinem didn't get the vast left wing conspiracy memo: "The Revolution is over; we won."

But that's just a fantasy. Revolutions can't ever end. The struggle is eternal. As long as there has ever been an injustice, there will always be injustice. You know, injustice, like marriage only between complementary genders, and a merit based playing field for job and education opportunities, and meaningful, enforced borders.

That's something else that I just don't get. I do understand the arguments for "regularizing" illegals. They're here, and it would be inconvenient and disruptive to their lives to require them to return to their country of origin. How onerous to go back to the mud huts and chicken-crowded alleyways, when they can get free emergency-room healthcare and that high-quality inner-city tax-free education here, with that world-prize jackpot of American citizenship for their anchor babies. If I could sneak into New Jerusalem and become a citizen of the City of God, well, I'd do it too.

So I get that. What I don't get is the open-borders crowd -- and what a chicken-crowd -- who want open borders. You know, new people rushing in on the very bare heels of the old horde. Like, adding to the problem. Surely they must understand that there's a problem? Closing emergency rooms? Over-crowded classrooms? Over-flowing prisons? Unlicensed drivers? TB outbreaks? Admittedly, some of our irrational rightwing complaints, such as with drivers licences, are an easy fix: just give them licenses. Problem solved. Licenses are after all just like borders -- a political construct, a mere intellectual fiction that might be hand-waved away with an elegant flourish. Mightn't it be possible, with sufficient faith, to do the same with, say, antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis? Given the awesome power of words, it must be thus. I will it so.

So that's why we masturbating leftists and greedy fatcats are in love with a virtual fence. It represents no actual barrier, you see, so we can get all those brown voters and cheap laborers to give us power, political or financial, depending on how we're bent. And bent we are, hell bent, to either oppress or grievance-monger, according to our bias. Exploit. I mean the verb.

It has to do with understanding value, true value. What is valuable must be protected. Things of value can be stolen, and their worth is not increased by the act. As George Will says when speaking of the monster Castro, a market economy "is an information-generating mechanism," which means that "communism cannot know what things should cost. Hence communism's amazing contribution to humanity's economic history is 'value-subtraction' -- products worth less than the materials that go into them." I quote that, aside from the fact that I just love clear and elegant reasoning, because it points out the need to fight only for things that are worth fighting for. Worth.

Steinem? The most "restricting" force in American life is the obligation to be an ethical and law-abiding citizen. There is a way in which Revolution and citizenship are opposites. Citizenship requires some meaningful form of stability, a foundation upon which to build, complete with the expectation that what has been built will survive. Revolution means change, and as long as there is revolution there must be change -- even what has been built will be vulnerable: perhaps something better is possible, but something different is required. Every actual historical Revolution has been a bloodbath. This, contrasted to the fact that markets are inherently democratic. You see? Practice over theory. Independence over authoritarianism.

We object to gay marriage not because we object to homosexual acts, but because marriage is what it is -- a foundation of stability. We object to open borders because exploitations, either of votes or of labor, undermine the vested interests, the committed investments of actual citizens, who depend on stable wages and on loyalty to our culture's institutions, as opposed to the ad hoc interests of those who come merely to exploit their exploitability. Our labor as citizens in the business of our democracy has added worth that is worth protecting.



J

Brief Update

It is only due to the oddities of DNC rules that Obama has such a significant delegate lead. His peculiar advantage comes from his amazing support from black majority congressional districts. Astounding. Who ever would have dreamed that blacks would vote for a black candidate in highly disproportionate numbers? It's inexplicable.

DNC rules have it that apportionment of delegates among candidates is proportional as long as losing candidates get at least 25% of the vote. If a candidate gets less than this, s/he would get no delegates. Thus, in black majority districts, where Obama gets virtually all the votes, Hillary gets no proportion of the delegates. Obama also generally wins big, two to one, in the low-turnout caucus states.

Obama has a six percent lead in delegates, but, counting Florida, only a one percent lead in the popular vote. It's a tie. What will break it? Scandal? Obama has his breaking Rezko land deal, and Hillary has that ancient Whitewater history -- vetted, though. Obama has his Naftaquiddick, and Hillary has twisted so many times she's a Moebius strip. Healthcare? Well, first, I should think they really mean "sickcare" ... but as for whom they plan on forcing to pay for other people's drug habits, that's a Kafkaesque labyrinth my poor brain cannot begin to navigate. Is there a difference then? Certainly. Are you blind? He's black, and she's female. Work with me.

Does it matter, any of it? Hardly. Is Obama really ahead? Perception is what matters. Come the election, the pink whiners will worry about perceived fairness. The clinton arm-twisting will be mitigated by the apparatchik fear of alienating the blacks who so faithfully sharecrop on the Dem plantation. If the Dems lost the blacks, all they'd have would be abortion, appeasement and drugs. That's the manufacturing flaw in the clinton machine. Gotta keep the blacks. They're oil. Another kind of black gold. Am I offensive and insensitive? Only to demographics that do not think for themselves.

The blue states, by their very nature, will increasingly become less relevant. It's not that they secede to Canada. It's that they depopulate themselves, with abortionism, homosexuality and mutagenic infertility. Blacks, who traditionally have had such a strong family unit, in the past three generations have been corrupted by the leftist welfare state into the criminal ethos of entitlement exploitation. For shame. What that means for the Dems is that an increasingly dysfunctional underclass of dependent minorities will be the only reliable base of the left. Its white powerbrokers will decline in number and most likely increase in power, as long as dependence is a commodity that can be nurtured and exploited.

Go, Obama!


J

Crunch

Hillary picked up 193 delegates on March 4th, and with 5 from Wyoming, has a pledged total of 1234; she seems to have 242 SuperDelegates!, making her SuperDooper total 1476 (coincidentally, the year she was born). Obama picked up 178 delegates on the 4th, and with Wyoming's 7 now has 1377 popular delegates; with his 210 SuperDelegates! he has about 1587. I say about because there is some conflict in the reporting, and also because one of my staff might possibly have made an adding mistake. To clinch the nomination, somebody needs 2025.

The Dems still have events in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico. These total up to 612 delegates. Let's round. Obama needs about 440 more. Hillary needs about 550. If current trends hold, no one wins. (But we knew that.) You realize what that means.

A brokered convention.

Here's why Hillary wins. The clintons know where the bodies are buried. They didn't spend 8 years in Washington for nothing. And everyone knows they have the hardest hardballs around. Even those SuperDelegates! who are already pledged for Obama can switch over. What bribe, what threat, what seduction would the clintons not use to achieve their ends? They are the very definition of backroom operatives. Suddenly John Edwards with his delegates seems important.

Add that fact to the clinton's genius for dirty tricks -- which hasn't been working so far because the MSM was Obama's waterboy -- and we can expect a Change indeed. Hillary knew about the Rezko connection long ago, and brought it up ineptly. Now it's gaining traction. Who could possibly be so naive as to think that in the vast sewer of Illinois politics, Obama hasn't gotten some stink on his shoes? No, it's not really fair, and it's not even really substantive. Perhaps. But we've seen how stupid and petty this process is.

Obama's minister, Jeremiah Wright, is just a howling black racist preacherman, from what I can tell, who loves Farrakhan and hates America. So what. Obama has the right to listen to whomever he wants and go to whatever place of worship he chooses. Private lawful and ethical behavior is private. It's matters of public policy that count from a politician.

