October 31, 2009
THE TASH BROTHERS PLAY THE NYC MARATHON. ROCK WITH US AND FEED THE HUNGRY
SUNDAY, NOV. 1, 9:30 AM, 4TH AVENUE AND 88TH ST. BROOKLYN. ROCK THE MARATHON WITH US AND BRING A DONATION OF NON-PERISHABLE FOOD TO FEED THE HUNGRY. MAJOR FUN!
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 542
Never ask your dog if your clothes match. Not only are they colorblind, but they'd never dream of hurting your feelings. Better to ask the cat, who has no such reservations.
A MADMAN'S GUIDE TO LIFE
No sense kidding ourselves anymore, this world has really gotten away from us. Why even pretend we know what's going on anymore? Hell, we can't even name half the countries anymore! What the hell is Kyrgyzstan? How exactly are you supposed to pronounce that? Is there a Kyrgyz language, too? No one remembers anything remotely like that from Geography class. But it's not only the explosion of new countries, it's everything. Even baseball has lost its mind, playing the World Series right into November, the middle of football season. With blind umpires, no less.
You wonder why there's even newspapers anymore. All they are these days are daily confirmations that the whole world has gone batty. Balloon boys? What? Suicide bombers killing their own kind? What's the point? What happened to blowing up infidels? At least that gave a little rationale to the whole deal. Not a lot, but something you could try to wrap your head around. Then there's the news that Sarah Palin is a bestselling author. Who knew she could even read? And then you see Glen Beck's picture on the cover of Time Magazine. What, Jerry Lewis was busy that week?
Truly the time has come to just let it all hang out and go completely batshit crazy. In a world where the most famous people on earth are Paula Abdul, Muamar Ga-Daffy and the Geico lizard, it's not like anyone's going to notice. So maybe we should consider doing the following:
Call up your boss and tell him you won't be in today because the weather report said there was an 80% chance of locusts.
Put on leotards, ballet slippers and a black turtleneck and organize a "Ballet Karaoke Night" at your local bowling alley lounge, dancing favorite selections from "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker."
Wear one of those bluetooth ear pieces hooked up to a string and a paper cup, then shout into it all day long that your signal is weak.
Build a replica of the Statue of Liberty out of Kitty Litter.
Auction one of your kidneys on e-Bay.
When waiting on line at the bank, announce that this is not a stickup.
Start a charity to save the pigeons.
Send a monthly bill to your friends for services rendered. Offer discount rates for nights and weekends.
Get several inflatable sex dolls to be your "posse," and take them everywhere when your cheapskate friends refuse to pay up.
When asked to remove your shoes at the airport, take off your pants too.
Start building an ark on your front lawn and take applications from the neighbors for their pets.
Collect signatures on a petition to change the National Anthem to "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goal Posts of Life."
Tell your blind girlfriend you'll understand if she wants to see other people.
Sing "99 Bottles of Beer on The Wall" all the way through every day on the subway, urging your fellow commuters to sing along. That ought to start everybody's day in a jolly mood.
Organize a vacation trip to Rome that features sacking and looting.
Get a tattoo on each forearm saying "left" and "right."
Offer your services on Craig's list as an imaginary friend.
Install Lunar Energy panels on your roof to generate electricity at night.
Sign up for Twitter, and send only one message 50 times a day: "Help!"
Wear a parachute on elevators and keep a hand on the rip chord, just in case.
Spray red paint on live minks and ermines.
Start a Phone Book Of The Month Club.
Send all your written communication in hieroglyphics of your own devising.
Open a diner that serves only parsley, cole slaw, pickles and ice water.
Start a campaign for the Olympic Games to include Extreme Hop Scotch.
Start thinking that maybe there is a way to turn Afghanistan into Idaho.
Climb Mount Rushmore to fulfill your lifelong ambition of carving the faces of the Olsen Twins onto it.
Go to a football game with your own referee's whistle and a bunch of footballs to throw to the players when they drop the ball.
On casual Fridays, wear a loin cloth to the office.
When you go to open school night, demand that the teachers explain exactly why your little Billy isn't learning to be as handsome as Brad Pitt. Do this even if you have no children.
Start e-mailing Nigerian princes that you're willing to accept 5 million dollars American, no questions asked.
Open a Celebrity Stalking Service.
When running for president, participate in a debate on the issues between yourself and several of the leading sock puppets.
Look up that fifth dentist and ask him why he's so damned disagreeable.
Go to Starbucks and order a regular coffee, black, no sugar.
You wonder why there's even newspapers anymore. All they are these days are daily confirmations that the whole world has gone batty. Balloon boys? What? Suicide bombers killing their own kind? What's the point? What happened to blowing up infidels? At least that gave a little rationale to the whole deal. Not a lot, but something you could try to wrap your head around. Then there's the news that Sarah Palin is a bestselling author. Who knew she could even read? And then you see Glen Beck's picture on the cover of Time Magazine. What, Jerry Lewis was busy that week?
Truly the time has come to just let it all hang out and go completely batshit crazy. In a world where the most famous people on earth are Paula Abdul, Muamar Ga-Daffy and the Geico lizard, it's not like anyone's going to notice. So maybe we should consider doing the following:
Call up your boss and tell him you won't be in today because the weather report said there was an 80% chance of locusts.
Put on leotards, ballet slippers and a black turtleneck and organize a "Ballet Karaoke Night" at your local bowling alley lounge, dancing favorite selections from "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker."
Wear one of those bluetooth ear pieces hooked up to a string and a paper cup, then shout into it all day long that your signal is weak.
Build a replica of the Statue of Liberty out of Kitty Litter.
Auction one of your kidneys on e-Bay.
When waiting on line at the bank, announce that this is not a stickup.
Start a charity to save the pigeons.
Send a monthly bill to your friends for services rendered. Offer discount rates for nights and weekends.
Get several inflatable sex dolls to be your "posse," and take them everywhere when your cheapskate friends refuse to pay up.
When asked to remove your shoes at the airport, take off your pants too.
Start building an ark on your front lawn and take applications from the neighbors for their pets.
Collect signatures on a petition to change the National Anthem to "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goal Posts of Life."
Tell your blind girlfriend you'll understand if she wants to see other people.
Sing "99 Bottles of Beer on The Wall" all the way through every day on the subway, urging your fellow commuters to sing along. That ought to start everybody's day in a jolly mood.
Organize a vacation trip to Rome that features sacking and looting.
Get a tattoo on each forearm saying "left" and "right."
Offer your services on Craig's list as an imaginary friend.
Install Lunar Energy panels on your roof to generate electricity at night.
Sign up for Twitter, and send only one message 50 times a day: "Help!"
Wear a parachute on elevators and keep a hand on the rip chord, just in case.
Spray red paint on live minks and ermines.
Start a Phone Book Of The Month Club.
Send all your written communication in hieroglyphics of your own devising.
Open a diner that serves only parsley, cole slaw, pickles and ice water.
Start a campaign for the Olympic Games to include Extreme Hop Scotch.
Start thinking that maybe there is a way to turn Afghanistan into Idaho.
Climb Mount Rushmore to fulfill your lifelong ambition of carving the faces of the Olsen Twins onto it.
Go to a football game with your own referee's whistle and a bunch of footballs to throw to the players when they drop the ball.
On casual Fridays, wear a loin cloth to the office.
When you go to open school night, demand that the teachers explain exactly why your little Billy isn't learning to be as handsome as Brad Pitt. Do this even if you have no children.
Start e-mailing Nigerian princes that you're willing to accept 5 million dollars American, no questions asked.
Open a Celebrity Stalking Service.
When running for president, participate in a debate on the issues between yourself and several of the leading sock puppets.
Look up that fifth dentist and ask him why he's so damned disagreeable.
Go to Starbucks and order a regular coffee, black, no sugar.
October 30, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 541
There is no special virtue attached to what time you get out of bed. That only comes into play with how you behave when you are awake.
GOOD DREAMS, BAD DREAMS. OF DREAMS AND DREAMERS...
Spare us from leaders without dreams. For that matter, spare us from leaders with dreams of personal glory, which turn out to be nightmares for everybody else. Those dreams usually entail a whole bunch of us getting maimed and killed, and then erecting statues of the jackass who got us into that whole mess in the first place, so for as long as that statue stands we're reminded that we were once the patsies of a murdering megalomaniac. How many more times are we going to get fooled by that dream again? No, we want real, honest to goodness dreamers leading this pack of ours, someone who dreams that things can be better. People like Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy, or even religious mystics like Christ, Gandhi or King. These were all people who told us we could do better, and challenged us to claim our full measure of humanity by living up to all that is good and decent within us.
Dreamers change the world as much as scientists and inventors. Christopher Columbus was a dreamer of the first magnitude, even though his dream of sailing west from Spain to India ran into a giant roadblock called North and South America, or The New World, as Europeans called it. His daring act of venturing into the vast unknown encouraged millions more to dream of what else might be, and the energy and unbridled industry of dreamers began transforming the world. Let's take a look at some of the good dreams people have shared with us over the millennia, and a peek at how some dreams were derailed by the nightmare brigade portion of humanity. Let's start with this guy:
The Dreamer - Jesus Christ: This ex-carpenter turned preacher had the best of dreams to offer humanity, a profound but simple message of love, tolerance, humility, peace and good will. He spread his message in a remote backwater of the Roman Empire for three years before being killed for his troubles. His followers spread the word.
The Nightmare - What became of Christianity: The followers of Christ proclaimed him Savior and formed a powerful organization called simply "The Church," and then proceeded to completely ignore his message by gaining political power and demanding unquestioning obedience to their misreading of Christ's words, treating Christians like so many dogs to be brought to heel, and those who followed other faiths as vermin to be exterminated. So successful were they in their Inquisitions and wars, the Church became the working model for Islam when it was their turn to "Spread The Word," which they did at the point of a sword and came up with a bunch of new harsh rules and torture techniques in the service of a loving God.
The Dreamers - Mohandes K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King: Called The Mahatma, Mohandes Gandhi was an Indian Hindu scholar and preacher who taught nonviolence, tolerance, love and understanding as the way to achieve human freedom from oppression. He inspired another religious man, the American Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. who, like Gandhi, achieved a degree of freedom for his people through determined nonviolence, and like his philosophical mentor, earned a bullet in the head for his visions.
The Nightmares: India and Pakistan today, once a single entity but now now two overpopulated, nuclear-armed countries evenly divided between rich and abjectly poor at each other's throats since Gandhi's death, and torn from within by inequality and religious warfare. For Dr. King, the nightmare was not only his death, but another generation of racial strife in an America long tortured by this issue.
The Dreamer - John Lennon: This fabulously successful musician and songwriter shared his dream of peace and love in the form of some unforgettable music backed up with outspoken activism, risking controversy and personal derision to consistently champion the better angels of humanity.
The Nightmare: Another dreamer cut down in his prime by a man with a gun in his hand and and no love in his heart.
The Dreamers - Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy: Two American presidents a hundred years apart who sought a more perfect union of these United States, one untainted by racial inequality and oppression. The second dreamer also had another dream, to put a man on the moon, a dream made true by others.
The Nightmare: Two more visionaries who didn't live to see the fruits of their dreams, cut down by a couple of other guys with guns and nothing but hatred in their hearts
The Dreamer - Bob Marley: An obscure musician from an obscure former British Colony, the island nation of Jamaica in the Caribbean, this illegitimate son of a British Army Officer and a Jamaican mother became a true giant of music and peace. His deceptively simple songs of freedom, love and redemption are masterpieces of song writing craft, and his honesty, insight and contagious joy made him a beloved world figure long after he was taken from us, and earned Reggae Music a valued position in popular music.
The Nightmare: Other than surviving an assassination attempt and dying much too young of cancer, there has been no nightmare associated with Mr. Marley, and his songs, his goodness and universal message of equality, respect and love still ring true and clear.
The Dreamer - Lydnon Baines Johnson: The president who took over for the slain John Kennedy, he implemented the Civil Rights initiatives introduced by his predecessor, then went on to wage his War on Poverty and introduce The Great Society, social legislation that eliminated starvation in The United States overnight and began the process of enfranchising the disenfranchised.
The Nightmare: President Johnson became more and more obsessed with fighting the unwinnable and unjust Vietnam War, the most divisive conflict in American history and an issue that began tearing America apart at the seams from within, a trend that continues to this day. So dispirited was Johnson that he abandoned the presidency and any hopes of building on his Great Society dreams of financial equality for Americans of every background, a failure that has come home to roost in today's America of haves and have-nots. Lyndon Johnson could have become one of our greatest dreamers and leaders, but the mindless pursuit of futile global warfare derailed a great and worthy dream.
The Dreamer - Barack Obama: The son of a Kenyan shepherd and a white American mother who raised him alone, Barack Obama has had a meteoric rise to become one of America's youngest presidents and our first black president, collecting on the dividends of the dreams of Lincoln, Kennedy, King and Johnson. President Obama came to Washington with the dream of correcting the Us-Versus-Them political landscape that has been dividing America since the Vietnam War by reaching out to those whose political views differ from his own. He also dreamt of expanding the rights of American citizens to include the right to medical care, and to end the futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that threaten to derail American domestic issues and International prestige.
The Nightmare: Too soon to tell how all this will turn out after only 10 months in office, but so far the opposition has been industriously biting Obama's outstretched hand of cooperation and unity. The two wars are still being waged and Obama has been sidetracked dealing with a Corporate Shadow Government that wants to continue to run the America solely for the benefit of wealthy individuals and corporations. This battle between who controls the American government, our lawfully elected officials or a self-appointed wealthy elite, is likely to define his presidency for the immediate future. If he doesn't win that battle and regain control of the government for the American people, he will be able to implement few, if any of his dreams, and the nation will be the poorer for it. Let's root for the dreamers, that brand of human determined to leave this world a better place than the way they found it. We need to dream and we need our dreamers.
Dreamers change the world as much as scientists and inventors. Christopher Columbus was a dreamer of the first magnitude, even though his dream of sailing west from Spain to India ran into a giant roadblock called North and South America, or The New World, as Europeans called it. His daring act of venturing into the vast unknown encouraged millions more to dream of what else might be, and the energy and unbridled industry of dreamers began transforming the world. Let's take a look at some of the good dreams people have shared with us over the millennia, and a peek at how some dreams were derailed by the nightmare brigade portion of humanity. Let's start with this guy:
The Dreamer - Jesus Christ: This ex-carpenter turned preacher had the best of dreams to offer humanity, a profound but simple message of love, tolerance, humility, peace and good will. He spread his message in a remote backwater of the Roman Empire for three years before being killed for his troubles. His followers spread the word.
The Nightmare - What became of Christianity: The followers of Christ proclaimed him Savior and formed a powerful organization called simply "The Church," and then proceeded to completely ignore his message by gaining political power and demanding unquestioning obedience to their misreading of Christ's words, treating Christians like so many dogs to be brought to heel, and those who followed other faiths as vermin to be exterminated. So successful were they in their Inquisitions and wars, the Church became the working model for Islam when it was their turn to "Spread The Word," which they did at the point of a sword and came up with a bunch of new harsh rules and torture techniques in the service of a loving God.
The Dreamers - Mohandes K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King: Called The Mahatma, Mohandes Gandhi was an Indian Hindu scholar and preacher who taught nonviolence, tolerance, love and understanding as the way to achieve human freedom from oppression. He inspired another religious man, the American Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. who, like Gandhi, achieved a degree of freedom for his people through determined nonviolence, and like his philosophical mentor, earned a bullet in the head for his visions.
The Nightmares: India and Pakistan today, once a single entity but now now two overpopulated, nuclear-armed countries evenly divided between rich and abjectly poor at each other's throats since Gandhi's death, and torn from within by inequality and religious warfare. For Dr. King, the nightmare was not only his death, but another generation of racial strife in an America long tortured by this issue.
The Dreamer - John Lennon: This fabulously successful musician and songwriter shared his dream of peace and love in the form of some unforgettable music backed up with outspoken activism, risking controversy and personal derision to consistently champion the better angels of humanity.
The Nightmare: Another dreamer cut down in his prime by a man with a gun in his hand and and no love in his heart.
The Dreamers - Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy: Two American presidents a hundred years apart who sought a more perfect union of these United States, one untainted by racial inequality and oppression. The second dreamer also had another dream, to put a man on the moon, a dream made true by others.
The Nightmare: Two more visionaries who didn't live to see the fruits of their dreams, cut down by a couple of other guys with guns and nothing but hatred in their hearts
The Dreamer - Bob Marley: An obscure musician from an obscure former British Colony, the island nation of Jamaica in the Caribbean, this illegitimate son of a British Army Officer and a Jamaican mother became a true giant of music and peace. His deceptively simple songs of freedom, love and redemption are masterpieces of song writing craft, and his honesty, insight and contagious joy made him a beloved world figure long after he was taken from us, and earned Reggae Music a valued position in popular music.
The Nightmare: Other than surviving an assassination attempt and dying much too young of cancer, there has been no nightmare associated with Mr. Marley, and his songs, his goodness and universal message of equality, respect and love still ring true and clear.
