Heigh-ho

Everything Must Go

2008-03-28T17:09:00.006-04:00

A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

Obviously, Harriet has never moved my wife.

See you here.

spd's Big Book of Little Disappointments

2008-03-26T18:25:00.004-04:00

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
Samuel Johnson, Letter to Hester Thrale, Jun. 26, 1775.

I learned early in life which words I dreaded most to hear my father speak. They were words never spoken harshly or in raised voice, but whose force was such that you felt the air leave the room. “I am very disappointed in you.” If Dad ever followed up on those words with an “I hope you learned your lesson” or an “I expect more from you next time,” I never heard it. What mattered was that his state of being was “disappointed,” and that I knew that no artful dodge, no plaintiff wail or act of contrition could ever undo it. Oh, I knew that Dad’s disappointment in me was only temporary. He still loved me. He only he wished I wasn’t such a complete idiot sometimes. But my memory of the power those words prevents from uttering them aloud…at least to my own kids.

Life's disappointments are as varied as the landscape- the juvenile creek of “They promised it would snow last night!” winds through the vain woods of “the Smiths didn’t send us a Christmas card” to join the great river of broken hearts on its way to the sea of ... um... metaphors. Irrespective of its personal magnitude, however, every disappointment exposes two basic human flaws; the first being the reliance on our own expectations (“I screwed up, I trusted you”), and the second being the inability to correctly anticipate the expectations of others (“You screwed up, you trusted me”). Note that in both cases the blame cast is bi-directional. (The corollary to this is the equally human phenomena of being pleased. Both require the surprise that comes from misplaced expectations.)

It is this human capacity for misjudging expectation that sets disappointment apart from mere annoyance. Flies are annoying. Humans are disappointing. For example: Being served a cup of lousy coffee in a Waffle House is an annoyance, but it’s also not unexpected. The waitress at the Waffle House will probably get you another cup of coffee if you ask (nicely), but it will still taste like crap. No harm, no foul. Order some orange juice. Get that same lousy cup of coffee at the end of a four-figure meal, however, and you’re both annoyed and disappointed. You’re annoyed that the coffee tastes like sewage, but you’re disappointed that the restaurant would diminish the excellent meal you just enjoyed by serving you crappy coffee. The waitress will surely brew a new pot for you, and the manager may send over a free dessert, but your disappointment will linger because you expected better from the humans.

Why bother with disappointments? Why not? The name of this blog is “Heigh-ho,” after all. And I’m to blame (at least halfway) for every disappointment I’ve ever experienced. Plus, the only alternative is to lower my expectations. Where's the fun in that?

So, over the next few weeks and/or months, I am going to be collecting your Little Disappointments here at Heigh-ho, and letting you in on a few of my own. Don't be shy about it, friends. Share so that maybe we can all avoid a few unnecessary disappointments in our future. Or at least recognize them for what they are.....your fault.

Where to start?

How about with the letter “A?”

Beat It, 2007, You're Blocking the View

2007-12-31T13:55:00.000-05:00

Here it is December 31st, 2007, and time once more to pretend that the preceeding 364 days were actually worth the daylight by running down the all the important events conveniently grouped by calendar month.

What makes you think that I've got a better idea?

January: New Speaker of the House Nancy Peolsi promises an end to double digit approval ratings.

February: Dixie Chicks win 5 Grammys, vow never to leave Los Angeles again.

March: Switzerland "Accidentally" Invades Liechtensein- Israel Blamed.

April: New Jersey Governor Corzine discovers the purpose of seat belts. Don Imus discovers the purpose of the seven second delay. We all become Hokies.

May: The hurricanes are coming! The hurricanes are coming!

June: Scientists confirm that Barry Bonds supplied steriods to pygmy pandas so that they too could become Giants.

July: Porsche. There is no substitute.

August: While everyone else is busy on vacation, Russia, Canada, and Denmark all "accidently" invade Greenland - Israel Blamed.

September: Larry Craig resigns Senate to take wide-stance position as restroom attendant.

October: Dumbledore fiddles while Gore burns.

November: Belgians explore dissolving their country in favor of forming a unified doormat with France and the Netherlands.

December: The 2007 Junior Eurovision Song Contest CD goes on sale, and immediately wins 5 Grammys.

All in all, I'd say that if you don't happen to be a fan of the WORLD CHAMPION Boston Red Sox, then your year was probably as forgetable as this post. Which, dude, is like, epic.

That's okay, folks. You see, I've got it on good authority that 2008 is going to be a WHOLE lot better. Promise.

Happy New Year.

Seasoned Greetings

2007-12-24T20:54:00.000-05:00

From all us at Heigh-ho,
To all of you, wherever you are,

We wish you and your family a very, very

Merry Christmas!

Don't forget to give your dog a bone!
If you don't have a bone handy, use a cat.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T08:14:00.001-05:00

There is a time for some things,
and time for all things;
a time for great things,
and a time for small things.

-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxv

Thank you, Father, for Thy blessings, great and small. And for those with whom I share Your heavenly bounty. Thank you for my time among Your children, and may You keep them in Your sight forever and ever. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.
Be well.

Lawyers In Love

2007-11-06T12:18:00.000-05:00

In recognitition of those Pakistani attorneys who have bravely stood against the truncheons of government thugs in defense of that nation's laws and constitution, I offer the the following encouragement from the Roman poet Ovid:

The purpose of laws is to prevent the strong from always having their way.

He who would not be idle, let him fall in love.

Love is a thing that is full of cares and fears.

The wit of man has devised cruel statutes,
And nature oft permits what is by law forbid.

Passion persuades me one way, reason another.
I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.

She who resists as though she would not win,
By her own treason falls an easy prey.

The bow
If it never be unbent,
will lose its power.

Though strength be wanting,
the will to action
Merits praise.

What we call birth
Is but a beginning to be something else
Than what we were before;
and when we cease
To be that something,
then we call it death.

When worse may yet befall, there’s room for prayer,
But when our fortune’s at its lowest ebb,
We trample fear beneath our feet, and live
Without a fear of evil yet to come.

Let others seek safety.
Nothing is safer than misfortune,
Where there’s no fear of greater ill to come.

Jove send me more such afternoons as this.

"Nobility lies in the man, my prince, not in the towel. "
-Richard Burton as Thomas a Beckett

Good show, counselors.

Bloody good show.

World Champs

2007-10-29T00:48:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to the World Champion Boston Red Sox.

Baseball is never just a game, or a series. Baseball is a season.

Thanks for a great season, boys.
See you again come spring.

Puttin' On The Dog

2007-10-24T11:43:00.000-04:00

You gotta stomp, whistle and scream
You gotta wake right up in your dreams
You gotta jump, wheel and drive
Keep that feeling alive

You gotta kick, holler and shout
I'm gonna tell you what it's all about
You gotta tell me that you love me
Tell me that you're mine

We're putting on the dog tonight
We're putting on the dog tonight
We'll be p...putting on the dog tonight
Putting on, putting on the dog tonight
We'll be putting on the dog tonight
We'll be putting on the dog tonight
Putting on the dog
Putting on the dog

-Tom Waits

Hi folks! It's me, Fenway, the Official Black Dog of the Virginia Chapter of Insane Red Sox Fans. I was born back in April, just about the time the first pitch was thrown out on this glorious season. The first thing my owner did was hang a Red Sox collar around my neck and name me after a hot dog. I repaid the favor by chewing the visor off of his favorite Boston cap. Yeah, I'm Red Sox inside and out. When you think about it, for almost my entire life the Red Sox have led the league. Am I a lucky dog or what?

And unlike some other people my owner knows, I've ALWAYS been a Red Sox fan.

LET'S GO RED SOX!!!

My Momma Mae West Said

2007-10-20T10:01:00.000-04:00

Don't
let
a
man
put
anything
over
on
ya
'cept
an
umbrella.

Heh.
Good advice. That.

(Posted by Portia)

Don't Tread On Me

2007-10-13T09:12:00.000-04:00

In the Continental Congress, Philadelphia, October 13, 1775:

"Resolved, That a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns, and a proportionable number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted, with all possible despatch, for a cruise of three months, and that the commander be instructed to cruize eastward, for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies for our enemies, and for such other purposes as the Congress shall direct.

That a Committee of three be appointed to prepare an estimate of the expence, and lay the same before the Congress, and to contract with proper persons to fit out the vessel.

Resolved, that another vessel be fitted out for the same purposes, and that the said committee report their opinion of a proper vessel, and also an estimate of the expence."

Happy 232nd Birthday to the greatest Navy the World has ever known.
May God bless and protect all who sail for Her.

Miss America

2007-10-07T16:09:00.000-04:00

Soldier boy
Oh, my little soldier boy
I'll be true to you

You were my first love
And you'll be my last love
I will never make you blue
I'll be true to you
In the whole world
You can love but one girl
Let me be that one girl
For I'll be true to you

Wherever you go
My heart will follow
I love you so
I'll be true to you
Take my love with you
To any port or foreign shore
Darling you must feel for sure
I'll be true to you

Soldier boy
Oh, my little soldier boy
I'll be true to you.

The Shirelles - 1962

I'll be true to you.

Rememberance

2007-09-11T09:38:00.000-04:00

Memento etiam, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei et dormiunt in somno pacis. Ipsis, Domine, et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen."

Hey, Freedom Man

2007-08-24T18:05:00.000-04:00

It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, 'Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.'

A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind. And, when I saw it, neither could I. (President Ronald Reagan's farewell speech from the Oval Office on January 11, 1989.)

~~A few weeks ago~~ The other day, I mentioned to spd that I had found a "feel good" story I wanted to post here at HH about the widow of an American journalist who, after a two-year crusade, was "reunited" with the Iraqi translator who was at her husband's side when he was murdered.

It took but only a few Google searches to realize that my "feel good" video byte, courtesy of late night cable, had a dark underside that didn't paint a pretty picture for Iraqis working with the U.S. government.

~~For a number of reasons~~ Because of work demands, I chose to bail on posting the post but like the sailor in Reagan's anecdotal retelling, I couldn't get out of my mind the "small moment with a big meaning" of a young Iraqi woman exiting through JFK's automated doors in Jamaica, New York, and the determined American woman who made it happen. So here goes. Stains, and all.

I am the widow of Steven Vincent, the freelance journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, Iraq on August 2, 2005. Two days prior to his death, Steven had an op-ed piece published in the New York Times in which he broke the story of how the Iraqi police force was being systematically infiltrated by Iranian-backed fundamentalists and Shiite militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr rather than to the central government. He also wrote of the "death squads" that roamed Basra in police cars and trucks filled with uniformed men who snatched their victims off the streets and murdered them with utter impunity. When one of those vehicles came for him in broad daylight, his translator, fixer and friend Nour al-Khal bravely stood by him as five men in police uniforms descended on them and wrestled Steven into the truck to take him to his death. From what I was later told by the FBI, the thugs who targeted my husband had no interest whatsoever in Nour; they repeatedly pushed her away, telling her to leave. But she would not abandon Steven; she kept inserting herself into the struggle until they took her as well. She had no idea what her kidnappers planned to do, where they would be taken, what, ultimately, the end would be. For all she knew she was going to her death, yet she did not hesitate for a moment, this tiny, 5-foot-tall woman, to try and protect the man who had hired her to be his guide.

She and Vincent were gagged, beaten, thrown in the back of a truck, driven to the outskirts of town, set free, told to run - and shot from behind. Steven was hit at close range and in a final act of God's mercy died instantly; Nour, who had been let go first, was farther from the truck, so even though she was shot in the back three times, she survived.

But Nour's nightmare was not over. Hardly. Rescued by the "good police" she was handed over to the Green Zone for medical treatment, then held incommunicado for three months while she was "interrogated, mentally and emotionally bullied, threatened, [and] told she would never be given a visa to come to this country." Finally released into the Red Zone without papers, and unable to return safely to her home in Basra or to the family who no longer wanted anything to do with her, she spent the next 18 months on the lam fearing for her life while Vincent's widow doggedly sought to gain her asylum.

[i]n some small attempt to repay her for her dedication, bravery and selflessness, I have spent the last year trying to get Nour into America. I have dealt with officials at the Baghdad embassy and the State Department. I have filled out forms. I have made countless calls, sent innumerable emails. I have pledged to stand financial security for her. I have gotten a promise from the UN Bureau Chief of Al-Arabiya that he will hire her when - if - she gets here. And each path I have gone down has proven fruitless. I have been told she does not qualify for refugee or asylum status because Iraq is now a democracy, hence there should be no reason she would need to flee. I spent months working with embassy people who assured me they were extremely touched by her plight, would move heaven and earth to see she got "special treatment" and who then, in the end, told me she needed to go to Amman and apply for a visa like every other Iraqi. I was told the U.S. government was no longer accepting Iraq's S-passports because supposedly there are so many forgeries it's impossible to know who is really holding them, so we won't take any of them. The embassy in Amman is no longer accepting applications from Iraqis; the Jordanian government is beginning to crack down, stopping Iraqis on the streets who then run the risk of being deported; Egypt is now demanding that before Iraqis come they get a letter of invitation from a certain government official. The noose is tightening, and soon there will be no place in the region where Nour will be able to feel safe. She sits and waits, still hopeful, but the reality is her hope is dwindling, as is mine."

It wasn't until Vincent's widow was afforded the opportunity to provide the chilling details of Nour's plight in her testimony before a Senate hearing in January--and with the cameras running-- that the wheels of "make it happen" justice began to turn in her favor. Six months later, Nour, who had risked her life to save Steven Vincent's, stepped off the plane at Kennedy Airport, and into the arms of the woman who had saved hers.

Since the war in Iraq began 4 years ago, approximately 600 Iraqis have been granted amnesty in the US. In the first six months of 2007, the US admitted 63 Iraqi refugees, including Nour.

I am not naive enough to think that the US could--or should-- throw open its doors to large numbers of people who have been uprooted since the war began. I recognize that it is enormously more complicated and dangerous than relocating 130,000 South Vietnamese as we did in the first year after the Vietnam War ended. I am cognizant of the fine line the Administration walks between wanting to provide aid, and not wanting to encourage more flight. Nevertheless, I do think that we owe special consideration to the brave Iraqi citizens who are risking their lives because of their association with the United States military, its contractors or the ~~MSM~~ news organizations.

Moreover, beyond the obvious morale or humanitarian responsibilities that we face, there are far reaching geopolitical reasons to extend a lifeline to our Iraqi friends:

"If we screw this group of people, we're never going to make another friend in the Middle East as long as I'm alive," said Kirk W. Johnson, who served as regional reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah in 2005 for the U.S. Agency for International Development, who is advocating the resettlement of Iraqis who have worked for coalition forces. "The people in the Middle East are watching what happens to this group."

