A Zen Story

A Zen student came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?"

"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see what you have."

"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.

"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.

"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.

"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over."

Alternative Cartoons Part 9 - Keith Robinson

When I was growing up Keith Robinson printed a weekly strip in the Orange County Register (and probably other papers too, come to think of it.) It was consistently funny, although my Dad said that he didn't get it. I got it. His first collection of strips "Making It - A Survival Guide for Today" was one of the first comic strip books I bought (not counting Peanuts I picked up at garage sales and what not. And I still have it.

Here's one of the strips.

If you like the strip you might check out the creator's website and maybe buy something--anyway, hope you are having a nice Easter weekend.

Edited to add--I took out the full screen version of the strip, as it's been a few days, and I didn't like the way it made the website look.

Driving around at Lunch

As many of you know, I live in Florida. And so as I am driving around, listening to the radio, I am subjected occasionally to the following message, more or less.

"You know, here in Florida, things are home spun and folksy. And also we rely on Orange Juice. Money from the sale of Orange Juice does everything from pay taxes to make the sun come up in the morning. So if you want our state to be successful, you'd better drink Orange Juice, or else."

I wonder if other states have this? Are citizens in Wisconsin encouraged to eat cheese for the sake of the children? Or New Mexicans encouraged to fill their shopping carts with Salsa?

At any rate, although I have not drunk orange juice in many a year, I promise to go buy some orange juice and drink at least one glass of it.

By the way, does anybody know what cures scurvey?

In other news, drove past an office of the local tax collection authority with a sign in the window. "No Loitering." People who loiter near tax collection agencies sort of are their own reward.

What a Conservative Wants

Jonah Goldberg writing today tackles the issue of why Conservatives, who are supposed to abhor change, are willing to embrace it in the Middle East. I wasn't wondering this myself, but I suppose other may have been. Near the end of his paper, he states, " . . . I would dearly love if we could go back to the way this country was 50 or 100 years ago. Some changes have been for the better, of course. Ending Jim Crow, color TV, rising crust frozen pizzas, etc. But on the whole, I'd prefer this country to look a lot more like it used to. Indeed, I'd like to shrink the size of the federal government by, I dunno, half? Two-thirds?"

Yep, back to the good old days. 100 years ago, unions were illegal. Worker safety and environmentalism were not issues that concerned anybody with power. Corporations could largely do anything they wanted, and largely did. Some corporations had their own private police forces to keep order in the communities they lived in. Truly a Gilded Age for America's wealthy. But, if you are one of the millions of Americans who aren't already wealthy, maybe that's not the most idyllic time to be alive.

However, Mr. Goldberg's last two paragraphs are a bit more positive, particularly in his hops for the world.

"And I'd like to spend a small fraction of those savings on tearing down the crack houses of the world, which breed crime and misery, and replace them with sights worth seeing. I'd like to see democracy and prosperity in the Middle East, and a peaceful settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. I'd like to see a unified Korea, run from Seoul not Pyongyang. I would like to see Africa moving forward rather than slipping ever further behind. I'd like to see South America so prosperous that illegally immigrating into America would seem like a pointless and silly endeavor.

I'd like to see these things for two reasons, one conservative and one "liberal." The liberal side of me says that we are our brothers' keepers and we have some minimal obligation to liberate people from tyranny and needless misery. But, just as important, I am a conservative who believes the problems of the world will find their way here and mess up the home I dearly love if we don't do something about them."

The World Of Art



There have been and will be lots of stories about the looting and the loss of priceless artifacts in the Museums of Baghdad. McGuire Gibson, a Professor at the Oriental Instituted at the University of Chicago, described it this way to Salon, "It's catastrophic. It's a lot like a lobotomy. The deep memory of an entire culture, a culture that has continued for thousands of years, has been removed. There was 5,000 years of written records, even Egyptian records don't go back that far. It's an incredible crime."

What interests me is how the right is willing to completely turn a blind eye to this tragedy, and seem annoyed that anybody would complain about it. It would be one thing if they said "Well this is a terrible tragedy, but that's what happens in a war." And to be fair, some are saying that. But some seem to think that this story is a media fabrication or something. Even bringing it up as a concern or an issue is proof that you don't love Ameirca.