The Dreamer - Lydnon Baines Johnson: The president who took over for the slain John Kennedy, he implemented the Civil Rights initiatives introduced by his predecessor, then went on to wage his War on Poverty and introduce The Great Society, social legislation that eliminated starvation in The United States overnight and began the process of enfranchising the disenfranchised.
The Nightmare: President Johnson became more and more obsessed with fighting the unwinnable and unjust Vietnam War, the most divisive conflict in American history and an issue that began tearing America apart at the seams from within, a trend that continues to this day. So dispirited was Johnson that he abandoned the presidency and any hopes of building on his Great Society dreams of financial equality for Americans of every background, a failure that has come home to roost in today's America of haves and have-nots. Lyndon Johnson could have become one of our greatest dreamers and leaders, but the mindless pursuit of futile global warfare derailed a great and worthy dream.
The Dreamer - Barack Obama: The son of a Kenyan shepherd and a white American mother who raised him alone, Barack Obama has had a meteoric rise to become one of America's youngest presidents and our first black president, collecting on the dividends of the dreams of Lincoln, Kennedy, King and Johnson. President Obama came to Washington with the dream of correcting the Us-Versus-Them political landscape that has been dividing America since the Vietnam War by reaching out to those whose political views differ from his own. He also dreamt of expanding the rights of American citizens to include the right to medical care, and to end the futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that threaten to derail American domestic issues and International prestige.
The Nightmare: Too soon to tell how all this will turn out after only 10 months in office, but so far the opposition has been industriously biting Obama's outstretched hand of cooperation and unity. The two wars are still being waged and Obama has been sidetracked dealing with a Corporate Shadow Government that wants to continue to run the America solely for the benefit of wealthy individuals and corporations. This battle between who controls the American government, our lawfully elected officials or a self-appointed wealthy elite, is likely to define his presidency for the immediate future. If he doesn't win that battle and regain control of the government for the American people, he will be able to implement few, if any of his dreams, and the nation will be the poorer for it. Let's root for the dreamers, that brand of human determined to leave this world a better place than the way they found it. We need to dream and we need our dreamers.
October 29, 2009
THE TASH BROTHERS PLAY THE NYC MARATHON. ROCK WITH US AND FEED THE HUNGRY
SUNDAY, NOV. 1, 9:30 AM, 4TH AVENUE AND 88TH ST. BROOKLYN. ROCK THE MARATHON WITH US AND BRING A DONATION OF NON-PERISHABLE FOOD TO FEED THE HUNGRY. MAJOR FUN!
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 540
One of the best things about life is that so much of it is optional. No one can force you to watch synchronized swimming, eat tofu, or think about Canada.
WHAT'S THE GOAL? ASK MOM...
What is the purpose of life? To live? Possibly. Anyone who claims to be in possession of any definitive answer to that one is either out of their mind, supremely arrogant or a religious nut who ignores his own faith's teachings that much of creation and life is shrouded in mysteries beyond human understanding. And who can deny that such mysteries abound? The founding of religions is merely the reaction to, and the acknowledgment of, forces above and beyond our human senses. Faith is an attempt by mankind to make sense of the fierce and beautiful chaos of the natural universe, starting with our own tiny corner of Creation.
For millennia, our religious aspirations reached no further that our immediate surroundings and the stars visible to the naked eye, also representing a miniscule slice of all that exists. Then we invented telescopes that informed us that we are somewhat less than The Crown of Creation. Even our unmanned probes into our Solar System and beyond are equivalent to exploring a spot on the couch an eighth of an inch away from where you are seated. Now our orbiting space telescopes are providing us with images of fantastic events and locations on so vast a scale that the human mind is staggered at the almost painfully beautiful complexity and unimaginable size of the Universe.
Which still leaves us all here on the third stone from a smallish star in a galaxy far, far away from everything. If and when humanity spreads out into the rest of the galaxy, we all pretty much know it will not be in the lifetimes of our great-great-great-great grandchildren. So, that leaves us pretty much to our own devices back here on Planet Earth, to deal with each other as best we can. And truth be told, we haven't been all that nice to one other, like forever. And being that we're here for the foreseeable duration, maybe it's time that we decided what is the purpose of life for humans. Leaving aside the unknowable mysteries of all of creation, people need to figure out some kind of game plan for this planet.
Winging it, as we've been doing all along, sure hasn't worked out all that well for the majority of humans. Our history has basically been a bloody mess, a fairly comprehensive guide to what went horribly wrong and what sort of behavior to avoid. Wars, slavery, genocide, starvation and the brutal exploitation of the many by the few are the major themes of human existence. That and mass starvation, which kills even more of us than our wars and murders. We still haven't gotten that stuff out of our system, no matter how many religions we invent to tell us how wrong these things are, both to slay one another so earnestly and to do nothing while so many die from lack of food on a bountiful planet. Maybe it's time for Plan B.
There have been countless people with an ambitious Plan A throughout history, but they always seem to have been designed to conquer, kill and enslave, and not a single one of them has ever succeeded in their stated aim of spreading their Plan A to every nation on earth. Most plans did not even outlive their planners. Just ask Alexander the Great and Adolph the Not-So-Great. The longest run any empire ever had was Rome, the better part of a thousand years, with most of those years marked by slaughter on a grand scale, pillaging, crippling taxation and mindless oppression. The portion of the world that was the Roman Empire didn't miss them all that much when they finally went away.
Other rapacious empires came and went and still mankind had no plan, no vision of what these lives of ours are supposed to mean, with so many people understandably taking refuge in the faith that death would bring us a rewarding afterlife. Small wonder when most people's lives were ones of endless drudgery broken up only by a series of terrifying catastrophes. Who wouldn't look forward to death if misery, fear and degradation was what life is all about? And the sad fact is that so many of the religions that invented these comforting beliefs were huge perpetrators of the misery visited upon humanity while they lived their earthly lives. Talk about adding Inquisition to injury!
Can we change all this crazy nonsense? We've pretty much exhausted all the possibilities of bloodshed and mayhem, from traditional war to genocide to proxy wars to to biological warfare to conquest, slavery, human sacrifice and brutal oppression. Even the "new wrinkle" of suicide bombings is getting old, and has no more solved anyone's problems that all the other rotten things we've done to each other since beyond memory. Anybody satisfied with the outcome of any of these things? Not at all, but like that concise definition of insanity, we keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. Can we take a breather here, a little time out to think things through, maybe take a tranquilizer and have a nice hot cup of tea?
We need a new definition of the meaning of our lives. We have to end our wars, declare them all a draw, with no winners to march the boulevards in grand victory parades and no losers to lick their wounds, bury their dead and plot their bloody revenge. Been there, done that, been there, done that, been there, done that... Time to rethink our thinking. Can we make a plan that includes all God's children, however we think, or don't think, of God? And speaking of God, can we allow everyone to worship as they please, but allow none of our religions a voice in running our civic affairs? Total separation of church and state.
Since no two religions completely agree, and most of them have a hell of a lot of blood on their hands, let them sit this one out as we try to come up with a new way to deal with one another in a way that pays no attention at all to whom the other guy prays, or doesn't choose to pray. There are few things less relevant to ethical behavior than one's religion, and few things more liable to arouse divisiveness and hatred. That's no condemnation of anybody's faith, merely a literal reading of history. What happened, happened, and the role that our various religions played in the bloody mess of history has been that of major players in the mayhem. When government and religion are intertwined, the results are always the direct opposite of what governments and religions are supposed to be about. This applies not only to events we read about in history books, this is current events. Read the papers.
So lets leave religion a private matter and come up with a set of ethics because it is the right thing to do, and also because it is in every person's best interest. Before we enter school as very small children we know it is wrong to harm another person, wrong to lie or cheat or steal. We know greed is bad and sharing is good. We know it is better to be nice to everyone and have good manners than to be surly and ill-tempered. We have been taught that generosity is better than greed and friendship is better than hostility. We learned that talking out our differences is better than coming to blows, and patience and understanding is better than anger and intolerance. We learned firsthand that love is the very best thing that people can share. We all learned these lessons as children and passed them along to our own children. We just didn't act on these lessons very consistently.
So here's Plan B: Let's all behave like our mothers taught us to behave: Play nice and share. Be good to your brothers and sisters and don't be selfish. Be the best boy or girl you can be and help others to do their best. When someone gets hurt, help them, when someone needs you, don't turn your back. Don't be a pest. If we apply these simple lessons we learned before we could read, this world would be a better place tomorrow. When you think about it, people really don't have to formulate any grand new scheme to live better lives and get along a lot better with others in this world. We just have to listen to our mothers. They had life figured out pretty good. Let's play nice.
For millennia, our religious aspirations reached no further that our immediate surroundings and the stars visible to the naked eye, also representing a miniscule slice of all that exists. Then we invented telescopes that informed us that we are somewhat less than The Crown of Creation. Even our unmanned probes into our Solar System and beyond are equivalent to exploring a spot on the couch an eighth of an inch away from where you are seated. Now our orbiting space telescopes are providing us with images of fantastic events and locations on so vast a scale that the human mind is staggered at the almost painfully beautiful complexity and unimaginable size of the Universe.
Which still leaves us all here on the third stone from a smallish star in a galaxy far, far away from everything. If and when humanity spreads out into the rest of the galaxy, we all pretty much know it will not be in the lifetimes of our great-great-great-great grandchildren. So, that leaves us pretty much to our own devices back here on Planet Earth, to deal with each other as best we can. And truth be told, we haven't been all that nice to one other, like forever. And being that we're here for the foreseeable duration, maybe it's time that we decided what is the purpose of life for humans. Leaving aside the unknowable mysteries of all of creation, people need to figure out some kind of game plan for this planet.
Winging it, as we've been doing all along, sure hasn't worked out all that well for the majority of humans. Our history has basically been a bloody mess, a fairly comprehensive guide to what went horribly wrong and what sort of behavior to avoid. Wars, slavery, genocide, starvation and the brutal exploitation of the many by the few are the major themes of human existence. That and mass starvation, which kills even more of us than our wars and murders. We still haven't gotten that stuff out of our system, no matter how many religions we invent to tell us how wrong these things are, both to slay one another so earnestly and to do nothing while so many die from lack of food on a bountiful planet. Maybe it's time for Plan B.
There have been countless people with an ambitious Plan A throughout history, but they always seem to have been designed to conquer, kill and enslave, and not a single one of them has ever succeeded in their stated aim of spreading their Plan A to every nation on earth. Most plans did not even outlive their planners. Just ask Alexander the Great and Adolph the Not-So-Great. The longest run any empire ever had was Rome, the better part of a thousand years, with most of those years marked by slaughter on a grand scale, pillaging, crippling taxation and mindless oppression. The portion of the world that was the Roman Empire didn't miss them all that much when they finally went away.
Other rapacious empires came and went and still mankind had no plan, no vision of what these lives of ours are supposed to mean, with so many people understandably taking refuge in the faith that death would bring us a rewarding afterlife. Small wonder when most people's lives were ones of endless drudgery broken up only by a series of terrifying catastrophes. Who wouldn't look forward to death if misery, fear and degradation was what life is all about? And the sad fact is that so many of the religions that invented these comforting beliefs were huge perpetrators of the misery visited upon humanity while they lived their earthly lives. Talk about adding Inquisition to injury!
Can we change all this crazy nonsense? We've pretty much exhausted all the possibilities of bloodshed and mayhem, from traditional war to genocide to proxy wars to to biological warfare to conquest, slavery, human sacrifice and brutal oppression. Even the "new wrinkle" of suicide bombings is getting old, and has no more solved anyone's problems that all the other rotten things we've done to each other since beyond memory. Anybody satisfied with the outcome of any of these things? Not at all, but like that concise definition of insanity, we keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. Can we take a breather here, a little time out to think things through, maybe take a tranquilizer and have a nice hot cup of tea?
We need a new definition of the meaning of our lives. We have to end our wars, declare them all a draw, with no winners to march the boulevards in grand victory parades and no losers to lick their wounds, bury their dead and plot their bloody revenge. Been there, done that, been there, done that, been there, done that... Time to rethink our thinking. Can we make a plan that includes all God's children, however we think, or don't think, of God? And speaking of God, can we allow everyone to worship as they please, but allow none of our religions a voice in running our civic affairs? Total separation of church and state.
Since no two religions completely agree, and most of them have a hell of a lot of blood on their hands, let them sit this one out as we try to come up with a new way to deal with one another in a way that pays no attention at all to whom the other guy prays, or doesn't choose to pray. There are few things less relevant to ethical behavior than one's religion, and few things more liable to arouse divisiveness and hatred. That's no condemnation of anybody's faith, merely a literal reading of history. What happened, happened, and the role that our various religions played in the bloody mess of history has been that of major players in the mayhem. When government and religion are intertwined, the results are always the direct opposite of what governments and religions are supposed to be about. This applies not only to events we read about in history books, this is current events. Read the papers.
So lets leave religion a private matter and come up with a set of ethics because it is the right thing to do, and also because it is in every person's best interest. Before we enter school as very small children we know it is wrong to harm another person, wrong to lie or cheat or steal. We know greed is bad and sharing is good. We know it is better to be nice to everyone and have good manners than to be surly and ill-tempered. We have been taught that generosity is better than greed and friendship is better than hostility. We learned that talking out our differences is better than coming to blows, and patience and understanding is better than anger and intolerance. We learned firsthand that love is the very best thing that people can share. We all learned these lessons as children and passed them along to our own children. We just didn't act on these lessons very consistently.
So here's Plan B: Let's all behave like our mothers taught us to behave: Play nice and share. Be good to your brothers and sisters and don't be selfish. Be the best boy or girl you can be and help others to do their best. When someone gets hurt, help them, when someone needs you, don't turn your back. Don't be a pest. If we apply these simple lessons we learned before we could read, this world would be a better place tomorrow. When you think about it, people really don't have to formulate any grand new scheme to live better lives and get along a lot better with others in this world. We just have to listen to our mothers. They had life figured out pretty good. Let's play nice.
October 28, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 539
The best kind of scientist to be is a mathematician. Who can argue with your theory that 2 plus 2 equals 4? No worries about being discredited by some smart aleck who theorizes that 2 and 2 is really 37. Either your numbers add up or they don't, and you can sleep at night.
PETROLEUM, THE BIGGEST BLACK HOLE OF THEM ALL
Ah, scientists, that wonderful, curious, superbly educated and intelligent subspecies of humanity. Where would we be without them? Probably still hunting and gathering, and industriously fighting over barren patches of real estate. Okay, so we're still fighting over barren patches of real estate on a fairly regular basis, but that's not the scientists' fault.
They could probably even tell us why we keep up that crazy behavior, not that it would do them much good because we wouldn't listen anyway, maybe even turn on them as we have so many times in the past, so they wisely leave that one alone. No sense giving us an opening to go all Catholic Church vs. Galileo on them, or Bush vs. Anything science-related.
Which is why most scientists stick to the physical world of objects and substances, where they have excelled in producing wonders the likes of which would have had our hunting and gathering ancestors falling on their knees to worship them. Either that or slaying them down to the last man, woman and boy wonder as fiendish apostates, depending on their mood.
So it's a fine line trod by the scientists of this world, acting upon their inborn curiosity to seek answers to ancient riddles from a natural world reluctant to yield its secrets, while avoiding having their heads adorning a pike for their trouble. But human nature and curiosity are powerful forces, and the thirst for knowledge has never been quenched even when the powers that be made it their policy to kill the curious questioners on sight.
In spite of ourselves, humanity has come light years from our early history as stunted, filthy nomads and scavengers. For much of this species elevation we have our scientists to thank, from the first hunter who mounted a sharp stone on a long stick so we could kill dangerous animals from a safe distance to today's breakers of the genetic code that makes humans human. Grazi.
The world we live in today is largely due to the incredible discovery that petroleum could provide power for just about anything and everything, and even the parts of it we couldn't set on fire to make our engines go vroom could be made into plastics so we can possess formica, bubble wrap and GI Joe With The King Fu Grip action figures. Think how empty life would be without such amenities. Imagine not being able to pop our bubble wrap? The mind boggles at the potential emptiness.
And because our scientists unlocked the power of petroleum, science and technology joined hands like star-crossed lovers and dragged humanity along for the ride of our lives to the point where we have unlocked the atom, stood on the moon and can Twitter our friends all day long about the relative merits of waffles and pancakes!
And yet (there's always an "and yet," isn't there?), the time for our love affair with petroleum is drawing to a close. Sad? Surely, since the black goo is basically the stuff that dreams are made of and the substance that got us this far along on our human journey.
We peruse the landscape of millions of vehicles and aircraft whizzing hither and yon, a hundred billion lights showing the way at night and a hundred thousand GI Joe With The Kung Fu Grip dolls smiling jauntily in garbage dumps, swimming in a sea of popped bubble wrap, never to rot away in a thousand human generations.
And we sigh.
How can we say goodbye to petroleum and it's kissing cousins, coal and natural gas? We burnt these things and ignited a modern society the likes of which the world has never seen. How can we even consider extinguishing the flames of love and gratitude?
