I just can't watch. . . .

“But barring astoundingly self-defeating behavior by Democrats, a decent bill will get to Obama's desk." So said E.J. Dionne a few days ago predicting a health-care reform bill would pass, and so quoted I a few entries back. But, I added, never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to engage in astoundingly self-defeating behavior.

Which, of course, is exactly what they're doing. Republicans have completely opted out of any discussion, so if the crazies want to get heard, they have to find forty or so blue-dog Democrats who have nothing better to do than to howl at the moon and call it music. In this case, they have two demands: no federal health-care dollars can go to illegal immigrants, and no tax dollars can go toward abortion.

Simple enough. Write that into the bill, but then exactly how are you going to enforce it? The Blue Dems don’t say, except basically anything you can come up with isn’t good enough. Simply writing these restrictions into the bill doesn’t even start to cover it. How do we know Jose’ is really a citizen, even if he was born in Pasadena and went to Harvard? The looney right doesn’t even believe the President is a citizen since his father was born in Kenya and he was born in Hawaii.

This only makes him a citizen of Kenyawaii.

And it’s not enough to say any public-option plan can’t cover abortions; any private health plan that has any publicly subsidized enrollees can’t either.

Why stop there? Why not prohibit private individuals from paying for their own abortions if they are unemployed and collecting insurance, or getting disability, or in the military, or working for an agency that has a government contract? Those are tax dollars they’re spending, and if they want to spend them to kill babies, they need to give them back and start standing at the exit to Wal-Mart with a “Need abortion, Please help” sign.

Or they could just get a job at Wal-Mart, since they probably won’t ever get health coverage there either.

Despite all this craziness, the Dems still probably have the votes to pass a bill this weekend, especially if Obama will come on down to the hill and meet with some Dems who are still sitting on the fence. Which is exactly what he was going to do until the tragic shootings at Food Hood, Texas, so now he’s not.

Huh?

Huh?!

Really, I just can’t watch anymore. I’m going back to my cartoons. Let me know how it all turns out.

Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu

Nation,

I’m no fan of South Park, but when a cartoon show for twenty-somethings devotes an entire episode to bashing Harley riders, I have to say “Tip of the Hat.”

You can see it here:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/251889/

(btw, I don't know why blogger isn't letting me paste in hot links anymore, but it's not. You can, of course, get there from here by copying the link and pasting it into your browser. Meanwhile, I'll have my crack team of tech-savvy interns get on this problem.)

(Next) Monday night at the movies

Here's the announcement for the next Monday Night at the Movies film at the local Ross Ragland Theater. I like the note at the end about submitting questions in advance, which at first seems rather ridiculous but then you have to consider some of the questions you get otherwise. I'll probably go.

Skye Borgman is yet another Klamath Falls native who is making it in da movies. Prior guests included directors James Ivory and Chris Eyre. There's no accounting for a jerkwater town like this producing such talent. Unless there is.

("Jerkwater": adj. Informal
1. Remote, small, and insignificant: a jerkwater town.
2. Contemptibly trivial: jerkwater notions.

From jerkwater, a branch-line train, so called because its small boiler had to be refilled often, requiring train crews to "jerk" or draw water from streams.]

**********

Monday Night at the Movies Presents Junk Dreams
With Cinematographer Skye Borgman
Monday, November 9th, at 7 p.m.
Click here to watch the film trailer!

The Ragland presents Junk Dreams, with introduction and lecture by Cinematographer Skye Borgman, Monday, November 9th, at 7 p.m., as part of the theater's Monday Night At The Movies free film series.

Junk Dreams is a documentary adventure that chronicles one magical journey of two ageless brothers. Ernie and Charlie Borgman board a 29 foot Chinese Junk and set sail for a 1,500 mile journey from Port Hadlock, Washington to Valdez, Alaska. The two and a half month adventure takes them along the Canadian and Alaskan coast and into the icy waters of the Gulf of Alaska. Through torrents of rain and raging waters, engine troubles and broken masts ... the two men come face to face with adventure, their true fountain of youth. This is a documentary about family. It is a story of passing along the passion for life for our children. It is a story of aging but never growing old.

Skye Borgman was born in Alaska, raised in Oregon and is a Klamath Union High School graduate. She moved to Los Angeles in 2000 with the intention of fusing photography, travel and momentum. She received her MFA from USC's Film Production program and has been working as a cinematographer, on both narrative and documentary films, ever since.

To help The Ragland shape and define the pre-screening lecture and post-screening question and answer session, please submit your questions and comments on the following film topics and themes to media@rrtheater.org before the screening on November 9th.

1. Family bonds
2. Passing along passion for life to our children
3. Aging but never growing old

Another thing I never thought I'd see in my lifetime, except for awhile there

Predictions about the chances for health-care reform have all been mostly off the mark for the last few months or so, which is one reason why I haven’t had anything to say about it recently. But E. J. Dionne today makes a remarkably sure prediction:

“But barring astoundingly self-defeating behavior by Democrats, a decent bill will get to Obama's desk. He and his party will then own the most sweeping reform of the American social safety net since the passage of Medicare in the 1960s and, arguably, Social Security in the 1930s.” He goes on to list all of the immediate benefits that will be implemented, as well as the more sweeping reforms that will begin in 2013.

You can read him here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110101703.html?wpisrc=newsletter

You can never count out astoundingly self-defeating behavior by Democrats, but the momentum favors Dionne’s prediction, and if he’s right, my head will probably explode. Imagine: The United States might finally rise to the level of, say, Cuba, in its availability of good-quality and affordable health care for everyone.

As Ma says in the Faulkner novel As I Lay Dying, “Thy will be done. Now I can get them teeth.”

About motorcycles

The November Harper’s Magazine has an interesting memoir by poet Frederick Seidel entitled “About Motorcycles.” Identified as a “Memoir,” I had trouble believing it was entirely or even mostly true. I thought it might be some kind of rider’s fantasy disguised as autobiography. Among other things, Seidel claims that two different factories, MV Agusta and Ducati, prepared one-off street legal versions of their Moto-GP race bikes for his personal collection. Completely unlikely, especially since he describes the Agusta as a shaft drive for some reason. So far as I know, only BMW ever fielded shaft drive racing motorcycles.

Also dubious is the list of who’s who in motorcycle racing that he describes as personal friends or close acquaintences, including Agusta’s and Ducati’s factory owners, top designers, and team managers. Plus a couple of the world’s most beautiful movie stars.

But it seems likely the whole thing is true. Wikipedia provides this bit of information: “Seidel is independently wealthy-- that is to say, he inherited rather than earned his personal fortune-- and is fascinated by Ducati motorcycles, of which he owns four.”

As a reminiscence about a lifelong love of motorcycles, I don’t find it to be all that compelling and would recommend instead The Perfect Vehicle: What It is about Motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. A girl who loves her MotoGuzzi: talk about unlikely!

Still, if you’re a rider and have an extra $6.95, you should probably pick up the November Harper’s, or just stop by and borrow mine.

Funny numbers

Conservative columnist and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol (who is now going as Bill) should not be confused with comedian Billy Crystal, even though they look a lot alike.


Bill


Billy







What are these guys, twins?

Kristol (the conservative) takes comfort in some recent poll numbers: “The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public's conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.”

So you might see this as an indication that Republicans will enjoy twice the support in coming elections that Democrats will, until you think for a minute about the 36 percent who self-describe as moderate. How much room for them is there in today’s Republican party?

Not much. Maybe not any. In what would otherwise be an obscure little congressional special election in New York, a moderate Republican actually managed to win the primary, which has now resulted in a Conservative Party challenger who has the backing of Sarah Palin, among other Republican notables. Kristol seems to things that’s okay: “A liberal Republican anointed by the GOP establishment for the special congressional election in Upstate New York will probably run third, behind the conservative Republican running on the Conservative Party line, who may in fact win.”

But if I were the non-comedian Bill, I think I’d be less comfortable with my own numbers and observations. “When asked how much confidence they had in congressional Republicans to make the right decisions for the country's future, only 19 percent of respondents expressed much confidence in the GOP -- well behind the confidence levels in congressional Democrats (34 percent) and Obama (49 percent).”

And I’d be downright worried about the cast of characters serious Bill points to as the leaders and worker bees of the New Republican Party: “The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.”

Expect Republicans to pick up seats in the off-year congressional elections, as the minority party always does. How many they pick up will probably depend on how far they can reach beyond their base and draw in moderate voters.