That's the sort of thing I mean. Purity tests. We are after all talking about politics. Compromise and purity don't really go together. And to imagine that Obama is pure in the first place is just silly. No one is pure. No one famous. The trick about growing up is to learn this sort of fact, without letting it ruin us. That's what hope is.


J

Drive Time

It's important to not make decisions in an emotional state. I do have a bit of conflict, frustration and loyalty, but it has to be rationality that decides the issue. I'm not getting enough of a workout from bjj. Not enough intensity. There are only a very few guys who challenge me, and they're not there enough. I end up sitting and waiting too much. I could do some other sort of exercise I suppose, maybe pushups? -- but that's not why I'm there.

My son rolls at another place, 20 or 30 minutes further down the line, through bad traffic. I hate the idea of the drive. Just a waste, and inefficient. But I will be training there next month. He trained where I roll, for a couple of weeks -- then he had to leave on some business. He noticed the more casual atmosphere, which I like, but not at the expense of training.

There it is. N tells me that everyone rolls with everyone where he trains. I like that, a lot. He says it is much more intense. I like that. Also more regimented, with structured water breaks and limited rests. Don't care for that much. I know when I need water. I don't need external motivations. But you take the bad with the good. The chance to roll on a regular basis with a black belt would be valuable. I virtually never roll with our black belt. That's a deficit.

I suppose I'd have to say that in terms of bjj alone, a change is due. I'm the guy who never leaves his post, though. It's not a question of loyalty. I'm just trying to make it that way. It's a business relationship. That's all.

I have been there three years now, three full years. I'm still remote. You'd have to look close to figure out that I cared about anyone there. It bothers me. Leaving. Because even if I come back after a month of too much driving, it's just more misplaced loyalty from me. It's not intense enough, the training. Too much sitting. I'm not there to sit.

And I'm sure there are some people who'd be glad to see the last of me.



J

Burning Bridges

Obama gave a speech in Selma Alabama to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of that seminal civil rights march. He spoke movingly about how his mother and father dared to come together because of the march. The crowd in the church where he was speaking in Selma were inspired to enthusiastic applause. Obama said that he would not be there in Selma, he would not exist at all, save for the courage of those brave men and women who stood up and marched against the tyranny of Jim Crow and institutional racism, that some form of equality might eventually be achieved.

A black man from Africa and a white woman who's ancestors had owned slaves were swept up in the tide of hope that crossed the land and came together in love. "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge," says the Senator. And his parents "got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama. I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because y'all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants."

How beautiful. How beautiful.

The march in Selma occurred in the third month of 1965. Obama was born in August of 1961.

Oh.

Well, perhaps he just got the dates wrong? Maybe there was some other Selma march over a bridge? No. Perhaps he meant a march over some other bridge, and just got the city name wrong? No.

"Liar" is such a harsh word. To stir up people's emotions with heroic images cannot be wrong, even if we stir them up with fiction. We are after all moved by fiction. That's what literature and movies are for. Am I wrong? So what's so bad if he makes us think something that never happened is real?

And we will ignore the fact that this is the very definition of a lie. His motives must justify that mere technicality.

He says something else, as well. "So the Kennedy’s decided we're going to do an air lift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country." Interesting. Interesting. A Kennedy program made it all possible.

A problem, though. Kennedy was sworn into office in January of 1961. Obama was born in August of '61. Generally that would mean that he would have been conceived in November of 1960 -- say, Election Day. Before Kennedy was president, so before he could have instituted any such African outreach. Time travel? Something Kennedy did from the Senate? But Obama says it happened from the White House. Is he talking about Eisenhower and Nixon? I think not. What, then?

Facts matter. Someone who gets fundamentals wrong on a consistent basis cannot be taken seriously. Is this Obama? I am insufficiently informed on the details of all his many speeches. But in these particular matters, which play such a very important part in Obama's own personal narrative, we must suppose that he should be familiar with the actual facts.

He is not. Or he is lying. Both are pretty serious charges. Either he himself is ignorant of things that I know, who have no specific reason to know. Or he is assuming an ignorance on the part of his listeners, which seems arrogant and actually contemptuous. Seems that way to me. That's how I frame it when someone lies to me. You're thinking I'm so stupid that I'll just believe any idiot story you make up. That's what I used to say to teenagers.

There's something so adolescent about lying. There's something so immature about not getting easily discovered facts straight.

But you have to form you own opinion. Maybe it's not important. But how is this Change? What is Hope to be founded on? False Hope?


J

Naftaquiddick

It seems that Hillary is still in the race. Somehow, weirdly, I like that. Let the cannibals eat themselves. Texas Republicans crossed over to vote for Hillary over Obama, in a sneaky Democrat tactic. It's the first time there's been such a movement from the right. Maybe it made the difference. Ah well, the rules allow it. There was a lot of talk that even if Hillary didn't win anything, she'd stay in. Well, she was only a hundred and something delegates behind Obama, so it's not like she was out of it. But the good of the party, don't you know. Wouldn't it be absolutely cool if it goes to a brokered convention? In the Internet Age? What a spectacle. Worth the price of admission. Even I will pay attention. Hillary will win that.

I don't give these opinings of mine much thought. It's easy to predict the future when there's no cost for being wrong. If I lost a finger each time my opinion was wrong, I'd be more careful. But Nobody knows how to make promises and twist arms like the clintons. And the shine -- I mean the gloss is coming off Obama. The Canadian Memo -- Memogate? -- Naftaquiddick? -- where Obama is said to have assured the North that all his protectionist verbiage is just slop for the pigs, and he doesn't mean it, really. This, after he said there was no such memo, no such communication. Interesting. And some weird real estate deal out of Chicago, where some Mafioso bought up some land next to the house Obama was buying -- I didn't quite follow why that was necessary -- point is that there's really likely to be some nasty old corruption involved. Hmm. So much for CHANGE!!!. So much for HOPE!!!. Not every messiah can resurrect himself.

Tonight I got a little political in my conversation. Someone else was talking about Republicans. I didn't bother to eavesdrop. But somehow I invited myself into the dialog when it turned to abortion, and I engaged in a not terribly eloquent disquisition on the matter. With a gentle and likable young liberal. He managed, in three sentences, to conflate economic policy, civil rights, and Affirmative Action. So many passions. So many reasons why Republicans are wrong. I managed to point out that they were separate issues, but I'm sure the point wasn't quite grasped. Such is the nature of casual conversation -- it requires no intellectual discipline.

I did manage to enunciate the idea that I'd rather be greedy than envious. You know, the Republican cliche rather than the Democrat cliche. Greed is just low and ugly. Envy is about wanting harm to someone else. The politics of envy. The rich must be taxed, disproportionately. How that is equal protection under the law evades my understanding. If we are equal, then we should be treated equally. Ah well, I won't rehash the matter. It's just that his ideas about Republicans seem to have been formed in the 1950s. Odd, since he was born in the mid-1980s. Did he see me in my checked pants? I usually only wear them at my exclusive country club. I'll have to talk to my house boy about this.

Well, that's all. Just thought I'd write a note to keep in touch. Why don't I ever hear from you? Too busy to drop a line to your good old buddy Jack? You'd better love me while you may. Tomorrow I may fly away.


J

Brrr

Another of the obscure and fascinating books that I wrote years ago dealt with global climate change. Specifically I posited a mechanism to explain the onset and duration of the Ice Age. It is an elegant and robust theory, if I do say so myself. I'm quite brilliant. Without going into detail, it supposes a rise in ocean temperatures, which increased evaporation and thus precipitation. The same presumed catastrophe that raised ocean temperatures altered the albedo and heat-retaining qualities of the continents, which preserved precipitated water as snowcover. When the oceans cooled, precipitation declined and the ice shields receded. There's more to it, but that's enough. My point is that oceans control the weather.