Last month, a bipartisan group of senators, including Gordon Smith and ~~Ted Kennedy~~ another Senator introduced the “Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act” legislation that will create 5,000 special visas for Iraqis who work directly with the United States and are in imminent danger of death, and allow persecuted Iraqis with close work or family ties to the United States to apply directly for resettlement in the United States. In late July, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, called for issuing visas to all Iraqis who are employed by the U.S. government.

My "feel good" story is starting to feel...

* * * *
Beyond the 100,000 Iraqis who may be targeted as "collaborators" because of their work with the U.S -led coalition, there are an estimated 4 million Iraqis who have been uprooted by the Iraq conflict. Nearly 2 million (plus) Iraqis have fled to safety (?) in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen; another 2 million are displaced within their country's borders. Approximately 40,000-60,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes every month. The daunting effect of this migration (which is worthy of its own future post) ~~should not~~ can not not be minimized. The relocation of the Palestinians in 1948, alone, which is dwarfed by the size of the current migration, portends a similiar tipping point. You can read about more about this looming "crisis of historic proportions" here. You should. You. Really. Should.

Update: Here's the video clip of Nour's July '07 arrival at JFK.

(Posted by Portia)

Ethics Question

2007-08-22T18:29:00.000-04:00

Habeas Porpoise

2007-08-20T17:27:00.000-04:00

I'm back from the beach. Tanned, rested, and, after one day back at work, ready to swallow a pistol.

But rather than simply soil ms. rdr's drapes, I thought instead that I'd give you a quiz.

What do Rosie O'Donnell, the Kremlin, David Duke, CNN, Waffle House, and the 2005 Philadelphia Eagles all have in common?

If your first answer is along the lines of them all being/having assholes, you're only partially right. In fact, all of the above are named as defendants in federal civil suits filed by one Jonathan Lee Riches©, a person aggrieved currently enjoying a federally-funded vacation.

Finding it necessary to defend his constitutionally-protected rights against the wanton abuses so prevalent in these dark days of the Bush administration, Mr. Riches© has brought suit against a host of people, places and things, (purportedly) to include the following:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, John Snow, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Google, Pope Benedict XVI, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden, Alan Greenspan, Jerry West, Accuweather.com, Bill Gates, John Deere, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Def Jams, Jay-Z, the Queen of England, Stephen Spielberg, Tony Danza, Don King, Paris Hilton, the University of Miami, Marion Blakey, Matt Drudge, the State of Israel, the Salvation Army, CNN, tsunami victims, Sirius Satellite Radio, Jessica Alba, the Houston Chronicle, the ACLU, Donald Trump, Outback Steakhouse, the Vatican, Chris Berman, Vince McMahon, P-Diddy, John Grisham, Columbine High School, Richard Daley, UPS, BET, Jewish employees of NBC Universal, Brad Pitt and the son he adopted with Angelina Jolie, Elizabeth Smart, Charlie Sheen, George Pataki, Oliver North, Vladimir Putin, George Orwell, AskJeeves.com, the Kremlin, Kelly Clarkson, David Letterman, George Tenet, Plato, the Lincoln Memorial, Warren Buffett, Scooter Libby, Christina Applegate, Mein Kampf, John Walsh of America's Most Wanted, Venus Williams, Anna Nicole Smith, the U.S. Marines, Denny's, Larry King, Grace Jones, Rolling Stone magazine, Planet Hollywood, NASCAR, Eminem, the Screen Actors Guild, The Da Vinci Code, Mike Tyson, the Sears Tower, Holocaust survivors, Mt. Rushmore, Dennis Hopper, Barbara Walters, Lambeau Field, Pizza Hut, Ray Nagin, Barry Bonds, the Ming Dynasty, Jenna Bush, Tom Ridge, eBay, General Motors, Booker T. Washington, the NHL, Diane Sawyer, Comcast, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Phil Donahue, the Geneva Convention, the 2005 Philadelphia Eagles, Bill O'Reilly, Burt Reynolds, Paula Abdul, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, David Stern, Whoopi Golderg, the Olsen twins, the Roman Empire, Wolf Blitzer, Demi Moore, Michael J. Fox, Verizon, the Rose Bowl, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Vanna White, Ross Perot, Sugar Ray Leonard, Sammy Sosa, Rosie O'Donnell, Joey Buttafuoco, Marco Polo, the Eiffel Tower, USA Today, John Wayne Bobbitt, Yao Ming, WKRP In Cincinnati, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Kevin Bacon, the Humane Society, Fabio, Bono, The Home Depot, Geraldo, Russell Crowe, Ben Roethlisberger, Paul Revere, Michelangelo, the Boy Scouts of America, Viagra, Suge Knight, Randy Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, the widow of Peter Jennings, Jeb Bush, Julia Roberts, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Yahoo!, the Hoover Dam, Bob Villa, Tonya Harding, Harrison Ford, Jennifer Lopez, Pete Rose, Joe Lieberman, Sly Stallone, Patty Hearst, Ken Starr, Rush Limbaugh, Chandra Levy, Louis Farrakhan, The Waffle House, Gray Davis, Lucy Liu, the Black Panther Party, Elian Gonzalez, Bob Barker, Danny Glover, Chris Matthews, Wendy's, Drew Barrymore, Rudy Giuliani, Louis XV, Elton John, the planet Pluto, Lil Kim, Trent Lott, the Virgin Mary, the Golden Gate Bridge, Monica Lewinsky, Dennis Rodman, John Ashcroft, Noelle Bush, Jackie Chan, Colin Powell, John McCain, Michael Moore, the Boston Globe, the World Wide Web, the Academy Awards, Oprah, David Duke, Napoleon, Guantanamo Bay, Katie Couric, Sandra Bullock, Bob Saget, NCAA basketball, Sandra Day O'Connor, Boston Market, the Backstreet Boys website, Teri Hatcher, the Great Wall of China, George Clooney, Mariah Carey, Kiefer Sutherland, Burger King, Tina Turner, the Minnesota Vikings, Gene Hackman, Southwest Airlines, the Pentagon, the King of Prussia Mall, Tony Blair, the LAPD, Michael Irvin, Chubby Checker, the PGA, Super 8 Motels, Justin Timberlake, Madison Square Garden, Emeka Okafor, the World Anti-Doping Agency, Betty Crocker, Weird Al Yankovic, the Warsaw Pact, Barack Obama, the Doobie Brothers, Emilio Estevez, Cal Tech, Pat Roberts, YMCA, Ken Jennings, Mel Gibson, Jacques Chirac, Al Pacino, Martha Stewart, Skittles and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Far be it for me to judge whether Mr. Riches© 's claims are justiciable, but Word on the street is that the charges brought by Mr. Riches© against the Ming Dynasty are headed for Celestial Mediation.

Events of the day, however, have put Mr. Riches© 's claim for "63,000,000,000.00 Billion dollars backed by gold and silver" against Michael Vick into the Heigh-ho legal spotlight. As you are undoubtedly aware, Mr. Vick today plead guilty to being the stupidest human being on the planet. He also plead no contest to allegations that, t-shirt sales notwithstanding, he never really played up to his over-hyped potential as a NFL quarterback, anyway.

As a result of Mr. Vick's guilty pleas, his days as a professional football player are sooooo over- or at least until ~~the Los Angeles~~ ~~Oakland~~ ~~Los Angeles~~ Al Davis Raiders sign him up straight out of prison to throw shivs down the heart of the secondary. Even then, however, Mr. Vick's legal troubles are only just beginning.

Thanks to your faithful scribe's slight of hand and secret handshake, my assistant was able to procure a copy of Mr. Riches© 's latest legal assault on those who would trample his constitutional freedoms. I post Mr. Riches© 's Complaint here as a public service, and also as a warning to those who might dare to physically hurt Mr. Riches© 's feelings or attempt to dash his hopes.

Click for bigger. And consider yourselves warned.

Good to be back, folks.

Interlude

2007-08-10T19:37:00.000-04:00

Have a nice week.
I promise that I will too.

Dog days

2007-08-05T22:27:00.000-04:00

Meet Fenway, number three black dog.

How could anybody look at that face and still root for the Yankees is beyond me.

Still....

Yo, Brooklyn

2007-07-28T10:57:00.001-04:00

So I was invited to a Brooklyn Cyclones baseball game tonight. It's not the Yankees (which may be a good thing...), it's not even the Mets--it's their farm team--but it's baseball, and it's baseball in Brooklyn (eat your heart out Dodgers' fans). Up close, and within spitting distance of always entertaining Coney Island. So why the heck not? Well, this is why the heck not....
Fans are invited to dress up as their favorite Stallone character, with the winning costume receiving a prize pack.

Anyone named "Sylvester" will be admitted to the ballpark at no charge.

In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the 1987 movie Over The Top (in which Stallone plays a struggling trucker competing in a Las Vegas Arm Wrestling Championship, and sporting a New York City Arm Wrestling T-shirt), the New York Arm Wrestling Association (NYAWA) will host over 100 men and women competing that day for the 25th Annual White Castle ‘Kingsboro’ Golden Arm Wrestling titles, featuring a championship match taking place on the dugout during that night's game!
Good grief. A whole night dedicated to Sylvester Stallone? Quick. Somebody. Anybody. Please remind me again why I love going to baseball games.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the original Rocky movie: The timeless story of the two-bit loser who gets the chance of a lifetime, "goes the distance" and gets the girl, to boot. What's not to like? Stallone was brilliant, the fight scenes a cinematic feat, and the writing gritty (~~Women weaken legs~~ You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder ) The fact that a penniless, out of work actor wrote the screenplay, starred in it, and won Academy Awards for both is the classic case of life imitating art.

I've watched the movie at least a half dozen times, and it still makes me cheer and ~~bawl~~ wipe a tear at the end. Hearing a few notes of its theme song can give me goosebumps. Truth be told, some friends and I even bounded up the steps of the Museum of Art ~~a few times~~ once when I lived in Philly singing Gonna Fly Now at the top of our lungs while we danced and hooted atop the Benjamin Franklim Parkway. [Yes, there was alcohol involved after the first time.] I don't doubt that I've seen snippets of the Rocky sequels but if my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you whether he wins, dies, or keeps the girl.

Stallone has made 56 films and I can say ~~proudly~~ truthfully that I've seen only two of them from beginning to end. One by choice as admitted above, and the other Over the Top by dint of familial guilt, and because my ~~gangly~~ budding nephews managed to rig the VCR so that it played on a continuous loop for an entire weekend. Of course, the fact that I even remember the name of that flick has nothing to do with um...Stallone's arm muscles, and everything to do with quality time I spent with my nephews. Right.

I've never, ever seen any of the Rambo movies save the trailers I was forced to watch in movie theaters or the night that PortiaMan hid the remote control, and I was exposed to 20 minutes or so of First Blood Part XX III before I decided it was a good time to balance our checkbook, instead. Both times scared the bejesus out of me, and made me want to buy the poor guy ~~a shirt~~ diction lessons.

As far as I'm concerned, Stallone's talent ended when the credits for Rocky I started rolling. Until this morning, that is, when I watched this very um...entertaining clip, and realized that I may have acted precipitously by dismissing Mr. Stallone's ~~thighs~~, ~~shoulders~~ er...talents. Damn. Double damn.

Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Anybody got a bandana I can borrow for tonight's game?

(posted by Portia)

They Say It's Your Birthday!

2007-07-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

Go ahead, miss a few meetings.

Many happy returns, Portia, my old friend.

Buh-by!!!

2007-07-19T17:08:00.000-04:00

Set free the Flying Monkeys.

Justice is served...kind of.

*Spit.*

Have a nice life, Liar.

This I Believe

2007-07-15T17:07:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of the World Series of 1947, I experienced a completely new emotion, when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else. This is organized major league baseball, and I am standing here with all the others; and everything that takes place includes me.

About a year later, I went to Atlanta, Georgia, to play in an exhibition game. On the field, for the first time in Atlanta, there were Negroes and whites. Other Negroes, besides me. And I thought: What I have always believed has come to be.

And what is it that I have always believed? First, that imperfections are human. But that wherever human beings were given room to breathe and time to think, those imperfections would disappear, no matter how slowly. I do not believe that we have found or even approached perfection. That is not necessarily in the scheme of human events. Handicaps, stumbling blocks, prejudices — all of these are imperfect. Yet, they have to be reckoned with because they are in the scheme of human events.

Whatever obstacles I found made me fight all the harder. But it would have been impossible for me to fight at all, except that I was sustained by the personal and deep-rooted belief that my fight had a chance. It had a chance because it took place in a free society.

I look at my children now, and know that I must still prepare them to meet obstacles and prejudices. But I can tell them, too, that they will never face some of these prejudices because other people have gone before them. And to myself I can say that, because progress is unalterable, many of today's dogmas will have vanished by the time they grow into adults. I can say to my children: There is a chance for you. No guarantee, but a chance.

* * * *

I believe in the human race. I believe in the warm heart. I believe in man's integrity. I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that the society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it — and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist. My fight was against the barriers that kept Negroes out of baseball. This was the area where I found imperfection, and where I was best able to fight. And I fought because I knew it was not doomed to be a losing fight. It couldn't be a losing fight-not when it took place in a free society.*

Dreams rode on your shoulders, man. You forever changed the face of the game, and the minds of a nation. We owe you a world of thanks for your gifts.

The White House is paying tribute to Jackie Robinson's legacy today by hosting a tee ball game on the South Lawn featuring teams from Brooklyn’s Inner City Little League, and the Wrigley Little League of Los Angeles (the two cities that the Dodgers have called home, and where Robinson spent his entire Major League career.) Each of the Little Leaguers will wear the No. 42, Robinson's jersey number, which was retired** a decade ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier.

Go Brooklyn!

_______________________________
* Robinson's "This I Believe" essay was delivered in 1952. You can listen to a tape of it here

**No. 42 was the first and only number to be retired by all the teams in the MLB. Mariano Rivera (who plays for the MFY) is the only active MLB player who still wears the number. Upon Rivera's retirement, No. 42 will rest in perpetuity with Jackie Robinson, the man who did it proud.

Posted by Portia

Snakes

2007-07-13T11:52:00.001-04:00

Almost exactly one year ago I posted a longwinded piece on the Iranian oil bourse and how ~~those skeeving bastards~~ that government might manipulate the dollar by only accepting Euros, rather than the world-wide standard, "petrodollars." Pay no attention to the pink bikini.