If Kristol’s observations are correct, it might not be good news for the Grand Old Party and no laughing matter for moderate Republicans.

For a good laugh, I'd recommend Billy's When Harry Met Sally and especially City Slickers.

RIP Soupy Sales

"Soupy Sales (January 8, 1926 – October 22, 2009)[2] was an American comedian, actor, radio-TV personality and host, and jazz aficionado."

(Wikipedia)

Even his Wikipedia entry is good for some laughs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales

As noted, he was also a jazz aficionado and worked a lot of music into his shows.

I was a huge fan of Soupy as a kid. It saddens me to learn he's no longer with us. I'm moving this to the top of my Netflix queue:

http://www.netflix.com/Search?v1=The%20Soupy%20Sales%20Collection&lnkce=acsEnhCk

And now, a pie in the face for God.

Last ride

On Friday, I leave for my motorcycle club’s annual Hardy Souls campout, held outside the town of Seneca in the Northeast mountains of Oregon. Seneca has the distinction of having the lowest temperature ever recorded in Oregon, minus 54 degrees in February, 1933. This is late October, not February, and by all the old-timers’ accounts, the winters just aren’t what they used to be. Still, in past events we’ve seen morning temperatures in the low teens, and it’s one thing to stiffly crawl out of a tent when the very ground around you is frozen hard; it’s quite another to pull on freezing clothes, get on a motorcycle, and start the long ride back home, never mind the frost on the road.

Still, it’s a grand event and one I wouldn’t miss, not just yet anyway. Last year, I was only a few weeks out of prostrate surgery, so I made the concession of going by car, for which I was richly ridiculed. This year I’ll be on my new-to-me 2006 Suzuki V-Strom, a bike built more for comfort than for speed and itself a concession to age and comfort I wouldn’t have considered even a few years ago.

But temperatures are forecast to fall only into the upper twenties with daytime temperatures approaching sixty, and already I’m making a mental list of the things I’ll take along for comfort. With the increased luggage capacity of the new bike, I’ll include a small French press and a bag of Starbuck’s so I won’t have to go from tent to tent with my begging mug and rely on the kindness of friends I’ve known for over twenty years.

Fresh hot coffee and a new bike aren’t the only concessions I’ll make for comfort. You learn a lot from experience when you travel by motorcycle for twenty-five years. In cold weather, I carry two sleeping bags, and depending on temperature, I’ll nest one inside the other or use one as a comforter. It gets cold enough inside the tent for your breath to freeze on the inside, but as long as I stay covered up, I’m deliciously warm.

For years, all my bikes have had electric grips, which keep hands from going numb and even developing frostbite, if not exactly warm and comfy. Also, I wear an electric vest which plugs into the bike’s electrical system. Again, when it’s below freezing there’s no sensation of actual warmth with these, just suffienct heat to keep your core warm enough to ward off hypothermia. The not-too recent development of toe warmers, little charcoal bags that somehow react to oxygen and toe jam, provide enough heat that toes only get cold and not downright painful.

Imagine sitting on a seat hard as a board, in twenty-degree weather and with a 70 mile-per-hour wind, and you can see that the best that can be hoped for is to be able to keep riding.

So why bother going out when I know the best I can do is to somewhat mitigate my misery? That’s hard to explain to people who don’t ride, but there’s something that-much-more exciting about beating the elements and heading out on a trip long after most riders have winterized their bikes and are home watching NASCAR. And life in camp is good. Our hosts Ed and Ellen Barton bring their truck with a hefty load of firewood and the makings of Ellen’s famous freeze-ass chili. Bjorn Klingenberg brings his vintage hand-cranked Victrola and a stack of rare and wonderful 78s featuring original recordings of World War Two-era big bands. And I get to meet and joke around with this eclectic mix of friends I’ve known for over two decades, many of them at least a few years older than me and, like me, determined to scratch out one more ride in the beautiful fall colors of the Oregon high country before the snow settles in and we have to settle for spiced cider around the fire at home.

So I can’t wait for Friday morning. When the sun gets high enough and temperatures rise into the forties and even fifties, there's no better feeling than riding fast through some of the most beautiful scenery in the West.

I think a lot recently about how much longer I’ll be able to do this. I have many friends who still ride in their sixties. Only a few still ride in their seventies, so sometime over the next few years, I’ll likely reach a point where age and good sense tell me that this part of my life is over, that this pleasure belongs to younger men. Anticipatory grief, my friend John calls it. John's a psychologist and knows about these things.

For now and for as many more years as I can still throw a leg over, I plan to keep the real grief at bay.

¡Fiesta más fina!

PBS just ran a two-hour special, Latin Music USA, that was very informative but pretty much doomed by the broad topic and brief run-time. In two hours, the most they could do was introduce a few leading characters and offer only the briefest clips of their music. Thus, Dizzy Gillespie gets his rightful mention but we only hear him play a few notes. His Cuban protégé Arturo Sandoval gets considerably more time talking about what a great influence Dizzy was.

Too bad. When he was on, no one could play trumpet like Diz. No one.

Still, it’s a show worth watching if you love Latin music as I do, and I’m sure it will repeat.

And now, coming up tomorrow night (Thursday) also on PBS, a broadcast of the White House concert in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, a “Fiesta Latina.” Marc Anthony headlines, with appearances by Los Lobos, Jose Feliciano, and many more.

I first saw Anthony in a Paul Simon tribute concert when he sang Simon’s Latin-infused hit “Late in the Evening”:

“Then I learned to play some lead guitar, I was underage in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a j.
When I come back to the room, everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play.

It was late in the evening, and I blew that room away.”

And did he ever. Then I saw him in El Cantante, the Hector Lavoe bio-pic where he proved that he could act as well.

A highlight from the White House concert, previewed on Youtube clips, is the First Family all dancing on stage. I guess they got the idea from Tom Delay doing the cha-cha on Dancing with the Stars. The President has the better moves and looks way less gay.

This should be a terrific concert.

Curious George

George Will today heaps scorn on Michelle and Barack Obama, not for going to Copenhagen to promote Chicago for the Olympics, but for talking too much about themselves and for using cliches. He counts the number of personal pronouns in each speech, gives an example or two of a tired chestnut, and declares, "Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance." His stunning conclusion: The president is vain.

In his short speech, Obama begins with a little personal narrative about how he came to Chicago. He continues:

"Chicago is a place where we strive to celebrate what makes us different just as we celebrate what we have in common. It's a place where our unity is on colorful display at so many festivals and parades, and especially sporting events, where perfect strangers become fast friends just because they're wearing the same jersey. It's a city that works -- from its first World's Fair more than a century ago to the World Cup we hosted in the nineties, we know how to put on big events. And scores of visitors and spectators will tell you that we do it well.

"Chicago is a city where the practical and the inspirational exist in harmony; where visionaries who made no small plans rebuilt after a great fire and taught the world to reach new heights. It's a bustling metropolis with the warmth of a small town; where the world already comes together every day to live and work and reach for a dream -- a dream that no matter who we are, where we come from; no matter what we look like or what hand life has dealt us; with hard work, and discipline, and dedication, we can make it if we try.

"That's not just the American Dream. That is the Olympic spirit. It's the essence of the Olympic spirit. That's why we see so much of ourselves in these Games. That's why we want them in Chicago. That's why we want them in America."

Not a bad pitch, I'd say. Not a single personal pronoun for three paragraphs. But what about the cliche's? Obama, Will says, makes use of "the foggy sentimentalism of standard Olympics blather." Best to stay clear of any mention of the Olympic spirit or the character-building properties of sport.

So Will's two charges are that the president is vain and uses cliches. The horror! When can we get back to the humble presidents who have led and defined America, and who invariably spoke in strikingly original language about our values, destiny, and national character?

Will has an extended list of just those very presidents, let's see, around here somewhere, but he doesn't happen to mention any just now. And failing to give credit where credit's due, he doesn't even mention that the president was not wearing blue jeans.

Anyway, I'm on the Olympic Committee and I'm looking at Chicago/Rio... Chicago/ Rio... Chicago/Rio...

Hmmmm. . .

Ya know, I think we're going to Rio!

Our word for today

unc·tu·ous
adj.

1. Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness: "the unctuous, complacent court composer who is consumed with envy and self-loathing" (Rhoda Koenig).
2. Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.