The NCDC reports that the average US temperature for January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 average." In the first half of February, Toronto enjoyed 70 cm of snowfall, shattering the previous 66.6 record of 58 years ago. China had its coldest winter in a hundred years; in the sultry south, powerlines iced over, broke and could not be repaired.

Last year we were informed that Arctic Sea ice was at its "lowest levels on record." Records have been kept since the distant year of 1972. This year the ice in many places has thickened by 10 to 20 cm over last year's measurements.

Computer modeling that has the oceans cooled by melted icecaps, which then halts the great heat-sharing currents out of the equatorial regions, which then brings in another Ice Age -- such models have just been shown to be wrong by Robert Toggweiler (of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University) and Joellen Russell (assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics, University of Arizona). The importance of northward wind had been missed -- its effect on ocean currents is far larger than that of ice melt in heating the Arctic.

In January, Oleg Sorokhtin, of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, dismissed the idea of anthropogenic climate change as an insignificant factor, siting the far more salient fact that solar activity has entered "an inactive phase." This is corroborated by the National Research Council's Kenneth Tapping, who supervises a massive radio telescope aim on the sun. He maintains that a sustained period of severely cold weather is due, if sunspot activity remains sluggish. Who woulda thunk it -- the sun affects the weather.

Reduced solar activity is the putative cause of the Little Ice Age, from the mid-14th to -19th centuries. It's what killed off the Greenland vikings. It's why there are no more vineyards in England. Based on the clear, irrefutable pattern of the many days and weeks of this current winter, we're in for such an ice age again.

What, I'm overextending the evidence? No I'm not. You are.


J

Black House

This is how Obama wins: Bill Richardson as his running mate. Governor of ... New Mexico? Moderate reputation. Hispanic. Get it? There is a large segment of the population that votes not according to principle or policy, but according to group identity. Historically Hispanics do not vote for blacks. They will vote for Obama if a Hispanic is on the ticket. It will make the difference, since McCain is not going to bring out the conservatives. Obama will modify his leftist rhetoric during the general election campaign, which will lull moderates into voting for him. He already has a reasonably large and very devoted following. Richardson is the humpmaker.

McCain’s only chance is a very conservative, ethnic running mate. It would be a cynical move, but so what. It’s all manipulation. When we play the game by the rules, the point is not the rules, but the game. McCain can attract independents and moderates, but he does not inspire the enthusiasm of Obama.

Hillary? It’s so very tempting to write her off. But she is a clinton. They leave talon marks on the flagstones when it’s time to leave the public square. Even if she loses Texas and Ohio, the Pennsylvania Democrat machine is in her pocket, or bill’s pants, or something. It will be a spectacle to behold if/when she loses. Like Satan falling from the Heavenlies. What orgy of spite will she unloose upon her former idolaters? It's hard to think she'll be done. When has a perpetual motion machine ever broken down?

Isn't it a shame, the stupidity of politics? It really is some sort of sociological proof of the power of averages and epidemiology. Individuals cease to matter. It's all about crowds and herd mentality. That one smells right! Let's mount it! -- or -- Obama's black? Let's vote for him, or let's not vote for him. Let me check a mirror. What we know is that free money gets wasted. It keeps people at a subsistence level. The only meaningful generosity is that which we create ourselves. Can't we pick someone who's politics are based on an understanding of human nature rather than animal needs?

Tuesday will pretty much decide the general election candidates. I expect Obama. It's a good thing, in a sense. But it will be incredibly divisive. I don't know the future. But I do expect things to get ugly. Let's hold our breath.


J

Another Enword

There is, famously, a love that dare not speak its name. That phrase, uttered by Oscar Wilde upon the stand after he foolishly brought a liable charge against the Marquise of Queensberry -- who addressed his calling card to a delighted Wilde with the phrase "posing as a somdomite". The Marquise was in a state of mental distress when he scribbled the note, due to the incorrigible fact that his son was being somdomized by Wilde, or visa versa.

When charged with "homosexual acts not amounting to buggery", Wilde defended himself with a well-crafted hortatory toward Victorian tolerance: there is "that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. ... It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it." After this, the gallery burst into applause.

Speaking as a middle-aged man, all I can say is, that is so hot.

There are many things that dare not speak themselves. A belief in Intelligent Design on college campuses. A suggestion that Affirmative Action is racist. The enword. And Barack H. Obama's middle name. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. There, I said it. But isn't it odd that such a fuss should have been made over some radio guy who introduced McCain at some rally, stirring up a controversy because he used Obama's H-name? Jack is my middle name. Jack. So many dirty, dirty bad things start with jack. I'm a dirty boy, so unashamed of speaking that name. Is Obama ashamed? I should think not. His appendages and instruments, then? No. It's a tactic of course, this rush to presume and pretend offense.

Shall we succumb to it?

Implication is not the same as obscenity, any more than satire is copyright infringement. Hussein, meaning "beautiful", is as common a name in the Middle East as John is in the West. But it is off limits. How demeaning to every American with such a name. For shame. It's like the ignorant racist puppets in NY who were offended by a bureaucrat's use of the word "niggardly", and demanded and got a resignation. (Pardon my insensitive use of the word "resignation", which has an "n", an "i", and a "g" in it. I, a Niger snot! Ignore stain! Ignite arson! Neat origins! Sane rioting! Reasoning it! Nosier giant! Noiser gnat! Orient gains! Soaring nite! Atoning sire! A rising tone! Raining toes! Ironing seat!) It's like the little schoolyard boys who tease some child for being named Osama. We do not cure intolerance by hiding it in the closet. Hasn't the Gay Pride movement taught us anything? When we are supposed to teach five year olds about condoms in public schools, might we also be allowed to utter a prominent politician's middle name?

So what if the radio guy was being sarcastic. Such sarcasm is not, after all, very tearing. If that was his point, it speaks to his character. If not, then what's the issue? In either case, no apology was due. Why then did McCain hasten to offer one? Was all his courage used up on some long ago occasion? It remains a mystery.

There are, it seems, fatwas against words. Apartheid against ideas is a leftist orthodoxy. How shall we confront such anti-First Amendment tactics? Well, not by ignoring them.

Precisely this same ploy was used in the 2006 Senate race, where James Henry Webb erected himself and his manliness by habitually referring to his rival as George Felix Allen. Allen lost, because he was a girliman who remained silent about his faggy name Felix. Haw haw.

A Fantasy Political Scenario

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen of the press. Some of you have been reporting on my opponent's emphasis of my middle name, Felix. It's a name given to me in honor of a respected family friend, and the fact that I have never used it in no way reflects shame, as my Democrat opponent James Webb seeks to imply through his tone. Why he should call me by a name I do not call myself is no profound mystery. He is employing an underhanded and rather cowardly tactic. He is implying that because of my middle name I am unmanly. I will face his implications directly. Perhaps Mr. Webb is better at ball sports than I am. I cannot speak to his interest in balls. But I hereby challenge Mr. Webb to a fight. His choice of rules. If he declines this offer, I will select a name for Mr. Webb, a new middle name. Say, Charlotte. I will be phoning Mr. Webb with this offer. Thank you for your interest in these important matters.

The End

Obama's campaign thanked John McCain for his apology. Both men were diminished by the affair. We should have expected more from them. Could it be that Barack "Pretty Boy" Osama and John "Never Back Down" McCain are just silly politicians, quibbling over words? This, when there is a so much greater issue before a world so filled with enemies whose names we dare not speak?