Today it was announced that ~~those skeeving bastards~~ Iran is demanding that Japan pay for all of its Iranian oil in yen.

Japan should think, hard, before complying with the orders of a terrorist nation.

I know that I will be thinking about it. You should be, too.

You Bet Your Life

2007-07-11T11:13:00.000-04:00

Unless you're Thomas Friedman, you probably figured out a loooooong time ago that Iran is the real reason that we are in Iraq. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 (thanks Jimmy!) Iran has shown itself to be a far more potent force for destabilization than any other nation is the region.

Iraq? You might recall the two neighbors had a little dust-up going for most of the 1980's. Saddam was trying to keep the Islamic Revolution from taking hold in Iraq. As for the myth of its weapons of mass destruction, the ones that the WORLD believed Iraq possessed, Saddam created that, not only to rattle the West, but to keep Iraq from invading following the ass-kicking we gave Saddam in the First Persian Gulf War.

We can debate whether Saddam was actively sponsoring terroism against the United States, but we know for certain that he was slaughtering his own citizens. Iran, on the other hand, has been the worldwide leader in terrorism for decades. Here's what your government had to say about Iran and Iraq in April of 2001:

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan continue to be the seven governments that the US Secretary of State has designated as state sponsors of international terrorism. Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2000. It provided increasing support to numerous terrorist groups, including the Lebanese Hizballah, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which seek to undermine the Middle East peace negotiations through the use of terrorism. Iraq continued to provide safehaven and support to a variety of Palestinian rejectionist groups, as well as bases, weapons, and protection to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group that opposes the current Iranian regime.

I guess we should have added al-Qaeda to the list of Iranian clients, yes?

Now, it should be fairly obvious that, because Iran is an Islamic State, the United States would run the risk of inflaming the entire Islamic world if we attacked it just for sponsoring international terrorism. That's not even a misdemeanor in that part of the world. Not only would such an outright attackwe face an oil embargo, Israel would have been put to the torch from six directions. Iraq, on the other hand, was weaker, a proven bad-actor, and secular! Bingo. We're in Iraq. Why the President just didn't explain it this way is anybody's guess.

But Iran is still the real enemy of the world, so how much longer are we going to wait until we take her out? Let's see how today's market is shaping up:

Hmmmmm. This might be the time to do a little speculating. At least some people are.

Sooner? Or later?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NUMBER ONE SON!

2007-07-06T15:32:00.000-04:00

Once again, those who love you are celebrating your birthday without you.
No matter, because you and your shipmates are where you need to be for those of us here.
And we love you for that. All of you.

And you need not worry about blowing out the candles on your 25th birthday,
because I burned the cake in your honor.

Thank you, Son. I am so proud of you.
I am so proud of your shipmates.
You are the best the nation has to offer.

And for all you girls out there:
Kiss a sailor and GO NAVY.
You'll never be the same again.
Guaranteed.

Eight Things That You Didn't Need To Know About Me.

2007-07-05T11:05:00.000-04:00

So Portia and I got tapped by Cassandra to participate in another "crappy meme. " I'm supposed to tell eight things about myself. Why eight? Who knows? That's just the way crappy memes work.

Portia admirably stepped right up to the plate and spilled her beans. Now its my turn to fulfill my crappy meme obligation. So here goes....

First, the rules (which, according to crappy meme rules have to be posted first or you won't be allowed to play):

* Post these rules before we give you the facts.
* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write their own post about their eight
things and post these rules. At the end of their post, they choose eight people
to tag and list their names.
* Don't forget to leave a comment telling them they've been tagged,
and to read your blog.

And now, Eight Random Facts/Habits About Me That You Didn't Need To Know Except For this Crappy Meme.

1. I noticed my first female butt in 1955 at the age of 11 months. I haven't stopped noticing them yet.

2. I flunked typing in high school. Who knew that I'd ever need to know how to type? It was the only course that I ever flunked, although I came close in gym the second half of my senior year, and was almost prevented from graduating. Fortunately, I was given the option of writing a six page paper entitled "The Benefits of Physical Activity in Lifetime Sports." It read like a script for a porno movie.

3. There a picture of me wearing a New York Yankees hat. I got it for my seventh birthday, along with a flash light. I've only recently determined that my father was a cheapskate when it came to spending money on his kids. He more than made up for it, though, by spending his time with us. Lavishly so.

4. I'll eat anything. The only food that I truly dislike is chitterlings. I once ate calf brains made especially for me in the authentic country French style by a dark-eyed French woman whose name is lost to me now. She was a very good cook. I've even eaten "mucktuck," frozen whale blubber that tastes like a cross between chicken and greasy ice cream. This was provided to me by my then sweetie, Miss Nome. Chitlins? Tried 'em. Don't like 'em. Never gonna try 'em again unless they're served to me by Hale Berry wearing nothing but a smile.

5. I got my first scars at nine months when I reached up and pulled a pot of boiling water off of the stove. The results are still quite visable from wrist to bicep on my right arm. Since then, I've collected many more scars, so many that I'm afraid God won't recognize me. Maybe I should get a tatoo?

6. I was a hippie for a while back in the 70's. I had really long hair, frye boots, and ate no meat. I even hitchhiked my was across the USA. I'm living proof that with the timely application of a right-sized Navy boot in the ass, almost anybody can grow up to be a lawyer.

7. On a hammock in her dad's backyard.

8. I broke my best friend's nose - twice - but the second time was an accident. He is still my best friend after 40 years. I don't have a single Asian friend, though, which is wierd. If you are Asian and would like to be my friend, there's an opening. I promise that I won't break your nose.

There. Now you know eight completely useless things about me. The next step in crappy memes is selecting eight other people to play. Of course I don't know of eight other people who haven't already been ~~assualted~~ tagged, so what I will do instead is randomly select random people who I don't know and who don't know me. This way I'll be sure not to make any new friends.

1. This person writes a whole blog about Lindsey Lohan, in Spanish, so I figure that he or she has plenty of time on his or her hands.

2. This person writes about cupcakes and such. Cool name for a blog.

3. This person writes about the everyday life of a 10 month old. I wonder what eight things he can tell us about himself? He probably still hasn't noticed his first butt.

4. This person writes about the worst thing ever. She should be ashamed of herself.

5-8. These guys.

My work is done.

The Fourth of July

2007-07-04T09:49:00.000-04:00

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics -- each one singing his, as it should be,
blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank and beam;
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work,
or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat --
the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench --
the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's song -- the ploughboy's, on his way
in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother -- or of the young wife
at work -- or of the girl sewing or washing -- Each singing
what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day -- At night, the party of
young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

-Walt Whitman - "Leaves of Grass"

Spill the Beans Time

2007-07-01T16:58:00.000-04:00

thanks to the Princess, who has forgotten to remember that one reason I don't have my own blog is to nix any chance I might be tagged for one of these smarmy blog chain thingys. So much for flying under the radar....I guess the fact that spd gave me a set of keys to his "graffiti wall" qualifies me--in some version of blog etiquette--to share in all the blog ~~pain~~ fun. Thanks guys. Your collective munificence has not gone unnoticed. I *owe* you. Both.

I know Cass' meme comes with instructions to follow before one hands over the family jewels but I rarely read instructions, much less follow them. Nowadays, you need instructions in order to read the instructions (NB: the 156 page "booklet" that accompanied by new cell phone) so I'll leave that part of the assignment to spd, along with any talk of "family jewels." Have at it, buddy.

Drumroll, please:

1. I rarely read instructions, much less follow them. Through the decades, this has been a huge time saver, and except for a school test or two, and the time I tried to put together our home theater solo, it hasn't gotten me into trouble (yet) but seemingly bugs the sh*t out of everyone else.

2. I voted for Richard Nixon in 1972. Hey, I was young and foolish.

3. I was a Red Sox fan in 1975. See comment to number 2, above. I also blame the fact that I was living in Boston, and dating a rabid Red Sox fan (why is it that there are no other kind?) Of course, watching Fred Lynn play all season didn't hurt either. See comment to number 2, a fortiori. That said, I continue to believe that the 1975 World series was the most exciting series EVER played. Well, that is until the 2004 World Series but by then I was less young, and no longer foolish. Still, Pudge will forever have a place in this now steeled Yankee fan's heart.

4. I prefer sex in the morning (yes, there are no pictures....)

5. I am late for work most every day (see um...nevermind)

6. I blush very easily. See numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5, above.

7. I HATE cilantro more than I hate the Cincinnati Reds (see number 3, above). At least the Reds serve a purpose by making the MFY look good; the world can do without an ubiquitous ~~weed~~ herb that tastes like dolls' hair.

8. I don't even know 8 bloggers but I'm fond of commenter, Don aka Anonymous. Just saying....

If you've scrolled this far, here's a bonus entry for your effort: spd is an honorary member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. Pass it on....

Posted by Portia

Saturday Morning Sigh

2007-06-30T09:15:00.000-04:00

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you, darling
And still be on my feet
And still be on my feet

Posted by Portia

Race to the Bottom

2007-06-26T17:45:00.000-04:00

Hello America. Senator John McCain* here.

Citizens, it's come to my attention that the dang-blasted foolhardy traitorous bias of the eastern liberal media has decided that my ability to raise campaign funds to steer the country into a new dimension has been hampered by the appearance of that plain-speaking down home good ol' boy, Fred Thompson. What's wrong with you? Don't y'all remember what happen the last time you elected an actor? Oh, you do? Well, just don't hold the fish on that line longer than it takes for the worm to wriggle out, if you know what I mean.

You've probably guessed that I can talk just like folks, better'n Fred, too, and do it with a mouthful of marbles. Here's the plain truth: Fred hasn't yet decided to run for President. Golly, he might decide to run for dogcatcher, or even Justice of the Peace. Heck, Fred might even be able to marry your daughter on Tuesday nights...after five! In an Elvis costume!

Do you really want to give your money to a man who wears an Elvis costume to your daughter's wedding? 'course not.

Now you just pay no attention to all that heehaw jabbering in them danged eastern newspapers. All I can say is that this here John Deere's not about to break down in the final rows of harvest. No sir-ree. I'll betcha that. So them Harvard Yard diddlin' wordsmiths come out with yet another story that says this cowboy is a-droppin' outta the race....well, I'll tell you true: They're just plain smoking wacky weed.

Sure, I got some sores from the Supreme Court knocking the guts out the election reforms me and my 'pard Feingold pushed through Congress like a herd of longhorns across the Red River. And yep, my stance on that dang-blabbed Immigration Reform Bill isn't going to win me any friends down in the holler. But, neighbors, I was absolutely forced to vote with Obama and Hillary to allow illegal immigration to continue unabated, otherwise them good peoples in Fargo wouldn't be able to order a "cervaza frio" just like we do down here in Tucson and Washington, D.C., without being misunderstood. That's what I call progress for America.

Others might say that I'm out of touch with America. Goldangy, no, neighbors.

America is out of touch with me.

Out of touch with me.

An' you can bet the farm on it.

*John McCain is a true hero worthy of our respect and admiration for his service to this nation and for his courage under the harshest of conditions as a prisoner of war. I do not mean, in any way, to diminish the Senator's contributions to the United States of America through this careless bit of snark commentary. While Mr. McCain has plainly met his duty, ten times over, it reamins that he and I have parted company on many a burning issue. I make no apology that I do not find him to be a viable candidate for the office of Chief Executive, and I expect that he would think far less of me should I do so. Fortunately, for Senator McCain, the number of people that read this site is approximately the same as the number of Supreme Court Justices that voted to quash McCain- Feingold's bill's ban of "issue ads."

Irrepective of our political differences, and they are vast, should I ever have the opportunity to meet the man in person I shall immediately snap to attention and crisply salute him. He is ours.

Go Navy.

Pants On Head

2007-06-25T13:17:00.000-04:00

You have no doubt heard by now of the suit brought by an Administrative Law Judge in Washington, D.C., to recover $54 million dollars from a Korean dry cleaner for losing the judge's pants.

Not surprisingly, the ALJ who brought this outrage into court has lost the case, and is, thus far, liable for court costs. A motion for attoneys fees running in the many thosusands of dollars has been made by the small businessman, and will be entertained by the court at a future date.

In the meantime, I thought it important that I put to rest any lingering doubts as to whether the fellow who so fouled the system of justice, the court, and his neighbor, is anything other than an abusive bully unworthy of being a lawyer, much less a judge. He isn't.

He has brought such disrpute unpon his office that the D.C. Office of Administrative hearings has taken him off of cases since May, and removed his biography from its website.

Not enough. This person has shown himself to be so vindicative and irrational that he should be barred from practicing the law. He set out to ruin another human being, putting forth such outlandish theories as to bring into serious question, not only his character and fitness to practice the law, but also his sanity. He has made a mockery of himself and my profession. He must go.

Color me pissed.

"With All Due R-E-S-P-E-C-T"

2007-06-08T10:56:00.000-04:00

I know that I'm late to this story, but I've been busy trying to save my giggles for the world's other biggest joke. Nevertheless, it's worthwhile to briefly touch on the subject of humor in the courtroom.

Don't. Go. There.

Saying a bankruptcy judge was "a few french fries short of a Happy Meal" may cost an out-of-state lawyer the ability to practice in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The comment already has cost Chicago-based McDermott Will & Emery partner William P. Smith his client -- Miami Beach's Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute.

When I first heard the story, it seemed absurd. The idea that a federal judge should go completely ballistic over such a commonly uttered idiom seemed a bit childish. I simply can't imagine that a seasoned attorney, such as counselor Smith, actually meant to infer that Judge Isicoff was dumb. It was merely a slip of the tongue. Hadn't the judge herself ever said something she immediately wished she hadn't? Why didn't she just hold up her hand and say "Excuse me?" and allow the poor bastard to apologize profusely and beg the Court's forgiveness? Why publicly humiliate the guy and his firm? Why cause such a fuss over such a minor gaffe? It just didn't make sense.

Now it does. Judge Isicoff was evidently sick and tired of big city lawyers coming down to Miami (which is just a sleeply little town on the coast of Cuba) and dissin' her district like a banana republic.

"People come to the Miami and Fort Lauderdale courts, and they think that it's a second-class court system when they come from New York or Chicago or places like that," said Charles M. Tatelbaum, national chairman of the bankruptcy litigation and secured transaction practice at Adorno & Yoss in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "I am pleased because it would have been a lot easier for her to simply ignore it and do nothing, and this is the kind of person she is because she is going to say, 'I am not going to stand for that.'"