3. Containing or composed of oil or fat.

4. Abundant in organic materials; soft and rich: unctuous soil.

5. Diane Sawyer, television news personality, who is about to take over as anchor of the ABC Nightly News upon the retirement of Charles Gibson at the end of this year.

This leaves only one network news program, NBC and its host Brian Williams, which hasn’t gone over completely to a soft-news orientation. Props (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) to Katie Couric for what passed as tough questions in her interview with Sarah Palin when other networks were playing paddy cake, but that was the exception for Couric. Asking Palin to "name one" newspaper or magazine she read regularly (she couldn't) earned Couric the enmity of the right, but didn't qualify her as a great journalist.

Sawyer seems to want to conclude every interview with a nice big hug, and her choice to anchor at ABC signals the near death of television news in favor of info-tainment. Along with the near death of daily newspapers, it all seems to signal the end of responsible journalism. The thought of Fox News and the the internet as our only remaining sources of information is truly frightening.

Of interest is today’s column by Michael Gerson, available here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092403932.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Essential viewing

Since we reconnected to cable TV last winter, I haven’t been watching much PBS, which we used to get off of our antennae. Too bad. I just got in the mail the PBS Home Video catalogue, and it reminded me that Ken Burns’ series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea begins this Sunday. I’ve set my DVR to record the series.

The catalogue also reminded me of the Frontline documentary "Sick Around the World," in which journalist J.R. Reid “visits six capitalist democracies—France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom—for their ideas about medicine and its delivery to the public. . . .” I watched this program some time ago, well before the election and Obama’s health care initiative, and it made a profound impression on me, convincing me that designing a universal health care system that would best serve American needs really isn’t all that complicated. A well-chosen Blue Ribbon Panel, with a modest budget and competent staff, could do it in a year, as I’ve argued here earlier.

I’d like to order the video and make Congress all watch it together, with no Blackberries, twittering or naps allowed, and then vote yes on the panel’s recommendation within one year or lose their own health insurance. Since I can’t do that, I’ll only say here that I strongly recommend seeing it, and you can order it for $25 from shopPBS.org. I’m going to order the companion "Sick Around America," which I haven’t seen yet and which I expect will be less encouraging.

Btw, I’ve just noticed that my spell check in the new version of Word wants to change Obama to Osama. NOW I understand why people are getting so confused.

Eh?

My friend Michael Broschat has a very interesting post on his recent Canadian vacation. All I could come up with about ours was "we seen a bear."

I’ve long thought Canada was a much more reasonable country than ours because it lacks our inflated sense of ourselves and our role and responsibilities in the world. Broschat and I were discussing Graham Greene’s The Quiet American recently, a very fine narrative of just the kind of thing I’m talking about. American history might be understood at least in part as the unintended and mostly negative consequences of our sense of our moral selves.

Also greed, but still.

I’ve long thought the world would be a better place if the North had simply allowed the South to secede. I wonder if there was ever any serious discussion of that option. In fact, it may not be too late. At no time since the civil war have we been so divided into red and blue states, and the best solution could be the two-state solution: The red states can realize their dream of small government and legalized discrimination, and the blue states can quickly evolve toward a European-style social democracy. Those who find themselves geographically and ideologically misplaced could just move.

Anyway, Broschat's post is much more interesting and thoughtful than mine, and you can read it here: http://www.michaelbroschat.com/MontlakeBlog/DisplayBlog.aspx

Stoopid hurts

I knew these were Harley riders despite the misleading club name.

2 dozen motorcycles crash on I-5 in Ore.(AP) – 15 hours ago

“WILSONVILLE, Ore. — Oregon State Police say more than two dozen motorcycles, most of them belonging to the Brother Speed motorcycle club, crashed on Interstate 5 on Friday afternoon, blocking freeway traffic for hours.Police say the bikers were behind a car when traffic slowed in the northbound lanes near Wilsonville, south of Portland.They say the bikers and car tried to slow but collided, scattering bikes across the pavement.

The Oregonian in Portland reports that two bikers with critical injuries were flown to Portland hospitals by helicopter. Rescue personnel say seven others were treated for shoulder and hip injuries and broken bones.The freeway reopened about 6 p.m., nearly four hours after the accident.”

Want some pictures? http://www.kptv.com/slideshow/traffic/20997318/detail.html

Want to see a video from the club’s website?

http://www.brotherspeedmcoregon.com/content/brothers-speed-videos

Here's more. I'm following this story via an online motorcycle forum, where 9 out of 10 posts are conspicuously lacking in any kind of sympathy for the "victims."

From the Oregon Department of Justice

Brother Speed MCEstablished: May 1969 in Boise, Idaho, United StatesYears active: 1969-present
Territory: Northwestern United States
Ethnicity: WhiteMembership: 150 full-patch members
Criminal activities: Drug trafficking, arms dealing, extortion and money laundering
Allies: Free Souls, Gypsy Jokers and Outsiders
Rivals: Mongols and Vagos

Suppost you had to go to the DMV for a flu shot. . . .

I’m so glad Mary and I have private insurance and don’t have some government bureaucrat standing between us and our doctors, telling us which procedures and medicines we can have and which we can’t. (And here I swore off sarcasm for the rest of the year and lasted less than a day.)

A few days ago we each got a letter from our insurance company explaining to us that a number of medications have been placed on a list of meds to be reviewed, and before we can renew the next time, our prescribing physicians have to contact the insurance company and justify why we need this med, why we should continue this med, why a cheaper alternative wouldn’t work just as well, and what would happen if all of a sudden we stopped taking it. The list of meds for review numbers in the hundreds according to the company’s website.

This already happened just a year ago, and our family doctor almost had a stroke he was so angry and frustrated. He had scores of patients (four score and seven, to be exact) who got the letters, and he had to cancel all appointments for a month while he wrote letters to the insurance company arguing that he got it right the first time when he prescribed a specific med for a specific condition. He also had to cut back on his golf games.

This year, I am informed the insurance company is going to review a med I’ve been on for about five years now, one that, let’s say, has substantially improved my quality of life. Without revealing a lot of personal information, let’s also say that without this medicine I turn into a vampire, and stopping it or substituting a cheaper alternative would not be in my best interests or those of society. Mary’s target med prevents certain plagues and back hair. It might be considered cosmetic.

The thing is, despite all the hassle for our doctors, I support this kind of periodic cost/benefit review. It’s an important component of keeping medical costs down, and it ensures that I still need all these prescriptions I take. Maybe chocolate pudding no longer triggers my hallucinations. Maybe you don't need that codein that the doctor prescribed six years ago for your toothache.

The problem is that the four score and twenty separate insurance companies in Oregon each have their own list of meds for review, and rather than being a once annual, or bi-annual or semi-annual, routine chore, it’s a never-ending process in the doctor’s office. Novak might have to give up not only golf but also martini lunches.

Of course, if this were a requirement in a public-option health plan, Republican lawmakers and their lunatic fringe town-hall bashing unwashed psycho mobs would be screaming about the evils of socialized medicine. But since it’s my private insurance company, all this will pass without comment or discussion in the media.

Because America still has the best health care system in the world. (There I go again.)

And btw, I almost never have to go to the DMV anymore since almost all their business can now be done online. This is not necessarily a good thing, since at my age, it's important to determine that I can at least still find the DMV and drive there without running over a child. Be that as it may, the few times I've actually had to stop by in recent years, I took a number, waited a few minutes, and was helped by a courteous and efficient staff member.

I don't know what all the fuss is about the DMV as a bad example of what would happen to virtually all services once Obama has his way and we turn into a Nazi/Socialist/Communist nation. The DMV has been more or less a pleasure to visit, way more pleasant than a visit to my family medical clinic, where taking a number might be considered to imply I might actually get back to see the doctor that day and where, literally, sooner or later, they will have me by the balls.

Let's also add. . . .

Matt Miller, who said: "Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we'll have billions of "health" dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers. But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they'll learn to love it. If everyone's covered and insurer "cherry-picking" is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility. "

He said that and more here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/07/AR2009090702070.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Neither of these writers, whose columns just happen to appear on the same day, fully represent my thinking on health care reform. They do, though, make me think about other ways to achieve what are our commonly held goals and values, and they have every appearance of being the kind of rational, results-oriented thinkers who can move a plan forward.

See, the thing is, the Republican party has forfeited its right and responsibility to participate in this debate. What we need now is not a good compromise plan but a great new plan, and one that we can sell to the Blue Dog Democrats. The Blue Dogs need to understand that if they want the Democratic Party help they'll need to get reelected, they need to get on board with what will become the President's endorsement of the Blue Ribbon plan.