Ah well. Same old same old. If only there were a candidate of change.


J

The Age of Aquarius

You’ve heard about the fish. And the amphibians and the reptiles. How they’re changing their sex all the time. Like they’re from San Francisco. The Potomac is full of such transgendered vertebrates. How symbolic of our times. Such transmutations are natural, in certain species. Years ago I wrote a book on Evolutionism, encyclopedic in scope, in which for some reason I cited a type of fish in which the largest female of a group where there is no male will simply become male. Certain lizards can manage the same feat. How interesting. But the Potomac fish are a different kettle of, um, fish. The females are normal. Eighty percent of the smallmouth bass males, however, produce eggs instead of sperm.

At this same time, there is a sharp rise in reported cases on college campuses all along the Potomac of impotence and a lack of sexual interest by males. Hm. Being the unbelievable stud that I am, this seems an odd and strangely desirable problem to have. I am troubled by a surfeit of hormones, you see. And at my age. Poor little me. Perhaps I should get my drinking water from the Potomac, which is full of feminizing chemical endocrinal disruptors.

The soft female-like boys of this latest generation, however, cluster not only along the Potomac. We find them everywhere. Throughout the continental USA, in England, in Greenland, in Japan. All over. As for our human females, they are enjoying an early puberty, starting around age eight. That’s so hot.

Well? Male alligators in Florida are turning up with shriveled testicles and high female-hormone counts. The phenomenon has been linked to phthalates, which are used in clear plastic drinking bottles -- water, Coke, Pepsi and so on. The specific actor is polyethylene terephthalate, PET. When the bottle gets a bit heated, as in a hot car, and the liquid has a plastic taste, that’s PET. All those plastic bottles from Disney World end up in the watershed and affect the alligators. Hmm. PETs act like female hormones. Girls testing as having high PET levels tend to enter puberty early. See? Six times higher levels means eight-year-olds with large breasts.

I saw something of this when I taught fifth graders some few years ago. Little boys, and a handful of ten year old girls with fully developed breasts. It’s very different than when I was a kid, and most likely when you were. In those days the boys were behind the girls by months, rather than years. By thirteen the girls where through puberty and the boys were entering. Now the lag time is three or four years. It’s not just PETs. It’s a lot of chemicals. Endosulfan, for example -- a major commercial pesticide -- was shown in 2003 to disrupt the onset of puberty in boys, by blocking the effects of testosterone and other androgens.

The actions of these industrial chemicals are overwhelmingly feminizing, and hasten puberty in girls, and delay and distort masculine development in boys. Seems like a problem to me. The plastic in baby bottles, for example, has been shown actually to damage male neonate animal brains, specifically in memory and motivation functions focused in the nucleus accumbens. The same damage does not occur in females. The males demonstrate less curiosity about their environments, and their activity profile strongly resembles that of control females. Strangely, females exposed to the same plastic demonstrate heightened activity, environmental curiosity, and increased learning ability. Again, the only relevant variable here is the plastic.

Ah well. Increased ADHD in boys. Decreased testosterone and semen levels than in my generation, lower sperm count, and endemic infertility. Genital malformations are up by three times; pregnant mothers who drink phthalates are ten times more likely to have boys with undescended testicles, or subaverage penis-size, or hypospadias (misplaced urethra terminus). No, it’s not funny.

From these specifics we might derive any number of insights, environmental, political, sociological, ethnographic. I won’t bother to flesh it out. I could talk about us planting the seeds of our own destruction, for all that there are fewer and fewer seeds. I could suggest that the underdeveloped moslems are outbreeding the West not only because we choose to have smaller families, but because we are not capable of having larger ones. I could point out that the rise of modern liberalism, so self-loathing/blameful and disloyal and irresponsible, might derive as much from biology as from philosophy. I might call it the End of Days.

Why bother? Everyone talks about history, but nobody does anything about it. Is there a solution? Well, first, is there a problem? Maybe it’s a good thing? We become extinct and save the planet from our pollution and global warming? We remove our unclean presence and leave the world to the purity of a certain desert faith? What after all has freedom given us? Melting icecaps and mutant fish. Yin yields to yang.

On the other hand, we might choose not to use clear plastics to drink from. We might wash our vegetables (don’t think meat-eating is the answer -- animal flesh stores such chemicals at an even higher density). It starts with being aware of the problem. After that one can choose to care, or not. If biologically generated motivation from out of a healthy nucleus accumbens is insufficient to make us care, perhaps ethics and a commitment to some intellectual ideal might do it. How would I know what could move you?

But that’s why I eat the way I do. Health matters for so many reasons. One young fella made his standard joke today about how healthful meat-eating is. One suspects he does know better. But it’s all so emotional. Emotion is not a free pass.

As usual, mine is an appeal to rationality. These are the facts, some of them. Do with them what you will.

Does the title of this post seem impenetrable to you? We did not know what the New Age would bring. The triumph of hippie values is brought about by the very thing they rebelled against. Corporate chemicals -- as opposed to hallucinogenic ones. Their feminine ethos triumphs against masculinity at the cost of infertility. The New Age is bringing not love, love, love, but sterility, deformity and extinction. What is the point of saving the planet, if we fail to save the baby boys?


J

Leap

This is the day that Jason came to live with me. I say he came, but I went and got him. Out at one of the juvenile halls. This is also the day I lost Joey.

February is such an unfinished month. Where I am, the trees are just thinking about opening up their leaf buds. I planted elms, 28 years ago. One of them, in the open ground, is in full burgeon. Another grows out of a small square of dirt in the cement. The only leaves it has are left over from last fall. Today I was wondering why that would be. I figured it just wasn’t getting enough water. All its roots have to travel so far, under the driveway and sidewalk and street. All that cement must make a difference.

I know a cat that lives on the roof. They go crazy, it seems. But no, not crazy. Just true to their genes. Some are born mild, some wild. It doesn’t have anything to do with where they’re born. A friendly cat gets eaten by coyotes. A cat with wild genes will be friendly to a few people, but only because they’ve been tamed. That made me think again today that cats only like you because you give them pleasure. We’d like to think all that rubbing up against us is love. It’s not. It’s just them spreading their scent. They have glands by their mouths. It must feel good to rub scent glands on pant legs.

And the house if full of dogs. So and so is out of the country again. Only three of his dogs are left. They wait by the door all day hoping someone will come home. Then they trail after like sled dogs. One just stands and waits patiently to be petted. One runs in small circles, over and over, smiling and glad that it’s not being beaten. It came from an abused puppyhood. The other one is just along to be a part of the crowd. As with almost everyone, it’s mostly about food.

Well, I suppose that's the point of it all. Just looking for something to keep us going. Last a little longer. We're all February, every once in a while prolonging our days. It's only proper. The alternative is regret. Regret over unfinished lives.


J

Being Schooled

I just spent four hours talking with my son. I won’t go into the details, much. But I kept identifying major life lessons in what he was saying. I've rarely gotten specific here with his military position. He was a sniper. One of the things he said was that he could always tell what error a shooter was making by the pattern the shots made on the target. If the shots missed the mark along a vertical plain, the shooter was making a trigger error -- jerking instead of squeezing. If the shots were too high or low, it was a breathing error -- a big sucking gasp up and then the shot. If it was diagonal, a combination of these two. If it was just a random scatter, it was a sighting error. Nobody told him this. He intuited it. I’m sure other people know it. I’m sure competent instructors know it, although none of them told my son. Now you know it.