Tatelbaum said the bankruptcy bar backed Isicoff's appointment to the bench and described her as a "no-nonsense person" and a "super lawyer" with a "very good sense of humor."

Prominent bankruptcy attorney Paul S. Singerman, co-chief executive officer of Berger Singerman in Miami, said Isicoff is an "even-tempered, polite and patient" judge.

"Sometimes I observe lawyers that come from larger cities than Miami and who perceive that their home city is a more sophisticated commercial center do bring with them, sometimes unintentionally, an air of superiority or arrogance," Singerman said.

Put aside for the moment that whatever the above-quoted attorneys actually think of Judge Isicoff, they wouldn't be caught dead saying anything other than that she's the best danged judge on the planet and has a funny bone that just won't quit. They'd be a few fries short of a happy meal to say otherwise, donchathink?

No, the real story here is about turf. It's my courtroom, in my district, in my state, and no fancy-pants Yankee lawyer's going to come down here and disrespect it. That warning has now been served - in spades.

Let me tell you, Judge Isicoff isn't alone in her stance. I witnessed a very senior trial attorney from a large New York firm get his head handed to him by a 4th Circuit Federal District Court judge (who, of course, is the greatest judge on the planet and has a terrific sense of humor!). The poor fellow thought that His Honor would be interested in knowing how the courts in the 2nd Circuit handled certain matters. In a voice that froze the hearts of all in attendance, the kindly jurist informed the attorney that he didn't give a "darn" about how they did it up north, that isn't the way they did it in Virginia. He then invited the fellow to sit down, which he did, and from whom not a word was heard again during the course of the trial.

Which reminds me of a story...

Back in 1992, two attorneys were were engaged in a vehement argument over a motion in the courtroom of Providence, R.I., Superior Court Judge Patricia Hurst. Finally she had enough and threatened to shoot both of the attorneys...with a water pistol.

"I told them I have a good way of dealing with prolonged motions," Judge Hurst later said.
Not everyone agreed, however, and Judge Hurst received a one month suspension for brandishing her water weapon in court.

Said the Judge after she had surrendered the weapon to her attorney, "I'm probably guilty of having a bad sense of humor."

Don't. Go. There.

Full woman, fleshly apple

2007-06-03T10:12:00.000-04:00

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight

runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.

SONNET XII
by Pablo Neruda

(Posted by Portia)

Early Exit

2007-06-01T15:10:00.000-04:00

Freckles the Ferret.

Happy Birthday Dad

2007-05-31T12:54:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the wrench.

Memorial Day

2007-05-26T09:42:00.000-04:00

A while back a friend of mine sent me a book by Peter Collier: "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty"
The book is prominently displayed in my office, and I frequently pull it down and let the pages open to wherever and read. These are the stories of heroes. Of men who gave it all and then gave some more. They are our fathers and sons and brothers and mates. They came to serve their nation as youngsters from cornfields and mesas and city streets, and in Tibor Rubin's case, from the maws of a Nazi death camp. They became heroes risking their lives for their comrades, and for each of us. Each story stands as reminder of what it means to believe in something beyond yourself.

Mr Collier writes in today's Wall Street Journal of "American Honor" and why it should matter still in a nation obsessed with celebrities and self.

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict -- a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Do not let these good men pass from view unheralded. Read their stories and tell them to your children. Honor them and thank them. Every one of them. And every one who served with them.

They are what our best is. American idols.

A Good Day

2007-05-22T10:48:00.000-04:00

Let's face it. Some days are just better than others. Your team drops one to its arch rival. You suddenly remember something that you should have done yesterday. You finally find a use for all that old Viagra, but it’s not the one you were hoping for.

Yep, some days don't seem worth the effort it takes to get out of bed. But then once in a while something good happens and suddenly your day just got a whole lot better.
For example, you stumble across the the fact that, not only did Louis Armstrong cover the 1959 smash hit "Marina" by Rocco Granata, the Italian/Belgian "maintenance artist and hit singer" but that there's also a 1989 Acid/Reggae remix!
Presto! Life is good again.*

Which brings me to the point of all this. A few weeks back I bumped into a gentleman at a charity wine auction. This fellow told me about a remarkable restaurant that is designed especially with the disabled in mind. In fact, he told me that the restaurant not only caters to the disabled (along with the abled), it hires and trains both the physically and mental challenged for jobs in the food service industry. Chef's from all over Central Virginia, from small bistros to five star restaurants, come to the 70-seat place to volunteer their time. It's a win-win-win situation with really good food to boot.

Happy face breaking out. And there's more...

The name of the restaurant is " a place that you'll have to hit the link for because I'm supposedly trying to remain anonymous." The proprietor has muscular dystrophy. The man I spoke with is the proprietor's father. He started the restaurant so that his son could both be employed and feel productive in a society that, well...offers fewer opportunities to those less abled. As anyone who's ever worked in a commercial kitchen knows, this is no handout, this is about getting people to work. It's like teaching your brother to fish for himself, but for black marlin.

I checked the place out late one afternoon, well after the lunch crowd had gone, and before the volunteer belly-dancers came in for "Tummy Tuesdays" (another topic fotr another time). There was a white board set up and the trainees were going through exercises about which kinds of foods went with each type of order. And by God, didn't it have the same feeling as those business training sessions we've all had to endure, with all the participants cheering their approval when the contestant got the orders right. Accomplishment means so much more when you're with your peers.

It was good. It felt right. I plunked the sponsorship funds down, thrilled at the prospect and warmed by the vibes. And I had a good day thereafter.

Here's to all of us, and to those who make all of us better.

*(So it's not so good as having a 24 year-old Grace Kelly deliver it to my door, in pajamas, in the rain, alone, I'll still get by.)

Princess Priceless

2007-05-16T10:40:00.000-04:00

You'll always stand out from the crowd, Cass.

Happy Birthday from your pals here at Heigh-ho

Yo! He's the Dopest!

2007-05-14T19:40:00.000-04:00

There are few times where words escape me.
This is one of them.
LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y. (AP) -- A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies.
Damion M. Mosher, 18, had been discharging .223-caliber rounds, placing them in a steel vise, putting a screwdriver on the primer, and striking the screwdriver with the hammer, deputies said.
Deputies were called to his home in Lake Luzerne shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday when one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.
Mosher told authorities he was trying to empty the rounds to collect the brass casings for scrap. (That damned Bush took away his allowance! Ed.)
Sheriff Larry Cleveland said about 100 other rounds that Mosher hit had ''fizzled,'' but one was somehow sent with more force. It was unclear if the bullet ricocheted or hit him directly.
An employee of Capitol Scrap Co. in Albany said Monday the business pays $1.70 a pound for scrap brass shell casings.
Cleveland said Mosher's shells amounted to just a few pounds.

Of course, I blame the teachers.

Go Forth Hokies, And Do Good Things

2007-05-11T11:00:00.000-04:00

Miracles sometimes happen, but more often they’re made of faith and will and hope and imagination, to say nothing of sweat.

Congratulations, my beautiful daughter, on your Commencement from Virginia Polytechnic University.

You'll make a fine attorney one day.

The Experts Speak

2007-05-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

Oh, for Pete's sake. Are these people actually living in the real world EVER?

''More and more, people are realizing that there are serious environmental and serious food security issues involved in biofuels,'' Greenpeace biofuels expert Jan van Aken said. ''There is more to the environment than climate change,'' he said. ''Climate change is the most pressing issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large deforestation in Indonesia.''

Who DID NOT see this coming? Raise your hands. Okay. You two! (points) You are now both "Greenpeace biofuels experts."

Anybody, ANYBODY, who has paid the slightest bit of attention for, say THE LAST THREE YEARS, would have known that shoving biofuels down the throats of the world was just shifting the problem from Gorebal Worming to famine and deforestation. For God's sake people read the damned Wall Street Journal for once! Self interest is the best predictor of future markets. Perhaps if there were a few more ECONOMISTS in your little play pen you might have a clue. Oh, that's right, you don't like what those kinds of people have to say.

What's next on your "we've got to do something" list, Mr. Expert? Soylent Green?

Boneheads.

Here Comes the Queen

2007-04-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is coming to pay me a visit on Thursday. Well, not actually me, in particular. Her Royal Highness is coming to Virginia to visit her former subjects. Well, not her former subjects exactly. The Queen is coming to visit the great-great-great, etc. grandchildren of the former subjects of King George III. George was not very nice man, but he did leave his country's Common Law for us to follow. And here in Virginia, we still do.

Anyway, Q.E. II is coming to the Capital of the Commonwealth to help us celebrate the 400th aniversary of the founding of Jamestown, a wretched little settlement down the James River aways. I suppose that I should be pleased that the Queen has decided to peek in and see how we're doing after a couple of hundred years on our own. She seems like a nice enough old gal. She's always been a good friend to America, and she keeps those wily Canadians in line. So, sure, we are delighted to have her stop by for tea.

Unfortunately, the world's biggest zoo is coming to town along with her.

I just got the list of streets and buildings in the vicinity that will be closed for her visit. Twenty of the buildings are within a block or two of my office. The streets that are closed surround me. If I get in at all, I won't leaving and time soon. They are expecting 18,000 people to congregate on the Capitol grounds. This means that the other 50,000 or so folks who have nothing better to do but gape at an elderly woman in a bad hat are going to be standing between me and my sandwich shop. Look, I know that she's the Queen of England and all, but sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph, it ain't like she's the Pope or anything. People need to get a life, and I need to be able to get a sandwich.

I suppose that I'll just have to muddle through it all somehow. Especially considering that I lost my chance to gawk at her myself.

By the way, that's Andy Warhol's portrait of the Queen. I've always liked it. But now it's also a cool refrigerator magnet!

I wonder if she's got one at home?

We Are All Hokies

2007-04-20T07:36:00.000-04:00

We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We are the Hokies ...

-- Nikki Giovanni, Virgina Tech University Distinguished Professor and poet

In Remembrance:

Ross Abdallah Alameddine
Christopher James Bishop
Brian Roy Bluhm
Ryan Christopher Clark
Austin Michelle Cloyd
Jocelyne Couture-Nowak
Kevin P. Granata
Matthew Gregory Gwaltney
Caitlin Millar Hammaren
Jeremy Michael Herbstritt
Emily Jane Hilscher
Jarrett Lee Lane
Matthew Joseph La Porte
Henry J. Lee
Liviu Librescu
Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan
Lauren Ashley McCain
Daniel Patrick O'Neil
J. Ortiz-Ortiz
Minal Hiralal Panchal
Daniel Alejandro Perez
Erin Nicole Peterson
Michael Steven Pohle, Jr.
Julia Kathleen Pryde
Mary Karen Read
Reema Joseph Samaha
Waleed Mohamed Shaalan
Leslie Geraldine Sherman
Maxine Shelly Turner
Nicole White

Tremors

2007-04-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday seems too far away to comprehend today.

Yesterday, I stood with friends and family to speak to God for Aiden Patrick, all of nine months old, round-headed and cherub-cheeked, and to claim for him the promise of everlasting life.

There were six or seven other babies there to receive the holy ointments and water and prayers that signify baptism into the ways of Mother Church, and all of them were “dressed like girls” to the consternation of ten-year-old #2 son. Aiden, and Maizy, and Shamus, and the rest of the new flock cried and wriggled in their sparkling white taffeta and lace as the aging Priest lead the assembled through the ancient rite. All the while their siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles squirmed likewise. As I watched the babes brought to the font I remembered my own sister’s baptism, 47 years ago, and recalled how the whole thing was too long to expect a four year-old to behave himself, and it's still WAY too dull to expect much attention from any fourteen year-old these days – or any days prior.

But the priest was patient to the cacophony and ennui, and reminded each of those assembled of the incredible significance of the instant moment. We speak for this child, he said, who cannot yet speak, in order to claim his or her soul for God And by so speaking, he reminded us, that we professed our own responsibility to ensure that the little brat never wanders too far off the path. This is pretty heady stuff to swear to before God.

With unflagging hope, however, we all agreed to such conditions. And so the sacred questions were proposed – the same as those asked a thousand million times before – and once more, those that could speak answered for the eternal lives of those who could not :

“Do you renounce Satan?”
“I do.”
“And all of his works?”
“I do.”

***

Today, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute , the university to which I entrusted daughter #3’s future, a human being, without cause or reason, cut short the lives of at least 32 other human beings - the children of other parents - and permanently damaged the lives of uncounted numbers of their classmates. I will mourn this day forever.

There is nothing quite so profound as the shock that follows a news report hinting that your child might be missing, forever, and for nothing. There is no measure of fear, pain, or guilt that can grip you, even for mere moments, until you are SURE that she breathes yet, and that she hears your prayers for her safety. The incredible relief that knowledge instantly provides is then immediately smashed by the thought that other parents, and even your own kid, might still await bad news, or worse news, or no news, but no further good news. For a kid about to graduate to law school, it's a shattering end to innocence.

I thought, like so may of us, that the most unspeakable Evil in our lifetimes unveiled itself at 9/11. Not that unspeakable “evil” did not exist beforehand, but only that following that horror a permissive society might yet be able to gauge how “evil” Evil could be. We even gave that evil a name – al Qeda. That name still stands as my definition of the unspeakable, and it’s one that that I will always despise.

But after today, there exists another, less-organized and more pointless, Evil that rattles my soul and spirit. Forget Osama, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and the other assorted great despots that we all concur constitute the essence of Evil in our experience. Imagine, now, Evil as simply the unorganized destruction of good. Imagine a force that proposes limitless power to its adherents without ideology, answer, salvation, victory, or peace, and yet unlimited enemies to choose from. Imagine no reason for being Evil, other than being Evil as an end unto itself.

Just a few days ago, Don Imus was evil incarnate. You want to change your bet?

Tonight I will watch with my family and my the nation and my world the horror that was unleashed at Blacksburg, Virginia, this morning, and I will weep at the thought that those that should have stood with my daughter at her graduation this May will be forever silenced by unspeakable, incomprehensible, Evil.

And then I will recall the simple affirmation I spoke not 24 hours ago on behalf of my innocent nephew.

I renounce Satan.
And all of his works.

God bless you, Aiden, for your life in this world.
May you never know Evil.
May you ever vanquish it.

Amen.

Imus'nt in the Morning

2007-04-13T08:01:00.000-04:00

I feel somehow obligated to post something about the Don Imus brouhaha before it becomes just another bone in the media graveyard. Not that I owe Imus anything other than a polite "What the hell were you thinking?" He no doubt would consider me a "dope" and a "lying weasel," two of his favorite epithets for his listeners and guests.