I, by the way, have no binding commitments over the next year or so and I'm very good on committees.

Pabst

The only thing worse than a horse designed by a committee might be a horse designed by a Congressional committee.

A few days ago, I suggested a “Blue Ribbon Panel” of experts to design, more or less from the ground up, a new system of paying for health care with the goals of “preserving quality, controlling costs, and covering everybody.” I now nominate Dr. Arthur Feldman, who has a column in today’s Washington Post, to serve on that committee. You can read his column here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/04/AR2009090402274.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2009090702562

Feldman might not have it all right, but he represents an essential point of view in the debate, and sitting together at a table with a dozen or so other experts with different perspectives, I’m confident such a panel could devise and design an excellent new health care system in one year.

The report and recommendations that come from such a committee would then become the President’s proposal for health care reform, and I’m convinced Obama could bring enormous pressure on Congress to pass it. In this way, the initial bill that goes before Congress for debate is designed not by politicians whose agendas are tied up in party politics and the need to get reelected, but by representatives of true stake-holders whose agenda is to design a health care system that might truly be called “the best in the world.”

Roy Rogers; no Trigger

Saturday I went to the second annual K-Falls blues festival. I missed the first. It seems that every town bigger than a breadbox has to have a blues festival these days. But the lineup of West Coast blues bands sounded promising, even though I'd never heard of any of them before. In fact, it was an enjoyable afternoon, and all the performers were worth turning out for, if not exactly world-class.

Except the final act, slide guitarist Roy Rogers and his band The Delta Rhythm Kings. Actually, three white guys from California, but Rogers, who in fact was named for America's Singing Cowboy, turns out to be maybe the best blues guitarist I've ever heard. I sat electrified for an hour or so and would have happily stayed another hour, even though the sun had dropped behind the hills and I was getting cold.

Roger's playing features blinding speed on the fret board, frequent dramatic changes in tempo and rhythm, and an endless stream of melodic surprises. He's tourning again after a number of years in semi-retirement. If you get a chance to see him, don't pass it up.

US Out of Afghanistan?

Another writer I almost never agree with is George Will. In fact, Will fairly recently made my list of "I don't read him anymore" columnists when he pontificated about bluejeans as the cause and symbol of the decline of civilization. Really, it came down to "I don't like bluejeans," this from a guy who always wears bow ties. Big surprise.

But in his column today, Will argues that the war in Afghanistan is unwinable, that there's nothing to be gained there, and that Af-stan is no more dangerous to the US than other failed states such as Somalia and Yemen:

"So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters. " He doesn't mention that a majority of Americans now feel the same way and support withdrawal of US troops.

My crystal ball doesn't show a drawdown before the start of an Obama second term, but it will happen sooner or later and it will look a lot as Will describes. We just need to watch out for Afghans wearing bluejeans.

A few more thoughts on health care

Wow. Charles Krauthammer has an excellent column today on health care reform, proposing a system which he argues will lead to universal coverage and which can pass Congress. You can and should read it here: (Doctor’s orders!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703262.html?wpisrc=newsletter

This is amazing since I absolutely never agree with Krauthammer, and I have to wonder if he even agrees with himself in this instance since his proposal, he says, will inevitably lead to health-care rationing and, (shudder), end-of-life counseling, also known as Death Panels.

My question is what’s so bad about rationing? It’s the only way to significantly control costs, something everybody agrees we have to do.

Take a typical case as an example: A 75-year-old man has advanced lung cancer. He has a 95 percent chance of dying within two months. With aggressive and expensive treatment, there’s a good chance he could live for six months, though with serious side effects to the treatments. Or, he could accept palliative treatment for his remaining two months—hospice care which includes pain control, assistance to stay at home, and support for the family—which would cost a fraction of what the aggressive treatment would cost.

Why would anyone suggest the government has a moral obligation to pay for the aggressive and expensive treatment? The free market should be at play here. Anyone who wants additional coverage beyond what the government would offer should buy private policies, exactly like they already do with Medicare supplements. This is also how it works in Canada, our socialist neighbor to the north.

Krauthammer suggests that counseling about options at this point would constitute subtle pressure to check out early, but in my view it would amount to an opportunity to explain clearly what the patient’s options are. These panels are optional in the current proposals, by the way; I think they should be mandatory, even though that makes me not pro-life.

Also by the way, and as another example, Mary and I convened our own Death Panels with a local attorney several years ago. We now have end-of-life directives on file that make clear that if we’re brain dead with no chance of recovery—barring direct intervention by the Baby Jesus, which can always happen but isn’t likely in our case—we don’t want any extraordinary measures to keep us alive. This would include things like tube feeding, breathing machines, or deep tissue foot massage by a sexy nurse of the opposite gender.

On second thought, I’ll take the foot massage.

Of course we put subtle pressure on each other since our pension benefits continue to the survivor, but still, we think we made the right decisions. Of course, we might have chosen the tube feeding on the chance the Baby Jesus would change his mind and not hold a grudge, but I wouldn’t expect the government to keep paying to keep me alive indefinitely.

So I would buy into the Krauthammer policy in a K-Falls minute (roughly twelve minutes, actually), which means there still has to be room for compromise in the Congressionaal negotiations.

Maybe health-care reform isn’t dead after all. It just needs a foot massage.

For Teddy. . . .

For the last several weeks I’ve been busy not-writing about health care. This explains the relative paucity of my blog entries recently. It’s been painful enough just watching the death spiral of health care reform, and writing about it is harder than trying to ignore it. But writing about anything else is actively not-writing about health care, so, sooner or later, I have to try to come to terms with my feelings about this and put something down in writing and up on the blog.

Welcome to later.

Columnist Michael Gerson today has a somewhat charitable view of why things haven’t gone better, presenting some more-or-less rational reasons why most people have never been on board with reform efforts. In part, the problem lies with the majority of Americans who do have health insurance and are risk-averse to changes which might reduce their coverage. In part, it lies in the general mistrust of big government and its ability to deliver on big programs to solve social problems. And in part, it lies in the almost universal concerns that we’re running massive deficits and are still in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression.

(The projected deficit was just revised upwards yesterday from $7 trillion to $9 trillion. I have no idea how much money a trillion dollars is, but I know it’s enough to buy billions of Happy Meals and have enough left over to buy a few million minivans, so from that perspective you could see how the average family would be concerned.)

And part of the pain­ that makes it hard to write about this is in watching the rapid decline in the public’s confidence in Obama and the inevitable decline in popularity as confidence goes down. I’m not even sure the average American still thinks his kids are cute anymore.

But despite all the rational reasons Americans might be concerned about health care reform, the biggest obstacle still has to be Republican determination to crush Obama. "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," said South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint. And let’s not underestimate the power of The Big Lie, no matter how stupid. The best argument I can imagine for Death Panels is Sarah Palin herself. We could send her down here to Oregon for a nice cup of assisted suicide.

It seems now that all is lost, that once again we’re going to say, “No healthcare for you!” 45 million times. But if we really can’t find a way to extend coverage to these unfortunates, I suggest we at least spread the pain around a little more fairly. We could have an annual lottery in which 45 million people are selected at random to not have health insurance for a year. Maybe Congress could help out by donating their healthcare coverage to the needy. If everybody was at equal risk of medical bankruptcy or death by no coverage, I think we’d find a way to extend coverage to everyone rather quickly.

Other good ideas: Anyone who says, “America has the best health care system in the world” will immediately lose all coverage and have one year to write an essay entitled “America Has the Best Health Care System in the World.” I’ll be grading these essays. You can contact me directly for a handout on this assignment.

Idea two, more seriously: Health cooperatives are a promising idea. They might bring on board the blue-dog Democrats, which is vital to any legislation since no Republican save maybe Olympia Snow will ever vote for a reform bill backed by this President. The trick then will be to find a way to get all uninsured Americans into the new National Health Insurance Cooperative by establishing a sliding scale of enrollment fees. Jim DeMint will say this is just socialized medicine in disguise, and he’ll be right, but he might not be able to do anything about it. He’ll have to stay home in South Carolina and drink a deMint Julep.

Really important: Build in real cost controls. Health care costs have to come down or they will grow from being a drag on the economy to being an anchor that pulls us all down. At the current rate of growth, health care premiums are an economic black hole which somewhere between three and twenty years will consume all of our GNP, at which point everyone will work in the health care industry and everyone’s pay will go entirely for health care, a kind of mobius strip of unnecessary procedures using the best equipment money can buy.