Or his ghillie suit. That strawman outfit that snipers make, to become invisible. All his classmates would spend hours and hours on getting the jute just right -- strips of cloth. Instructors would spray gaps with orange paint: you have no jute here. No down-scoring -- just pointing out the gaps. My son had the crappiest-looking ghillie suit ever. He laughed about it. But he’d absolutely load it up with veg. The point is to break up the human silhouette. Veg does that. Jute does it less. Orange paint doesn’t matter. Prettiness doesn’t matter. Effectiveness matters. The most effective thing was veg, and it was easy and fast. He got it right, and he got a lot more sleep than the jute weavers. Enough sleep matters more than enough jute. Easy and fast is not always the best thing. Only sometimes. Knowing when is what intelligence is for.

Or target identification. He'd have to make a sketch of some large building, and with a scope from hundreds of meters away identify military objects placed randomly around the site. A bullet on a windowsill, say. Ten objects, and you aren't told what they are. Very hard test, but you could list as many objects as you wanted. No down-scoring. "A black cylindrical object aprox. 3 cm. long, 1 wide, on right side of third step of main entrance." Most guys would list only ten objects, and fail. My son would list every object he could see that was questionable. Lots of misses, and all the hits. Perfect score. See? Play the game by the rules. Which means exploit the rules to their full, fair value.

Or distance estimation. I’m forgetting the terminology. But he had to estimate the distance of a human target. Is he 600 meters out? 800? 400? They’re allowed a 15% error for naked-eye estimations. So he didn’t try to guess the distance. He estimated the range. If it’s about 1000 meters, he’d ask himself, Is that about 850 meters? Nah, looks more than that. 1000? Could be. 1100? Could be. Call it 1050. He scored a hundred percent -- sometimes spot on, sometimes on the margin, but in the range.

Or enemy mortar fire into the FOB. A blaring alarum would sound, a ceaseless blaaaaa blaaaaa blaaaaa. It was more frightening than the explosions. How like life. Our fear is more troublesome than real danger. Nothing you can do about the danger. It’s just there. Fear is how you feel, though. My son is just like me, in this understanding. He’d be eating in the DFAC and the alarms would sound and everyone would race outside, and he’d just stay and finish his meal. How does changing your location reduce the danger? They’re not running to some shelter -- just outside. See? It’s not fatalism. It’s an understanding of risks. And if someone was hit by mortar fire -- everyone would run to the victim. Understandable, but a crowd is not helpful, and now that the enemy has the range, isn’t that crowd a good target? Not quite how it worked, since mortar fire is just random, but the principle is there. Crowds are not necessary.

Just one after the other, he was annunciating these profound truths, these life-lessons, through simple specifics. I was sitting there thinking, there’s a book in this. Not for me to write, but there is one. I was wishing I could take notes, but that’s not what it was about. That’s one of those simple specifics that I’ve gotten right. Listen to your son’s stories. It’s one of the ways we show our love and our respect.

He has hundreds of fascinating stories. Tragic, horrific, fascinating, heroic. Like what life is about. You'll have to read the book though. Or write your own.


J

Moslem Jokes

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Mohammad.
Mohammad who?
Oh, I'm sorry, I should have said "boom" instead of "knock knock."

Hey, is this an audience or an oil painting?

How many mohammads does it take to blow up a nursery school?
Just one, but he has to shave off his pubes first.

I know you're there, I can hear you breathing.

An imam, a mullah and an ayatollah go into a bar. The imam says to the bartender, "Gimme a scotch on the rocks." So the mullah takes out a sword and cuts off the imam's head. The ayatollah says, "Why did you do that?" So the mullah cuts off his head. Then he cuts off the bartender's head. Then he blows up the bar. Then he straps explosive to two mentally challenged women and detonates them by remote control as they walk through a crowded marketplace.

Heh heh, yeah, so I don't go to where you work and scrub toilets! And people don't give me any respect!



I know, these jokes are not at all funny. I have to make them up myself, and it's just not my gift. The essence of humor is surprise, and my efforts here are so very predictable. I tried to find some real moslem jokes, you know, online, but there aren't any. The most I could find were some obscure Scandinavian cartoons, many of which I failed to understand.

What. I don't get it. He has a gigantic headache? He's bombed out of his head? This racist who drew the cartoon, this hate-monger the so-called Kurt Westergaard, obviously a Nazi ... oh, well, I seem to have forgotten my point. But the racist Danes seem to have objected to our righteous holey jistring -- manifesting itself most recently in our holey righteous attempt to behead the so-called Kurt Westergaard last week, or otherwise send him to hell -- by reprinting the offending cartoons. How many embassies do we have to burn down before they get our holey massage? It makes me so mad sometimes I could blow up a Jewish daycare center. But I don't have to be mad to do that. Well, a mad bomber, maybe, but that's everyone.

Hm. I seem to have undergone an attitude shift. The Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps? It's only fitting. I am a master of themes both religious and psychological. If only I could draw. Cuz I've got some terrific ideas for some cartoons.


J

Whoops

George Will gets it right. Hillary “said she is constantly being urged to unleash her inner Pericles: ‘People say to me all the time, “You're so specific. Why don't you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up?”’”

Hillary’s eloquence is not to be questioned, but she really ought to exercise more thought as to whom she quotes. Those many people whom she references are all apparently reciting a talking point meme penned by some DNC apparatchik whose talents list more to the bureaucratic than the inspirational. I am forced to believe this, rather than the idea that Hillary herself composed this quasi bon mot, the polish of which is conspicuous by its low gloss.

How is Hillary to compete in the war of words with Obama? -- who gives us such bracing heroin as: "We are the ones we've been waiting for. [thundering audience whoop] We are the change that we seek." The message is the messiah. Y’see? Obama is so selfless. He never uses the world “I”, crafty devil. We we we, all the way home, to the White House. He says “our campaign” and “Yes. We. Can.” What monster of cynicism could argue with that?

With all his qualifications, silver-tongued Obama surely does belong in the White House. No doubt about it. He’d make a great White House press secretary. Bush could have used him. As it is, Obama is using Carter, or at least his old staff. Zbignew Brazinski and some surreal other unpronounceables from the Carter Error have been disinterred and had tanis leaf tincture infused into their crepe-like flesh that they might advise our Obama campaign. Even Chris Mathews, Carter’s old speech writer, gets tingles in his lower extremities when Obama’s tongue gets to work. Mmm.

It is, then, all about words. If Hillary could choose the right words, her clinton machine wouldn’t have to hoist her from the quagmire. If Obama requotes in just the right way some New Testament verse first breathed into Saint Paul, despots will repent and pennies will hail like a shower of golden light from the heavenlies. Cuz that’s where the pennies will have to come from.

Obama revealed his economic plan in Wisconsin. Big mistake, these specifics. They’re so, so analyzable, so refutable. He wants $150 billion for a green-energy plan; regulated profits for energy firms, drug companies and health insurers; expanded health insurance, by some $65 billion; an “infrastructure investment bank” of $60 billion; raised barriers to free trade; a mortgage-interest tax credit; double the workers getting the earned-income tax credit, and triple that benefit for minimum-wage workers. It sums to around $800 billion, which will be paid for by, uh, well … tax hikes on the rich won’t come close. Unless we redefine rich as middle class.

Steve Moore in The Wall Street Journal calculates that Obama will need a 39.6% personal income tax, a 52.2% combined income and payroll tax, a 28% capital-gains tax, a 39.6% dividends tax, and a 55 % estate tax. Why should Obama's collective we care about all these rich-dude taxes? It's just that it stifles the economy.