But, like many other New Yorkers, I spent a lot of time listening to Imus in the Morning (quack quack!) over many many years. For a brief time, he was even on the radio down here in Richmond (until he offended enough of we "chin-dribbling redneck crackers") to get replaced by someone less... controversial).

Still, I could sometime snatch a few minutes of the show on MSNBC between sips of coffee and scanning the WJS. He was part of the morning routine. His crankiness perfectly matched my own as I stood impatiently before the coffee pot waiting for the tawny nectar to at last save me from the cursed dawn. He skewered the high and mighty for us, and turned their sanctimony and self-righteousness back on them in the form of biting humor. Sometimes I cringed. Mostly I laughed.

Now he's off the air. A victim of his own stupidity and a 24 hour news cycle that consumes everything in its path. Some are making a case that the constitutional protections of free speech are being trampled, or that dropping Imus from the air is a form of censorship. I don't think so. This is how capitalism works. CBS and MSNBC are in the business to make money. Advertisers don't want their products associated with a program that is at the center of such an ugly incident. That would be dumb, and would take an awful lot of explaining to do to investors. Better to play it safe. That's business.

That is not to say that the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson have earned any points outside of their own well-established base for their blatant use of the situation to further their own agendas. No doubt Al and Jesse are disappointed that the situation didn't linger until they had successfully shaken down more advertisers and media outlets. There will be other chances for these two. They know that. But there are also a few million more former Imus listeners that are now hip to how the Race Game is played. No winners here.

The biggest losers here are the young women of Rutgers. That's what's so unforgivable, Imus. You can say what you want about public figures and politicians and any one else who would put himself in your way to hawk his new book. But you don't piss on a bunch of kids and ruin one of the best moments of their life. If one of them had been my daughter, I would have punched you right in the mouth.

That said, I don't believe it was your intention to cause a furor. That intention was supplied by the media and blogosphere. You were just grist for the mill. Once again, the media itself is always it own biggest story... until the next one comes along.

But, as one New Yorker told me: "My morning coffee will never taste the same again."

And neither, unfortunately, will mine.

Easter Sunday

2007-04-08T10:35:00.000-04:00

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

Emily Dickinson

It Happens Every Spring

2007-04-01T22:31:00.000-04:00

While ~~cleaning~~ thinking about cleaning out my closets this afternoon, I was listening to my favorite Sunday afternoon radio program, hosted by the erudite and mellifluous-voiced Jonathan Schwartz. Besides being passionate about music of all genres (he's a walking encyclopedia of every note ever sung by the Chairman of the Board), and the voice of the once avant garde WNEW-FM radio station legendary in our youth, he's a lifelong baseball fan! And yes, as the Gods of Payback would have it, he happens to be a die-hard Red Sox fan, and no, I don't hold that against him, either.

It was of little surprise then--given the 2007 Opening Day schedule and all--that he chose to devote most of today's program to all things baseball from play-by-plays of long ago to Bob Dylan's ode to "Catfish," to a German version of "Take Me Out to The Baseball Game"--Gute Himmel-- followed up with a hilarious bit by the inimitable Bob Newhart pretending to be Abner Doubleday pitching his "invention" to a game manufacturer. I went searching for the audio of "Nobody Will Ever Play Baseball" to post but only found a transcript. Anyone familiar with Newhart's splendid timing wiill surely appreciate that a cut and paste version of one of his skits could never ever capture his deliciously droll delivery. Give yourself a treat and buy the CD.

So, in honor of baseball, and its loyal and hopeful fans, I'm including instead a favorite passage of mine from "A Day of Light and Shadows," by the very same Jonathan Schwartz, a jewel of a book about the now classic--and fateful--1978 playoff game between the Red Sox and Yankees (Destiny 5, Red Sox 4), and a heartfelt love letter to the game itself.

One last thing I think you should know, or at least consider.
Baseball is a game without a clock, an event as short as fifty-one minutes, or as long as eight hours. Its moments of stillness are contemplative for all who are in it, around it. It is wonderfully divided into nine episodes, with either sixteen or seventeen intervals for gossip, the purchase of meat and beer, the jostle and rumble of strangers.

The schedule itself is novelistic, each season a grand Dickensian work, with sad little moments of Didion or Cheever tucked away in the flow of events. The game is influenced by three seasons of the calendar, whose roles we have come to recognize as intrinsic and implicative. The pages of its book are published daily, the facts of its matter packaged starkly alone in a box score as essentially American as a New Hampshire primary.

That I was attracted to something as lovely when I was seven or eight was no childhood epiphany. Baseball is obviously magical, a game played in the mind as much as on the field. It is an intimate puzzle, rolling around the brain, in class, on a plane, in the theater, and now again. while making love. It will never age and never cease. The team that represents you, your choice at an early age, will, guided by your honor, remain a lifelong partner. It is you, you are it, in emotional business together. There is no other way.
So, then.
No regret

Perfect. Let's play ball.
(Posted by Portia)

Best Pick-Up Line. Worst Lyrics. Ever.

2007-03-31T09:46:00.000-04:00

i'd like to check you for ticks....

everytime you take a sip
in this smoky atmosphere
you press that bottle to your lips
and i wish i was your beer

and in the small there of your back
your jeans are playing peek a boo
id like to see the other half
of your butterfly tattoo

hey that gives me an idea
lets get out of this bar
and drive out into the country
and find a place to park

cause id like to see you out in the moonlight
id like to kiss you way back in the sticks
id like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and id like to check you for ticks

i know the perfect little path
out in these woods i used to hunt
dont worry babe ive got your back
and ive also got your front
id hate to waste a night like this
ill keep you safe you wait and see
the only thing allowed to crawl all over you
when we get there is me

you know every guy in here tonight
would like to take you home
but ive got way more class than them
and that aint what i want

cause id like to see you out in the moonlight
id like to kiss you way back in the sticks
id like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and id like to check you for ticks

oooh you never know where one might be
and oooh theres lots of places that are hard to reach

id like to see you out in the moonlight
id like to kiss you way back in the sticks
id like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and id like to check you for ticks

oh id sure like to check you for ticks

I think you missed a spot...

(Lyrics by Brad Paisley)
(Post by Portia)

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces...

2007-03-21T08:44:00.000-04:00

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
“Atalanta in Calydon” Algernon Charles Swinburne

Color me ready.
And ~~skeptical~~ amused.

Bring it on. Both.
(Portia)

Bravo, Mr. Cavett*

2007-03-02T08:20:00.000-05:00

“Your life isn’t given,” I remember him saying, “it’s brutally ripped away from you. You’re no good to your buddies dead, and when the bullets start pouring in you don’t give a goddamn about God, country, Yale, your loved ones, the last full measure of devotion or any other of that Legionnaire patriotic crapola. You just want you and your buddies to see at least one more sunrise.”

A worthwhile read, if for no other reason than Mr. Cavett's nearly perfect writing.

____________________________
*Please note that this post reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of Management. Respectfully, Portia

When Lobbyists Attack

2007-02-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

The people must have something good to read on a Sunday.

- The Clash

We’re about at the halfway mark of this years’ Virginia General Assembly Session (46 days total). I’ve been busy pushing legislation that my clients would like to see enacted, and derailing those bills that my clients would not like to see become law. That’s what I do in January and February and sometimes March – I lobby.
That’s me at left.

Or at least you would think so judging from the frantic scribblings of our local “political correspondent,” one Jeff E. Schapiro. Jeff doesn’t like lobbyists, or politicians. Jeff thinks everyone is a crook or on the take. Jeff is desperate – desperate – to catch someone selling their vote or pimping their influence.

I say “desperate” because, in spite of all his bombast, he still can’t find anybody doing anything untoward. This is frustrating for Jeff. He just knows that Virginia legislators are selling their votes, but he still can’t land that big story that will put him on journalisms’ map! Maybe a side photo of the Speaker doing the perp walk would get the New York Times’ attention! Maybe they’d call and Jeff could live his dream of being a big time journalist ferreting out injustice and knavery in Washington, D.C.! Instead, fate has deemed that Jeff write a column about local politics for a third-rate rag that gets read for only 6 weeks a year in January and February and sometimes March. And to also get it wrong about 90% of the time.

But Jeff will take what he can get, and so we have yesterday’s bit of hard-hitting Geraldo-style “journalism” with the gripping title “Literally in Bed with Legislators.” (Ooooo, sexy!)

WARNING: Not recommended for the metaphoraphobic.

Ryan McDougle doesn't always do his part-time job. That way, his wife, Bea, can do her full-time job.

Ryan is a Republican senator from Hanover County with designs for attorney general and beyond. Bea is a lobbyist for muscular corporations.

Ryan McDougle isn't the only lawmaker literally in bed with a big-business lobbyist. Del. Wat Abbitt's wife, Madeline, also is a hired gun.

Mesdames McDougle and Abbitt have the good fortune of representing monied interests before a legislature swayed by fat contributions.

That's where the similarities end.
(And that's where the column should have ended, too.)

As a delegate and senator, McDougle -- nervous about a perceived conflict -- has abstained on sizzlers in which his wife is front and center: cable competition, payday lending, a smoking ban, telecom taxes and oversight.

McDougle, expecting to duck votes on gambling and possibly trucking and hospital bills, cites legislative language suggesting Mrs. M. has an "immediate and personal interest."

In other words, voters in a heavily suburban, safely GOP district are voiceless on issues of the pocketbook while McDougle's wife lines hers and he partakes, indirectly, of its six-figure bounty.

Bea McDougle or her firm billed $277,216 for her nine clients last year, including Verizon, the Virginia Association of Realtors, the American Trucking Association and Medco.

Abbitt, an Appomattox independent, can't recall not voting on an issue on which his wife lobbies. He votes on her bills if they apply to an industry in general rather than her clients in particular.

The McDougles and Abbitts are the only legislator-lobbyist married couples in a town where ethics laws are porous, largely freeing legislators and lobbyists to police themselves.

Whew! I need to catch my breath here. So much evil! And right under my nose, too!

Let's review: Senator recuses himself from voting on "sizzlers"(?) if there might be an appearence of conflict. This is how it should be. BUT, according to Jeff, this means that his constituents are "voiceless" and that the Senator is not doing his part-time job full-time! And there are pocketbooks involved! Scandlous! And check out the big issues! Payday lending! (Jeff, you've got to know that payday lending isn't an issue for the well-heeled in Sen. McDougle's district. Don't be a such a putz.) And look at the money his wife or her firm billed her nine clients last year! Why that's $30,801.78 apiece! For a years' work! Why, I'm flabbergasted!

And those Abbitts!!! Del. Abbitt votes on bills affecting an industry, meaning he's voting on HER BILLS whether or not she likes it! The Brute!

My guess here is that Jeff either doesn't understand the political process, or he is taking liberties. I think the latter. Ms. Abbitt herself doesn't have any bills before the legislature, Senators and Delegates do. All we lobbyists do is try to get those legislators to understand what the bill does and convince them to either support it or oppose it. Sometimes they listen to us, other times they don't. If Jeff thinks that he's on to something, I expect that he would have produced some sort of data showing the Del. Abbitt voted in a manner favorable to his wife's clients in excess of 50% of the time. You see anything like that in there? Me neither. It's all about inuendo. Or it could be that Jeff hates women.

Let's get back to Jeff's world, shall we?

The chumminess -- the incestuousness? -- that breeds this discomfiting tradition is not confined to Virginia. (Jeff: Look up big words before attempting to use them. They are husband and wife, not brother and sister. Also, I'm not entirelu sure that "chumminess" is a real word, and in any event it would be unlikely that such "chumminess" would breed gerunds.)

Connecticut, where a corrupt governor went to jail in 2005, allows spouses to lobby their husbands and wives in the legislature. But in South Carolina, where nearly 30 lawmakers were indicted in 1991 for bribery, spouses of legislators cannot lobby anyone while their husbands and wives are in office.

Hold it!!!! Connecticut threw its corrupt governor in jail. Connecticut allows husbands and wives to lobby the legislature. Are the two things related? Uh uh, Jeff. And what about them S.C. lawmakers indicted for taking bribes? That was an FBI sting operation, Jeff. It wasn't a husband bribing his wife with jewerly. Where's "the chumminess," Jeff?

Post-Tom DeLay D.C. is catching on. (Obligatory reference to DeLay? Check!) The U.S. Senate passed an ethics overhaul that would ban lobbying by spouses of sitting members of Congress.
TAKE COVER! HERE IT COMES!!!!!!!

In Richmond, the intersection of matrimony, money, politics and policy is as perilous as the one at Belvidere and Leigh streets.

Somewhere, Mencken weeps.

Other legislators and lobbyists say the McDougles and Abbitts are handled
gingerly for fear that what's said to one spouse is relayed to another, compromising strategy, disrupting an alliance or jeopardizing a bill. When Madeline Abbitt, a Democrat, meets with health-care lobbyists, the atmosphere shifts from cordial to cordial but guarded, some of them say.

That's news to her, says Mrs. Abbitt, who collected $77,436 in 2006 from such clients as Barr Labs,AT&T, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and Medquest Associates.

Ok, Jeff. You got me on this one. Madeline is lying. Every lobbyist knows that "cordial but gurded" is the name of the game whenever you are conversing with other lobbyists, because log rolling and backstabbing is also part of the game. It's no big deal, though, because tomorrow the tables may turn and I'll need you on my side. It's Politics 101.

Bea McDougle won't discuss her work. "I just don't talk to the
press," she said, ducking into an elevator.

Them McDougal's sure do enjoy "ducking" don't they? The family that ducks together....

Nevermind.

Cluebat Alert: Jeff. Why do you think it is that Bea McDougal didn't want to talk with you? Think, Jeff. Nobody wants to talk with you, Jeff. You're a hack and no matter what anyone says you'll print whatever you like. No one trusts you, Jeff. It goes back to your mother. That's why you hate women.

And by the way, if you think I didn't notice your choice of addressing the women in your article as "Mrs." rather than "Ms." you're mistaken. Too cute to be very effective, Jeff, but I'm sure that somewhere your journalism professor is smiling.

Now where were we? Oh yes, Ms. Duck making good her escape.

She is visible, tireless, accessible -- to lawmakers. The Republican will dash to a Broad Street doughnut shop with Democratic party boys for late-night munchies and political jawboning.

Translation: Not only is this rather attractive woman avoiding me, she's "accessible" to others! Even Democratic PARTY BOYS! Jawboning! Late at night! With the munchies! In a doughnut shop! Oh, has she at last not one shred of decency!