Well, sad to say, we don't have much choice in the matter. It seems that the earth was not considerate enough provide an endless supply of the sticky stuff, and we are getting close to burning off the last of the remains of the giant reptiles and ferns that died so we may live so modernly. Not only that, it turns out that our salvation from backwardness has sown the seeds of our own doom if we are not careful.
All this burning of acrid goo has poisoned the planet that gave it to us, and the resulting fumes are hacking away at the atmosphere that allows us to survive on this rocky stone on the remote edge of a smallish galaxy somewhere, we're not really sure, in a universe we don't understand all that much. What to do, what to do?
Do we stop the burning of fossil fuels, shut down our engines of progress and turn out the lights? Do we curse the comforts we have and shun them as an evil betrayal by our lover, Petroleum? That wouldn't do, would it? Petroleum has not been as faithless as some would have us believe. It has gotten us this far, and now it is time to cut the ties that bind.
See, the upside of petroleum is that the progress it has provided us thus far has given us the ability to seek its replacement. While many humans are reluctant to move on and peevishly declare any alternative to be an impossibility, those same sort of humans at one time denied the possibility of all that we have achieved by burning petroleum.
Like Charles Duell, the U.S. Commissioner of Patents, who urged the president to abolish the Patent Office since "Everything that can be invented has been invented." In 1899. Wonder what that worthy gentleman said when Orville and Wilbur Wright opened the Aviation Age 4 years later.
That was was not the first or last innovation breathlessly described this way by many a booming baritone announcer: "And they said it couldn't be done!" Well, it was done, and we're not finished doing amazing things. Scientist, engineers and inventors amaze us all the time.
It would be pretty cool if one of them could astound us once again with a lusty cry of "Eureka!" and the announcement that a clean source of energy is now ours. Would it be too much to hope for a renewable one? Maybe one that smells like cinnamon, too? Okay, that's a little nuts. Lavender would be just fine.
There's lots of people looking into lots of alternative energy sources, like wind, solar and tidal energy, but so far none of them packs the hefty punch of petroleum for the incredible amounts of energy it takes to run human society. We need one with plenty of of oomph.
Some scientists tell us our dwindling energy supply is a dire emergency. Other scientists say all this burning of petroleum, coal and natural gas is a worse emergency, one that will warm our planet, melt all the ice and make the place decidedly unpleasant for humans. Then there are those who study black holes in outer space, not worried about very much at all.
Who to believe? What to panic over first? We already bought all those low-energy light bulbs, which we now find out are laced with mercury, so we don't know what to think anymore, what with most of us not being scientists, but bright enough to realize that the Age of Petroleum is in its last days. We all know that pollution is bad for us, global warming is bad for us, and resorting to mercury-filled light bulbs to save some of our dwindling energy resources feels like a desperate move.
And then we remember something that our government did back in the 1960s when President Kennedy had this brain storm that we should put a man the moon. Everyone knew it would take more doing that just saying so to get a guy out of the atmosphere and sashaying around the moon, so a plan was made. A pretty complex and gigantic plan that entailed enlisting all kinds of scientists, engineers, technicians and aviators working together like a bunch of beavers trying to dam the Amazon.
Giant facilities were erected; laboratories, hangars, flight simulators, huge launching pads and a new thing called a Space Port. Thousands of brilliant minds were commissioned by the United States to work together towards a common goal, to land a man on the moon and, just as importantly, bring him back safely to tell the tale. And in eight years, they did it, then did it a few more times for good measure.
A lot of people wondered what good that whole thing was, that is until the byproducts of this effort revolutionized modern life with silicon chips, computers, cell phones and coaxial cables, to say nothing of velcro and Tang. The miniaturization required to fit a lot of gizmos into a small space capsule inadvertently launched the Information Age as well as all those space rockets.
So perhaps the government can do this again, commission the best and the brightest to put their heads together on a grand project, not to put more guys on the moon but instead to find a source of clean energy, one that might even send guys to Mars one day. The moon landing effort was called The Appolo Program, a damned cool name, but hey, that was the 60's, when lots of cool stuff happened. The Beatles, Hendrix, Motown, Janis, etc...
With or without a cool name or a catchy soundtrack, the Clean Energy Program (boring name!) could be the next great leap after the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. Who knows what side benefits could come out it too, really neat stuff that will make our iPods seem like bulky Victrolas?
Put a bunch of scientists in a room, or a laboratory, and tell them what is the goal, then let them think and work. Don't bother them too much or tell them what to do, just let them do their thing. Maybe it will take longer that eight years, maybe a generation or more, maybe less. Who knows? But it's either this or the black hole of petroleum, and we all know where that train is headed.
One day these scientists will come up with a solution, and clean energy will be found. Then they will get their ultimate reward at the unveiling of their discovery, when some baritone master of ceremonies, in his best manly booming tones, announces to the world: "And they said it couldn't be done!"
They could probably even tell us why we keep up that crazy behavior, not that it would do them much good because we wouldn't listen anyway, maybe even turn on them as we have so many times in the past, so they wisely leave that one alone. No sense giving us an opening to go all Catholic Church vs. Galileo on them, or Bush vs. Anything science-related.
Which is why most scientists stick to the physical world of objects and substances, where they have excelled in producing wonders the likes of which would have had our hunting and gathering ancestors falling on their knees to worship them. Either that or slaying them down to the last man, woman and boy wonder as fiendish apostates, depending on their mood.
So it's a fine line trod by the scientists of this world, acting upon their inborn curiosity to seek answers to ancient riddles from a natural world reluctant to yield its secrets, while avoiding having their heads adorning a pike for their trouble. But human nature and curiosity are powerful forces, and the thirst for knowledge has never been quenched even when the powers that be made it their policy to kill the curious questioners on sight.
In spite of ourselves, humanity has come light years from our early history as stunted, filthy nomads and scavengers. For much of this species elevation we have our scientists to thank, from the first hunter who mounted a sharp stone on a long stick so we could kill dangerous animals from a safe distance to today's breakers of the genetic code that makes humans human. Grazi.
The world we live in today is largely due to the incredible discovery that petroleum could provide power for just about anything and everything, and even the parts of it we couldn't set on fire to make our engines go vroom could be made into plastics so we can possess formica, bubble wrap and GI Joe With The King Fu Grip action figures. Think how empty life would be without such amenities. Imagine not being able to pop our bubble wrap? The mind boggles at the potential emptiness.
And because our scientists unlocked the power of petroleum, science and technology joined hands like star-crossed lovers and dragged humanity along for the ride of our lives to the point where we have unlocked the atom, stood on the moon and can Twitter our friends all day long about the relative merits of waffles and pancakes!
And yet (there's always an "and yet," isn't there?), the time for our love affair with petroleum is drawing to a close. Sad? Surely, since the black goo is basically the stuff that dreams are made of and the substance that got us this far along on our human journey.
We peruse the landscape of millions of vehicles and aircraft whizzing hither and yon, a hundred billion lights showing the way at night and a hundred thousand GI Joe With The Kung Fu Grip dolls smiling jauntily in garbage dumps, swimming in a sea of popped bubble wrap, never to rot away in a thousand human generations.
And we sigh.
How can we say goodbye to petroleum and it's kissing cousins, coal and natural gas? We burnt these things and ignited a modern society the likes of which the world has never seen. How can we even consider extinguishing the flames of love and gratitude?
Well, sad to say, we don't have much choice in the matter. It seems that the earth was not considerate enough provide an endless supply of the sticky stuff, and we are getting close to burning off the last of the remains of the giant reptiles and ferns that died so we may live so modernly. Not only that, it turns out that our salvation from backwardness has sown the seeds of our own doom if we are not careful.
All this burning of acrid goo has poisoned the planet that gave it to us, and the resulting fumes are hacking away at the atmosphere that allows us to survive on this rocky stone on the remote edge of a smallish galaxy somewhere, we're not really sure, in a universe we don't understand all that much. What to do, what to do?
Do we stop the burning of fossil fuels, shut down our engines of progress and turn out the lights? Do we curse the comforts we have and shun them as an evil betrayal by our lover, Petroleum? That wouldn't do, would it? Petroleum has not been as faithless as some would have us believe. It has gotten us this far, and now it is time to cut the ties that bind.
See, the upside of petroleum is that the progress it has provided us thus far has given us the ability to seek its replacement. While many humans are reluctant to move on and peevishly declare any alternative to be an impossibility, those same sort of humans at one time denied the possibility of all that we have achieved by burning petroleum.
Like Charles Duell, the U.S. Commissioner of Patents, who urged the president to abolish the Patent Office since "Everything that can be invented has been invented." In 1899. Wonder what that worthy gentleman said when Orville and Wilbur Wright opened the Aviation Age 4 years later.
That was was not the first or last innovation breathlessly described this way by many a booming baritone announcer: "And they said it couldn't be done!" Well, it was done, and we're not finished doing amazing things. Scientist, engineers and inventors amaze us all the time.
It would be pretty cool if one of them could astound us once again with a lusty cry of "Eureka!" and the announcement that a clean source of energy is now ours. Would it be too much to hope for a renewable one? Maybe one that smells like cinnamon, too? Okay, that's a little nuts. Lavender would be just fine.
There's lots of people looking into lots of alternative energy sources, like wind, solar and tidal energy, but so far none of them packs the hefty punch of petroleum for the incredible amounts of energy it takes to run human society. We need one with plenty of of oomph.
Some scientists tell us our dwindling energy supply is a dire emergency. Other scientists say all this burning of petroleum, coal and natural gas is a worse emergency, one that will warm our planet, melt all the ice and make the place decidedly unpleasant for humans. Then there are those who study black holes in outer space, not worried about very much at all.
Who to believe? What to panic over first? We already bought all those low-energy light bulbs, which we now find out are laced with mercury, so we don't know what to think anymore, what with most of us not being scientists, but bright enough to realize that the Age of Petroleum is in its last days. We all know that pollution is bad for us, global warming is bad for us, and resorting to mercury-filled light bulbs to save some of our dwindling energy resources feels like a desperate move.
And then we remember something that our government did back in the 1960s when President Kennedy had this brain storm that we should put a man the moon. Everyone knew it would take more doing that just saying so to get a guy out of the atmosphere and sashaying around the moon, so a plan was made. A pretty complex and gigantic plan that entailed enlisting all kinds of scientists, engineers, technicians and aviators working together like a bunch of beavers trying to dam the Amazon.
Giant facilities were erected; laboratories, hangars, flight simulators, huge launching pads and a new thing called a Space Port. Thousands of brilliant minds were commissioned by the United States to work together towards a common goal, to land a man on the moon and, just as importantly, bring him back safely to tell the tale. And in eight years, they did it, then did it a few more times for good measure.
A lot of people wondered what good that whole thing was, that is until the byproducts of this effort revolutionized modern life with silicon chips, computers, cell phones and coaxial cables, to say nothing of velcro and Tang. The miniaturization required to fit a lot of gizmos into a small space capsule inadvertently launched the Information Age as well as all those space rockets.
So perhaps the government can do this again, commission the best and the brightest to put their heads together on a grand project, not to put more guys on the moon but instead to find a source of clean energy, one that might even send guys to Mars one day. The moon landing effort was called The Appolo Program, a damned cool name, but hey, that was the 60's, when lots of cool stuff happened. The Beatles, Hendrix, Motown, Janis, etc...
With or without a cool name or a catchy soundtrack, the Clean Energy Program (boring name!) could be the next great leap after the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. Who knows what side benefits could come out it too, really neat stuff that will make our iPods seem like bulky Victrolas?
Put a bunch of scientists in a room, or a laboratory, and tell them what is the goal, then let them think and work. Don't bother them too much or tell them what to do, just let them do their thing. Maybe it will take longer that eight years, maybe a generation or more, maybe less. Who knows? But it's either this or the black hole of petroleum, and we all know where that train is headed.
One day these scientists will come up with a solution, and clean energy will be found. Then they will get their ultimate reward at the unveiling of their discovery, when some baritone master of ceremonies, in his best manly booming tones, announces to the world: "And they said it couldn't be done!"
October 27, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 538
Revolution is fine as long as you have an idea of what will replace what you overthrow. No sense burning your uncomfortable clothes and only then discover that all there is to wear is burlap. Think ahead, make plans.
DO WE REPLACE THE CORPORATIONS?
The American government is more and more being held hostage by business interests, wealthy corporate entities that know no loyalty to the nation that made them rich and powerful and who actively work against the interests of the American people. In many instances these lobbyists actually write the text of the laws introduced to Congress to benefit themselves only, a serious crime and a blatant usurpation of a vital governmental function amounting to treason. They actively seek direct subsidies and tax breaks even though they are successful businesses, siphoning money from our national treasury that must be made up by working people, all the while fighting any social legislation that benefits anyone but themselves. Under successive Republican Administrations, tax breaks to the wealthy have transferred trillions of dollars directly from the pockets of the working classes to the pockets of the extremely rich, resulting in 1% of Americans owning more wealth that 95% of Americans combined.
Uncounted billions of dollars are spent by lobbyists to gain access to, and control of, the United States Government. Legislators are bribed and blackmailed, their campaigns financed and their creature comforts catered to. Many of our elected representatives are equally criminally culpable for this corruption for accepting gifts, trips to luxury resorts and sexual favors. Not only of being bribery recipients, but for violating their oaths of office. The result is that the American people are more and more disenfranchised from our government that is supposed to be, in Lincoln's immortal words: "of the people, by the people and for the people." Well, the people this government is of, by and for lately are a tiny group of wealthy elite corporate princes, a group of people it is imperative that we overthrow.
Does overthrowing this rapacious elite mean revolution? Sure does. Not revolution against our government, but revolution by our government to liberate itself from corporate clutches. Revolution to restore the United States Government to the American people. Do we dismantle the corporations? Maybe, if putting the criminals among their executive corps in jail doesn't work. What criminals? Any who break the law, the same definition for criminal that exists for the rest of humanity. The financial collapse of 2008 was made possible by a great many crimes, from fraud to pyramid schemes to outright theft. Does anyone think that Bernie Madoff and the other handful of scapegoats who went to jail were the only bad guys who contributed to the disappearance of 5 to 7 trillion dollars worth of American wealth? Hardly.
And yet, looking around the corporate landscape, it is still by and large the same cast of shady characters running the financial houses. They didn't even lose their jobs, never mind having to answer in court for their crimes! Any worker in any job anywhere knows that if even $500 of money you were responsible for goes missing, there will be an aggressive inquiry and perhaps a criminal investigation culminating in a conviction and/or prison sentence for the guilty party. How is that not the case when the figure is 5 trillion dollars? Why isn't the FBI, the IRS, the Justice and and Treasury Departments all over these corporations with search warrants and subpoenas for their records, transactions and e-mails, both pubic and confidential? Where are the investigations, never mind the indictments, trials, arrests, perp walks and verdicts? Why are any of the people who led these companies into near ruin still employed, still handling other people's money?
The financial thieves were instead rewarded with trillions of tax dollars to bailout their corrupt institutions, without any rule changes to prevent them from committing the same crimes again. So, who is running the government, men of law and elective office or the corporate princes who bribe and cheat and steal our representative government? And now that the banks are flush with cash from our tax dollars, they are awarding themselves billions of dollars in bonuses once again. The only voice opposing this obscene appropriation of other peoples money is President Obama, who is proposing to slash executive pay for firms that accepted bailout money and to tax bonuses at the rate of 90%.
Of course he is being met with howls of protest from the corporate princes, who say that top talent will go to work elsewhere. Where elsewhere? Who will have their larcenous, failed asses? If a person will take risky gambles with other people's money, invent illegal scams and criminally misrepresent the worth of their company in pursuit of a bonus, who can trust this person not to rob the company itself? Let them go elsewhere! Would you trust this person to be even a supermarket cashier? Who would miss the kind of "talent" that made 5 trillion dollars go poof?
But the president does not go far enough, and he must avoid going through Congress to fight these people since the Congress has been severely compromised by corporate bribery. In his capacity as the boss of the Justice Department, President Obama needs to declare war on corporate crime the way other presidents have declared war on the Mafia. There are laws already on the books that have been violated and the Justice Department's only job is to prosecute lawbreakers, no matter who does the breaking. Investigate these corporate crooks and put the whole corporate world on notice that their government access is denied and their adherence to the law is mandatory.
The president also must direct the Justice Department to investigate members of Congress in both parties who are suspected of criminal activities, or even the treason of abdicating their role of writing legislation to private interests or themselves writing legislation designed to benefit specific companies or individuals. That will send a clear message to holders of public office that no one is above the law. As strange as that sounds, it is practical, since they are now underpaid considering the unique demands of their jobs. Underpaid people are far more prone to dishonesty than well-compensated workers (except for bankers, of course). Theirs is a demanding job that requires them to maintain two homes and two offices, both in their home state and in Washington. Pay an excellent salary and attract more qualified legislators, less prone to accepting bribes, gifts and free trips.
The president must also have the Justice Department investigate lobbying organizations and prosecute anyone found to be engaging in criminal acts. There are many laws involving interference in official business or impeding the functions of government and these can be enforced. If lobbyists are found to have been writing laws or even short passages of laws, then treason must be added to the bribery charges. And what is this attempted corporate takeover of the United States Government but high treason? And what nation allows treason to continue unhindered? Certainly not one that intends to continue to thrive.