A final good idea: Blue Ribbon Panel. Appoint a Blue Ribbon Panel of experts on heath care and tell them to come back in a year with a report and recommendations. Despite the political near-impossibility of reform right now, it’s actually not that hard to come up with a plan that will meet the goals of preserving quality, controlling costs, and covering everybody. Then forget about bipartisanship and ram the plan through Congress. A generation later, they’ll be asking what took us so long.

So there it is. I broke my blog-writer’s block and wrote something about the health care debacle. Now I can get back to the important things in life, like I have to wash my car.

And how sad it is that Teddy Kennedy didn’t live to see it, but I’ll be even sadder if I don’t live to see it.

Our summer vacation

Mary and I are just back from a month-long vacation in our trailer. We visited family and friends from Yellowstone (Mary’s brother Paul and sister-in-law Karen) to Nordegg, Alberta (old friend Nancy and her family. Nordegg is a small town on the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies where Nancy and her husband Dennis are finishing their retirement home.) We had great visits with everyone and a chance once again to spend time in some of the most spectacular mountain settings on earth.

Plus, we saw a bear, our first grizzly in the wild. Mary picked it out from our speeding truck, eating berries about 300 meters away and across a river. Perfect circumstances for extended grizzly viewing through binoculars, so we stopped and watched for some time. Surprisingly, only one other car pulled over. I guess grizzlies are about as routine up there as deer are here. No one stops to look at deer in deer country, unless you just hit one in your car. On a motorcycle, you will definitely stop.

Of course, bear photos taken with our pocket digi-cam only show a brown dot in the bushes, so you’ll have to take our word for it. Here’s what the bear looks like in our photos:
.

This trip was something of a trial run for a planned excursion this winter when we hope to head to the southwest for two or three months. Mary’s thinking two, I’m thinking three. I guess this will make us snowbirds, a label I don’t particularly like because it evokes pictures of elderly couples pulling trailers or driving motorhomes the size of an army barracks and staying in “parks” which are actually little parking lots with personal sewer hookups. Said elderly couples rarely leave their trailers since they can now automatically level themselves from inside and deploy their satellite dishes so the TV can go on even before their canopy automatically rolls out.

I think of us as more akin to the Lewis and Clark expedition if Lewis and Clark had a Dodge ¾- ton with a Cummins Diesel to pull their chuck wagon.

But then I don’t really have a better name than "snow birds" to describe us since “explorers” is an obvious stretch. Besides, birds have known for millions of years that when it gets really cold and the nights are long, you can just go south. They deserve respect for that, though I consider myself smarter that the average bird, so we’re going to see if it works for us.

We wanted on this last trip to see how well we could get along in the confined space of our trailer and in a setting where we spend almost all our time together for weeks at a stretch. This has never been the case in our marriage, and I think we discovered that the curmudgeon in me comes out in direct proportion to the time I do not spend alone. I need time alone to think my Deep Thoughts, like how long have birds been flying south for the winter?

Millions of years!

Also, we need to work on team trailer-backing since we still do a crappy job of me backing up the trailer as Mary shouts instructions. “NO! Your other left! Turn the wheel this way.” She yells this while inscribing a large circle in the air with her arm, which of course looks backwards to me in my mirror. Meanwhile, neither of us notices that I’m crushing small trees and driving through log fences with the outside, neglected front tire of the truck.

We’re better at this when we’re less tired from driving all day. Too bad we only have to back up the trailer after we’ve been driving all day. Quoth Mary, delivered in a calm but forceful manner: “You need to know that I will walk every fucking mile home if you don’t stop yelling at me like that.” I think that took care of that one problem of mine, anyway. How was I supposed to know I was yelling?

So for our coming winter hajj, we know that we have to drive less and stay longer in one location, and I have to take frequent walks into the desert to think my Deep Thoughts. Also, we have to remember that Scrabble is just a game.

For now, we’re back home where Mary is enjoying not getting ready to go back to work next Monday. This is the best part of early-stage retirement. It hits you about twelve times a day and by itself is enough to overcome any background existential angst, chronic depression, or even a toothache, which Mary has; thank God she got an emergency appointment to see the dentist today.

I’m watching all the motorcycle races I taped while I was gone and thinking about making a little bike trip sometime in about a month. It’s good to be home, but after two or three days I start to feel a little restless, and fall is the perfect time of year for a motorcycle tour.

Plus, I vant to be alone.

Discrimination, and life's true pleasures

Here’s an interesting perspective in a column today by Michael Kinsley: (You can read the whole thing at )

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061702801.html?wpisrc=newsletter

“By now you probably know the story. President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee is a member of an all-women's club called the Belizean Grove. Its main activity is an annual retreat, usually in Belize, where a self-described "constellation of influential women" gathers to practice the folk rituals of 21st-century big shots and wannabes of both genders, such as bonding and mentoring. This club is a response to the Bohemian Grove, a similar annual gathering in Northern California. The Bohemian Grove has struggled against the tide of history for years in its attempt to remain all male, and so far it has succeeded with only a few concessions. One famous argument was that the presence of women would prevent members from urinating on trees -- another treasured folk ritual in those circles, apparently. . . .

And later: “The true answer is that we tolerate discrimination in favor of traditionally oppressed groups more than we tolerate discrimination against them. It's not symmetrical. And, if you believe in affirmative action -- as Sotomayor proudly does, as I do -- it can't be. An all-women's club is okay even though an all-men's club is not. A corporation's minority recruitment program or a university's minority scholarships are considered admirable, while similar programs reserved for white people would be regarded as horrific.”

I agree with Kinsley’s reasoning as much as I’m impressed by his willingness to tell the truth: We (the enlightened we) tolerate a certain level of discrimination in favor of minorities to begin to reduce the effects of centuries of discrimination against them. Kinsley argues that the Belizean Grove is still discriminating, this time against poor women, but he misses the obvious point about the coattail effect. We need to allow powerful women to meet, mentor, and network so that more less-privileged women will have a chance to move into these circles of power.

But for me, I still recognize the legitimacy of all-male groups where men can feel comfortable urinating on trees. My monthly poker group from time to time discusses inviting a woman to join and always decides against it. We need to feel comfortable using vile language and making grossly sexual jokes. We need to be able to urinate on trees.

Whatever the female equivelents may be to this jackass behavior, I say “more power to them.”

¡Qué romántico!

Last Saturday, June 13th, was Mary’s birthday, and since we were also celebrating her retirement, I organized a surprise party for her at the local Thai restaurant. Somehow, I managed to keep it a secret, though I almost said something about “your party” a couple of times in the days before.

About twenty friends and colleagues joined us, bringing thoughtful gifts and cards, sweet or silly. (Who knew there is a whole line of naked cowgirl cards?) My surprise gift was a trip to Hawaii, Kauai to be specific, so I made her close her eyes while I put a lei around her neck and on her head.

It was made of real flowers and was cold, so it probably felt like a snake until she got to open her eyes.

We leave next Monday for a five-day vacation, a bit of a second honeymoon for us. In fact, our first honeymoon didn’t happen for close to a year after we were married and consisted of a camping trip to Oregon where it rained most of the time, so really this is more like a first honeymoon.

¡Qué romántico!

Saying goodbye to an old friend

I'm riding up to Salem today to look at and probably buy a used Suzuki V-Strom 650. It's three years old and has 18,000 miles. I found it on Craig's List, and it looks like it's in great shape and has most of the accessories I want.

I wasn't in the market a week ago, but rode my VFR to the World Superbike races in Salt Lake last weekend, about 600 miles each way, and both I and the bike had problems. Every year it gets a little harder to ride comfortably in the relatively sporty position of the VFR. My back and neck start to cramp, and after a couple of hours, it gets almost unbearable. I broke the trip into two days each way, and even 300 miles was mostly uncomfortable to downright painful.

Then too, the VFR started having problems. First the speedometer started to fail. By the time I got home, it was completely dead. I had a turn signal working intermittently. Most serious, on the way back outside of Winnemucca, the fuel injection light came on. I expected the bike to die anytime soon, but it kept running fine all the way. Very nervous-making, though. There’s mostly nothing but desert between here and Winnemucca, and the roads don’t even have shoulders. If the bike had died, I would have had to push it off into the sagebrush and lay it down, then try to hitchhike somewhere. It could have been a mess.