But we don’t have to worry about that. Obama has a speech just on the tip of his tongue, that will whoop us out of any such oratorical quagmire.


J

Living in a Body

It’s no way to live, but I just now had the ideation that I don’t really like people, and don’t want to be around them. We must suppose that by people I mean strangers and the like. Even so, there’s something wrong.

I’ve started working out again. My old strength workout. Stopped it three years ago when I took up BJJ. I’ve had my little joke in these pages about my masculine beauty. The reality is that I do indeed present a pretty impressive picture, a lean and reasonably muscled guy who looks generally younger than his years. What’s disturbing to me is that I’m not as strong as I look, or at least as strong as I thought I was. A few years ago I could dip twice my body weight ten times. 360. Now I strap 35 pounds around my waist and think that’s really hard. I could squat three times my body weight ten times. Now I can manage twice my weight, 5 times. I was six pounds away from a one-armed chin-up. Now it’s 24 pounds.

But I’m feeling vigorous. And I find I have that essential mental focus needed for the sorts of gains that I do know how to make. So I’m working out again. I just have to find the time. Last year around April I was all revved up about competing in the World Championships, the Mundials, and I was going to gain some weight and some strength and all that, but I got that strange shoulder and arm injury.

Now in five weeks it’s the PanAms again, which I won. I’m thinking about competing again. I’m thinking about fighting in a younger age division. I’m pushing 50, y’know. I’m thinking Masters, which is 30 to 35. Spot them 15 years. My height is usually an advantage, but I’m slow nowadays, and not all that talented, and not very aggressive. I do like to win. I’ve never lost a gi fight. But these young blue belts will be much tougher than what I’m used to. Don’t get to train with people my size all that often.

I never had a midlife crisis. It was more of a catastrophe, and I didn’t have it, it had me. My family was destroyed by hostile outside forces. A few other things. You know -- carnage. But partly I never had a midlife crisis because I never had a place in the world to begin with, outside of family. A career just to make money -- I was a dedicated teacher, loyal to a corrupt system, but I was always an outsider. My marriage failed long before midlife, and I was never motivated to trick some other female into thinking she loved me.

So, what? I train BJJ, I read, I do what I do. I write this silly blog. My son is out of state, still, on some business. I miss him. I avoid meaningful contact with people. I listen to ambient noise -- heaters and clocks and heartbeats. I avoid sources of anxiety. I notice that almost all of my sentences begin with “I”, but suppose that anything else is just subterfuge.

Every once in a great while I’ll get a comment here, about how twisted I am. They’re just talking about some detail of my prose. Am I really twisted? I suppose so. On the continuum of human twistedness, I’d say I skew about 15 degrees south of normal. Why would that be? I expect it’s because I’ve always been aware of how alone we are. It’s my first memory. It’s why my sentences begin with I.

I don’t tell the details of my story because I haven’t given up hope. If you knew the details, I’d be lost. Extremes of the continuum -- lost at one end, hope at the other. And slightly off-center, tilting toward the darkness, is always being alone.


J

the prince of peace

[All quotes and images taken from Is Barack Obama the Messiah?]

What They Say

Barack Obama dot com: "Just follow Barack's lead and be honest with them. You don't need to debate policy or discuss the day's headlines.

Donna Brazile: "Barack Obama is a metaphysical force in American politics."

***

Chris Matthews: "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment."

"I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising."

***

Ezra Klein: "Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. ...Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence..."

***

Ken Burns: "As Abraham Lincoln experienced in his time, this nation is again at a crossroads. We again need a president who is above all authentic, who points us confidently toward that future, a leader with real character, like Obama, who calls upon each and every one of us to heed what his predecessor from Illinois called "the better angels of our nature" and not our basest fears. I am confident that Obama will be that kind of president. It is time for real change."

Gerald Campbel: "For his part, Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind. ... Unlike other candidates, Obama is an inspired leader. He is authentic and truthful. He radiates truth and goodness. He possesses charisma and exercises sound judgment."

***

Gary Hart: "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians, and this makes him seem elusive to the conventional press and the traditional politicians. His instinct for the moment and the times is orders of magnitude more powerful than the experience claimed by others. ... In an age of great transformation, experience of the past is worthless because it is a barrier to the breakthrough gesture...

"Some see Barack Obama as the long awaited champion finally come to slay the awful dragon of race. And they are right. Some see him as a new start for the Democratic Party and national politics. And they are right. Some see him as the walking embodiment of internationalism, ready to restore an honorable and respected place for America in the world. And they are right.

"I see Barack Obama as a leader for this transcendent moment, the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century and to convert threat to great new opportunity."

Eve Konstantine: "Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings of who we are as a people, and as a country. We've surfaced him out of "the field" and charged him with the task of riding this wave on our behalf...

Obama has tapped into his own [Vibrational Intelligence]. He's listened to the unspoken, heard the unvoiced, and has responded to the yearning of our youth, our boomers, and the disenfranchised. He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence, of which we're all a part; and he's simultaneously speaking into that field."

***

Bill Rush: "Barack's going to bring the whole unit-, unit- the whole nation together - NO MORE Red States, NO MORE Blue States, ONE NATION. ... He hasn't been a senator for that long. But you know he's coming in here, he's doing it because he wants to, but also because he feels like he's CHOSEN to do this. You know our nation right now needs something, needs some CHANGE, needs something to SHAKE THINGS UP...

“I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered,” Mr. Rush said, all other explanations failing. “I’m a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God’s plan. Obama has certain qualities that -- I think he is being used for some purpose. I really believe that."

Toni Morrison (to Obama): "...in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

George Packer: "At times, Obama almost seems to be trying to escape history, presenting himself as the conduit through which people’s yearnings for national transformation can be realized. [He] spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days."

***

Michael Sietzman: "We finally have a candidate in Barack Obama who uses the word 'We' while others use 'I.' He empowers us with words and the authentic emotion behind them and people are rushing into the tent to drink that magic water. Candor, inclusiveness, poetry, and inspiration. We don't only deserve those things, we long for them. We want to be led and we want to be lifted and anyone who doesn't understand that simply doesn't understand us.

***

Michelle Obama: "We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the ONLY person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

=====

Honestly, he gives me chills. -- Mural artist

***

"It's almost like the Messiah, you know?" said [Jan] Young.... "People really, really want change, and you feel it. You don't just hear it -- you feel something coming from him."

***

"Brenda Bladen was trying to explain why she liked Barack Obama so much—he was authentic, selfless, and inspirational. He was restoring her faith in politics. "I'm not comparing him to Jesus Christ but..." she said, before talking about the senator's humble beginnings..."

"He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words," said Mack, now a regional field organizer. Obama hugged her and whispered something in her ear – she was so thrilled she doesn't remember what it was.

***

"He's very charismatic. It was a 'you-had-to-be-there' kind of experience," said Lolita Breckenridge... "Not too much of the speech was new to me," she admitted. "But hearing him live..." she trailed off, shaking her head and grinning. ...

[Obama] did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of "I love you Obama!" with a reassuring: "I love you back."

"Black and white, and the youth; they appeared in a state close to rapture watching Obama speak. Here and there one could see women crying and some men wiping away tears too. ...

"It's not so much by what he says but it's the way the crowds respond to his words. When 16,000 people, without prompting, start shouting some of his keynote phrases as he delivers them, you know something special is going on.