To continue to tolerate all this corporate crime and treasonous acts would be national suicide. Aggressive action must be taken to dismantle this organized criminal enterprise, using the same RICO statutes that toppled criminal cartels from Chicago to Cartagena. And if the corporations are gutted of their leadership? Who cares? There will be a hundred thousand talented people lining up to take their places, a hundred thousand executives more likely to be content with their fantastic salaries and far more mindful of obeying the law and paying their fair share of taxes. Any lobbyists remaining in their jobs would actually have to come up with logical arguments to present to Congress rather than Rolex watches, sexual favors or incriminating photographs.
So let the Anti-Corporate Treason Revolution begin. Either they are in charge of America or the American people are in charge. Right now they are winning this war, and the gulf between the haves and have-nots widens every day. The corporate lobbyists are close to succeeding in killing the Pubic Option in the Health Care Reform Bill, the only reason for the bill's existence. Corporate interests succeeded eight years ago in getting America to invade Iraq so they could have access to Iraqi oil and for no other reason (Never forget President Eisenhower's farewell address where he warned of the rise of the "military-industrial complex."). Corporate lobbying efforts already succeeded in stealing the majority of America's wealth for a tiny minority. This is class warfare and the American people are on the losing side. Our enemies have sold our jobs, stolen our money and are trying to take over our government. Time to fight back. Make your voice heard by President Obama and demand that he overthrow this government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations and return America to the American people.
Uncounted billions of dollars are spent by lobbyists to gain access to, and control of, the United States Government. Legislators are bribed and blackmailed, their campaigns financed and their creature comforts catered to. Many of our elected representatives are equally criminally culpable for this corruption for accepting gifts, trips to luxury resorts and sexual favors. Not only of being bribery recipients, but for violating their oaths of office. The result is that the American people are more and more disenfranchised from our government that is supposed to be, in Lincoln's immortal words: "of the people, by the people and for the people." Well, the people this government is of, by and for lately are a tiny group of wealthy elite corporate princes, a group of people it is imperative that we overthrow.
Does overthrowing this rapacious elite mean revolution? Sure does. Not revolution against our government, but revolution by our government to liberate itself from corporate clutches. Revolution to restore the United States Government to the American people. Do we dismantle the corporations? Maybe, if putting the criminals among their executive corps in jail doesn't work. What criminals? Any who break the law, the same definition for criminal that exists for the rest of humanity. The financial collapse of 2008 was made possible by a great many crimes, from fraud to pyramid schemes to outright theft. Does anyone think that Bernie Madoff and the other handful of scapegoats who went to jail were the only bad guys who contributed to the disappearance of 5 to 7 trillion dollars worth of American wealth? Hardly.
And yet, looking around the corporate landscape, it is still by and large the same cast of shady characters running the financial houses. They didn't even lose their jobs, never mind having to answer in court for their crimes! Any worker in any job anywhere knows that if even $500 of money you were responsible for goes missing, there will be an aggressive inquiry and perhaps a criminal investigation culminating in a conviction and/or prison sentence for the guilty party. How is that not the case when the figure is 5 trillion dollars? Why isn't the FBI, the IRS, the Justice and and Treasury Departments all over these corporations with search warrants and subpoenas for their records, transactions and e-mails, both pubic and confidential? Where are the investigations, never mind the indictments, trials, arrests, perp walks and verdicts? Why are any of the people who led these companies into near ruin still employed, still handling other people's money?
The financial thieves were instead rewarded with trillions of tax dollars to bailout their corrupt institutions, without any rule changes to prevent them from committing the same crimes again. So, who is running the government, men of law and elective office or the corporate princes who bribe and cheat and steal our representative government? And now that the banks are flush with cash from our tax dollars, they are awarding themselves billions of dollars in bonuses once again. The only voice opposing this obscene appropriation of other peoples money is President Obama, who is proposing to slash executive pay for firms that accepted bailout money and to tax bonuses at the rate of 90%.
Of course he is being met with howls of protest from the corporate princes, who say that top talent will go to work elsewhere. Where elsewhere? Who will have their larcenous, failed asses? If a person will take risky gambles with other people's money, invent illegal scams and criminally misrepresent the worth of their company in pursuit of a bonus, who can trust this person not to rob the company itself? Let them go elsewhere! Would you trust this person to be even a supermarket cashier? Who would miss the kind of "talent" that made 5 trillion dollars go poof?
But the president does not go far enough, and he must avoid going through Congress to fight these people since the Congress has been severely compromised by corporate bribery. In his capacity as the boss of the Justice Department, President Obama needs to declare war on corporate crime the way other presidents have declared war on the Mafia. There are laws already on the books that have been violated and the Justice Department's only job is to prosecute lawbreakers, no matter who does the breaking. Investigate these corporate crooks and put the whole corporate world on notice that their government access is denied and their adherence to the law is mandatory.
The president also must direct the Justice Department to investigate members of Congress in both parties who are suspected of criminal activities, or even the treason of abdicating their role of writing legislation to private interests or themselves writing legislation designed to benefit specific companies or individuals. That will send a clear message to holders of public office that no one is above the law. As strange as that sounds, it is practical, since they are now underpaid considering the unique demands of their jobs. Underpaid people are far more prone to dishonesty than well-compensated workers (except for bankers, of course). Theirs is a demanding job that requires them to maintain two homes and two offices, both in their home state and in Washington. Pay an excellent salary and attract more qualified legislators, less prone to accepting bribes, gifts and free trips.
The president must also have the Justice Department investigate lobbying organizations and prosecute anyone found to be engaging in criminal acts. There are many laws involving interference in official business or impeding the functions of government and these can be enforced. If lobbyists are found to have been writing laws or even short passages of laws, then treason must be added to the bribery charges. And what is this attempted corporate takeover of the United States Government but high treason? And what nation allows treason to continue unhindered? Certainly not one that intends to continue to thrive.
To continue to tolerate all this corporate crime and treasonous acts would be national suicide. Aggressive action must be taken to dismantle this organized criminal enterprise, using the same RICO statutes that toppled criminal cartels from Chicago to Cartagena. And if the corporations are gutted of their leadership? Who cares? There will be a hundred thousand talented people lining up to take their places, a hundred thousand executives more likely to be content with their fantastic salaries and far more mindful of obeying the law and paying their fair share of taxes. Any lobbyists remaining in their jobs would actually have to come up with logical arguments to present to Congress rather than Rolex watches, sexual favors or incriminating photographs.
So let the Anti-Corporate Treason Revolution begin. Either they are in charge of America or the American people are in charge. Right now they are winning this war, and the gulf between the haves and have-nots widens every day. The corporate lobbyists are close to succeeding in killing the Pubic Option in the Health Care Reform Bill, the only reason for the bill's existence. Corporate interests succeeded eight years ago in getting America to invade Iraq so they could have access to Iraqi oil and for no other reason (Never forget President Eisenhower's farewell address where he warned of the rise of the "military-industrial complex."). Corporate lobbying efforts already succeeded in stealing the majority of America's wealth for a tiny minority. This is class warfare and the American people are on the losing side. Our enemies have sold our jobs, stolen our money and are trying to take over our government. Time to fight back. Make your voice heard by President Obama and demand that he overthrow this government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations and return America to the American people.
October 26, 2009
THE 2009 TWO QUICK SLAPS AWARDS
In such hard and contentious times, the temptation is to take all those people who are actively contributing to the general stress and misery and either shoot them down like dogs, hang them, beat them about the head and neck with blunt objects or drown them in mud puddles. Or all of the above. However, we like to think we are better than that and are above such behavior in what we would hope are more enlightened times, at least outside of places like Saudi Arabia where whippings, amputations and beheadings are deemed wholesome family entertainment. As for those of us living in the present age and not the Middle Ages, we wish to impose a penalty upon certain individuals who are blatantly guilty of contributing to the widespread misery without tainting ourselves as barbarous butchers in the process.
Towards that end, we at bobcrespo.com propose a revival of The Two Quick Slaps Awards. After a vote on the most deserving recipients, a panel of 10 or 20 slappers (more than that might be too time-consuming, or fatal, whichever is worse) can be drawn by lot to administer two sharp slaps to the the insolent faces of any or all of those mentioned below. Or feel free to include your own write-in candidates along with a brief description of their transgressions. And the 2009 Two Quick Slaps Award goes to...
Richard and Mayumi Heene for The Dumbest News Story Category: The Heenes decided they wanted in on some of that reality show action, those TV programs that celebrate what fine families we have here in the good old U.S. of A. To illustrate why they were so deserving of their own show, they enlisted their 6 year-old son to be a liar when they launched an out-of-control hot air balloon and told the authorities he was aboard. Well, the Heenes got arrested, admitted the hoax and face custody hearings over their 3 children. Sounds like a surefire ratings winner! Thursdays on Fox, 8PM, 7 Central.
Bull O'Really, Crush Limburger and Gland Bucks for The Alarmist Blowhard Category: Past perennial winners O'Really and Limburger are joined by newcomer Gland Bucks in a 3-way tie for the coveted Alarmist Blowhard Award. Bucks has shown himself to be their equal in ignorance, lying and arrogance, and has gone these 2 famous gas bags one better by having having his tear ducts surgically altered to flow at will, ratcheting up his fake sincerity level several notches. Applications for awards presenters are skyrocketing. Line forms to the left.
MIchael Moore and Keith Olberman for The Most Annoying Liberal Award: These two have done more damage to the good causes they champion that any 10 Bull O'Reallys ever could, simply by force of their unappealing personalities. Mr. Moore thinks he is competing for the Nobel Smug Fat Slob Prize, While Olberman loves the sound of his own bleating voice more than the air he breathes (far more than his share). These two condescending clowns are also up for the Ted Kennedy Memorial Largest Head Award, hoping to unseat incumbent Lou Dobbs and potentially making them the first Multiple Two Quick Slaps Award Winners since Shotgun Dick Cheney and Karl "The Animal" Rove swept the Best Puppeteer and Most Malignant American categories as co-winners for 8 straight years.
Laura Harper and Mark Rayder for The Congressional Corruption Award: While neither of these two are members of the House or Senate, they are two of the leading lobbyists for the private health care industry. If you are wondering who is killing the Public Option Benefit of the Health Care Reform Bill (or at least has it on life support), look no further than the legions of wealthy lobbyists hired by wealthy health care corporations, who actively bribe our legislators in order to control the American government by working against the interests of the American people. There are far too many lobbyists to include them all here, so Ms. Harper and Mr. Ryder get the dubious honor of receiving Two Quick Slaps for all of these walking cancers in human form.
President Barack Obama for The Hamlet To Be Or Not To Be Award: When we last elected a president, we opted for the smart guy with a plan as opposed to the dumb guy with the puppet strings. Not only that, we handed the guy an insurmountable majority in both Houses of Congress! Would it be too much to ask that he stops deliberating at snail speed over every policy decision and piece of legislation as if these were brand new choices and not things he came in promising to do? What's to decide? He said he wanted to end our two wars, close Guantanamo and pass a Public Option Health Care Bill. It's written down and on video tape, you can look it up. Why the Hamlet act when next year's mid-term elections can very well close the window of opportunity to pass the agenda that the American people elected you to implement? Two Quick Slaps and A Swift Kick In The Butt for you, Mr. President.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for The Prison For Profit Award: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's official web site motto is "Building a better Arizona!" Like many of his Republican colleagues, he apparently thinks that building a better state of this union entails the profitizing of municipal services. Towards that end, he is entertaining bids from private corporations to run the entire Arizona Prison System. This malignant trend has led to Private Prison lobbyists petitioning state and federal governments to pass laws mandating longer prison sentences for every crime, thus maximizing their profits. In a country that imprisons more of our citizens than any other nation and persists in calling ourselves "The Land of The Free," this practice is unconscionable and a blatant attempt to shirk governmental responsibility. You think prisons are horrible criminal academies now? Wait until the profit-driven corporations drop all pretense of reforming and educating inmates so that petty criminals become the lifelong raw material for their sordid industry. Two Very Hard Slaps from inmates jailed for years for misdemeanors for Governor Brewer.
General Stanley McChrysal for The I Hated History Class Award: The commander of NATO (read that: American) forces in Afghanistan is convinced that he can turn Afghanistan into America Lite if only he's given 40,000 more troops, neatly omitting the fact the armed troops traipsing around our streets and countryside is not necessary for America to be America. What he also apparently forgets is that America won that war years ago, annihilating their armed forces and toppling their government. The only thing is, that he wasn't in command back then, and desperately needs a victory for his Joint Chiefs of Staff resume, so apparently he wants to re-defeat Afghanistan. Clever, no? Which has happened to Afghanistan any number of times in their 5,000 year history, including by Alexander The Great in 330 BC. Afghanis paid no attention to the many "conquerors" who came and went and continued to be the loose tribal confederation it has always been. Then there is the stated reason why America defeated Afghanistan in the first place, to rid the place of Al Qaeda. Mission accomplished, McChrystal, they all moved across the street to Pakistan. Two Quick Slaps for the ambitious General McChrystal.
Readers may feel free to tell bobcrespo.com of any other deserving nominees in any category they chose. This list has not even touched upon the Most Annoying Celebrity Award or the Dopiest Olympic Sport Award, two perennial favorites. Then there's the Famous For Being Famous Award, with multiple winner Paris Hilton facing some stiff competition from that clue-free dunce Jon Gosselin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 Lawsuits fame. The Two Quick Slap Awards are very flexible, so feel free to nominate anyone who gets on your nerves. Your comments will be posted unedited on this website, so feel free to vent your spleen. The Two Quick Slap Awards may not lift the hard times, but they will make us all feel so much better.
Towards that end, we at bobcrespo.com propose a revival of The Two Quick Slaps Awards. After a vote on the most deserving recipients, a panel of 10 or 20 slappers (more than that might be too time-consuming, or fatal, whichever is worse) can be drawn by lot to administer two sharp slaps to the the insolent faces of any or all of those mentioned below. Or feel free to include your own write-in candidates along with a brief description of their transgressions. And the 2009 Two Quick Slaps Award goes to...
Richard and Mayumi Heene for The Dumbest News Story Category: The Heenes decided they wanted in on some of that reality show action, those TV programs that celebrate what fine families we have here in the good old U.S. of A. To illustrate why they were so deserving of their own show, they enlisted their 6 year-old son to be a liar when they launched an out-of-control hot air balloon and told the authorities he was aboard. Well, the Heenes got arrested, admitted the hoax and face custody hearings over their 3 children. Sounds like a surefire ratings winner! Thursdays on Fox, 8PM, 7 Central.
Bull O'Really, Crush Limburger and Gland Bucks for The Alarmist Blowhard Category: Past perennial winners O'Really and Limburger are joined by newcomer Gland Bucks in a 3-way tie for the coveted Alarmist Blowhard Award. Bucks has shown himself to be their equal in ignorance, lying and arrogance, and has gone these 2 famous gas bags one better by having having his tear ducts surgically altered to flow at will, ratcheting up his fake sincerity level several notches. Applications for awards presenters are skyrocketing. Line forms to the left.
MIchael Moore and Keith Olberman for The Most Annoying Liberal Award: These two have done more damage to the good causes they champion that any 10 Bull O'Reallys ever could, simply by force of their unappealing personalities. Mr. Moore thinks he is competing for the Nobel Smug Fat Slob Prize, While Olberman loves the sound of his own bleating voice more than the air he breathes (far more than his share). These two condescending clowns are also up for the Ted Kennedy Memorial Largest Head Award, hoping to unseat incumbent Lou Dobbs and potentially making them the first Multiple Two Quick Slaps Award Winners since Shotgun Dick Cheney and Karl "The Animal" Rove swept the Best Puppeteer and Most Malignant American categories as co-winners for 8 straight years.
Laura Harper and Mark Rayder for The Congressional Corruption Award: While neither of these two are members of the House or Senate, they are two of the leading lobbyists for the private health care industry. If you are wondering who is killing the Public Option Benefit of the Health Care Reform Bill (or at least has it on life support), look no further than the legions of wealthy lobbyists hired by wealthy health care corporations, who actively bribe our legislators in order to control the American government by working against the interests of the American people. There are far too many lobbyists to include them all here, so Ms. Harper and Mr. Ryder get the dubious honor of receiving Two Quick Slaps for all of these walking cancers in human form.