The VFR is due for a major service, plus I need to get these other things fixed. Since VFRs are known for electrical problems, I'll probably replace the battery and regulator/rectifier as well, then put it up for sale. I'll ask a reasonable price, but truth is it might be hard to sell, even though I consider it a great bike. At 50,000 miles, it has a lot of life left in it, but I'll probably have to spend a thousand or more to get all these things taken care of.

I decided on the V-Strom because I think it will be a more comfortable riding position and it's still a sporty, fun bike to ride. I know a few people who have them, and they all love them. And I'm getting it at a good price, so if I don't like it, I can probably ride it for this season then try to sell it. It's hard to sell bikes here in K Falls because it's a long drive for most people and they can usually find the same bike closer to home. I may end up with both bikes for some time. Only problem with that is I don't have room in my garage for two bikes and my scooter, but I think I can rearrange a lot of junk and make it work.

So now I have a bike to ride to the BMW rally in John Day in a couple of weeks and Laguna Seca next month. The shops here and in Medford are booked out to mid-July, so I'll miss two of my favorite trips if I don't buy something else. The VFR is confined to the garage until I can get it fixed.

All in all, I'm happy with the choice. Can't afford a new bike or even a used, say, FJR. I even thought about a Gold Wing, but those are WAY too expensive. And I think I'll be happy with the V-Strom. They get good reviews for comfort and handling, and the v-twin 650 is a snappy little engine.

btw, Superbike at Miller Motor Sports wasn't a great weekend. The track is very visitor friendly, with lots of grandstands, bathrooms and food. But it seems to lack character somehow. Laguna Seca is always a grand festival. Miller felt like a theme park built by Mormons: well-planned, wholesome, and boring. And let me mention women. I assume they have some in Utah, but “I wish they all could be California girls.”

Even the races weren't very exciting. The leaders almost immediately fell into their positions with comfortable spaces between everyone. Round and round they rode for 21 laps with no real drama. The most exciting part was the thunder storms rolling through the area and all of us sitting in metal bleachers. One strike could have taken out a thousand people or so, including me, so that was kind of fun to watch. I had to decide if the lightning was close enough that I should get out of the covered grandstand and into the rain, or stick it out where it was dry but increasingly dangerous.

It was interesting to watch everybody around me. No one seemed too concerned that we could all get fried and we wouldn’t even know what hit us. Part of riding motorcycles is having a baseless confidence that the worst that could happen never will. It’s the other grandstands that will get it, not mine.

All done

This just in by email from Mary:

"I just excused my very last class of my career. They left smiling and happy and proud of themselves, with promises to do their best next year.

love you, honey"

I'm very proud of Mary's career in education. She modeled for her students a genuine enthusiasm for science, a respect and caring for one another, and a professional demeanor that allowed her to control the wild and scenic hormones of junior high school students without being heavy handed about discipline. And she always dressed nice.

So now, we both look forward to many years of retirement fun together. We're a lucky couple.

Mary Sunshine, indeed.

Smoke Signals

Chris Eyre isn’t as famous as our other homegrown Klamath Falls director, James Ivory, but he has a distinguished list of film credits and awards and has also directed excellent programs for PBS, including the first three episodes of the series We Shall Remain, “a ground breaking mini-series that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history from PBS's acclaimed history series American Experience.”

Tonight his first film, Smoke Signals, is being shown at the Ross Ragland Theater, with Eyre back in town to introduce and take questions. I think Smoke Signals is a terrific film and look forward to seeing it again. It’s the story of an atypical Native American kid growing up on the reservation. He goes off to find his father, whom he knows was a hero and saved him from a fire when he was a baby but who later abandoned the family. When he finds him, he learns that there’s a lot more to the story than he had known. Rather than just being another tragedy about a defeated and failed culture, Smoke Signals has a lot of humor in it.

There’s much more on Eyre at Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_eyre

and at IMDB here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_eyre

I’m surprised to see that Smoke Signals is only ten years old. It seems longer ago that I first saw it.

Tortured logic

What would we do if we suddenly caught Osama bin Laden and somehow found out that he just happened to know that some bad guys were about to explode a bunch of atomic bombs in American cities?

This patently false dilemma is brought to us by Michael Scheuer, the chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, in a column in today’s Washington Post:

“In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: 'Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God's permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities.’ Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation's results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: ‘What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?’"

As a college writing teacher for twenty-five years, I was frequently reminded that most people don’t know what a dilemma is. Students would often use the word to mean a simple problem: “The dilemma of illegal immigration,” for example. They didn’t understand that a dilemma is a choice between two options to solve a problem, each of them bad. The expression “horns of a dilemma” comes from the image of facing a charging bull; you can dodge left or you can dodge right, but unfortunately bulls have horns on both sides and you’re about to be impaled on one of them.

Still, choose fast.

A false dilemma is a scenario that overly simplifies or distorts one or both of the choices. What we want here is a bull with more or less only one horn. Scheuer’s dilemma is false in several ways, which is actually characteristic of most false dilemmas, but Scheuer raises what is generally considered to be a logical fallacy to a logical absurdity. It’s not a bull’s horns we’re facing here, it’s bullshit. Watch your step.

First, Scheuer ignores history. If torture will give us the answers we want, why is Bin Laden still free? We’ve been torturing Afghani, Pakistani and Iraqi prisoners since shortly after 9/11, and we still can’t find one guy hiding in a cave somewhere? If torture is one of the horns, it’s a really puny horn because of its proven ineffectiveness.

Another indication it’s a false horn is the perfectly contrived circumstance of the dilemma: It’s not just some terrorist, it’s Osama. It’s not just one attack, it’s multiple atomic bombs. We don’t have weeks or months to break up the plot, we’ve got hours. Who wouldn’t torture one guy to save millions of lives? I know I would. I’d poke out his eyes with a hot poker, I’d let savage dogs chew off his balls, I’d make him watch while I ripped off his wives’ burkas and laughed at their bad teeth.

The problem, of course, is any garden variety terrorist could hold out for a few hours and would happily give out false information, sending our highly trained and well-positioned atomic bomb squads out to get the bomb at Disneyland when it’s really ticking away at Knotts Berry Farm.

Ka-boom!

And this false dilemma has no downside on the torture horn. We never torture the wrong guy. We never torture several thousand wrong guys and piss off all their brothers and sisters still out there, hanging around Baghdad cafes putting the finishing touches on their atomic bomb plans. Or maybe just suicide belts. We never have to complain because their guys, (the fucking animals!), are torturing our guys.

But I’m missing the other horn, which for Scheuer is the overly delicate sensibilities of Poor Old Barack: “Or asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?”

So now renouncing torture is just one guy’s “ideological beliefs.” Again, I know what I’d do because Scheuer’s dilemma admits of only one possible response. If I’m facing a charging bull, I’m going to dodge right and bring out the thumbscrews. Who could possibly decide to take their chances with somebody else’s namby-pamby “ideological beliefs” and ignore the atomic bombs? Oh, yeah, and one of the atomic bombs is hidden under your mother’s bed.

(But wait a minute: The bull’s right or my right? Think fast! We only have seconds to decide! I just hate these needless complications when it really should be a simple choice.)

Some dilemmas actually are quite easy to resolve, which means they’re not really a dilemma to begin with. Shoot the pirates. Shoot my neighbor Walter. Shoot the bull, for that matter.

Me, I’d opt to torture Michael Scheuer until he admits that his torture-Osama dilemma is bullshit.

Then I’d head for the basement where I’ve stockpiled food, water, and guns and ammunition. It’s best to take cover until we impale all these wild bulls running around out there.

Psssst. . . .

In these troubled times, I’m very excited that I can offer my friends and family a can’t-miss investment opportunity guaranteed to earn big returns:

Portuguese water dogs.

Give this girl a kiss

A few weeks back, the local paper ran a rant to the editor about how overpaid and underworked teachers are, not to mention the outrageous benefits we get. I rarely read these letters, let alone respond, but I was moved to write a column in response. The paper ran it.

Today, I got an email as follows from a young teacher. 'bout made my day:

Dear Dr. Carroll,

I wanted to write and thank you for your encouraging article in Sunday’s paper. I am a first year teacher and have been overly stressed this last week as the reality of layoffs has become apparent. I completed my bachelor’s in applied psychology at OIT and completed my master’s at SOU last July. It was a difficult summer, completing a very expensive degree, giving birth in June, having a husband return to school to also become a teacher, and no prospects of a job.