Then, it's back to the cozy confines of the Capitol, where she, Madeline Abbitt -- and their hubbies -- ply separate but overlapping trades.
(Cue the pimps & ho's music!)

There's no law against it. There's also no law against tacky.

Well, Jeff. You've prove that last point pretty well by this article. And I'm sure that now whole threes of lobbyists will beat a path to your door just dying for a chance to be interviewed by such a journalistic giant.

But not me, Jeff. I'm with the ducks.

How to Strangle an Independent Judiciary

2007-01-09T16:26:00.000-05:00

What a joke.

Filed at 3:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a concession to the Senate's new Democratic majority, four of President Bush's appeals court appointees have asked to have their nominations withdrawn, Republican officials said Tuesday.
These officials said that William Haynes, William Myers and Terrence
Boyle had all decided to abandon their quest for confirmation. Another nominee,
Michael Wallace, let it be known last month that he, too, had asked Bush to
withdraw his nomination.
Haynes is the Pentagon's top lawyer, and was an
architect of the Bush's now-abandoned policy toward treatment of detainees in
the war on terror. He had been tapped for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Boyle is a federal judge in North Carolina, and his appointment to
the 4th Circuit provoked opposition from Democrats
who cited his rulings in civil rights and disability cases, as well as his
higher-than-average reversal rate by higher courts.
William G. Myers III, nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sparked opposition from environmentalist organizations and their allies among Senate
Democrats.
Wallace's appointment to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals drew opposition from Democrats, civil rights groups and the American Bar Association.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said only ''consensus nominees'' are likely to win confirmation under the new Democratic majority -- a declaration that effectively doomed the chances for the four men whose appointments were left in limbo when the Senate adjourned last year for the elections.
Several Republican officials said the White House was likely to make the announcement later in the day. They said
Bush also intends to appoint 33 other judicial nominees, including three whose
appointments were not acted on by the Senate in 2006.
The officials who described the developments did so on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt a formal announcement.

I want to puke. Has anybody, ANYBODY, come up with a single, substantiated reason why these gentlemen should not be confirmed to the bench?

Check out the utter crap thrown at Mr. Haynes by the self-styled "People for the American Way" who cite none other than that poster boy of responsibility, clear thinking and self-restraint, the Honorable Edward M. Kennedy:

Nominations do not get much worse than this. Haynes does not come anywhere close to the commitment to fundamental rights and the principle of separation of powers that we all expect from the federal courts. He would be a poster boy on the 4th Circuit for denying the rule of law, and he should not be confirmed.

Well hell, Senator. Arern't you being a bit judgmental? I mean it's not like he drove off a friggin' bridge or anything.

How about the nomination of Bill Meyers to the (thoroughly whacked out) 9th Circuit? Uh uh, baaaaaaby. He evidently does not sufficiently support "environmental protection and the rights of Native Americans" , the lack of which, I must suppose, outweighs his ability to evenhandedly apply the rule of law. You want proof? "He has made statements that cast doubt on his support for the right of privacy and other basic federal rights." Quod erat demonstrandum.

Next out of the que is Terrence Boyle , whose appoint to the federal bench, according to The Paper Record, "provoked opposition from Democrats who cited his rulings in civil rights and disability cases, as well as his higher-than-average reversal rate by higher courts."

Ruh roh.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee staff demonstrates that Judge Boyle's reversal rate is actually below the national average for district court judges. Using the standards of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the national rate is 8.6% and Judge Boyle has a reversal rate of only 7.5%.

Let's compare, say, 2002, shall we?

Notably, the 9th Circuit accounted for both 30 percent of the cases (24 of 80) and 30 percent of the reversals (18 of 59) the Supreme Court decided by full written opinions this term. In addition, the 9th Circuit was responsible for more than a third (35%, or 8 of 23) of the High Court’s unanimous reversals that were issued by published opinions. Thus, on the whole, the 9th Circuit’s rulings accounted for more reversals this past term than all the state courts across the country combined and represented nearly half of the overturned judgments (45%) of the federal appellate courts.

Hmmm.... the standards seem to be shifting a bit here.

Last on the chopping block is Michael Wallace. His failings? I dunno.

He graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1973. In 1976, he received his
Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia College of Law, where he
served on the Virginia Law Review and was named to the Order of the Coif.
****
Wallace, a longtime member of the influential Federalist Society and lawyer for the Mississippi Republican Party, is a graduate of Harvard University.
****
Wallace, 54, had been special counsel to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi during the impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999. He also worked for Lott in the 1980s after serving as a law clerk to then-Associate Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist.

You got that?

Right.

My faith in the future of the federal judiciary of this nation is failing fast. I cannot conceive of a qualified candidate who would walk away from private practice to take a 200% pay cut in the service of a notion of morons.

Pfftt.

The Whack Street Journal

2007-01-02T12:09:00.000-05:00

Ack. I sneezed, and the world changed format. Not the"world" exactly, just the Wall Street Journal. Same thing to a lot of us old heads who like certain things to stay just the way they are, at least until we're dead.

First, there was the old black and white edition at left that lasted about 110 years. Staid, dull, highly informative, and, evidently, insufficiently "hip" for a modern reader steeped in the flash and glamour of such reliable news media as the internet and USA Today (which, BTW, eventually took over the WSJ's widest circulation title in 2003. Duble-ack.)

So , like any good capitalist, the WSJ changed with the customer. It added color ads in 1995, and in April 2002 slapped four color print right on the front page.

I handled it. It was still the WSJ, after all, even if it now included snappy features about women's fashion trends and parenting for the nanny-challenged. I was proud of the way I so willingly coped with modernity.

But now... well, I don't know if I can take it anymore. Starting today, The Wall Street Journal has lopped off a whole column from each page! They have shrunk the paper from 15 inches to a paltry 12 inches wide, or roughly the same width as a "normal" newspaper, such as the Richmond Times-Disgrace or the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation. "Less bulky!" "More user friendly!" they tell me. "Saves newsprint and curbs global warming." Sure, sure. Whatever.

But this!!!! How do you explain this?

Traffic Report
January 1, 2007 10:11 p.m.; Page B4

It's unforgiveable.
Justin Timberlake over Lil' Scrappy?
Twice?????

Cancel my subscription.

Back on the Air

2007-01-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that, in general, 2006 sucked bigger than than a giant squid. With the exception of the addition of several new beautiful children and the subtraction of several old murderous bastards, the entire year can be summed up as being a bad case of cramps. A real lollapelosi.

But, after fielding countless emails from my vast readership requesting that I renew their subscription to ennui, I figure that one more senseless rant or two will not hasten the end of days any more than Brittany Spears going commando.
So what the hell.

Let's start 2007 off right then, shall we?

Merry Christmas in Heaven

2006-12-25T14:09:00.000-05:00

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business has come to entertain you!

"God had a special job for me. He gave me a special talent to relate to people of all cultures. I found that the common denominator of among people was love. Because regardless oa all the obstacles which we fight, the social problems and the poverty problems, it all boils down the the love factor. And I believe I was able to create that in my life."

James Brown

May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006
R.I.P.

We're Done Here

2006-10-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

It's been great, and I will always miss the opportunity to voice my objections to whatever the hell it is I'm objecting to. But I have emerging adults living in my home who have caught on to this blog, and, unfortunately, that changes everything.

Everything.

Damned if I didn't have a fun run, though, didn't I?
I wouldn't have changed a thing.

But who ever "spd rdr" was, he is now officially gone. That secret identity was insuffficiently guarded by its owner, and thus now must disappear. So be it. You'll know me when you see me again. You always have.

Thanks for your attention, your affection, and your patience.
I 'll be around.

And everyone who ever had a heart,
They wouldn't turn around and break it.
And anyone who ever played a part,
They wouldn't turn around and hate it.

Lou Reed - Sweet Jane.

Kisses.

-spd rdr.

The One and Only HH Post - Ever - About Mark Foley

2006-10-16T20:20:00.000-04:00

Satellite's gone up to the skies
Things like that drive me out of my mind
I watched it for a little while
I like to watch things on TV

*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love

Sa-tel-lite of...

Satellite's gone way up to Mars
Soon it'll be filled with parkin' cars.
I watched it for a little while
I love to watch things on TV.

*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love

Sa-tel-lite of...

I've been told that you've been bold
With Harry, Mark, and John.
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday through Thursday
With Harry, Mark, and John.

Satellite's gone up to the skies
Things like that drive me out of my mind.
I watched it for a little while
I love to watch things on TV.

*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love
*BUM BUM BUM* Satellite of love

Sa-tel-lite of...

Love.

-Lou Reed

*cough*

Dueling Covers

2006-10-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

Check out this very clever, very fun clip of animated album covers brought to life.
Well done.

Yeah, I know. The yummy (and once risque) Whipped Cream and Other Delights
album cover has nothing to do with the link but I thought y'all needed something
other than a DEAD STUFFED MOUSE (Wally??) staring at you between our random
posts...or at least until spd delivers on next week's art of goat massage. Tease.

(posted by Portia)

Feckless Friday

2006-10-13T17:38:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Al Gore, the internet is a wonderful resource for helpful information that assists us in living life to the fullest.

For example, if you are like me, you have probably long been wondering "Well, how exactly do I stuff a dead mouse? My daughter sooooo wants one atop her wedding cake one day."

Wonder no more, my friends. The internet has all the answers.

(Stop looking at me like that, Wally.)

Next week: The art of goat massage.

The End of the Reagan Revolution

2006-10-09T18:40:00.000-04:00

Goddamn it, Foley!

Motor City Mojo

2006-10-08T07:52:00.000-04:00

It is not polite for a gentleman to take pleasure from other's misfortune, even if they be Yankee Fans, and some of my best friends are Yankee fans. So I will not smirk over the Bronx Bombers' failure to wring the least bit of dignity from their brief stay in the playoffs. I will let others take delight in A-Rod's AWOL post-season performance (1 for 14, an .071 avg with no runs batted in, and an error!). I will refrain from giggling about the coming explosion from Mount George in Tampa that will consume the entire $200 million lineup (except for Jeter, of course). And, because these are the same bunch of Pinstripes that took five straight from the Red Sox in August (in Fenway!) and killed our entire season, I will not gloat.

Instead I will congratulate the pitching staff of the Detroit Tigers on their spectacular outings, particularly local boy Jason Verlander (ROOKIE OF THE YEAR) for throwing 100+mph lightning and leaving highest paid hitters in baseball with nothing to hit but the dugout wall.

I also thought that I might mention that the the Mets swept their series, and look like they'll be hanging the bunting in ugly old Shea for a fourth time.

Not that anybody cares.

Motown Rising

2006-10-07T19:52:00.000-04:00

At the moment, the city of Detroit is thrilled — orange-flag-waving, horn-honking, income-anticipating thrilled. It was fun to see the Tigers’ players touching hands with their fans at the edge of the field (and spraying them with Champagne) after their 8-3 drubbing of the Yankees yesterday, but the Bronx Bombers do not exist for the humanitarian purpose of providing a lift to a downtrodden city. George Vecsey

To quote spd: "What the hell is going on?"

A scrappy, underdog team that three years ago LOST 119 games
beats the sh*t out of the Yankees in four, and sends them packing
with their sorry bats between their legs. Remarkable. The best
line-up since Murderer's Row and we're run out of town like
Dead Men Walking (if only...)

Bravo, Bonderman. Congrats, Jim Leland. See ya, A-Rod.
(Posted by Portia)

News From Mars

2006-10-07T07:55:00.000-04:00

You might have noticed that I have been in scarce supply the last couple of weeks. I was on the Moon. Or maybe at the bottom of the ocean. Or in at Turkish prison. It really doesn't matter much, because where I was there was no news. But as any spaceman or diver or ex-con will tell you, re-entry into the World is the most dangerous part of the trip.

They ain't kidding.

Friday's WSJ usually contains a thought-provoking opinion piece by Dan Henninger, and yesterday's was no exception. It was the timing that blew me away.

There's an old saw about stepping back for a bit and asking "What would a man from Mars think if he saw all this?" I haven't had time to read newspapers or watch TV or surf blogs. There was news all around me, but it was strangled by the clock, the calendar, and the white noise from the beginning of time. So I awoke on Friday morning, still a bit out of it, picked up the newspaper, and was struck dumb.

"What the hell is the matter here?" asked the Man from Mars. "What the hell is going on?" Lurid text messages. Nut job nuke test. Head-stomping football player. Pedophile free in California. Amish girls dead in Pennsylvania. Amish girls!

The stories shot from the pages like lightning bolts, each one more shocking than the last. The Man from Mars thought hard about just putting down the paper and going home. And then I read Henninger's piece and I took heart that it wasn't just me. There are other Martians out there wondering how everything suddenly seems to have gone off the track. It's cold comfort, I know, but it's also the only brand available.

Soon the numbness of living with the news will return, and I'll be part of the World again.

Or maybe I won't.

Barn Door Open

2006-10-04T02:51:00.000-04:00

Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.
-William Techumseh Sherman, 1870

It's too late for me to get into this. I am far too worn and haggard from weeks-on-end of putting someone else's well-being before my own. I'm not bitching. I know what I signed up for, and the pay ain't half bad.

I'm bushed, however, and barely alive as I hit the pillow. But there's this thing that keeps me from my dreams of Sweet Colleen in her chocolate bikini.
It's this ... uncertainty ... (but we will never call it that) that appears behind shuttered eyes. A reluctant, but compulsive, fingering of the internal GPS for the coordinates as to where I am, relative to the rest of the world. As if it mattered. One guy. In the whole universe.

But tonight we'll start in Singapore and move northeast, over a thousand Phillipine isles and out across the wide, blue Pacific. The globe spins past ten thousand cultures and ten thousand tongues, yet here I am above it all, moving. Moving. A billion lives past beneath my wings and yet I am focused on one Place, the Place that I am. And soon enough, I have found me. I'm right the fuck here, of course. But the World has come to find me.

And then I have to decide whether it matters at all where I stand together, or whether I stand alone.

And in the meantime I pray for sleep.

Keepin' the Faith

2006-09-29T21:30:00.000-04:00

I've taken a detour to Buzz-Saw City.

Keep on dancing, folks.

I'll join you later.

Aces

2006-09-22T07:36:00.000-04:00

At left is Eddie Rickenbacker, America's "Ace of Aces" in The Great War. Eddie knocked down 26 enemy aircraft in combat over France. He wasn't quite as prolific a warrior as Manfred Von Richthofen who had 80 confirmed kills, notching 20 of them in April 1917 alone. But unlike the Red Baron, Eddie never became a number himself, which given the risks involved was quite an achievement.