"The atmosphere at his events is such that one wonders if Obama is about to walk out with a basket with some loaves and fishes to feed the thousands. ...

"People rushed forward screaming hysterically. ... “It was HIM!” she yelled. “But,” I questioned, “how do you know? All the windows were darkened.” She replied, “I felt it.”

"...He gave the same speech he gives everywhere. I paid no attention to him but watched the crowd.

"Those faces. It was raw, naked, complete, worship, love, heart-whole passionate stunned and almost unbelieving but desperately wanting to believe him adoration."

***

Jody Klein of Centralia, Wash., about two hours-drive south of Seattle, was near tears as she recounted her Obama experience. At age 20, she'll vote in a presidential election for the first time.

"There's just this amazing excitement that's here," she said. "When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa … how important a time this is for us. It was really exciting."

***

"The rest of us, we were in this huge crowd outside in the rain and he came out in the rain and talked to us," said Keze, her voice still raw from cheering. "I was 10 feet away from him, 10 feet away," she repeated another two times in awe.

"The only time I felt like that was when I saw Pope John Paul II."

What He Says

When Morgan Freeman comes over to greet Obama, the senator begins bowing down both hands in worship. "This guy was president before I was," says Obama, referring to Freeman's turn in Deep Impact and, clearly, getting a little ahead of his own bio. Next, a nod to Bruce Almighty: "This guy was God before I was." (Okay, more than a little ahead.) But Freeman is eating it up. Leaning in, he tells the senator to win it. "I will," Obama replies. "That's why I'm running."

***

“False hopes? There’s no such thing. This country was built on hope. We don’t need leaders to tell us what we can’t do—we need leaders to inspire us. Some are thinking about our constraints, and others are thinking about limitless possibility.”

***

"My job is to be so persuasive that if there's anybody left out there who is still not sure whether they will vote, or is still not clear who they will vote for, that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."

***

We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us ... that we cannot remake this world as it should be. Because we know what we have seen and what we believe -- that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored; that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest. Yes. We. Can."

Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.

Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."

That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots... "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists...

That's how the greatest generation...

That's how pioneers ... they said, "Yes we can."

That's how immigrants traveled ... "Yes we can."

That's how women ... how workers ... how young people...

That's what hope is. That's what hope is.

That's what hope is, Madison.

That moment when we... When we... Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom. When we instead join arm in arm and decide ... block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is.

There's a moment in the life ... when that spirit... if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment. This is our time.

What I Say

I'm just worried about what he's doing to all our fine young white women.




J

Bad Day

There are lots and lots and lots of punks who deserve this sort of treatment.

This boy, Eric Bush, age 14 -- upon whom puberty hangs so heavily -- really doesn't seem to be one of them. As a teacher of teenagers for many years, I understand Officer Salvatore Rivieri's frustration and its venting. I was fired from three different schools, and more, over the years. Once I sent a letter home saying that the son acted like his parents were drug addicts and that they needed to be very ashamed of themselves. Once I put a punk in a headlock and dragged him to the office. Yes indeed, I understand Officer Rivieri.

But there is clearly some issue that this public servant has imported into the situation. He has been suspended with pay. I'd expect some sort of lawsuit. Adults need, desperately, to hold teenagers accountable. We are accountable ourselves. To set an example of stern dignity is one thing. To abuse our size advantage and rant under color of authority is something else.

We'd hope that some good comes of it. Perhaps young Mister Bush will adopt a more adult form of address. Perhaps Officer Rivieri will not be required to dress like half a Teletubby. And perhaps the Department's staff psychologist will brush up on stress-management techniques, so that decent men will be able better to compartmentalize their private and their public frustrations.


J

Bad B.O.

Obama is supposed to be hard to attack. Our vaunted Republican Attack Machine can't RAM into him without seeming, uh, insensitive. He's black, you know. Poor man. It's best to just ignore that condition, eh? And every other condition -- or do I mean position? Just hands off, is all. Hasn't the poor man suffered enough already? LEAVE BARACK ALONE!!!

Actually, no -- he hasn't suffered at all. His lineage owes nothing to the tradition of enslavement and racism that has polluted this nation. He is truly an African American, in the way that I am not a European American. He's African the way my son is Australian -- by birthright from an alien parent. Barack was raised by a white mother in foreign tropical lands. His minority status is purely one of melanin and statistics. Indeed, Obama is not African-American at all. He's Kenyan-American.

Yes, he can be attacked. We'll just attack his white half. You know, his unthinking Kennedistic liberalism. His paternalistic Ivy League theoretician Big Sister Marxist devotion to platitudes. Lefty stuff. Harmless, entirely harmless, because of its fine intentions. What kind of a racist monster attacks such a benign person? Well, me, for one. Except that I'd disagree with your hateful characterization of me as a "racist" "monster" who "attacks" a "benign" "person." Oh. Oops. I didn't mean to put "person" in quotes. That makes it seem like I meant to imply he wasn't a person. He's more than just a mere person -- he's a personage.

We'll attack him, when we start to, for his positions. For instance, he says he'd meet as president with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Kim Jung Il. Face to face, that is. Sounds like a good idea. Sounds like a good idea. Isn't it funny that the same people who are okay with this are upset that he appeared at the same event where an anti-gay-marriage pastor spoke. Problem is, in his private life, or as a mere public figure, Obama bestows no special favor on those with whom he appears. As president he would represent all of us, and the holy radiance with which his presence would imbue these dicpotatoes would be blinding. Presidents are special, you see.

His Almanac of American Politics rating on Foreign Policy is 85% liberal -- not 100% liberal because of such odd positions as that he would invade Pakistan in order to attack al-Qaeda. "I will not hesitate," he orated, "to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America." I must be missing the nuance, that distinguishes this statement from Bush's so-hated policies of the past five years. But I'm being disingenuous. The hesitation wouldn't be in the attack, it would be in determining what a "direct threat" might possibly be.

He imagines that Iran can be handled by "sustained and aggressive diplomacy" along with "tough" sanctions. The UN would be a major factor in such efforts. Hm. NoKo springs to mind, as to how this is a really uninformed and ill-considered and anti-realistic and pseudo-good idea. You know, where we get lied to a lot and the dicpotato gets everything he wants. If I'm gonna get screwed, I want a vagina somehow involved. He uses words like "tough," yet he criticizes Hillary's vote to classify the Iranian Quds Force as a terrorist organization: it could enable Bush to launch military action against Iran, y'see.

He is for a published schedule of US withdrawal from Iraq. On January 30, 2007, he introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 which called for capping the level of troops in Iraq at then-levels. In other words, he vigorously opposed the surge, which has worked to the point of reversing the problem. He called for "removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008" -- which is, like, uh, in a few weeks from now.

He has however called for a surge, or invasion, of two additional US brigades into Afghanistan. He claims there was "misreporting" of his comments to this effect, saying that "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan or Afghanistan." This seems to contradict his position, noted, that he would sent troops into Pakistan "even if the Pakistani government did not give approval..." You figure it out.

As for Israel, he supposes that "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Project your mind briefly over the geopolitical landscape of our troubled globe, and puzzle to yourself as to whether this is a statement entirely in full consonance with reality. As an aid to your cogitations, I'll just remind you of Burma and the Horn of Africa. What say we first care about peoples who do not resort to terrorism? 'Nuff said.

Obama says he "will not support any bill that does not provide [an] earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population." No nationalist, he. Come one, come all. How very generous of him. As we must expect. He's for the "Dream Act" -- which I seem to think pays for college for illegals. The American Dream becomes the Illegal-American Dream. The We Are the World Dream. One earns a path to citizenship by applying for legal entry from outside the country. He's talking about providing a stolen path to citizenship for the forged-documented population.