Fortunately, I was given the opportunity to become an ESL teacher for a K-12 school. I had no background in ESL, let alone experience with secondary level students,and wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into. Although this year has been a challenge, I LOVE MY JOB! I love everything about it. The long hours, difficult students, low pay, catastrophic loan payments, and the fact that I will need to complete 24 more graduate level credits to attain my ESOL endorsement to keep my job are all worth it.

I know I am making a difference in the lives of students everyday, and the frustrating part is that I am still not guaranteed that I will survive potential layoffs. Your article has expressed everything I wish the public to consider about our profession. I could have easily applied to be in a nursing, dental, or radiological program, but teaching is truly my passion. I have never worried about the money, but now that there is a fear of losing my job, I can’t help but to feel frustrated. Your words hit close to home and have made me feel a little bit more appreciated in these dismal times.

Thank you for advocating.

Sincerely,

Ashley Spivey

Blah, blah blah. . . .

In all the depressing news about the economy, I’m at least enjoying the hilarious political satire of John Stewart and especially Steven Colbert. Almost as diverting is following the debate between Rush Limbaugh and, supposedly, the Obama administration. Some commentators have said it’s unfair to label Limbaugh the spokesperson for the Republican party, but a long list of Republican leaders have lined up behind him.

Even Michael Steel, chair of the RNC and a leader who has often put his foot in his mouth, had to back away from criticisms of Rush. If Limbaugh isn’t the anointed leader, who is? Steel himself? John McCain? Sara Palin? Bobby Jindal? John Boener?

John Kerry made the mistake of not reacting fast enough to the outrageous claims of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. They weren’t the official voice of the Republican party, but they probably did more than any Republican officials or the Bush campaign to defeat Kerry. Should the Obama administration just stay quiet about a guy who makes equally outrageous charges and has the support of sixty percent of Republicans and a huge national audience?

I’ve been listening to a little of Rush and Sean Hannity on AM radio when I’m out in my truck running errands. Somebody in the administration needs to respond to this nonsense.
And it’s not like the Republicans haven’t done the same thing in the past. In an article in today’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz points out that “Mark McKinnon, a top adviser in President George W. Bush's campaigns, acknowledged the value of picking a divisive opponent. ‘We used a similar strategy by making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party,’ he said of the documentary filmmaker. ‘That's why we gave him credentials to cover the 2004 convention and then turned the spotlight on him.’”

And further, “For nearly two decades, the radio host has masterfully inserted himself into political disputes by pushing the usual boundaries. In last year's Democratic primaries, he tried to derail Obama with what he dubbed Operation Chaos, urging his followers to cross over and vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

If Republican leaders don’t like the White House responding to Rush Limbaugh, they need to distance themselves from him publicly.

Don’t hold your breath.

I love my TV!

Last month I decided to cable-up. Blame it on those long winter nights. We also got a better deal by bundling our computer hook-up, telephone and television. Now I can surf the web, call my cousin in Arizona, and watch a Sopranos rerun, all at the same time.

Our only TV for the last six years or so has been rabbit ears, which got us the three networks, Fox, and PBS, all for free. I usually watched the nightly news, which runs maybe one or two overly brief stories of any substance. The rest is fluff and commercials. Is it really a lead story that the East Coast is getting a big storm in February?

PBS has occasional good programming. Fox has The Simpsons. Beyond that, nada.

But the new cable, coupled with the DVR which allows me to record any program and fast forward the commercials, has proven to be better than I expected. Now I record the network news and watch the whole program in about fifteen minutes, skipping both commercials and any stories about a beached whale. I can pause to go out to the kitchen and start dinner, usually beans and rice, or rice and beans. We’re not immune to the recession, you know, despite having the luxury of living on a fixed income. (Remember when people used to complain, “I’m living on a fixed income”? Now it’s not polite to boast about your good fortune.)

I record The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, both of which manage to bring humor to the news, which otherwise is overwhelming in its depressingness.

Yesterday, I recorded the first motorcycle road race of the year, an epic battle between a seasoned veteran and promising rookie at Phillip Island in Australia. Great race! The only American rider is Ben Spies, who looks like he might dominate the season. And BMW is fielding its first team of two bikes, returning to racing after almost three decades. The Beemers finished in the top ten, and former world champion Troy Corser looks like he’ll be in the running.

Is Troy Corser an absolutely perfect name for a motorcycle champion or what?

And finally I’m finding that there actually is something worth watching on television, as long as you can watch it when you want and skip most of the commercials. I usually watch an hour or two a night. And of course I still have DVDs. Saturday I watched Pan’s Labyrinth, an excellent film loaned to me by my Spanish tutor. “Don’t read the subtitles!,” she commanded. Right. My tutor is very strict, but I cheat.

I watched the big Obama speech to Congress, fast-forwarding through the long interruptions for applause. And the Bobby Jindal rebuttal had to be the strangest and most amusing thing I’ve seen in years. I actually did a replay of some of the best parts. (BTW, his story about being in the office with the local sheriff while Washington bureaucrats foiled rescue attempts turns out to be as true as Sara Palin just saying no to the bridge to nowhere. Kenneth the Page comparisons were right on the mark. So much for now for the rising stars of the new Republican party.)

All of this raises the question of whether television, like the newspapers, can survive a new technology which makes its advertising irrelevant. In the long run, maybe not, but by then I’ll be dead. In the meantime while I’m not dead, I’m once again enjoying television as one part of my entertainment and news on a daily basis.


Cage fighting is fun, too.

Dog People

Berry berry good to me

Wow, I gotta love the VA. After I got the letter last week saying they were going to pay me for my complete though short-lived total disability, I got a check the next day. I didn’t expect to see any actual cash for a very long time, if ever. Since I tried to withdraw the claim a couple of times, in writing, I half expect them to catch up to me and ask for the money back. More likely, they have other things to do and this case is closed. For now, everything is going into savings.

I won’t mention an exact amount except to say it is a modest but tidy sum. With Mary retiring in June and us planning to travel about in our truck and trailer, it will make for a somewhat more upscale vacation. No more camping in Wal-Mart parking lots. (Actually, we never camp at Wal-Mart and never shop there either, for all the usual reasons.)

All of this got me thinking about what wonderful benefits I’ve received from the VA over the years. After I got out of the army in 1970, VA paid me student benefits for three years until I finished my B.A. I always worked part-time as well, but my modest monthly total meant I could get by rather well if I was frugal, and I never had to take out any student loans. When I first me Mary, I wowed her by taking her out for a steak dinner. She ended up briefly in the hospital shortly after, and I wooed her not with flowers but a carton of cigarettes. We've been together ever since. She married me for my money.

A few years later, I learned I had one year left of student benefits, which pushed me to follow up on my plans to get a master’s degree and try for a teaching job in a community college. I had my first teaching experience as a new grad student when they handed me the book they used for freshman comp and told me what room I was in. Between the stipend for teaching and the VA checks, I was able to finish my master’s, again without borrowing any money. I ended up as an adjunct in the Oregon University System, and then paid staff rates to get my Ph.D. from U of O. Essentially, the Ph.D. was free.

It’s certainly possible that none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the financial encouragement.

We never bought a house using a VA loan, but we’ve refinanced this one a couple of times for lower interest rates, and one of those loans was VA. And now they’ve paid me handsomely for my used prostate.

So although I had a shotgun-enlistment in the army with the draft board only a few weeks behind me, and although I hated the military, I have to say the VA has been berry, berry good to me. I know that benefits aren’t nearly as good for GIs now, and of course there are horror stories about wounded troops getting lost by the system and living without any follow-up medical care. A whole new generation of vets is heading for a life of official neglect and bureaucratic obstacles. It's not only sad, it's stupid.

I hope the Obama administration will actually walk the talk of supporting our troops. For me, things have gone the way they should have gone in a nation that says it honors veterans.

There's stimulated, and then there's stimulated

In the new age of bipartisanship, Republicans in the House yesterday unanimously voted against the Obama stimulus plan on the grounds that it represented more of the same old Democratic government spending. Liberal spending is defined as any government spending that doesn’t go to defense contractors in the congressperson’s home district.

From the little I know about it, I agree that some of the proposed new spending seems more stimulating than other new spending, but it seems to me that any money pumped into the economy for any thing will excite our spending molecules and send us on a buying spree. So $200 million to spruce up the National Mall means $200 million spread around the real Washington, D.C. where professional mall sprucers will start spending their money to buy things they wouldn’t have bought otherwise, like food and maybe a new Chevy.