President Barack Obama for The Hamlet To Be Or Not To Be Award: When we last elected a president, we opted for the smart guy with a plan as opposed to the dumb guy with the puppet strings. Not only that, we handed the guy an insurmountable majority in both Houses of Congress! Would it be too much to ask that he stops deliberating at snail speed over every policy decision and piece of legislation as if these were brand new choices and not things he came in promising to do? What's to decide? He said he wanted to end our two wars, close Guantanamo and pass a Public Option Health Care Bill. It's written down and on video tape, you can look it up. Why the Hamlet act when next year's mid-term elections can very well close the window of opportunity to pass the agenda that the American people elected you to implement? Two Quick Slaps and A Swift Kick In The Butt for you, Mr. President.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for The Prison For Profit Award: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's official web site motto is "Building a better Arizona!" Like many of his Republican colleagues, he apparently thinks that building a better state of this union entails the profitizing of municipal services. Towards that end, he is entertaining bids from private corporations to run the entire Arizona Prison System. This malignant trend has led to Private Prison lobbyists petitioning state and federal governments to pass laws mandating longer prison sentences for every crime, thus maximizing their profits. In a country that imprisons more of our citizens than any other nation and persists in calling ourselves "The Land of The Free," this practice is unconscionable and a blatant attempt to shirk governmental responsibility. You think prisons are horrible criminal academies now? Wait until the profit-driven corporations drop all pretense of reforming and educating inmates so that petty criminals become the lifelong raw material for their sordid industry. Two Very Hard Slaps from inmates jailed for years for misdemeanors for Governor Brewer.
General Stanley McChrysal for The I Hated History Class Award: The commander of NATO (read that: American) forces in Afghanistan is convinced that he can turn Afghanistan into America Lite if only he's given 40,000 more troops, neatly omitting the fact the armed troops traipsing around our streets and countryside is not necessary for America to be America. What he also apparently forgets is that America won that war years ago, annihilating their armed forces and toppling their government. The only thing is, that he wasn't in command back then, and desperately needs a victory for his Joint Chiefs of Staff resume, so apparently he wants to re-defeat Afghanistan. Clever, no? Which has happened to Afghanistan any number of times in their 5,000 year history, including by Alexander The Great in 330 BC. Afghanis paid no attention to the many "conquerors" who came and went and continued to be the loose tribal confederation it has always been. Then there is the stated reason why America defeated Afghanistan in the first place, to rid the place of Al Qaeda. Mission accomplished, McChrystal, they all moved across the street to Pakistan. Two Quick Slaps for the ambitious General McChrystal.
Readers may feel free to tell bobcrespo.com of any other deserving nominees in any category they chose. This list has not even touched upon the Most Annoying Celebrity Award or the Dopiest Olympic Sport Award, two perennial favorites. Then there's the Famous For Being Famous Award, with multiple winner Paris Hilton facing some stiff competition from that clue-free dunce Jon Gosselin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 Lawsuits fame. The Two Quick Slap Awards are very flexible, so feel free to nominate anyone who gets on your nerves. Your comments will be posted unedited on this website, so feel free to vent your spleen. The Two Quick Slap Awards may not lift the hard times, but they will make us all feel so much better.
October 25, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 536
The words "faith" and "belief" cannot replace the words "fact" and "proof," although many of us think otherwise. Mostly this is a harmless notion, but too often incites animosity, murder and repression in an effort to convince others that our fairy tale is superior to their fairy tale. Go figure humans...
DOPOTO REPORTS: PROGRESS IN REVERSE?
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), in our only capacity, that of pointing out the readily apparent, has been following with interest the No-Impact movement. It is an environmental initiative, a Green thing if you will. People are encouraged to turn off their electric lights, stop using their cars, produce as little trash as possible and eat only locally produced foods. In short, to live as one would in a very poor and backward nation. Why insisting that a reverse cultural move helps the planet is anyone's guess, as even a short glance at history informs us that the greatest benefits to mankind were obtained through the application of technology, and the failure and human misery of today's poorest nations is due to their severe lack of modern technology.
Low Impact adherents have submitted the argument to DOPOTO that eating only locally produced food is what mankind did for 99% of our history, an obvious fact of the sort this Department can relish. Also obvious is that throughout 99% of mankind's history, life expectancy was around 40 years, relatively mild diseases were fatal, childbirth was a leading cause of death in women, many children died before reaching maturity and malnutrition was an ever-present hazard. Illiteracy, superstition and tribalism stunted man's social development and inbreeding harmed his genetic chances of producing successful, vibrant offspring during this 99% of our history. Sanitary conditions were abominable and primitive medical practices caused almost as much death as the pervasive filth. Would these Low-Impact campaigners care for humanity to revisit those aspects of our history as well as living in the dark, walking to every destination and barely subsisting on a meager diet of whatever scrawny specimens are native to the immediate vicinity?
The Department is all for cleaning up our environment and ceasing the waste of valuable resources. We also admire the earnest activism and unbounded energy of Green Movement participants. We would only respectfully suggest that perhaps these keen minds would be best put to better uses, like finding a replacement for the greasy remains of dinosaurs that we set on fire to make our engines go. If one can dream that first-world citizens would willingly give up the amenities so painstakingly won from this hard and unforgiving world because Green activists say it is wrong to be comfortable and well-fed, then could not those same minds dream a more practical dream of creating a fuel that does not pollute our water, earth and sky? That would be the easier task, by far.
The only way they will get people to reduce their carbon footprints is to replace carbon-based fuels like petroleum, natural gas and coal. Long observation of humanity has convinced DOPOTO that once humans have attained a certain level of progress, success and comfort, they will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Human memory is long, and oral and written histories even longer. Hard evidence (one of the Department's favorite things) also tells us that the way to solve a serious a problem is unstinting study, research, experimentation and application of one's findings, all very modern notions developed in the past 1% of mankind's history. Such methods have improved our diets and general health, doubled our life spans, eliminated many deadly diseases, created automobiles and aircraft that eventually led to putting a man on the moon, all things once considered impossible.
None of these exciting breakthroughs were wrought by encouraging humanity to live as our ancestors did, who, by the way, did a great deal of polluting and left very large carbon footprints during their short lives with all their wood burning, forest clearing, destruction of fragile eco-systems, wasteful agricultural methods and species eliminating. While modern humanity is far from perfect and a lot of our technology is unnecessarily dirty and hazardous to our health, it is far less dirty and hazardous than the technology of 50 years ago. Many of the improvements were due to the scientific response to the work of environmental activists, so the Department has a great respect for those who would safeguard the only home humanity has, Planet Earth. Which is not to say that every idea they come up with is astounding. The eat-only-local-food idea, for example, has been just as big a monumental waste as some of the waste the Green Movement rails against. DOPOTO urges them to take human nature into account when formulating human solutions.
Another curious development that has caught the eye of the Department is the current Democratic administration's inertia when it comes to enacting what was announced to be an ambitious social and political agenda. President Obama was handed an almost unprecedented majority in both Houses of Congress, an obvious advantage when one wishes to pass a law. Yet for some unexplained reason, this Administration and Congress acts as if it has all the time in the world to do their work. DOPOTO's long experience in observing humans and reporting the obvious tells us otherwise. It is approaching a year since they took power, leaving only another year before the mid-term elections could possibly erase their overwhelming Democratic majority, making it a precarious enterprise to pass even the most innocuous bill if it has been sponsored by a Democrat.
Recent history is plain (obvious!) when it informs us that few Republicans will consider any idea on its merits, only its source. If the Democrats lose their majority, one of them could introduce a bill simply declaring that every American citizen is allowed to breathe, and a dozen Republicans will denounce the idea as a communist left-wing conspiracy to hire Devil-worshipping transvestite cannibals to teach every kindergarten class. Researchers here at the Department have concluded that if the Republicans held this electoral trifecta, that not a day would pass without another law being enacted designed to bestow the last bit of America's remaining wealth on the richest 1% of Americans and to rename The Bill of Rights "The Bill of Suggestions."
So, what are the obvious conclusions to draw from the recent activities (or non-activity) of these two groups of political activists, one set elected and one set self-appointed? That, when dealing with humanity and its most pressing problems, it is always best to take reality into consideration and to heed the obvious always. The most difficult problems to overcome are generally not the physical realities confronting us, but the human realities. After all, man has stood on the surface of moon, but mankind has never embraced the view of Planet Earth as seen from the moon; a beautiful, tranquil blue sphere with no borders visible and no sign of strife or animosity of any sort. Sometimes the obvious is hiding in plain sight. The forest for the trees...
This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
Low Impact adherents have submitted the argument to DOPOTO that eating only locally produced food is what mankind did for 99% of our history, an obvious fact of the sort this Department can relish. Also obvious is that throughout 99% of mankind's history, life expectancy was around 40 years, relatively mild diseases were fatal, childbirth was a leading cause of death in women, many children died before reaching maturity and malnutrition was an ever-present hazard. Illiteracy, superstition and tribalism stunted man's social development and inbreeding harmed his genetic chances of producing successful, vibrant offspring during this 99% of our history. Sanitary conditions were abominable and primitive medical practices caused almost as much death as the pervasive filth. Would these Low-Impact campaigners care for humanity to revisit those aspects of our history as well as living in the dark, walking to every destination and barely subsisting on a meager diet of whatever scrawny specimens are native to the immediate vicinity?
The Department is all for cleaning up our environment and ceasing the waste of valuable resources. We also admire the earnest activism and unbounded energy of Green Movement participants. We would only respectfully suggest that perhaps these keen minds would be best put to better uses, like finding a replacement for the greasy remains of dinosaurs that we set on fire to make our engines go. If one can dream that first-world citizens would willingly give up the amenities so painstakingly won from this hard and unforgiving world because Green activists say it is wrong to be comfortable and well-fed, then could not those same minds dream a more practical dream of creating a fuel that does not pollute our water, earth and sky? That would be the easier task, by far.
The only way they will get people to reduce their carbon footprints is to replace carbon-based fuels like petroleum, natural gas and coal. Long observation of humanity has convinced DOPOTO that once humans have attained a certain level of progress, success and comfort, they will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Human memory is long, and oral and written histories even longer. Hard evidence (one of the Department's favorite things) also tells us that the way to solve a serious a problem is unstinting study, research, experimentation and application of one's findings, all very modern notions developed in the past 1% of mankind's history. Such methods have improved our diets and general health, doubled our life spans, eliminated many deadly diseases, created automobiles and aircraft that eventually led to putting a man on the moon, all things once considered impossible.
None of these exciting breakthroughs were wrought by encouraging humanity to live as our ancestors did, who, by the way, did a great deal of polluting and left very large carbon footprints during their short lives with all their wood burning, forest clearing, destruction of fragile eco-systems, wasteful agricultural methods and species eliminating. While modern humanity is far from perfect and a lot of our technology is unnecessarily dirty and hazardous to our health, it is far less dirty and hazardous than the technology of 50 years ago. Many of the improvements were due to the scientific response to the work of environmental activists, so the Department has a great respect for those who would safeguard the only home humanity has, Planet Earth. Which is not to say that every idea they come up with is astounding. The eat-only-local-food idea, for example, has been just as big a monumental waste as some of the waste the Green Movement rails against. DOPOTO urges them to take human nature into account when formulating human solutions.
Another curious development that has caught the eye of the Department is the current Democratic administration's inertia when it comes to enacting what was announced to be an ambitious social and political agenda. President Obama was handed an almost unprecedented majority in both Houses of Congress, an obvious advantage when one wishes to pass a law. Yet for some unexplained reason, this Administration and Congress acts as if it has all the time in the world to do their work. DOPOTO's long experience in observing humans and reporting the obvious tells us otherwise. It is approaching a year since they took power, leaving only another year before the mid-term elections could possibly erase their overwhelming Democratic majority, making it a precarious enterprise to pass even the most innocuous bill if it has been sponsored by a Democrat.
Recent history is plain (obvious!) when it informs us that few Republicans will consider any idea on its merits, only its source. If the Democrats lose their majority, one of them could introduce a bill simply declaring that every American citizen is allowed to breathe, and a dozen Republicans will denounce the idea as a communist left-wing conspiracy to hire Devil-worshipping transvestite cannibals to teach every kindergarten class. Researchers here at the Department have concluded that if the Republicans held this electoral trifecta, that not a day would pass without another law being enacted designed to bestow the last bit of America's remaining wealth on the richest 1% of Americans and to rename The Bill of Rights "The Bill of Suggestions."
So, what are the obvious conclusions to draw from the recent activities (or non-activity) of these two groups of political activists, one set elected and one set self-appointed? That, when dealing with humanity and its most pressing problems, it is always best to take reality into consideration and to heed the obvious always. The most difficult problems to overcome are generally not the physical realities confronting us, but the human realities. After all, man has stood on the surface of moon, but mankind has never embraced the view of Planet Earth as seen from the moon; a beautiful, tranquil blue sphere with no borders visible and no sign of strife or animosity of any sort. Sometimes the obvious is hiding in plain sight. The forest for the trees...
This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious
October 24, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 535
Blessed are those who prosper on their own merits, at the expense of no other.
FIRST, HANG ALL THE BANKERS
William Shakespeare's advice for straightening out society was "First, hang all the lawyers." Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare, but hanging all the lawyers is only a secondary concern in our modern age. No doubt in your day lawyers did their best to mangle the law and turn it to their own personal advantage. Well, they're still at it, but their malignant efforts are not quite as distressing as the actions of today's bankers, those who handle everybody else's money. It seems that in recent years they conveniently forgot the "everybody else's" part of the money that passes through their hands and came to consider the collective wealth of nations as their very own to do with as they pleased. And so they gambled recklessly, engaged in fraudulent business practices and helped themselves to other people's money in the form of staggering "bonuses."
The result? In America alone, the destruction of 5 to 7 trillion dollars (no one's really certain exactly how much these clowns flushed down the toilet) of collective wealth and the near-collapse of the richest economy in history. In turn the whole world was affected and a severe worldwide recession in is progress. Bankers now claim it is at an end since they are making money again thanks to socialist government bailouts, but the fact that a very tiny portion of humanity (bankers) is in the chips again has not lifted the hard times from the backs of average citizens. Their life savings are still depleted, their homes are worth less than they paid for them, if they haven't already been tossed to the curb, and unemployment is rampant.
So it's small comfort to anyone but themselves that bankers are once again the living embodiment of the French aristocracy as so colorfully described by Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities." There is no joy to be derived from the news that these corporate princes are granting themselves obscene bonuses from someone else's money once again, formulating more questionable investment schemes and declaring that it is all to the good. Sure, it's all to the good for champagne-swilling, private jet-riding and treasury-looting greedaholics, but for the rest of us, still pretty grim.
The banks have yet to invest in a single industry that provides actual jobs or produces any tangible products. Far too much of the nation's wealth is tied up in the financial industry, where the only "products" they produce are pieces of paper in a game of "hot-potato" where a tiny elite makes money off the shuffling of valuable assets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't mean a damned thing to the nation's workers, the people who actually built this place and keep it functioning. To value real property on what anyone's feelings are about that property borders on the mystical and the weirdly religious. That's pretty much how stock prices are determined, a baffling approach to business but one that allows speculators to earn endless money on nothing more than guessing (!) how people feel. Dow Jones is merely an indicator of who's ahead in some colossal poker game where only a few are sitting at the table, with the rest of us providing them the chips with which to gamble.
When they win they don't share their profits and when they lose they pass their losses off to others, then demand more chips from us to keep on playing the same old game. When they lose big they run to our national treasury for even more chips, this on top of the direct socialist subsidies and tax breaks they have been accepting for many, many years, even in their most profitable times. This they see as their just due, much like the royalty of centuries past figured they were ordained by God to run the world and live in luxury while the vast majority of humanity suffered an impoverished and precarious existence.
That's why things like the American and French Revolutions occurred. While the lives of average Americans in no way compare to the degradation and starvation of the Age of Monarchies, the broad gulf between the haves and have-nots is rapidly widening. Right now in America, less than 1% of the population owns more wealth than 95% of all Americans. The super-wealthy and the corporations contribute far less of a percentage of taxes than ever before, with some paying none or actually receiving money from the government just for existing. This means that workers have had to make up the difference. Successive Republican administrations have orchestrated the largest peacetime transfer of wealth from the working classes to the rich in the history of mankind with a series of unfair tax laws, making people who were already very wealthy a super-wealthy aristocracy, while the classes below them took another step down the economic ladder.
Which is why America might need a Second American Revolution, not to overthrow our government but to liberate it from the clutches of the wealthy elite and their corporations. These cutthroat quasi-royals who champion free market Capitalism are actually practicing Socialism for the wealthy while opposing social programs for everyone else. Through their extensive lobbying organizations they have corrupted our democratic government, in many cases even writing laws to benefit themselves, an illegal usurpation of the duties of our elected government. Has anyone noticed how few of the perpetrators of the financial collapse of 2008 have been arrested for their crimes, which were many and well-documented? Or how many of the same individuals are still running the major corporations they nearly ran into the ground out of naked greed?
The fact that their self-induced financial disasters so negatively impacted every other segment of society also goes practically unmentioned. Millions of jobs were lost or downgraded in pay and benefits, and now these greedy patricians are chaffing at the government's demands to limit the pay of corporate executives whose companies accepted federal money. It has finally dawned on the government that the bonus system encouraged reckless gambling with the nation's collective wealth.
Why it didn't occur to them to take all these bankers out and hang them is another story, one that may have to be told in the Anti-Corporate Revolution. Unless and until these people are fired for their larceny and the wealthy and the corporations are bought under the rule of law like everyone else and made to pay their taxes, other solutions may have to be sought. Thanks for the suggestion, Mr. Shakespeare, and for the reminder of where all this is going, Mr. Dickens. People can take only so much, and people who have tasted freedom and prosperity are likely to take even less.