But then again, what else is new.

Another Top Ten

Here is another Top Ten list, for those of you playing along at home.

My Top Ten Favorite Beatles Songs (as of this moment).

10 - You Never Gave me Your Money
9 - She Said, She Said
8 - Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
7 - For No One
6 - Julia
5 - Any Time At All
4 - Strawberry Fields Forever
3 - Two Of Us
2 - Rain
1 - Ticket to Ride

Worrying Too Much

I bring lunch to the office here and eat sometimes. Because this is work and not home, I generally use a plastic fork, as they are cheaper and disposable (hey, I love my planet, ok. I'm just lazy). Anyway, sometimes as I'm taking my plastic fork and jamming it into my stir-fry or whatever, and bring it to my mouth, I find myself thinking, "hmmmmm I wonder what would happen if my food was so incredibly hot that it melted my fork and I jammed it into my mouth and got a mouth full of melted plastic. I don't think I'd like that."

That's why it's best to watch TV while you eat--makes it harder to think.

The Reason

Because!

No Politics Day

I'm sorry, but unless something amazing happens today, I'm not going to comment on politics. I'm already annoyed with my day, and nothing I read annoyed me enough to want to comment on it.

So instead I'm going to write about other things. Here's my list of my top ten favorite Electronica Songs, as of this moment.

10. Apollo Four Forty - "Crazee House"
9. New Order (w/ Chemical Brothers) - "Here To Stay (Full Length Vocal)"
8. Mint Royale (w/ Pos from De La Soul) - "Show Me"
7. BT - "The Revolution"
6. Moby - "Body Rock (Rae & Christian Remix)"
5. Groove Armada - "Easy"
4. Underworld - "Shudder/King of Snake"
3. Chemical Brothers (w/ Richard Ashcroft) - "The Test"
2. DJ Me DJ You - "Because (DJ Swamp Mix)"
1. Fatboy Slim - "Demons (Stanton Warriors Mix)"

New Quote

New Quote up at the top of the page--one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands. Enjoy!

Syria?

Well, Thomas L. Friedman, writing today at the New York Times, suggests that maybe Syria isn't a lock. He argues that since we have no legal basis for invading Syria, we aren't going to do it. That might be a bit naive, but I'll admit that I hope he's right.

He favors an approach he calls "Aggressive Engagement." That means getting in Syria's face every day. Reminding the world of its 27-year occupation of Lebanon and how much it has held that country back, and reminding the Syrian people of how much they've been deprived of a better future by their own thuggish regime.

This seems like a valid approach, as it is less likely to enflame Iraq and the rest of the Muslim World. But others, such as Mona Charen, are suggesting that Syria faces an ultimatum now. And we all know how ultimatums from the US work.

Walter Williams

Well Walter Williams, for some reason, really really doesn't want to touch the war. As near as I can remember, he hasn't touched it once. However, he's still got his favorite cause to keep him interested. And that cause is the government taking money away from you and giving it to poor slobs who don't deserve it. While discussing the morality of this situation, Williams comes up with this interesting statement, "How about all the government programs that account for at least two-thirds of federal spending, such as: aid to higher education, Medicare, food stamps, welfare or farm subsidies? Are they moral?"

Hmmmmmm. Two thirds of federal Spending? That sounds like a lot.



Well, lets take those five categories he suggests and graph them and see what that looks like. Do we get close to Williams' two-thirds?



Hmmmm, that's not very close, it seems to me. Now I am using 2001 data, because that appears to be the most recent year for which we have firm numbers. I got my information from Office of Budget and Management's website. Of course there isn't a budget category marked "Welfare," so I used the Unemployment Compensation and Other Income Supported programs under Emergancy Response Fund, which seemed to fit the bill for "Welfare."

Of course the missing piece could be Social Security. I mean that is a huge chunk of the budget, and I'm surprised that Williams didn't mention that in his initial 5. But then again, I'm not surprised. Social Security is a very popular program, precisely because it isn't technically a means of giving money to lazy bums. You put money in and then when you retire you get money out. It's a big harder for Williams to demonize that program in the same way he demonizes Farmers. So lets see what the graph looks like with Social Security in.