I got to thinking about "aces" the other day as I watched the trailer for the new WWI flying epic "Flyboys." I certainly want to go see it, but I am not sure whether mrs. rdr will let me take the youngest rdr to a PG-13 movie. Which would really be too bad, since, like their father and his father before him, both of my boys have a passion for combat aircraft. I have Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator versions 2 & 3 on the computer, and my son and I fight over the joystick. I don't know of too many other nine year-olds that can explain why the Folke-Wulf FW-190 was a far superior fighter to the Messerschmitt Bf-109 or the difficulty involved with landing a Vought F4U Corsair on a carrier deck. We trek down to NAS Oceana every year for the air show (the Blue Angels are only part of an all-day speed fest) where he reels off the names of the various aircraft that whizz by as if he'd been flying them his whole life. I have to pull him away from the History Channel when "Wings" is on. He's got the bug.

But he doesn't quite grasp World War I aircraft. The idea that a man would climb into a cloth-covered kite on bicycle wheels and engage in close combat at top speeds of 60 miles an hour, without a parachute, is beyond his reach. It's often beyond mine.

My father instilled in me his own appreciation of WWI aircraft. His earliest drawings (he was an artist) were of biplanes locked in mortal combat, soaring and diving for advantage - or escape. He would tell me stories of the great aces and their planes, and of the chivalry that shone in these "Knights of the Air." By the time I was 10 my notebooks were covered with drawings of Spads and Fokker Dr-1's spiraling in the air. I had the bug.

In 1966, the movie "The Blue Max" appeared and my father immediately set out for the theater with me and my brother in tow. Movies weren't rated in those days, so my mother never knew that Ursula Andress was going to get all cozy with George Peppard (my brother and I called her "Ursula UNdress" for years afterwards), and we were too young to follow the plot much. But the planes. Oh the planes! To see them fly at last!

It wouldn't be until the advent of the VCR that I would be able to watch Howard Hughes magnificently filmed "Hell's Angels" or the Oscar-winning silent film "Wings" and to finally understand how my father came to so adore those early heroes. Even the campy "Dawn Patrol"found a willing audience in me. Anything to watch those planes fly.

There aren't any "aces" anymore, it seems. The "dogfight" has given way to stand-off weapons that will destroy your enemy far over the horizon. And this is a good thing. But I cherish that magnificent spirit and courage that was glimpsed, ever so briefly, above the wreck and barbarism of trench warfare.

So now, 40 years after my first glimpse of a Fokker Tri-plane in full float, "Flyboys" is calling me.
And I will go. And I will take my boy. And he will understand.

UPDATE: mrs. rdr was aghast that I even thought that she would disapprove of me taking Danny to see"Flyboys." How dumb am I?

I'm Losing My Patience With These Idiots...Fast

2006-09-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

Well, if they were up your ass you'd know.

Bi-Partisanship

2006-09-18T20:46:00.000-04:00

Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation. - David Hume

2006-09-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

The enemy is like a woman, weak in face of opposition, but correspondingly strong when not opposed. In a quarrel with a man, it is natural for a woman to lose heart and run away when he faces up to her; on the other hand, if the man begins to be afraid and to give ground, her rage, vindictiveness and fury overflow and know no limit.

-St. Ignatius Of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 325 (1548).

And so it goes.

I was informed last night by my eldest daughter that I had lost my perspective; that I was becoming paranoid about the monsters under the bed; that I was extreme in my vision of history; that I was wrong and over-exercised about the threats facing western civilization; that the answers to the current mess can be had by meaningful dialog and a pull-back from hard-line rhetoric. In a word: I had become "unhinged."

I think I responded. No, I know that I responded, vorciferously. But the sound of my voice fell victim to the deadening aspects of the vast media forest within which we wander. I am crying "fire," and yet modern totems drown me out, even while they themselves burn.

And so this where we are in history.

Maybe.

She is, after all, a redhead.

And I am a Leo.

A Portrait Of Lasting Audacity

2006-09-16T09:08:00.000-04:00

Poor Father, he did the wrong thing. He gave me a powerful slap - he stared me in the eyes and said,
A girl does not, must not, cry.

Oriana Fallaci
June 27, 1929 - September 15, 2006

Your Daily Inspiration

2006-09-15T14:45:00.000-04:00

Cass started it.

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

2006-09-14T10:43:00.000-04:00

What is it with you people?

Ok. I fixed the problem. Ok?

OK?????

Not So Fast....

2006-09-14T01:40:00.000-04:00

WALTER: Will you be here, too?
PHYLLIS: I guess so, I usually am.
WALTER: (Putting on his hat) Same chair, same perfume, same anklet?
PHYLLIS: I wonder if I know what you mean.
WALTER: I wonder if you wonder.

Post no. 460 and counting. Nancy Pelosi be damned.

(posted by Portia)

Requiem

2006-09-11T07:01:00.000-04:00

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Amen.

Sleepless In Toronto

2006-09-09T07:33:00.000-04:00

It's hard to be an American these days, at least if you are Michael Moore. The Large One was in Toronto recently to attend Toronto International Film Festival, a vertitable love-in for the Hate America First crowd, and told the assembled glitterati of his "contingency plans to flee to Toronto if things got much worse in the States."

"Much worse?" I thought. Am I missing something?

No roadside bomb has delayed my commute to work recently, and work seems plentiful enough for those who seek it (including several thousand new immigrants each day). I turn on the tap, and out comes potable water, hot and cold. The lights burn brightly at the flick of a switch and the radio plays that forgotten song. Neither jackbooted police nor political death-squads threaten me when I go to the 24-hour grocery store to pluck from the shelves fresh foods from the world over, and in such quantities that I could never possibly eat it all. That new hospital is five minutes away, but if I dial those three numbers, the paramedics will be be here in two.

Back in my home, the one that I own, I choose from the 300-odd cable channels available to watch uncensored news from across the globe. Then I read the opinions of a host of voices in the newspapers delivered daily to my door. After I've decided which candiate to support for office, I can, if I so choose, cast my secret ballot. Later, I can petition my governments to do, or refrain from doing, certain things that I like or don't like, and then write on my blog pretty much anything I want to say about that, or anything else.

How much worse can things get?

"Plenty and peace breed cowards" Shakespeare wrote.* While cowardness has never been a national trait, it would seem that, despite all of our wealth and education, fear has become a national malady.

The shock of 9/11 is gone, and the anger over those attacks appears to have ebbed as well. In its place has grown a kind of self-inflicted terror that saps our strength and clouds our vision. A perfect example of this unfounded fear is how in Toronto Mr. Moore "worried aloud that the administration had 'a whole list of places we still have to invade.'" On the face of it, Mr. Moore's statements appear to be nothing more than another bit of Bush-hating rhetoric delivered to the Liberal faithful. But such senitments reflect the creeping paranoia that is now being foisted daily upon the American people.

Think about it. Cindy Sheehan states that she fantasizes about going back in time and murdering an infant named George Bush, and it's news. Spike Lee claims that the Bush administration blew up the levess to flood the Ninth Ward, and it's news. More a third of the country believes that the Bush administration had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, or knew about them in advance and did nothing to stop them. Never mind that the Supreme Court did more to curb civil liberties with its decisions in Kelo and Raiche than Bush could have possibly accomplished, Bush is out to "trample" your civil rights by listening to international cell phone calls made to suspected terrrorists. And as to free speech, why just look at what Bush did to that poor Joe Wilson and his unnamable wife! Absolutely chilling, I'll tell you!**

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that it is none other than George Bush that is inciting fear among the American people.

Uh huh.

I'm not just picking on the Left here, nor on the Main Stream Media. I recognize that there is a good argument to be made that elements of the right-wing are equally engaged in fear-mongering. Seriously, if gay marriage signals the End of Days then set 'em up all around, Jim, 'cause I'm going out tanked to the gills and reading the Sports Page.

What is really going on here is not simply the exercise of political partisanship. It is the public expression of America's frustration with the fact that it can no longer control its own destiny. Our borders are porous. Our way of life depends on foreign commodities, goods, services, and investment. Our elected offficials no longer hold our respect, and our faith in our system of justice is flagging. Our enemies grow bolder while we vacillate and backbite, seemingly resigned to our own perpetual insecurity.

The new national self-loathing is typified by the reaction of so many citizens to the recent news that CIA, the very people Bush relied upon for pre-war intelligence, discovered last fall that Saddam and al Qaeda weren't all that chummy after all. Hallelujah! We were wrong! YAY! WE SUCK! Patriots all. And the devils laugh.

A friend of mine, a very bright guy, asked me yesterday why it is that America could win World War II on both fronts in less than four years, but after five years Bush still hasn't captured the one man most responsible for 9/11.

I responded (with all sobriety) that it was because following the events of December 1941 the United States was prepared to incinerate entire cities and kill millions of soldiers and civilians, the guiltyalong with the innocent, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of our own troops and all the treasure in the world. "Is one man worth that kind of moral capital," I asked?

He didn't say much after that, but the way he looked at me indicated that he thought that perhaps I am a very dangerous person.

I'm not a dangerous person. I don't propose, as Don Imus once did, that we burn everything east of Beruit. Historical facts are sometimes hard to swallow, as are the options available to us when we animate our enemies with our own values and traditions. I doubt that our parents' will to survive as a nation, by whatever means necessary, could ever be rekindled in America today. And maybe that's a good thing. And maybe not. Time will tell.

Perhaps it is because we Americans are too fat and too successful that we are failing to convince the rest of the world that ours is the better plan, and/or that this experiment in personal liberty will not soon fade away, at least not without a fight.

But ask yourself: Why it is that we should fear those that would enslave the world, and not the other way around?

Indeed, why should we fear anything at all?

* Cymbeline, III, iv.
**(Of course, free speech apparently does have its limits, depending upon your point of view.)

A Day of Blue Skies

2006-09-07T14:01:00.000-04:00

I want to tell you a story.

A few weeks ago I was in my home town on Long Island to say goodbye to an old friend. There were a good many faces there that I hadn’t seen in some time. One of them was that of the younger brother of a classmate of mine. His family lived on the next block over and his sister married the youngest son of the old friend for whose life I had come to show my respects.

He had brought his wife and two young daughters to the celebration of my old friend’s life, and soon we got to talking about all the things that people talk about when they haven’t seen each other in 20 years. I finally asked him if he still lived on Long Island. He said no, he had moved his family out to Sussex County, New Jersey (a beautiful part of northwestern Jersey that nobody seems to know even exists). We talked about all the congestion and traffic on Long Island and about what a wise move he had made for himself and his kids.

And then I asked: “Do you have to commute to the City every day from Sussex?”

He paused for a heartbeat or two, and then in a low monotone said: “Not any more. Not since they blew up my building.”

It was my turn to pause. “You were there?” I asked softly.

“In the street.” he replied.

His eight-year old stopped sipping her Shirley Temple and piped in cheerfully as she wrapped herself around him “Daddy was late!"

My friend said nothing. He just looked at me, stone-faced, and stroked his child's hair. And in his eyes I saw him seeing all of the horrors of that day. And through his eyes I watched it with him.

Maybe only a few seconds passed. But it was enough. I clapped him on the shoulder and said “Let’s go get a beer.” Nothing more was said about it.

This is how life is for some. They won’t watch the specials and documentaries commemorating the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. They don't need to be reminded. They carry that movie in their head. In towns and villages all over Long Island you’ll find small memorials bearing the names of those residents who didn’t come home from work. It isn’t forgotten there. It is etched in stone.

My friend’s daughter was only a toddler when the towers came down, but she knows that it was good for Daddy to be late that one day. Nothing more need be said.

There Is No Damned Spoon

2006-09-05T19:31:00.000-04:00

Okay, everyone. On top of all the regular stuff that needs doing, I've got to complete that wonderful "self-evaluation form" before the 7th. I am really tired of telling people how I parted the Red Sea and all, so I figured that I might lean on you for some new garbage to dump.

Have at it.

Ernesto

2006-09-01T11:35:00.000-04:00

...and that's how it is down here on the Outer Banks. Tropical Storm Enersto is just a memory for folks around here. The sun is coming back out and the bathers are returning. I think that maybe I'll join them. Ha ha.

Ha ha. Thank you for that insightful report on Tropical Storm Er-nest-o, Bambi.

Now, don't forget your sunscreen! Ha ha.

let's check in now with our Richmond Storm Team. How's the weather down there, Juan?

Well, it looks to me like the drought is over. What does it look like to you, you stupid twit? Liquid sunshine? And why the f*ck do I always get the lousy assignments anyway? How come it's always me that has to stand around in the f*cking floods? "Look at how deep the water is folks, it's almost over the tops of my boots!" Morons. You want to know the what the f*cking weather is ? Get off your lazy ass an GO OUTSIDE!

We appear to be having technical difficulties with Juan's connection.

I'll bet that bitch Bambi isn't up to her armpits in snakes and dirty water. She's probably out in the sun on some beach batting eyes and being stupid. Right? Am I RIGHT???

We'll be right back, after this word from Mother Sheehan.

Do people find you annoying?

Smack Down

2006-08-30T22:12:00.000-04:00

I can't begin to do justice to Keith Olbermann's stunning rebuke to Rumsfeld's speech yesterday so I'll let his eloquent words speak for themselves...and for me.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It "knew" Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It "knew" Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It "knew" that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already "knew" the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

* * * *
You can read the rest of it here.

Update: Here's the video of Olbermann's commentary. I promise to provide a clip of Rumsfeld's speech as soon as I locate it...and after I read it:)

(Posted by Portia)

Where there is honey, there are bees.

2006-08-29T18:34:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here I am minding my own business (and yours) when up pops this little story from the New York Lawyer:

L.I. Attorney Censured Over High Fees
New York LawyerAugust 29, 2006

By Michael SchollNew York Law Journal

MINEOLA - Patent lawyer Michael I. Kroll of Syosset has been publicly censured for charging excessive fees to 75 clients.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, last week unanimously voted to confirm a special referee's report that had sustained two counts of professional misconduct against Mr. Kroll. The court found in Matter of Michael I. Knoll, 2005-00782, that Mr. Kroll violated the Code of Professional Responsibility by charging excessive fees for preparing patent applications.

A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office investigation into Mr. Kroll's fees was begun in 2000 after one of his clients, Lynn Svevad, complained to the office. Ms. Svevad had been seeking to patent a computer software program that allows users to have simulated conversations with deceased relatives.

The Appellate Division said the investigation found that the average fee charged in the New York City area for preparation of an application was $700. It also found that Mr. Kroll charged and collected $11,500 for the same service from Ms. Svevad.The investigation also identified 75 clients who were charged similar fees by Mr. Knoll for the same work.