The result? In America alone, the destruction of 5 to 7 trillion dollars (no one's really certain exactly how much these clowns flushed down the toilet) of collective wealth and the near-collapse of the richest economy in history. In turn the whole world was affected and a severe worldwide recession in is progress. Bankers now claim it is at an end since they are making money again thanks to socialist government bailouts, but the fact that a very tiny portion of humanity (bankers) is in the chips again has not lifted the hard times from the backs of average citizens. Their life savings are still depleted, their homes are worth less than they paid for them, if they haven't already been tossed to the curb, and unemployment is rampant.
So it's small comfort to anyone but themselves that bankers are once again the living embodiment of the French aristocracy as so colorfully described by Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities." There is no joy to be derived from the news that these corporate princes are granting themselves obscene bonuses from someone else's money once again, formulating more questionable investment schemes and declaring that it is all to the good. Sure, it's all to the good for champagne-swilling, private jet-riding and treasury-looting greedaholics, but for the rest of us, still pretty grim.
The banks have yet to invest in a single industry that provides actual jobs or produces any tangible products. Far too much of the nation's wealth is tied up in the financial industry, where the only "products" they produce are pieces of paper in a game of "hot-potato" where a tiny elite makes money off the shuffling of valuable assets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't mean a damned thing to the nation's workers, the people who actually built this place and keep it functioning. To value real property on what anyone's feelings are about that property borders on the mystical and the weirdly religious. That's pretty much how stock prices are determined, a baffling approach to business but one that allows speculators to earn endless money on nothing more than guessing (!) how people feel. Dow Jones is merely an indicator of who's ahead in some colossal poker game where only a few are sitting at the table, with the rest of us providing them the chips with which to gamble.
When they win they don't share their profits and when they lose they pass their losses off to others, then demand more chips from us to keep on playing the same old game. When they lose big they run to our national treasury for even more chips, this on top of the direct socialist subsidies and tax breaks they have been accepting for many, many years, even in their most profitable times. This they see as their just due, much like the royalty of centuries past figured they were ordained by God to run the world and live in luxury while the vast majority of humanity suffered an impoverished and precarious existence.
That's why things like the American and French Revolutions occurred. While the lives of average Americans in no way compare to the degradation and starvation of the Age of Monarchies, the broad gulf between the haves and have-nots is rapidly widening. Right now in America, less than 1% of the population owns more wealth than 95% of all Americans. The super-wealthy and the corporations contribute far less of a percentage of taxes than ever before, with some paying none or actually receiving money from the government just for existing. This means that workers have had to make up the difference. Successive Republican administrations have orchestrated the largest peacetime transfer of wealth from the working classes to the rich in the history of mankind with a series of unfair tax laws, making people who were already very wealthy a super-wealthy aristocracy, while the classes below them took another step down the economic ladder.
Which is why America might need a Second American Revolution, not to overthrow our government but to liberate it from the clutches of the wealthy elite and their corporations. These cutthroat quasi-royals who champion free market Capitalism are actually practicing Socialism for the wealthy while opposing social programs for everyone else. Through their extensive lobbying organizations they have corrupted our democratic government, in many cases even writing laws to benefit themselves, an illegal usurpation of the duties of our elected government. Has anyone noticed how few of the perpetrators of the financial collapse of 2008 have been arrested for their crimes, which were many and well-documented? Or how many of the same individuals are still running the major corporations they nearly ran into the ground out of naked greed?
The fact that their self-induced financial disasters so negatively impacted every other segment of society also goes practically unmentioned. Millions of jobs were lost or downgraded in pay and benefits, and now these greedy patricians are chaffing at the government's demands to limit the pay of corporate executives whose companies accepted federal money. It has finally dawned on the government that the bonus system encouraged reckless gambling with the nation's collective wealth.
Why it didn't occur to them to take all these bankers out and hang them is another story, one that may have to be told in the Anti-Corporate Revolution. Unless and until these people are fired for their larceny and the wealthy and the corporations are bought under the rule of law like everyone else and made to pay their taxes, other solutions may have to be sought. Thanks for the suggestion, Mr. Shakespeare, and for the reminder of where all this is going, Mr. Dickens. People can take only so much, and people who have tasted freedom and prosperity are likely to take even less.
October 23, 2009
LET'S MAKE A HUGE CARBON FOOTPRINT AND FEED THE STARVING
How quaint we are here in America and other wealthy nations. We freak out over a relatively mild strain of flu that has so far killed fewer people than bee stings, we wring our hands over our environment as it provides us plentiful food and creature comforts unprecedented in history, and formulate dumb theories to reduce the carbon footprints that sustain our bountiful lifestyles instead of putting our energies into finding a replacement for petroleum, clean energy. We are not evil for enjoying success in keeping ourselves well-fed, safe and warm. We worked pretty damned hard to get this way. Now trendy Greenies want people to eat only what is produced locally, calling it low-impact feeding or some such crap. Eat only what is produced locally? People who live in New York City or the Mojave desert would be pretty screwed if they followed that advice.
Weren't ships, railroads and trucks invented like a really long time ago to ship a variety of foods all over the place? Isn't a varied diet sort of a key component of good health? And isn't shrimp about the tastiest food anywhere? Not too many people live in the middle of the ocean where shrimp are harvested. Most farming regions specialize in a limited number of products according to climate, rainfall, topsoil and the like. Should people in Florida eat a shitload of oranges and people in Iowa consume only corn and beef? And what on earth would people in northern Alaska eat, only seals? Who came up with this hare-brained theory?
It sure wasn't anybody living in a nation where a lot of people starve to death. Bad enough that hunger is creeping back into America, the wealthiest nation in the history of nations, but every day in many countries across the globe there are people suffering such extremes of hunger that it is called starvation. So extreme is this starvation pandemic that a human being dies every 2.6 seconds. That's 36,000 people every single day and 13,140,000 every year, except for leap years, when it is 13,176,000. About 85% of starvation victims are young children. The Silent Slaughter is a global emergency of the highest priority, and it is within our power to end it. Fuck all those other polite Greenie causes and cockamamie theories, this is job #1!
This is not something that might happen, or will possibly occur in 50 to 100 years. This is now! This is real and tragic and it is unconscionable that it is not the first priority of environmental activists everywhere. Since you began reading this, seven children have died an agonizingly painful death after deep and prolonged suffering. Go make a cup of coffee and a snack. By the time you're done (say, 20 minutes?), 500 more children will be dead. It is not your fault. You did not create the conditions that allow more than 13 million of your brothers and sisters to die unheeded every year. But now you know. Do you think it's more important to buy mercury-filled incandescent bulbs to assuage your conscience about our environment or to try to help correct the biggest human emergency of them all?
Burn some electricity and Google the facts on your computer. While you're on the internet, check out the websites that rate charities and find out which ones are working to feed the starving and how effective they are and send them some dough or volunteer some time. Use some more electricity to e-mail your elected representatives and tell them to shut the fuck up about whatever stupid shit they're talking about and get America busy forming a very large New Peace Corps to deploy in emergency starvation regions and to stop paying our farmers not to grow food. Tell our government that you don't want the wealthiest nation in the history of nations to stand by and twiddle its thumbs while 13 million people die from starvation every year. Tell them that we don't want to be 307 million American Neros fiddling while the earth burns. We are America, dammit, and we're supposed to act better than that!
America alone can produce the required food. America alone can supply the required technical know-how, skilled personnel and dedicated teachers required to not only feed the starving, but teach them to feed themselves. America can do all this alone, but probably won't have to. If we make the first move and embark on this greatest of all wars, the peaceful War on Starvation, odds are we will collect a lot of allies along the way. Nations that exhibit an iron will and skilled leadership have moved the world community throughout history, for better or worse. Why not lead for the better? And what cause could possibly be greater that to feed every man, woman and child on this earth, and to create a sustainable system for eliminating starvation?
America has eliminated polio, invented a bazillion beneficial things, abolished slavery, fought and won two simultaneous world wars in less that four years to rid the world of fascism, and put a man on the goddamned moon! Anybody out there think we can't feed another 13 million people if we put our minds to it? And why is this our responsibility, you ask? How can it not be? America is the greatest power in the world right now, with more interests in more places than even the mightiest empires in history. We have soldiers stationed in 150 of the world's 192 countries and our fleets circle the earth, as do our business interests. We owe the world for this exalted position. For better or worse, America is The Man right now, and we need to act like The Man or stand aside and let someone else take over, someone who won't fiddle while Rome burns.
All that aside, we should feed the starving only because it is the right thing to do. There should be no strings attached, no political or monetary rewards demanded. America has always been as much an idea and a set of ideals as it is a nation. Our entire history has been a quest to finally live up to those ideals. We have failed here and there but never denied that we could do better or swept our failures under the rug, instead laying them open for ourselves and the world to see, then correcting our shortcomings. Time to fix another one. The world is faced with an ancient emergency that has never sounded any alarms for mankind when other great powers dominated the globe. No matter what good was done by any world power, mankind was never able to claim its full humanity in all our history of bloody wars, slavery and exploitation, with rarely a thought for the uncounted billions who have perished from starvation over the millennia.
America is supposed to be different. America is supposed to be better, and now we're Rome, we're Egypt, we're The British Empire. Do we allow the Silent Slaughter to continue on our watch? Do we fritter away our power, our activism and our goodness on a bunch of namby-pamby bullshit causes that can wait until we get food in everybody's belly? Or do we stand up and shout to the world: "Enough!" Help end the Silent Slaughter. Send money to food charities and demand that our American government takes immediate and aggressive action. Children are dying and we can stop it. It is within our power. We need to make a huge carbon footprint right now and produce enough food and technical goods and services to feed the hungry and to build lasting infrastructures to keep them fed. Even failure is preferable to not trying at all. If we don't try, we should be ashamed, as Americans and as human beings.
Weren't ships, railroads and trucks invented like a really long time ago to ship a variety of foods all over the place? Isn't a varied diet sort of a key component of good health? And isn't shrimp about the tastiest food anywhere? Not too many people live in the middle of the ocean where shrimp are harvested. Most farming regions specialize in a limited number of products according to climate, rainfall, topsoil and the like. Should people in Florida eat a shitload of oranges and people in Iowa consume only corn and beef? And what on earth would people in northern Alaska eat, only seals? Who came up with this hare-brained theory?
It sure wasn't anybody living in a nation where a lot of people starve to death. Bad enough that hunger is creeping back into America, the wealthiest nation in the history of nations, but every day in many countries across the globe there are people suffering such extremes of hunger that it is called starvation. So extreme is this starvation pandemic that a human being dies every 2.6 seconds. That's 36,000 people every single day and 13,140,000 every year, except for leap years, when it is 13,176,000. About 85% of starvation victims are young children. The Silent Slaughter is a global emergency of the highest priority, and it is within our power to end it. Fuck all those other polite Greenie causes and cockamamie theories, this is job #1!
This is not something that might happen, or will possibly occur in 50 to 100 years. This is now! This is real and tragic and it is unconscionable that it is not the first priority of environmental activists everywhere. Since you began reading this, seven children have died an agonizingly painful death after deep and prolonged suffering. Go make a cup of coffee and a snack. By the time you're done (say, 20 minutes?), 500 more children will be dead. It is not your fault. You did not create the conditions that allow more than 13 million of your brothers and sisters to die unheeded every year. But now you know. Do you think it's more important to buy mercury-filled incandescent bulbs to assuage your conscience about our environment or to try to help correct the biggest human emergency of them all?
Burn some electricity and Google the facts on your computer. While you're on the internet, check out the websites that rate charities and find out which ones are working to feed the starving and how effective they are and send them some dough or volunteer some time. Use some more electricity to e-mail your elected representatives and tell them to shut the fuck up about whatever stupid shit they're talking about and get America busy forming a very large New Peace Corps to deploy in emergency starvation regions and to stop paying our farmers not to grow food. Tell our government that you don't want the wealthiest nation in the history of nations to stand by and twiddle its thumbs while 13 million people die from starvation every year. Tell them that we don't want to be 307 million American Neros fiddling while the earth burns. We are America, dammit, and we're supposed to act better than that!
America alone can produce the required food. America alone can supply the required technical know-how, skilled personnel and dedicated teachers required to not only feed the starving, but teach them to feed themselves. America can do all this alone, but probably won't have to. If we make the first move and embark on this greatest of all wars, the peaceful War on Starvation, odds are we will collect a lot of allies along the way. Nations that exhibit an iron will and skilled leadership have moved the world community throughout history, for better or worse. Why not lead for the better? And what cause could possibly be greater that to feed every man, woman and child on this earth, and to create a sustainable system for eliminating starvation?
America has eliminated polio, invented a bazillion beneficial things, abolished slavery, fought and won two simultaneous world wars in less that four years to rid the world of fascism, and put a man on the goddamned moon! Anybody out there think we can't feed another 13 million people if we put our minds to it? And why is this our responsibility, you ask? How can it not be? America is the greatest power in the world right now, with more interests in more places than even the mightiest empires in history. We have soldiers stationed in 150 of the world's 192 countries and our fleets circle the earth, as do our business interests. We owe the world for this exalted position. For better or worse, America is The Man right now, and we need to act like The Man or stand aside and let someone else take over, someone who won't fiddle while Rome burns.
All that aside, we should feed the starving only because it is the right thing to do. There should be no strings attached, no political or monetary rewards demanded. America has always been as much an idea and a set of ideals as it is a nation. Our entire history has been a quest to finally live up to those ideals. We have failed here and there but never denied that we could do better or swept our failures under the rug, instead laying them open for ourselves and the world to see, then correcting our shortcomings. Time to fix another one. The world is faced with an ancient emergency that has never sounded any alarms for mankind when other great powers dominated the globe. No matter what good was done by any world power, mankind was never able to claim its full humanity in all our history of bloody wars, slavery and exploitation, with rarely a thought for the uncounted billions who have perished from starvation over the millennia.
America is supposed to be different. America is supposed to be better, and now we're Rome, we're Egypt, we're The British Empire. Do we allow the Silent Slaughter to continue on our watch? Do we fritter away our power, our activism and our goodness on a bunch of namby-pamby bullshit causes that can wait until we get food in everybody's belly? Or do we stand up and shout to the world: "Enough!" Help end the Silent Slaughter. Send money to food charities and demand that our American government takes immediate and aggressive action. Children are dying and we can stop it. It is within our power. We need to make a huge carbon footprint right now and produce enough food and technical goods and services to feed the hungry and to build lasting infrastructures to keep them fed. Even failure is preferable to not trying at all. If we don't try, we should be ashamed, as Americans and as human beings.
October 22, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 533
Most little-known facts are little-known for good reason. Does it help anybody to know that Tennessee is known as "The Turtle Capital of the World?" So much for The Grand Ole Opry, corn whiskey and the Great Smoky Mountains. Now whenever you think of Tennessee you'll think of turtles. You're welcome.
THINGS WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW
Call this the "Too Much Information Age." While the advent of the internet and the proliferation of personal computers have placed incredible amounts of information at our fingertips, not all information is created equal. Do we really need to know that most Panama hats are made in Ecuador? How much do we need to know about Sarah Palin's daughter's Baby Daddy, Levi "The Hockey Hunk" Johnson? Presumably the brain is like our computers, with only so many gigabytes of memory. The only problem with our brains, however, is the lack of a "delete" button. How much skull space are we filling with information about Michael Jackson's detachable nose, never to be plunked into any trash bin? And so bobcrespo.com issues a warning to the reader here to log out immediately if you don't want to know any of this:
The United States never lost a war in which mules were used. Is President Obama aware of this?
On a related note, more people worldwide are killed by donkeys than in airplane crashes. Perhaps a surge of donkeys and mules might be in order for the war in Afghanistan?
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. Well, that's at least one burdensome piece of useless information you don't have to know.
When licking a stamp you consume one-tenth of a calorie. That explains all the Holiday weight gain, no? Must be all those Christmas cards.
There is such a thing called The National Lightning Safety Institute. Sort of make you glad someone's on the ball with that.
There are no unknown facts about bananas, for which we can all be thankful.
Greenland, an icy wasteland, was so named by the exiled Leif Ericson to fool the rest of the Vikings into thinking that he had found a paradise.
The flush toilet was not actually invented by Thomas Crapper, but he did invent the floating ball cock in the toilet tank and did much to popularize the flush toilet with his company Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd. The ads for his product proudly announced: "It's a Crapper!" Well, no shit...
The bone mass of human beings is at its peak at around age 30. That explains a lot of the thick skulls on people who think they know what's what just because they turn 30.
In early England the traditional Christmas dinner was the head of a pig. Most observers note that British cuisine has not progressed all that much.
The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal. And a lot of good it did.
A dork is actually the term for a whale's penis. So calling someone a "big dork" is calling them a whale dick. Makes sense.
Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone. What else can you expect of people who used crocodile dung as a contraceptive? The stone pillows do help to explain those elongated heads, though.
In Tokyo, they sell toupees for dogs. Sort of brings the concept of "saving face" to a whole new level of paranoia when your bald dog is an abominable embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.