Still not even close to two thirds. Oh well, perhaps we'll never know exactly what Williams meant, except that he wants the government to fold it's tents and get out of dodge and so on and so forth.

Picture Time

Some of you are no doubt wondering what the main author of this website looks like. Well, due to certain obscurities in the American Food and Parcel Act of 1872 we are unable to post a current picture of the author at this time. However, we do have this nicely rendered conception of what the narrator may have looked like when he was about 20. Enjoy.

Tax Day

Well here in the United States, it's Tax Day. Many people across the United States are upset at the amount of money they have to give the government in return for such services as liberating the people of Iraq or being able to eat a hot dog in relative safety. Rest assured, Congress is working quickly to cut programs and benefits in order to provide tax cuts for those who desire them.

One area that Congress has decided, in its wisdom, to cut is Veterans Benefits. Paul Krugman, who I like more and more with each article he writes, puts it this way; "As the war began, members of the House of Representatives gave speech after speech praising our soldiers, and passed a resolution declaring their support for the troops. Then they voted to slash veterans' benefits.

Some of us have long predicted that the drive to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy would lead to a fiscal dance of the seven veils. One at a time, the pretenses would be dropped — the pretense that big tax cuts wouldn't preclude new programs like prescription-drug insurance, the pretense that the budget would remain in surplus, the pretense that spending could be cut painlessly by eliminating waste and fraud, the pretense that spending cuts wouldn't hurt the middle class.

There are still several veils to remove before the true face of "compassionate conservatism" is revealed, but we're getting there."

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) received a letter from one of his constituents that perhaps puts it even better.

To:
Rep. Jim Kolbe

April 14, 2003

Sir, I have been reading many articles that suggest that the upcoming budget proposed by this administration will, aside from providing tax relief for the upper class, also cut veterans benefits. As an unemployed disabled veteran who depends on the services from the VA just to survive I am deeply troubled by what I am hearing. Today Pres. Bush was lauding the accomplishments of the military and the sacrifices made. If this budget is implemented and VA services are cut, is that the support and gratitude the President was talking about?

Tucson , AZ

Something to consider in the middle of complaining about Taxes.

Mythology

Baldr is not a Norse God that gets much attention these days. Baldr was a God of goodness and light and so on. He had a dream that he would die, and so his mother went to all things on the earth and extracted from them a promise that they would not hurt her son. All things agreed, save one. The Mistletoe made no promise, as he was not asked, being so small and forgettable.

Thus Baldr was immune to all things and it pleased the Gods to test his invulnerability by throwing things at him. Loki, trickster god, found Baldr's blind brother, Hod, and asked him why he wasn't throwing things at Baldr. Hod said that he was blind. And so Loki placed in his hands a sprig of mistletoe and pointed him in the right direction, and thus Hod slew his brother, though blameless.

Odin sent one of his sons to Hel, keeper of the spirits of the dead, to petition her to return Baldr to the Gods. And we pick up the story from the Prose Eddas (Jean Young Translation).

In the moming he asked Hel if Baldr might ride home with him, telling her how much the gods were weeping. Hel said, however, that this test should be made as to whether Baldr was loved as much as people said. "If everything in the world, both dead or alive, weeps for him, then he shall go back to the Aesir, but he shall remain with Hel if anyone objects or will not weep." . . .

'Thereupon the Aesir sent messengers throughout the whole world to ask for Baldr to be wept out of Hel; and everything did that - men and beasts, and the earth, and the stones and trees and all metals - just as you will have seen these things weeping when they come out of frost and into the warmth. When the messengers were coming home, having made a good job of their errand, they met with a giantess sitting in a cave; she gave her name as Thökk. They asked her to weep Baldr out of Hel. She answered:

Thökk will weep dry tears
at Baldr's embarkation; the old fellow's son
was no use to me alive or dead, let Hel hold what she has.

We see a reflection of Hel's request in the current Conservative "wisdom" regarding the most effective way to bring peace. Hel demanded all things weep for Baldr; conservatives demand that all strive for war. Only by showing total unity can dictators be deterred. Says Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., ". . . they should learn a signal lesson from the now-nearly-accomplished liberation of Iraq: War is more likely to be made unnecessary if would-be critics support the President, than by their opposing him."

Thus if we want peace, we must support war, each and every one of us.