Or a few million $s for the National Endowment for the Arts. Artists need money just like the rest of us, and they’ll spend it on stimulating things like brushes and clay and exotic paints. Nude figure models need work, too.

Which is why I’m looking forward to receiving a few thousand dollars from the VA because, according to them, I was 100 percent disabled with prostate cancer for five months.

When I first learned I had PC a year ago, I began to read everything I could find on the subject, and one of the things I learned was that anyone who served in Vietnam and later developed PC was presumed to have a service-related disability from exposure to Agent Orange. I guess the VA quit trying to determine who might or might not have actually been exposed and just started paying out to anyone who was there because you can’t prove a negative: Nobody can prove I wasn’t downwind from an application that might have been miles away but was sprayed from a massive tanker plane flying at relatively high speeds and altitudes. These were not precision pesticide applications by farmers trying to cover their beet fields while mostly missing the grammar school next door.

So I filed a claim thinking why the hell not? I could be impotent and incontinent in a few weeks, and if that isn’t a double-dog disability, I don’t know what is.

After I had surgery and began to quickly recover, though, I couldn’t help but notice that the plumbing was working pretty much as well as ever, and with a little help from a moderate dose of Viagra, I could fly the flag as high as I could when I was twenty-something. That was actually an improvement over the pre-op me, so I began to actually feel unentitled, an emotion as rare these days as contrition in the political class, but there it was nonetheless. I wrote the VA a letter and said I wanted to withdraw the claim.

Not to be deterred, though, the closest VA office started calling to tell me I needed to come in for a physical to verify somehow that I was still 100 percent disabled. How do I prove impotence? I wondered. That might be a medical test a guy could enjoy failing. “Get undressed in the next room and a nurse will be in shortly to help administer the test. Do you have a gender preference for your nurse?”

I kept telling them I was doing fine and I still wanted to withdraw the claim, but they called back a few more times to remind me to make an appointment. I ignored the messages.

When I didn’t hear anything more for a few months, I forgot about the whole thing until yesterday when I received a big envelope from the VA with lots of official looking documents inside, and when I read through everything a few times, I figured out that they still believed I was totally disable for five months, at which time I became totally not disabled and my benefits were terminated.

There was no check inside, though I assume one is in the mail. Or not. You know how the VA can be.

For a brief moment I thought I can’t possibly accept this money, something around $10,000 before taxes, and then I realized the hell I can’t! I’ve actually been feeling left out because I haven’t received a single billion in bailout money yet, and why am I less deserving than a mall sprucer or bank president? I’m not, and I can assure the Republican super-minority in congress that unlike some of those banks, I always promptly spend whatever I take in and a little bit more, so I’ll have an immediate effect on the economy rather than a long-term effect, which seems to be a bad thing.

I could probably re-file with the VA to start up my benefits again. One of the criteria is continuing drug therapy, and there’s the Viagra thing. This stuff isn’t cheap.

I’ll have to think about it.

My kind of review

From the Washington Post

A Poor Reception for 'Bride Wars'

Ann Hornaday recommends that you send your regrets and not attend "Bride Wars": "Predictable, lazy and as overprocessed as Kate Hudson's hair, this thoroughly joyless movie also possesses a deep nasty streak, making it loathsome when it might have been merely annoying."

I wish I'd said that. Three movies that got good reviews and I thought were merely annoying when they could have been loathsome:

Mama Mia: Shrill, shrill, shrill. Will you all just SHUT UP!

Iron Man: Stupid! We went out to see it, and I should have left and played the motorcycle roadracing game in the lobby. When it was finally over, I badly needed a drink. Tragically, I quit drinking some years ago.

WALL-E: Or however you capitalize it. Great animated film for pre-teens. I'm sixty and could have better used my time Twittering.

None too soon

With only sixteen days left in the Bush administration, we’ll soon see an end to stories like this.
*****
LOS ANGELES -- The Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments have complained of being blindsided by Rey's negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation's largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.
But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.
Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

"Just within the last couple weeks, they finalized a big subdivision west of Kalispell," said D. James McCubbin, deputy county attorney of Missoula County, which complained that the closed-door negotiations violated federal laws requiring public comment because the changes would affect endangered species and sensitive ecosystems. Kalispell is in Flathead County, where officials also protested.

The uproar last summer forced Rey to postpone finalizing the change, which came after "considerable internal disagreement" within the Forest Service, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report requested by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). The report said that 900 miles of logging roads could be paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements "could have a nationwide impact."

Christmas, 2008

Mary and I are enjoying Christmas at home this year. We had a lot of snow yesterday, and today is sunny and relatively warm. There's a lot of shoveling to be done. This is actually a picture of Mary from last year. It looks about the same out there right now.

Happy holidays to all my friends and family. We're looking forward to dinner with friends this evening. In the meantime, there's more snow to be moved around.

Air disaster

Mary said awhile back that I needed a new hobby. I decided to give radio control planes a try.

Despite a few setbacks, I'm still trying to learn to fly. This could easily become another expensive hobby.

Still doing my part to stimulate the economy.

salvific

Here's a cool new thing at the New York Times online. Highlight any word and a question mark appears above it. Click on the question mark and it opens a new box with a dictionary definition.

NO! NO!

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, December 6, 2008 -- 12:55 PM ET-----

Sunny von Bulow, Heiress at Center of Attempted Murder Trials, Dies

Martha (Sunny) von Bulow, the American heiress who was first married to an Austrian playboy prince and then to a Danish-born man-about-society who was twice tried on charges of attempting to murder her, died on Saturday after being in a coma for decades, a family spokeswoman said.

Bill Sizemore Goes To Jail

At 11:30 this morning, Bill Sizemore was led to jail by Multnomah County sheriff's deputies after being ruled in contempt of court.

From the Oregonian:

"Veteran ballot initiative activist Bill Sizemore was handcuffed and jailed Monday after a Multnomah County judge found him in contempt of court for a fourth time in his long-running legal battle with two Oregon teachers unions.

"Multnomah County Circuit Judge Janice R. Wilson ordered Sizemore jailed until he signed and filed federal and state tax forms that charitable organizations are required to complete to maintain their tax-exempt status.

"Sizemore's lawyer, Gregory Byrne, said he hoped to have the tax forms filed later Monday, but Sizemore remained in a protective custody dormitory at the Multnomah County Detention Center on Monday evening.

"The dramatic development occurred as Wilson spent two hours reading her findings out loud, accusing Sizemore of repeatedly lying under oath.

----------------------------------------------------

"In a 42-page ruling, Judge Wilson described in detail how Sizemore created a web of deceit to funnel money through a sham charity and into his own pockets.

"'The inescapable conclusion is that [American Tax Research Foundation] was a sham charitable organization set up to pass money provided by Loren Parks and Dick Wendt to compensate Mr. Sizemore for his work on initiative measures,' Wilson said.

"The latest finding of contempt stems from a 2002 lawsuit in which a jury and the court found Sizemore's organizations engaged in fraud, forgery, and racketeering. (That ruling was upheld in July by the Oregon Supreme Court.) The current contempt order revolved around Sizemore's innumerable violations of the original injunction that accompanied a jury verdict finding Mr. Sizemore and his organizations conspired to violate Oregon law.

"From Judge Wilson's ruling: "The violations of the injunction are troubling in and of themselves. But they are even more disturbing because, together with Mr. Sizemore's willingness to lie under oath, they reflect not merely contempt of court in the legal sense, but contempt for the court, the judicial branch of the government and its processes and judgments--indeed for the rule of law. Mr. Sizemore is so blinded by his hatred of the unions who are plaintiffs in this case that he seems to have concluded that he is not required to follow the law."

"Judge Wilson ordered Sizemore to jail until he files signed informational tax returns and Department of Justice reports for American Tax Research Foundation (the Nevada-based "charity" that was used to funnel money from Loren Parks and Dick Wendt to Sizemore). He was also ordered to pay plaintiffs the amount of money that was transferred in violation of the injunction, and the original injunction against him has been extended another five years.
In November, Oregon voters rejected all five of the measures Sizemore got on the ballot.
More coverage from the Associated Press here. "

Laguna Seca, July, 2008

This year's world champion Valentino Rossi followed closely by last year's champion Casey Stoner at Laguna Seca last July. I'm already ordering tickets for the 2009 race. I can't imagine a more exciting sport.