In 2002, Bill Gates was considered more idolized than Chairman Mao by Chinese teenagers, which makes sense when you consider that Bill Gates murdered nobody, approximately 20 million fewer than Mao did during his Cultural Revolution.
Antarctica contains as much ice as the Atlantic Ocean does water. If it ever melts, this knowledge will not prevent Ohio from becoming oceanfront property and Florida from becoming a scuba diver's paradise.
"Old Ironsides," the fabled U.S.S. Constitution built in 1797, carried 48,000 gallons of drinking water and 68,000 gallons of rum. That's when the being in the navy was fun.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike than all the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. On the other hand, he does have an expensive gambling habit and jet-set lifestyles to support, while the Malaysian workers have only their mud and corrugated tin shanties filled with a half-dozen mouths to feed to worry about.
Goldfish have a memory span of three seconds, which comes in handy when your whole world is a gallon of water. Otherwise goldfish madness would be epidemic.
Rats cannot vomit. Good thing, too, with all their other nasty habits.
A large percentage of photocopy machine malfunctions are caused by people sitting on them to photocopy their butts. All in all, well worth the down time.
And finally, in case you think that the Information Age is a universal human experience, consider this: As recently as ten years ago, half the people on the planet had never made or received a phone call, never mind checked their e-mail or Googled a damned thing. That figure has undoubtedly shrunken, but that still leaves a couple of billion people out of even this very old technology loop. Maybe that's just nature's way of having someone ready to take over when the rest of us have our brains filled up by all this useless data.
The United States never lost a war in which mules were used. Is President Obama aware of this?
On a related note, more people worldwide are killed by donkeys than in airplane crashes. Perhaps a surge of donkeys and mules might be in order for the war in Afghanistan?
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. Well, that's at least one burdensome piece of useless information you don't have to know.
When licking a stamp you consume one-tenth of a calorie. That explains all the Holiday weight gain, no? Must be all those Christmas cards.
There is such a thing called The National Lightning Safety Institute. Sort of make you glad someone's on the ball with that.
There are no unknown facts about bananas, for which we can all be thankful.
Greenland, an icy wasteland, was so named by the exiled Leif Ericson to fool the rest of the Vikings into thinking that he had found a paradise.
The flush toilet was not actually invented by Thomas Crapper, but he did invent the floating ball cock in the toilet tank and did much to popularize the flush toilet with his company Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd. The ads for his product proudly announced: "It's a Crapper!" Well, no shit...
The bone mass of human beings is at its peak at around age 30. That explains a lot of the thick skulls on people who think they know what's what just because they turn 30.
In early England the traditional Christmas dinner was the head of a pig. Most observers note that British cuisine has not progressed all that much.
The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal. And a lot of good it did.
A dork is actually the term for a whale's penis. So calling someone a "big dork" is calling them a whale dick. Makes sense.
Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone. What else can you expect of people who used crocodile dung as a contraceptive? The stone pillows do help to explain those elongated heads, though.
In Tokyo, they sell toupees for dogs. Sort of brings the concept of "saving face" to a whole new level of paranoia when your bald dog is an abominable embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.
In 2002, Bill Gates was considered more idolized than Chairman Mao by Chinese teenagers, which makes sense when you consider that Bill Gates murdered nobody, approximately 20 million fewer than Mao did during his Cultural Revolution.
Antarctica contains as much ice as the Atlantic Ocean does water. If it ever melts, this knowledge will not prevent Ohio from becoming oceanfront property and Florida from becoming a scuba diver's paradise.
"Old Ironsides," the fabled U.S.S. Constitution built in 1797, carried 48,000 gallons of drinking water and 68,000 gallons of rum. That's when the being in the navy was fun.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike than all the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. On the other hand, he does have an expensive gambling habit and jet-set lifestyles to support, while the Malaysian workers have only their mud and corrugated tin shanties filled with a half-dozen mouths to feed to worry about.
Goldfish have a memory span of three seconds, which comes in handy when your whole world is a gallon of water. Otherwise goldfish madness would be epidemic.
Rats cannot vomit. Good thing, too, with all their other nasty habits.
A large percentage of photocopy machine malfunctions are caused by people sitting on them to photocopy their butts. All in all, well worth the down time.
And finally, in case you think that the Information Age is a universal human experience, consider this: As recently as ten years ago, half the people on the planet had never made or received a phone call, never mind checked their e-mail or Googled a damned thing. That figure has undoubtedly shrunken, but that still leaves a couple of billion people out of even this very old technology loop. Maybe that's just nature's way of having someone ready to take over when the rest of us have our brains filled up by all this useless data.
October 21, 2009
MORE RULES FOR ENLIGHTENED GENTLEMEN
In our continuing quest to face the demands and challenges of this modern age, bobcrespo.com is continuing to compile helpful rules for the proper comportment of a gentleman. Never has being a gentleman been more important than in this fractious, contentious era. The bounds of good taste and decorous behavior are being assailed on all fronts, and genteel, courteous discourse is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. So, in an effort to correct our hostile tendencies, these rules for gentlemen address our dealings with our fellow man. Consider:
When arguing with another who holds a different political viewpoint, a gentleman always offers his handkerchief to his adversary after he has bloodied his nose.
A gentleman never kicks a man when he is down. The lateral kick is likely to miss the mark. Stomping is the preferred method of assault on a prone opponent, applying the heel in an up-and-down piston movement.
When watching the Bull O'Really show, a gentleman never destroys the television set.
When accepting a twenty million dollar bonus from one's stockholders' money, a gentlemen never spins cartwheels and fist-bumps his colleagues. Instead, he humbly wonders why he wasn't given thirty million dollars of someone else's money.
When a gentleman who holds elective office is caught in a scandal, he never angrily denies any wrongdoing, instead calmly lays the blame on a subordinate.
When engaged in running a Ponzi scheme, a wise gentleman swindles only the obscenely wealthy. When your scheme inevitably collapses, public opinion will look favorably upon you and your prison sentence will be commensurately lenient.
When collecting billions of dollars in cash grants, subsidies and tax breaks from one's government for one's multi-billion dollar corporation, a gentleman waits a decent interval before condemning Socialist programs for the poor.
When belittling your opponent's arguments, a gentleman acts superior and knowledgeable. Only if that doesn't work is it permissible to smear the character of your opponent with sensational insinuations, the more outlandish, the better. Even when your accusations are found to be false, the simple act of bringing up charges of bestiality and cannibalism will taint their reputation and distract people from examining your blatant lies.
A gentleman always lies with a straight face.
When deciding between expediency and what is right, a gentleman considers which will be more beneficial to himself, then makes his decision.
A gentleman never dances a jig at the funeral of a rich relative. That can wait until after the reading of the will.
A gentleman never urinates on the grave of a rich relative that has cut him out of their will. It is far more gentlemanly to simply sue the rest of the family and hope they settle out of court for a substantial sum.
A prudent gentleman never stiffs his lawyer.
When invading a country, a gentleman makes sure it is the one who is your actual enemy. To attack the wrong nation would be an inexcusable faux pas.
When pretending to be a religious leader in order to gain power and wealth, a sagacious gentleman treats any accusations of fraud and indecency as a direct attack on God by those in league with the devil.
When masquerading as a self-help guru, a gentleman always pretends to care about those who seek his advice. Feigning sincerity is paramount.
When a gentleman is running a crime syndicate, he keeps the sensational murders to a circumspect minimum.
When one's spouse sues for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, a gentleman transfers no more than three-quarters of his wealth to off-shore accounts.
After faking one's own death, a gentleman never moves back to his old neighborhood.
When in possession of compromising information on one's rival, a gentleman takes pains to make it appear as if a third party has made it public.
When a gentleman blackmails another gentleman, he does so anonymously. To do otherwise is to invite prosecution and the resulting stain on one's character.
When fleeing the authorities, a gentleman never leaves a paper trail.
When arguing with another who holds a different political viewpoint, a gentleman always offers his handkerchief to his adversary after he has bloodied his nose.
A gentleman never kicks a man when he is down. The lateral kick is likely to miss the mark. Stomping is the preferred method of assault on a prone opponent, applying the heel in an up-and-down piston movement.
When watching the Bull O'Really show, a gentleman never destroys the television set.
When accepting a twenty million dollar bonus from one's stockholders' money, a gentlemen never spins cartwheels and fist-bumps his colleagues. Instead, he humbly wonders why he wasn't given thirty million dollars of someone else's money.
When a gentleman who holds elective office is caught in a scandal, he never angrily denies any wrongdoing, instead calmly lays the blame on a subordinate.
When engaged in running a Ponzi scheme, a wise gentleman swindles only the obscenely wealthy. When your scheme inevitably collapses, public opinion will look favorably upon you and your prison sentence will be commensurately lenient.
When collecting billions of dollars in cash grants, subsidies and tax breaks from one's government for one's multi-billion dollar corporation, a gentleman waits a decent interval before condemning Socialist programs for the poor.
When belittling your opponent's arguments, a gentleman acts superior and knowledgeable. Only if that doesn't work is it permissible to smear the character of your opponent with sensational insinuations, the more outlandish, the better. Even when your accusations are found to be false, the simple act of bringing up charges of bestiality and cannibalism will taint their reputation and distract people from examining your blatant lies.
A gentleman always lies with a straight face.
When deciding between expediency and what is right, a gentleman considers which will be more beneficial to himself, then makes his decision.
A gentleman never dances a jig at the funeral of a rich relative. That can wait until after the reading of the will.
A gentleman never urinates on the grave of a rich relative that has cut him out of their will. It is far more gentlemanly to simply sue the rest of the family and hope they settle out of court for a substantial sum.
A prudent gentleman never stiffs his lawyer.
When invading a country, a gentleman makes sure it is the one who is your actual enemy. To attack the wrong nation would be an inexcusable faux pas.
When pretending to be a religious leader in order to gain power and wealth, a sagacious gentleman treats any accusations of fraud and indecency as a direct attack on God by those in league with the devil.
When masquerading as a self-help guru, a gentleman always pretends to care about those who seek his advice. Feigning sincerity is paramount.
When a gentleman is running a crime syndicate, he keeps the sensational murders to a circumspect minimum.
When one's spouse sues for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, a gentleman transfers no more than three-quarters of his wealth to off-shore accounts.
After faking one's own death, a gentleman never moves back to his old neighborhood.
When in possession of compromising information on one's rival, a gentleman takes pains to make it appear as if a third party has made it public.
When a gentleman blackmails another gentleman, he does so anonymously. To do otherwise is to invite prosecution and the resulting stain on one's character.
When fleeing the authorities, a gentleman never leaves a paper trail.
October 20, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 531
If the people who recruit suicide bombers practiced what they preach, that bit of madness would have died off pretty quick.
AND SO THE SECOND IRANIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS...
Irony in revolution? In Iran, a nation held responsible for funding all kinds of terrorists, a suicide bomber struck their elite Revolutionary Guard, killing over 30 people including 5 top Guard commanders. Can't say that came out of nowhere, can they? Iranians have been chafing under their religious nut job government for quite some time and the latest election fraud seems to have been the straw that broke the Mullah's back. Surely the retribution by the Revolutionary Guards will be brutal and over the top, thus fueling the rebellion against the regime.
Unfortunately for the majority of Iranians, who are not religious nut jobs, the people responsible for bombing the religious nut jobs are a new set of religious nut jobs, some bunch of jackasses calling themselves "The Army of God." Great, just what the world needs, another army of God doing devilish things. If the majority of Iranian people don't get involved, they might wind up with something worse than what they've got, maybe a Taliban type of government.
They've already demonstrated poor planning skills in their last revolution when they overthrew the Shah and wound up with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, a bloodthirsty maniac masquerading as a man of God. That evil old fart tried to usher in the 14th century to a modern and sophisticated country, sending the nation's Jews into exile for fear of their lives after living there peacefully for thousands of years, chopping off hands and heads and generally instituting a New Spanish Inquisition, Ayatollah style. He also presided over a 10 year war with Iraq, who wasn't buying his call for revolution in every Muslim nation.
Khomenei finally dropped dead and was immediately deified, but there was still no relief in sight for Iran since he was replaced by another crazy Ayatollah named Ali Khamenei who thought his predecessor's ideas were just peachy. Under his watch Iran has been funding terrorists and trying to become the dominant voice in the Middle East and also the entire Muslim world. Just like Iraq in 1980, there aren't many buyers for turning back the calendar to the Middle Ages and chopping off heads and hands and stoning people to death because it is such good sport.
So if this suicide attack on the Revolutionary Guard is the beginning of a revolution in Iran, their incumbent government will get little sympathy or support from the rest of the world. But pity the people of Iran, who did nothing to deserve any of this. Iran is Persia, as ancient a civilization as there is on this earth, at one time a repository of science, scholarship and cosmopolitan tolerance. After a long decline under a series of Islamic dynasties, in 1925 Reza Khan overthrew the Qajar Dynasty and declared himself Shah. He instituted a system of industrialization, education and railroad construction that set Iran on the path to becoming a modern nation.
Their vast petroleum reserves made them an important and wealthy nation, especially after they wrested their oil industry away from foreign corporations. Kahn's son, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was briefly deposed for opposing this oil industry nationalization, but was reinstated with help from America under Eisenhower, the thinking being that he was the least troublesome of a sorry lot of Iranian leaders. Shah Pahlavi modernized Iraq's infrastructure and expanded education, but like any monarch his rule was strict and autocratic and eventually he had to go. That's where Khomenei came in, making the Shah look like benevolence personified by comparison, and it's been a downhill slide for Iran ever since. Who knows who will replace the savage buffoons running the show there?
There's still Pahlavi's son, Shah the Third, or whatever he calls himself, living in exile and waiting to return to the throne in glory to the cheers of the masses like many an exiled king throughout history, but he's better advised to keep living off the family wealth in playboy/king mode in Maryland where he lives. The time of monarchs is all but over and he probably likes his head to remain attached to his neck instead of rolling across some stadium floor for the entertainment of religious whack jobs. It's not like the Iranian people are looking forward to trading in one despot for another.
Who gets to run Iran after they overthrow the Medieval Mullah is anyone's guess. What is a sure thing, though, is that the Middle East is fulfilling its role in the world, showing us all how not to behave and how not to run a country or interact with a regional community of nations. The tribalism, the undisguised hatred and the callous and cynical misuse of religion has made the area a chaotic wreck for thousands of years. Looks like things are going to get worse (if that's even possible) before they get better in that tortured corner of the world. Let's hope that the Iranian people work to form a tolerant and law-abiding government and seek no vengeance on anyone. Hopefully they will tell the phony God guys that their assistance is not needed, you can go home now, but thanks anyway.
Unfortunately for the majority of Iranians, who are not religious nut jobs, the people responsible for bombing the religious nut jobs are a new set of religious nut jobs, some bunch of jackasses calling themselves "The Army of God." Great, just what the world needs, another army of God doing devilish things. If the majority of Iranian people don't get involved, they might wind up with something worse than what they've got, maybe a Taliban type of government.
They've already demonstrated poor planning skills in their last revolution when they overthrew the Shah and wound up with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, a bloodthirsty maniac masquerading as a man of God. That evil old fart tried to usher in the 14th century to a modern and sophisticated country, sending the nation's Jews into exile for fear of their lives after living there peacefully for thousands of years, chopping off hands and heads and generally instituting a New Spanish Inquisition, Ayatollah style. He also presided over a 10 year war with Iraq, who wasn't buying his call for revolution in every Muslim nation.
Khomenei finally dropped dead and was immediately deified, but there was still no relief in sight for Iran since he was replaced by another crazy Ayatollah named Ali Khamenei who thought his predecessor's ideas were just peachy. Under his watch Iran has been funding terrorists and trying to become the dominant voice in the Middle East and also the entire Muslim world. Just like Iraq in 1980, there aren't many buyers for turning back the calendar to the Middle Ages and chopping off heads and hands and stoning people to death because it is such good sport.
So if this suicide attack on the Revolutionary Guard is the beginning of a revolution in Iran, their incumbent government will get little sympathy or support from the rest of the world. But pity the people of Iran, who did nothing to deserve any of this. Iran is Persia, as ancient a civilization as there is on this earth, at one time a repository of science, scholarship and cosmopolitan tolerance. After a long decline under a series of Islamic dynasties, in 1925 Reza Khan overthrew the Qajar Dynasty and declared himself Shah. He instituted a system of industrialization, education and railroad construction that set Iran on the path to becoming a modern nation.
Their vast petroleum reserves made them an important and wealthy nation, especially after they wrested their oil industry away from foreign corporations. Kahn's son, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was briefly deposed for opposing this oil industry nationalization, but was reinstated with help from America under Eisenhower, the thinking being that he was the least troublesome of a sorry lot of Iranian leaders. Shah Pahlavi modernized Iraq's infrastructure and expanded education, but like any monarch his rule was strict and autocratic and eventually he had to go. That's where Khomenei came in, making the Shah look like benevolence personified by comparison, and it's been a downhill slide for Iran ever since. Who knows who will replace the savage buffoons running the show there?