***

Naturally, my short attention span distills this whole sorid affair into a
Daily News headline:

PREDATORY LAWYER GETS HOOKED BY OVERCHARGRING PREDATORY BOTTOM-FISHING MORBID COMPUTER GEEK - No Survivors Worth Mentioning

But what of the bait?

Seriously, this woman tries to patent a program that simulates you having an email conversation with long-dead Aunt Haddie, and then complains that her lawyer charged her too much to license such stupidity? Why couldn't she find a reputable attorney to prosecute a patent application that permits people to chat-room with dead folks?

(Um...nevermind. I figured it out by myself.)

The Court (wisely) held that the stupid lawyer in this case is liable for stupidly overcharging his stupid client amounts beyond the stupid level of their obvious stupidity. No verdict was returned as to whether Ms. Svevad (say that three times fast) was liable for luring the desperate into a place where her digital clouds obscured those last few lights remaining in the safe harbor of reason.

Ubi mel ibi apes . (Where there is honey, there are bees.) And where there are bees, there are bears. That's life as I know it. And that's ok.

But tomorrow is another day.

Surely You Can Come Up With A Couple More

2006-08-28T21:36:00.000-04:00

And don't call me Shirley.

Today's Excuse Quote

2006-08-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have time.
Tallulah Bankhead

(Posted by Portia)

The Coach

2006-08-27T14:38:00.000-04:00

"The ball is round, a game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory. Off we go! "

*

Army Immerses Soldiers in Weaponry

2006-08-26T14:43:00.000-04:00

Calgon, take me away.
And drown me.

Thug Lite

2006-08-26T10:02:00.000-04:00

Yet another sign that the Apocalypse is upon us:

"Elton John was talking to us about his upcoming album, The Captain and the Kid, due out next month, when he dropped a bomb about his plans for the project after that: he intends to record a hip-hop album with Dr. Dre."

Word to your mother.

It Ain't the Lips, Honey

2006-08-25T13:31:00.000-04:00

Cassandra and the ladies are all in a tizzy/snit about something that somebody said about conservative women having skinny lips. I'm not kidding.

Seeing as today I have nothing to say on that particular matter (or any other particular matter), I thought that I might just stir up some trouble.

But there's not a whole lot of trouble out there waiting for me to get into, it seems.

I'm not kidding.

Maybe you folks could come up with some ideas?

Thanks.

O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

2006-08-24T10:46:00.000-04:00

I thank you for your many kind comments in the post below about the passing of Big Jim C. I apologize for causing you to think that Jim was my father. He was not. My own Dad died some years ago. Jim was my best friend's father, a man I'd known for more than 40 years.

Even though we were not biologically linked, however, Jim was a father to me in many many ways. He was my Coach and teacher. He gave me my first job that required a tie. Jim was the Chairman of my personal Board of Directors, and he saw right through me.

Throughout my life,Jim never gave up on me, even when I had about given up on myself. And when I failed he'd never ask me why, but rather "What did you see there?" and then listen as I taught my self another lesson. And when at last I'd succeed his praise would be equally subdued. "Of course you did," he'd say.

Of course I did. Thanks to you.

St. Paul was right. There is no sting to death where the life is well lived. Jim approached every day with gusto and faith. Faith in himself. Faith in Christ. And faith in every human being.

I am a better man for having known him.

Big Jim

2006-08-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

Did we ever touch?
Or just bully past each other?

Either way, sir,
You remain my lighthouse.
And for all the glare of your harsh stare,
I love you still.

Rest, now, friend and father
And know that you have lit a beacon.
Strong enough to guide this single life.

Double Header

2006-08-19T09:49:00.000-04:00

What can I say?

The teams combined for 41 runs and 61 hits. Twenty pitchers -- that's counting Mike Myers and Scott Proctor twice -- threw 783 pitches. In all, the teams played 8:40 minutes of baseball, from Jason Johnson's first pitch at 1:10 p.m. until Mariano Rivera covered first to retire Wily Mo Pena at 12:52 a.m.

Dear Lord I do so hate the Yankees.

CSI: Rock Lyrics

2006-08-18T21:12:00.000-04:00

We begin a new sub-chapter in intellectual futility tonight with lyrics from The Doors:

Yeah!, come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, babe
Can't you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won't you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?

***
What was that promise that she made?

Game Day!

2006-08-18T10:22:00.000-04:00

Hey there, Mister Coffee. Are you ready for some baseball?

Chill out, Popsicle Head. The Sox are a game and a half back and looking tired.

Tired? Your boys dropped one to last the freakin' Orioles yesterday 12 -2, and you're calling us tired?

Yeah, well that sucked, but you know how it's going to go today.

Yeah, Joe.
I do.

August 12

2006-08-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Hppy brthdy, spd

From your friends at Heigh Ho

May all your wishes come true!

Well, most of them anyway....

(posted by Portia)

Vacation

2006-08-11T21:35:00.000-04:00

It's all I ever wanted.

One Man's Terrorist Is Another's Assh*le

2006-08-10T20:18:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard, "somebody" hacked into Joe Leiberman's homepage and knocked it out of commision with a "denial of service attack." Of course, Karl Rove denies any involvement, but then doesn't he always? I mean who else but Rove would replace Joe's homepage with a message like this:

''We ownz u site.''

Oh, yeah. That typifies the typical imperialistic neo-con jingo grabbism that typically this Administration is typically famous for so typically. And note the sly attempt by Rove and his gang of hackers to engage the black vote at the same time by layin' down some "jive." Shame on you, Karl. Have you at last no sense of decency?

There's little doubt that the Republicans are out to get Joe. After all, if Bush hadn't stolen the 2000 election, Joe might be president today - or still a heartbeat away. (Try harder Tipper!) Plus, he let the President kiss him! I'm no homophobic anti-semite, but according to Reverend Al Sharpton, this is probably the time that I should be laying in a stock of man-sized Holy Trojans for the coming of the End of the World.

Or something.

Seriously, folks. It has to be Rove, right? I mean, it couldn't be a Democratic operative or moonbat ticked off that Joe's going to run as an independent. Democrats don't stifle free speech, they bathe in it.

Like ducks in water.

High School

2006-08-09T19:26:00.000-04:00

Caption - If You Dare

2006-08-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

I am completely bereft of any ideas, flavors or colors, having been beaten to a intellectual pulp.

Henceforth, I'm thing outside of the fridge.

Boy-Howdy.

Once More to the Lake

2006-08-07T15:42:00.000-04:00

We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floorboards the same fresh-water leavings and debris--the dead hellgrammite, the wisps of moss, the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday's catch. We stared silently at the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and wells. I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one--the one that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn't know which rod I was at the end of....

"Once More to the Lake," by E.B. White

(posted by Portia)

New Survey Finds One In Three Americans Stark Raving Bonkers

2006-08-05T11:11:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's official. According to a new Scripps Howeard/ Ohio University Poll, one third of the adult population in America believes that little green men are coming to eat their brains and drain their precious bodily fluids.

There's no other explanation.

Too Darn Hot

2006-08-03T17:15:00.000-04:00

5:10 PM, the mercury is stuck at One Oh Three and it's
Too Darn Hot (Mel Torme does Cole Porter)

I'd like to sup with my baby tonight
fill the cup with my baby tonight
I'd like to sup with my baby tonight
fill the cup with my baby tonight
but I ain't up to my baby tonight
cause it's too darn hot
It's too darn hot
It's too darn hot

I'd like to coo with my baby tonight
and pitch the woo with my baby tonight
I'd like to coo with my baby tonight
and pitch the woo with my baby tonight
brother you fight my baby tonight
cause it's too darn hot
it's too darn hot

According to the Kinsey report
ev'ry average man you know
much prefers to play his favorite sport
when the temperature is low
but when the thermometer goes way up
and the weather is sizzling hot
Mister Pants, for romance, is not
cause it's too too
it's too darn hot, it's too darn hot
It's too too too too darn hot

Darn, it's hot.
(Posted by Portia)

Grounds For Annulment

2006-08-01T07:10:00.000-04:00

Depending on what's between your legs, this may or may not be good news: There is no Emily, there is no Steven, there will be no divorce, New York style.

As several savvy HH readers surmised early on (save this author), the billboard, the blog--even the joint bank account--were all bogus. B-O-G-U-S. All part of a ~~desparate~~ clever viral marketing campaign for an upcoming Court TV show, Parco P.I. about some overweight, underloved Kojak look-alike gumshoe in New York City who tracks down spouses copulating with other people's spouses.

How totally unfun is that? Totally. On top of that, it sucks.

Folks, these days we're being duped big time--not by con men luring us into a game of three-card Monte or fast talking used car salesmen--by predatory viral marketing evangelists piggybacking on ~~your~~ my gullibility to do their low-budget word-of-mouth advertising, and the kicker is most times we I don't even know what they're selling or ~~we're~~ I'm promoting! What's wrong with this picture? What happened to wooing me? What happened to the good old days when smarmy advertisers did the talking? Two nasty words: Viral marketing.

Oh sure, the billboard/blog viral campaign was highly ~~infectious~~ effective in generating viral buzz (he told two friends, who told two friends, who told two friends, et. seq.) Within 24 hours, it was the talk of MSM, the blogworld and my "mailbox" while it tugged at the heartstrings (or something lower) of every Emily and Steven among us (or as a friend said after seeing the billboard "I think I've seen that episode.") It sucked us in with the possibility of someone else's "dirty laundry" being aired--in real time--right before our very eyes! Woo Hoo! The ultimate "get even" scenario touring right here in River City, and admission is free. Or so we thought...that is until we discovered that it wasn't Emily who was getting screwed it was us!

Well, I don't know about you but I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I don't like being duped, and I certainly don't like playing host to someone else's viral virus. I got enough on my plate. I say it's high time for some backlash, my friends. This rant goes out to you Channel 23:

Dear Court TV:

Do I have your attention now? I know all about you, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, audience-deprived slimeball. Eveything's caught on tape. Eveything's going down on your permanent record. After your audacious billboard stunt, you can kiss goodbye any chance that I will ever watch, tape or TiVo any of your programs. You are officially banned in my household. Not even your commercials will grace my clicker.

And it's not only me who will be boycotting your low-budget low-life campaign. I have friends, lots of them. Some of them even have TVs. I am an honorary guest blogger on a blog that is read by people all over the world including Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. I will spread the sorry details of your stealth marketing tactics far and wide through my own low-budget campaign of viral buzz beginning right here and now.

Your forebears on Madison Avenue warned us years ago "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Well, here's an update bucko: It's not nice to con John Q. Public, either.

Have a nice day.

P.S. I hope Parco P.I. turns out to be just another washed-up "dick" with too much time on his hands, no headlights in his future, and the cancellation blues on his lips.

(Posted by Portia)

An Immodest Proposal

2006-07-29T11:53:00.000-04:00

Forty-five years ago this past May a young man from Massachusetts stood before a joint gathering of the House and Senate and challenged America to go to the moon. The timing was crucial. The Soviets had placed the first human being in orbit in January and the United States had countered with the sub-orbital flight of Alan Shepard just a few weeks prior to the President’s speech. “Now it is time to take longer strides,” Kennedy said, “time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.”

Kennedy didn’t just tell Congress that an American astronaut will go to the moon, he laid down the gauntlet for every American to pick up.

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations--explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Kennedy’s confidence in the ability of the Nation to achieve this daunting task was not boastful, but plainly spoken:

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.

Recently I have had occasion to think of President Kennedy’s challenge as I have grappled to understand the troubling path upon which we Americans find ourselves. Tyrants in the Middle East and South America are holding the United States hostage to their oil, while the swiftly rising economies in China and India gobble ever more of the precious stuff. The Wall Street Journal recently featuresd an article about how melting ice packs and glaciers will cause earthquakes as the surface crust rebounds from the sudden loss of pressure. They are now growing strawberries in Greenland. A doctor friend of mine recently dumped his year-old Lexus and bought a Prius, telling me that he “had to do something about global warming for his kids’ sakes,” and this lady fears the heat wave in San Francisco is the beginning of the end. What used to pass for the irrational, it seems, is becoming the commonplace. But something clearly needs doing.

In 1961, Kennedy saw the challenge as space. Today, I see that same sort of challenge here on Earth. I propose that we adopt Kennedy’s model and challenge the Nation to, by 2016, develop the mechanisms and support structure to replace the internal combustion engine. Not only are we up to the challenge, I dare say that we are the only nation capable of meeting it. But to do it will require a truly national effort.

First, we must regrettably halt our space program for the time being. Space isn’t going anywhere. Mars will wait for us while we fix things here on Earth. Instead of building space stations and manned rockets, NASA and it engineers will be turned to developing an alternative energy source to power land based vehicles. Although hydrogen comes first to mind, the wizards at NASA will be given free rein to develop alternative fuels and power plants, much like Kennedy had promised them in 1961.

The goal here is not only to develop an alternative source of power, but to also make it practical and affordable. (General Motors has been working on hydrogen-powered cars, but how much of that crippled giant’s resources can possibly be going towards such efforts?) NASA has exactly the kind of experience and personnel to bring this new technology to fruition. Funding the project will be the savings generated by halting in manned space exploration, and whatever resources this Nation is willing to muster to achieve this extraordinary goal. Once the power source is designed and tested, the technology will be made available to manufacturers world wide. Call it America’s gift to the planet and a finger in the eye of the oil tyrants.

The project encompasses far more than just designing an inexpensive power plant, however. Technologies must be developed to produce the fuel for the vehicles in a manner that does not just shift energy consumption. Currently, most hydrogen is produced by using natural gas, although other methods are being studied. NASA’s experience and bankroll would go far to accelerate these studies.

Of course, there would have to be some serious effort placed in developing the infrastructure to deliver the alternative fuels to market. Currently there is a single hydrogen pump at a Shell station in Washington, D.C. (can you guess why?). But a Nation that built the interstate highway system can surely devise a method to pump hydrogen from production to distribution. Petroleum companies might be given a stake in the production of the fuel thereby generating their interest in supplying the marketplace. Automakers too, must see reward in the development of the technology. I place sufficient trust in capitalism that these things will sort themselves out once it’s known that the change is coming and there is no turning back.

I realize that the challenge I speak of is daunting, but again I am reminded of Kennedy’s words to Rice University in 1962:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

We must choose to challenge ourselves again. To do great things "which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth. " We must choose to do these things to save both our liberty, and our environment. I believe that we’re up to the task. Someone just has to put it to us.

I'm looking for that someone.