The Almanac of American Politics rates him as 0% conservative on Economic Policy. He's for the death tax -- work hard, invest, save, so that most of your estate can go to the government rather than to your children. He is "absolutely determined" to get Nationalized Health Care -- turning 17% of the economy into a government monopoly. Thus, consistently, he is against school vouchers.

Opposed to exploring ANWR. Totally buys into anthropogenic Global Warming. What "we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. ...we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe." He would cut "greenhouse gas emission" by 80% -- isn't that pre-Industrial Revolution levels? He'd be against burning buffalo chips.

As a state senator, the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council awarded him a 100% rating. They like him, they really like him. Same deal in the US Senate: 100% from the world's largest provider of abortion services, Planned Parenthood, and from the world's largest lobbyist group for abortion services, NARAL. He's all for partial-birth abortion. Against parental notification. He was one of the few state senators who voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which requires medical care for aborted fetuses that survive the entirely legal and bioethical effort to medically terminate their metabolic activity. He supports embryonic stem cell research, and was co-sponsor of the 2005 Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. When Bush vetoed it, Obama said, "Conservative, pro-life Republicans want this bill to pass." Um, no?

He would sign the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Being disabled doesn't give you special privileges. The world shouldn't have to conform to your needs anymore than you must conform to its. How is being disabled a handicap, if it's not a handicap? Yes, my reasoning is weak. But compassion is not a governmental function. Public facilities should accommodate the general population. Private facilities should operate according to the values of their owners. It's called the free market.

"I do not agree...that homosexuality is immoral." Neither do I. I do think that immoral conduct is immoral. He supposes the gay rights movement is "somewhat" like the civil rights movement. Yeah, the way sodomy is somewhat like sex. He's for including "sexual orientation" in anti-discrimination laws. Does that include necrophilia? (I almost wrote negrophilia. For reals.) He supports health benefits for gay civil partners. I don't know. If it's a contract, then why not? But I think we should be able to sell our kidneys. He has an 89% rating from the HRC -- "very pro-gay".

A 100% rating by the NAACP. Um, duh? Pro-affirmative-action. Double-duh. Them coloreds love that affirmative action. It's a requirement, to be authentic.

He has supported a national ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He voted against legislation protecting firearm manufacturers from liability. Voted against an exception for people charged with violating local weapons bans by using a gun in their home for self-defense. He's a board member of the Joyce Foundation, which funds and maintains several gun control organizations in the United States. He rates a grade of F from the NRA -- a "true enemy of gun owners’ rights". Guns aren't my thing, but we have to take sides, don't we.

Well, it goes on. Take a look for yourself. He's not an idiot. I agree with some of his positions, if not his reasoning, and if I don't agree, I'm neutral. Energy policy for example isn't about Global Warming!!! -- it's a matter of national security, and I don't care how in love someone is with their SUV. They should be taxed into oblivion, except for people who ACTUALLY NEED them. They are the pyramids of our civilization -- useless monumental tombs to vanity that will bankrupt our civilization. They might as well be giant statues facing the sea. We shouldn't have to fight wars over our opium addictions.

Politics is about compromise. It's tyranny that's about always getting your way. An Omaba presidency is highly unlikely to be more of a disaster than a Carter presidency, and we survived that, and it gave us a Reagan, who really was much better than you think. Presidents function on three levels -- rhetoric, small groups, and personal. Rhetoric is about speeches and public impressions -- what Bush sucks at. 

Obama is a genius at this. Small groups are where things get done -- twisting arms and doing deals. Johnson was a master at it. Bush is apparently impressive in intimate settings. The personal level is where mastery of issues, study, diligence, competence come into play. clinton and Carter over-managed the little things, which made them ineffective. Carter famously supervised the tennis court schedule of the White House. Where would Obama fit? He is vague, so very vague. We don't know.

In any case, we will survive. America is vast. Excess stimulates contraction. As William James once dreamed, everything is circular. But wisdom avoids a world of pain. For all that he may be elected, this is not Obama's time. If it is indeed "our" time, "our" does not include him. He is the wrong man.


J

Pep

So let me explain it to you. I say something rude and/or degrading to you, and you get angry about it. I manipulate you, and you display the negative emotion that I want to provoke. Get it? Don’t you understand that? What are you, a sociopath? That way I feel powerful, and your lack of self control puffs me up even more. Cuz it’s like an economy. I purchase your puppet-like behavior and you dance on the end of my strings. So we both get something out of it. See? But the deal is that you have to care about what I say, see, like a normal person. If you don’t care about what I say, and smile amusedly at me, as if I were the pathetic one, well that’s just crazy. If I go to the bother of studying you with a critical eye so that I can identify and exploit your vulnerabilities, that means that you have to actually be vulnerable.

That’s how I raised you, and it’s how I expect you to be. Not self-assured. Not confident. Weak. Irrational. Otherwise I won’t feel dominant. Don’t you get that? Don’t you love me? Your poor old father, who sacrificed so much for you? When I think of all the pain you put me through, and this is the ingratitude I get in return, it just makes me sick. Yeah, I’m a failure all right, but not as much as you are. You’ll never amount to anything, just the way I always knew. Don’t even bother trying. I know you’ll just fail. I’m only saying this for your own good. Cuz you’ll never succeed at anything. Just give up.

What are you smiling at?


J

The First Black President

Indeed, the clintons are the greatest friends blacks ever had. Adoring, subservient blacks, that is. Blacks who know their place on the entitlement plantation. bill just loves to see the Negroes dance, so long as he calls the tune.

Offensive? Of course I'm offensive. Deliberately. I am sufficiently aware of the imagery I evoke to appreciate its effect. The issue is not whether I'm offensive. It's whether I'm correct. The left is now apprehending what the right as always known. The clintons are without principle. Not ad hominem. The evidence is clear. The "race card". For shame.

There's something fundamentally racist about the right. We like things the way they are, the way they were. Not terribly fair, is it, to the disadvantaged, who tend to be minorities. But the same can be said of the left. Fundamentally racist. Those poor, incapable minorities -- we must take care of them. How infantalizing.

Action is the tool of belief, just as mind is the fool of the heart. Does any mystery remain as to the clinton character? We know its mind and its heart, because we see its actions. If wisdom is the ability to draw accurate conclusions from insufficient evidence, we should be holy sages by now, regarding, or compared to, the clintons. There is hardly any need for intense emotion, though. There are worse things than unethical ambition. Incompetence would be an example.

Hillary hasn't shown herself to be terribly effective, but her incompetence has yet to be demonstrated. Same with Obama. He's just a cypher. He's a better dancer than Hillary though.


J

Northern Illinois University

Today's latest pettigreat dumbfuck met his fate on the campus of Northern Illinois University. He takes as his role model that other genius of self-expression, the Artist Cho, late of Virginia Tech, who came to world prominence last April in his dramatic display of power and will. I said I wouldn't say anything more about Cho, and I was correct. This is nothing more. Just more of the same. My fourfold take on that particular mass murderer? Here.

Eighteen people reported wounded, so far four killed. Not counting the scum in that number. I don't have a lot to say about this. What's left to say? A "skinny white guy" with a "stocking cap", whatever that is, or a black cap or a hoodie, with a shotgun and a pistol. The coward assassin saved a bullet for his peabrain. Why do these assholes always get the order wrong? Suicide first, then murder.


J