Gaffney says this as the Administration is apparently considering an invasion of Syria, and he paints a happy picture of us liberating Syria and Lebanon, if we get to invade Syria. So maybe avoiding the war is not something he's 100% behind.

Children

There's a new article by Howard Zinn today at Commondreams, reprinted from Newsday. Howard Zinn won't be celebrating the end of this war. He will presumably be satisfied that the killing has stopped, but as this war was not entered into for moral reasons, it cannot end happily. He calls for a new kind of patriotism, that would enable us to avoid the horrors of war.

"Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways."

While I understand Zinn's consternation with how we arrived at this point, one wonders why he fails to take into account those children who have and who would have grown up under Saddam's brutal regime. While I in now way want to minimize the potential problems facing the US, I don't think it's quite that easy to ignore pictures of cheering Iraqis.

The Education Front

Might not be necessary to have the Department of Defense take over the American Educational system after all. Apparently the little tykes are learning to live their country after all, at least according to Suzanne Fields, who writes;

But even before 9/11, American kids were declaring new attitudes of patriotism. In a survey of 2,911 ninth graders, fully 91 percent said they were proud of the United States; 85 percent they had "great love for the flag." The survey, by the International Association for the Evaluation of International Achievement showed no significant differences in race, sex or family incomes.

So maybe there is hope for the American Education System after all. Ms. Fields does encourage a closer reading, on the part of our youth, of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.

Continuing Questions

Good article by Michael Kelly on the continuing questions of the war. Here we are at victory in the military struggle, where few on either side of this issue doubted we'd be. And now we need to decide what victory means. What victory will look like for us and for the Iraqi People.

What is an honest opponent of a war supposed to do? Since even the end of this war won’t settle most of the important arguments about it, dropping all opposition at the beginning of the war would surely be more intellectually suspicious than maintaining your doubts while sincerely hoping for victory. Inevitably, more than one supporter of this war has taunted its opponents with Orwell’s famous observation in 1942 that pacifists—the few who opposed a military response to Hitler—were “objectively pro-fascist.” The suggestion is that opposing this war makes you objectively pro-Saddam. In an oddly less famous passage two years later, Orwell recanted that “objectively” formula and called it “dishonest.” Which it is.

The psychological challenge of opposing a war like this after it has started isn’t supporting the American troops, but hoping to be proven wrong. That, though, is the burden of pessimism on all subjects. As a skeptic, at the least, about Gulf War II, I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn’t happened yet.

In other news there was a positive article at MSNBC discussing Iraqis and US starting to do Joint patrols to get a handle on the looting, and a scary article underlining that Syria is probably next on the chopping block.

A Clarification

I would like to make two clarifying points on my piece about Nazism, posted on Friday.

It has been pointed out to me that in strictly economic and organizational terms, the Nazis are closer to both the Communists and many Liberals. And I concede this point--analyzed with those strict measurements, it is undoubtedly correct to say that Nazis are closer to Liberals than Conservatives.

I don't, however, think analyzing this issue strictly on Economic and Organizational grounds works as a classifying technique, as it cuts out social and cultural issues. Social and cultural issues are often those issues that motivate a movement far more than Economic and Organizational issues. Hitler didn't come to power promising "If elected I am going to oppress the hell out of you and take complete control of the economic system." He came to power saying "Together we can create a strong unified patriotic Germany, that keeps out foreign and Marxist influences."

Secondly I'd like to clarify the purpose of this post.

There are those on the Left who apparently believe and certainly say that if President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist and, in general, the mainstream American Conservative Movement are given their way they will install a brutal Fascist dictatorship in the Style of Adolf Hitler.

There are those on the Right who apparently believe and certainly say that if Tom Daschele, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and the mainstream American Liberal Movement are given their way they will install a brutal communist dictatorship in the style of Josef Stalin.

Make me a Commentator!!! forcefully condemns both lines of thinking and argument. It is the opinion of Make me a Commentator that both mainstream movements want to see a strong and productive Capitalist and Democratic America that works for all its citizens.

My original post was to correct what I felt and still feel was a historical misinterpretation. My original training was in history and this is an area of some interest to me. I did not and do not intend that this information should be used to smear the modern Conservative movement.