There's still Pahlavi's son, Shah the Third, or whatever he calls himself, living in exile and waiting to return to the throne in glory to the cheers of the masses like many an exiled king throughout history, but he's better advised to keep living off the family wealth in playboy/king mode in Maryland where he lives. The time of monarchs is all but over and he probably likes his head to remain attached to his neck instead of rolling across some stadium floor for the entertainment of religious whack jobs. It's not like the Iranian people are looking forward to trading in one despot for another.
Who gets to run Iran after they overthrow the Medieval Mullah is anyone's guess. What is a sure thing, though, is that the Middle East is fulfilling its role in the world, showing us all how not to behave and how not to run a country or interact with a regional community of nations. The tribalism, the undisguised hatred and the callous and cynical misuse of religion has made the area a chaotic wreck for thousands of years. Looks like things are going to get worse (if that's even possible) before they get better in that tortured corner of the world. Let's hope that the Iranian people work to form a tolerant and law-abiding government and seek no vengeance on anyone. Hopefully they will tell the phony God guys that their assistance is not needed, you can go home now, but thanks anyway.
October 19, 2009
BASEBALL FOR ALL THE MARBLES
Like Babe Ruth said: "Baseball is not only the best game, it's the only game." And who would know better than The Babe, the man who excelled at both of the main aspects of baseball, pitching and hitting. While he changed the game completely with his unprecedented power hitting, as a young baseball player he was an outstanding pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, winning 20-plus games twice, setting a record for shutouts by a left-handed pitcher that stood for 50 years, and going 3-0 in World Series play with an amazing .087 Earned Run Average in only three and a half seasons as a full-time pitcher. His .671 winning percentage (94-46, 2.28 E.R.A. lifetime) is one of the best marks ever for pitchers with over 100 decisions. Traded to the Yankees in 1920, he became a right fielder and proceeded to change and dominate his sport like no other professional athlete before or since.
Babe Ruth also started the New York Yankees on the road to being the most dominant of all professional teams, winning 26 championships. During his tenure with the Yankees they played in seven World Series, with Ruth hitiing 15 home runs in World Series games, winning four titles, and he left a legacy of excellence and high expectations that has surrounded the team ever since. Now once again the Yankees are playing post-season baseball, during an era of three rounds of playoffs that make it even more difficult for teams to reach, never mind win, the World Series.
The current Yankee team is built for the playoffs, and so far, so good. They swept MInnesota in the Divisional Playoff round and have a 2-0 lead in t=a best-of-seven series against their old nemesis The Los Angeles Angels in the second round, including Saturday night's 4 to 3 victory in a 13-inning nail biter, one of the most excruciatingly intense and well-pitched playoff games in recent memory. They have not been in a World Series since 2003, when they lost in six games to the Florida Marlins. They also lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in seven games in the 2001 World Series. Prior to that time, the Yankees had won four titles in 5 years from 1996 to 2000, making them the greatest baseball dynasty of the playoff era. There are only four holdovers from that team: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte.
These guys were raw kids in their Series-winning years, all showing poise and baseball knowledge beyond their years and flourishing under the steady hand of manager Joe Torre. Torre now manages the Los Angeles Dodgers who are fighting for the National League Pennant for what would be a dream World Series match up if the Yankees and Dodgers make it out of the second round. Jeter, Rivera, Posada and Pettitte are now in their mid to late thirties, yet are all somehow still performing at incredibly high levels, having turned in seasons that compare with their best. Joining them on the big stage are Alex Rodriguez, the world's best baseball player but one with no World Series rings, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon, Melke Cabrera, Phil Gardner, the veteran professional hitter Hideki Matsui and newcomers Mark Texiera and Nick Swisher.
Having lost Chien-Ming Wang, their best pitcher, to injury, the Yankees re-signed Pettitte and lured top pitching free agents C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, who have proven to be stars that can pitch under the white hot spotlight that is Yankee Stadium at playoff time. A new Yankee Stadium, by the way, replacing the House That Ruth Built across the street. Their manager, former Yankee catcher and World Series star Joe Girardi, is under pressure to deliver a championship since missing the playoffs last year in his first year as Yankee skipper, the first time in 13 years the Yanks failed to make the playoffs. He has been a good manager, guiding them to 103 wins, the best record in baseball n 2009.
Girardi is running the team his own way in the playoffs, adding speed with bench players who can pinch run, steal bases and cover extra ground in the outfield in late innings, courageously using only a 3-man starting pitching rotation, leaving the young Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen where he has enjoyed his greatest success after 2 years of being jerked around by the front office as to whether he would be a starter or a reliever. It is to Girardi's credit that the kid hasn't gone nuts and has proven to be a great reliever in the pressure of the playoffs so far. Both he and young Phil Hughes have been outstanding, and so have the rest of the relievers. As far as the professional, crisp and winning baseball Girardi's team is playing, he can thank the four holdovers from the recent glory years for their leadership by example. No one works harder than these four to stay in top shape and mentally prepare themselves for any situation that might arise.
The Team Captain, Derek Jeter, has always been a clutch performer, always raising his level of intensity and achievement in the playoffs. The Great Mariano Rivera, as he is called these days, is a model of consistency and poise that has made him the best closing pitcher in the history of the game, and if possible he gets even better in the playoffs, as attested by his miniscule .074 playoff E.R.A. Posada is all passion and fire, while Pettitte is a shrewd old master pitcher who finds a way to get great hitters out and keep his team in the game. These playoffs have so far been as good as baseball gets, with the best players at the top of their games finding one more way to win, one more clutch hit or strikeout or dramatic fielding play. Let's hope the new Yankee Stadium gets christened with a championship. The Babe wouldn't want it any other way.
Babe Ruth also started the New York Yankees on the road to being the most dominant of all professional teams, winning 26 championships. During his tenure with the Yankees they played in seven World Series, with Ruth hitiing 15 home runs in World Series games, winning four titles, and he left a legacy of excellence and high expectations that has surrounded the team ever since. Now once again the Yankees are playing post-season baseball, during an era of three rounds of playoffs that make it even more difficult for teams to reach, never mind win, the World Series.
The current Yankee team is built for the playoffs, and so far, so good. They swept MInnesota in the Divisional Playoff round and have a 2-0 lead in t=a best-of-seven series against their old nemesis The Los Angeles Angels in the second round, including Saturday night's 4 to 3 victory in a 13-inning nail biter, one of the most excruciatingly intense and well-pitched playoff games in recent memory. They have not been in a World Series since 2003, when they lost in six games to the Florida Marlins. They also lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in seven games in the 2001 World Series. Prior to that time, the Yankees had won four titles in 5 years from 1996 to 2000, making them the greatest baseball dynasty of the playoff era. There are only four holdovers from that team: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte.
These guys were raw kids in their Series-winning years, all showing poise and baseball knowledge beyond their years and flourishing under the steady hand of manager Joe Torre. Torre now manages the Los Angeles Dodgers who are fighting for the National League Pennant for what would be a dream World Series match up if the Yankees and Dodgers make it out of the second round. Jeter, Rivera, Posada and Pettitte are now in their mid to late thirties, yet are all somehow still performing at incredibly high levels, having turned in seasons that compare with their best. Joining them on the big stage are Alex Rodriguez, the world's best baseball player but one with no World Series rings, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon, Melke Cabrera, Phil Gardner, the veteran professional hitter Hideki Matsui and newcomers Mark Texiera and Nick Swisher.
Having lost Chien-Ming Wang, their best pitcher, to injury, the Yankees re-signed Pettitte and lured top pitching free agents C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, who have proven to be stars that can pitch under the white hot spotlight that is Yankee Stadium at playoff time. A new Yankee Stadium, by the way, replacing the House That Ruth Built across the street. Their manager, former Yankee catcher and World Series star Joe Girardi, is under pressure to deliver a championship since missing the playoffs last year in his first year as Yankee skipper, the first time in 13 years the Yanks failed to make the playoffs. He has been a good manager, guiding them to 103 wins, the best record in baseball n 2009.
Girardi is running the team his own way in the playoffs, adding speed with bench players who can pinch run, steal bases and cover extra ground in the outfield in late innings, courageously using only a 3-man starting pitching rotation, leaving the young Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen where he has enjoyed his greatest success after 2 years of being jerked around by the front office as to whether he would be a starter or a reliever. It is to Girardi's credit that the kid hasn't gone nuts and has proven to be a great reliever in the pressure of the playoffs so far. Both he and young Phil Hughes have been outstanding, and so have the rest of the relievers. As far as the professional, crisp and winning baseball Girardi's team is playing, he can thank the four holdovers from the recent glory years for their leadership by example. No one works harder than these four to stay in top shape and mentally prepare themselves for any situation that might arise.
The Team Captain, Derek Jeter, has always been a clutch performer, always raising his level of intensity and achievement in the playoffs. The Great Mariano Rivera, as he is called these days, is a model of consistency and poise that has made him the best closing pitcher in the history of the game, and if possible he gets even better in the playoffs, as attested by his miniscule .074 playoff E.R.A. Posada is all passion and fire, while Pettitte is a shrewd old master pitcher who finds a way to get great hitters out and keep his team in the game. These playoffs have so far been as good as baseball gets, with the best players at the top of their games finding one more way to win, one more clutch hit or strikeout or dramatic fielding play. Let's hope the new Yankee Stadium gets christened with a championship. The Babe wouldn't want it any other way.
October 18, 2009
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 529
Instead of a better mousetrap, invent a better mouse. That might be a pretty silly thing to do, but it will give everybody something to think about.
WHAT WOULD GLEN BECK DO? AND OTHER RIDICULOUS PEOPLE...
So, now that Glen Beck has been on the cover of Time Magazine, let's review his accomplishments. Hmm... let's see... okay... there's that... then there's... and also... adding up to ... nothing! There, that was easy, eh? Great, just what America needs, another guy famous for being famous. While his admirers praise him for being a champion of conservative causes, true conservatives cringe at the thought of being represented by a blubbering ignoramus who uses lying and crying as his main oratorical weapons. A man not handicapped with a brilliant intellect, he has risen to highest ranks among that new breed of American celebrities, Ridiculous People.
Glen Beck is not our first Ridiculous Person to rise to fame in spite of his glaring lack of brains, talent or ideas, but he is the most recent. Drawing his inspiration from other know-nothing lying blowhards like Bull O'Really and Crush Limburger, he added the twist of being able to cry at will, a truly odd thing from a supposed political commentator, and an act that makes him compelling in a creepy/funny way. To his credit, though, that bit of histrionics did earn him the cover of Time Magazine, so he must be worth something. At least that's the wishful thinking on Ridiculous People, that there is some underlying reason other than their complete foolishness for their fame. But, like most wishful thinking, there is no reality behind that thought.
Take Paris Hilton, for example, the perfect complement to the Bush The Younger years. Who better to reflect the utter insanity of having a really stupid president than a really stupid celebrity? Ms. Hilton has defined the phenomenon of being famous for being famous and has gone to great lengths to prove to her adoring public that she is indeed unworthy of any admiration at all. She has no wit, no talent and no interest in anything that means anything to anybody. Just like the president under whom she rose to world-wide acclaim for... that is... her, uh... existence. She went our Ridiculous Person President one better by not even pretending to be a Regular Person, content to be as ridiculous and trivial as is humanly possible.
Too bad Bush The Younger, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah, Geraldo Rivera and all our other Ridiculous People didn't take a better cue from Paris Hilton and stop pretending to be anything other than ridiculous human beings. Ms. Hilton instinctively knows that this is America, where we have the right to be, or not to be, anything we choose. In that sense Paris Hilton is the Perfect Ridiculous Person, demanding no credit for anything else, a true pioneer. What the Glen Becks of this world don't get is that it is enough to be Perfectly Ridiculous in and of itself and any ambitions above that are superfluous, going completely against the grain of Ridiculoushood.
If you are a Ridiculous Person, well, Americans will take you into their bosom and cherish your existence. They just won't take you all that seriously. And why should they? You're a Ridiculous Person! You are there for our amusement. You are not a leader, or a thinker or or a shaper of public opinion. You are Carrot Top in a suit. And as Bush The Younger has proven, you can even become a Ridiculous President. Twice, no less! To ask to be taken seriously by anyone other than your fellow Ridiculous People is to miss the point entirely. If that's what you want, you need to become a Serious Person, or at least a Regular Person, and that's too much work and involves too much brain-busting thought for a Ridiculous Person.
And the achievements of Serious People are not always recognized or appreciated, while the lack of contributions by Ridiculous People make them instant legends. Look at Bush The Younger. With his lack of brains and inability to speak coherently, he would have been an abysmal failure as a Serious Person, never mind being a Serious President. He wisely chose to go with his (lack of) strengths and will go down in history as the worst president ever and into any possible future, right up there in the fame department with Lincoln, FDR or George Washington, without all that bothersome hard work and mentally challenging intellectual credentials. More people know who Paris Hilton is than any serious or talented woman anywhere, again without having to study a damned thing, hone any talent or craft or formulate any cohesive thoughts at all beyond one's own personal desires.
So, Ridiculous People, embrace your uselessness, celebrate your stupidity and stroke your own gargantuan egos to your hearts' content. America loves you just the way you are. Please don't ruin it by demanding to be taken seriously. Twitter the world that you are on an elevator, make pompous assertions based on nothing more than the sugarplums in your head and continue to be as clueless and mentally lazy as you can be. You have been given the rare privilege of being America's darlings for no discernible reason. Don't upset the apple cart or we will move on the the next Ridiculous Person to adore. There's plenty more where you came from and odds are they won't bite the hand that feeds them by going all Glen Beck on us, pretending to be something else.
Glen Beck is not our first Ridiculous Person to rise to fame in spite of his glaring lack of brains, talent or ideas, but he is the most recent. Drawing his inspiration from other know-nothing lying blowhards like Bull O'Really and Crush Limburger, he added the twist of being able to cry at will, a truly odd thing from a supposed political commentator, and an act that makes him compelling in a creepy/funny way. To his credit, though, that bit of histrionics did earn him the cover of Time Magazine, so he must be worth something. At least that's the wishful thinking on Ridiculous People, that there is some underlying reason other than their complete foolishness for their fame. But, like most wishful thinking, there is no reality behind that thought.
Take Paris Hilton, for example, the perfect complement to the Bush The Younger years. Who better to reflect the utter insanity of having a really stupid president than a really stupid celebrity? Ms. Hilton has defined the phenomenon of being famous for being famous and has gone to great lengths to prove to her adoring public that she is indeed unworthy of any admiration at all. She has no wit, no talent and no interest in anything that means anything to anybody. Just like the president under whom she rose to world-wide acclaim for... that is... her, uh... existence. She went our Ridiculous Person President one better by not even pretending to be a Regular Person, content to be as ridiculous and trivial as is humanly possible.
Too bad Bush The Younger, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah, Geraldo Rivera and all our other Ridiculous People didn't take a better cue from Paris Hilton and stop pretending to be anything other than ridiculous human beings. Ms. Hilton instinctively knows that this is America, where we have the right to be, or not to be, anything we choose. In that sense Paris Hilton is the Perfect Ridiculous Person, demanding no credit for anything else, a true pioneer. What the Glen Becks of this world don't get is that it is enough to be Perfectly Ridiculous in and of itself and any ambitions above that are superfluous, going completely against the grain of Ridiculoushood.
If you are a Ridiculous Person, well, Americans will take you into their bosom and cherish your existence. They just won't take you all that seriously. And why should they? You're a Ridiculous Person! You are there for our amusement. You are not a leader, or a thinker or or a shaper of public opinion. You are Carrot Top in a suit. And as Bush The Younger has proven, you can even become a Ridiculous President. Twice, no less! To ask to be taken seriously by anyone other than your fellow Ridiculous People is to miss the point entirely. If that's what you want, you need to become a Serious Person, or at least a Regular Person, and that's too much work and involves too much brain-busting thought for a Ridiculous Person.
And the achievements of Serious People are not always recognized or appreciated, while the lack of contributions by Ridiculous People make them instant legends. Look at Bush The Younger. With his lack of brains and inability to speak coherently, he would have been an abysmal failure as a Serious Person, never mind being a Serious President. He wisely chose to go with his (lack of) strengths and will go down in history as the worst president ever and into any possible future, right up there in the fame department with Lincoln, FDR or George Washington, without all that bothersome hard work and mentally challenging intellectual credentials. More people know who Paris Hilton is than any serious or talented woman anywhere, again without having to study a damned thing, hone any talent or craft or formulate any cohesive thoughts at all beyond one's own personal desires.
So, Ridiculous People, embrace your uselessness, celebrate your stupidity and stroke your own gargantuan egos to your hearts' content. America loves you just the way you are. Please don't ruin it by demanding to be taken seriously. Twitter the world that you are on an elevator, make pompous assertions based on nothing more than the sugarplums in your head and continue to be as clueless and mentally lazy as you can be. You have been given the rare privilege of being America's darlings for no discernible reason. Don't upset the apple cart or we will move on the the next Ridiculous Person to adore. There's plenty more where you came from and odds are they won't bite the hand that feeds them by going all Glen Beck on us, pretending to be something else.
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