A Note from the Editor

Had kind of an off weekend as you might have surmised. Anyway I'm sure I'll be back to my evervescent self soon. You know, the happy cheerful guy who can't shut up about Social Security.

Literature Moment 4

Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come. A young man is walking down the street, quite casually, with an empty mind and no set purpose; he comes to a crossing, and for no reason that he could tell he takes the right hand turn instead of the left; and so it happens that he encounters a blue-eyed girl, who sets his heart to beating. He meets the girl, marries her--and she became your mother. But now, suppose the young man had taken the left hand turn instead of the right, and had never met the blue-eyed girl; where would you be now, and what would have become of those qualities of mind which you consider of importance to the world, and those grave affairs of business to which your time is devoted?

Upton Sinclair, 100%: The Story of a Patriot

Angel Food

How many people that you meet end up not liking you very much? Or to put a more exact word for it, end up disliking you. I mean not everybody likes you right? So out of 100 people how many end up disliking you do you think?

Well let's take a very charitable approach and suppose that 1 out of a 100 people won't like you much (in my case the figure is somewhere in the 60s at the least). Or in other words 1% of all the people you meet don't like you.

That means, taking 1% of the total population of the world, there are approximately 64,086,068 people who, upon meeting you, would not like you. 68 Million people. That's a lot of people.

In 1890 that would have been more than the population of the United States (although now we are at 294,489,979, or 4.6 times the number of potential people who don't like you (or wouldn't like you if they met you, assuming, charitably, that only 1 person out of a 100 doesn't like you)).

The United States Army Military during World War II (when the military reached it's peak size) was 16,353,700 or approximately one quarter the number of people who might not like you if they met you.

Of course, the odds are these people who wouldn't like you will never meet you. But wait a moment, aren't we going through some kind of communications revolution? You are going to have the potential to encounter more and more and more people than ever before. Isn't that great? So all these people who might never have had the opportunity to dislike you will now have that opportunity.

Something to think about as we walk boldly into a communications revolution.

Literature Moment 3

Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over thehead with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were he knew that none of them had ever beenable to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best he could under the circumstances--to live right, and hang on as long as he could and have his dying speech all ready when his time came.

But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it all happened just the other way.

Mark Twain, The Good Little Boy

Musical Moment 2

The last night on Maudlin Street
goodbye house
goodbye stairs
I was born here
I was raised here, and
...I took some stick here
love at first sight
may sound trite
but it's true, you know
I could list the details
of everything you ever wore
or said, or how you stood that day
and as we spend the last night
on Maudlin Street, I say
"goodbye house-forever!"
I never stole a happy hour
around here
Where the world's ugliest boy
became what you see
here I am - the ugliest man
Its the last night on Maudlin Street
and truly I do love you
oh, truly I do love you
When I sleep with that picture of
you framed beside my bed
oh, it's childish and it's silly
but I think it's you in my room
by the bed (...yes, I told you it was silly...)
and I know
I took strange pills
but I never meant to hurt you
oh truly I love you
I came home late one night
everyone had gone to bed
nobody stays up for you
when you have sixteen stitches
all around your head
the last bus I missed to Maudlin Street
so, he drove me home in the Van
complaining: "Women only like me for my mind..."
don't leave your torch behind
power-cuts ahead
as we crept through the park
but no I cannot steal a pair of jeans
off a clothesline for you
but you...without clothes
oh I could not keep a straight face
me - without clothes?
well a nation turns its back and gags...
I'm packed
I am moving house
a half-life disappears today
every slag waves me on
(secretly wishing me gone
well, I will be soon
oh - I will be soon)
There were bad times on Maudlin Street
when they took you away in a police car
dear Inspector - don't you know?
don't you care?
don't you know - about Love?
Your gran died
and your mother died
on Maudlin Street
in pain and ashamed
with never time to say
those special things
I took the keys from Maudlin Street
well, it's only bricks and mortar!
and...truly I do love you
wherever you are
wherever you are

Morrissey, Late Night, Maudlin Street

Literature Moment 2

"It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything. . . .

You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in that, too."

Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Musical Moment

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Well, they'll stone ya when you're walkin' 'long the street.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to keep your seat.
They'll stone ya when you're walkin' on the floor.
They'll stone ya when you're walkin' to the door.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

They'll stone ya when you're at the breakfast table.
They'll stone ya when you are young and able.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to make a buck.
They'll stone ya and then they'll say, "good luck."
Tell ya what, I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Well, they'll stone you and say that it's the end.
Then they'll stone you and then they'll come back again.
They'll stone you when you're riding in your car.
They'll stone you when you're playing your guitar.
Yes, but I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Well, they'll stone you when you walk all alone.
They'll stone you when you are walking home.
They'll stone you and then say you are brave.
They'll stone you when you are set down in your grave.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan, Rainy Day Women #12 and 35

Literary Moment

From Moliere's "Misanthrope."

Alceste. I deny it. We ought to punish pitilessly that shameful pretence of friendly intercourse. I like a man to be a man, and to show on all occasions the bottom of his heart in his discourse. Let that be the thing to speak, and never let our feelings be hidden beneath vain compliments.

Philinte. There are many cases in which plain speaking would become ridiculous, and could hardly be tolerated. And, with all due allowance for your unbending honesty, it is as well to conceal your feelings sometimes. Would it be right or decent to tell thousands of people what we think of them? And when we meet with some one whom we hate or who displeases us, must we tell him so openly?

Alceste. Yes.

Philinte. What! Would you tell old Emilia, that it ill becomes her to set up for a beauty at her age, and that the paint she uses disgusts everyone?

Alceste. Undoubtedly.

Philinte. Or Dorilas, that he is a bore, and that there is no one at court who is not sick of hearing him boast of his courage, and the lustre of his house?

Alceste. Decidedly so.

Philinte. You are jesting.

Alceste. I am not jesting at all; and I would not spare any one in that respect. It offends my eyes too much; and whether at Court or in town, I behold nothing but what provokes my spleen. I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice, self-interest, deceit, roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I am furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.

Philinte. This philosophical spleen is somewhat too savage.

Going to be Slow the Next Day or So

I'm on the road today and tomorrow--I might post tonight but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Shoplifting and Tapdancing

A Parable

One day little Armstrong was standing outside a grocery store, and he was a-hankering for a candy bar. So he snuck in quietly and grabbed one when the shop clerk wasn't looking. It was easy. So he did it a bunch more times until one day the shop clerk caught him in the act. Poor little Armstrong was so sad.

Luckily little Armstrong's friend Jonah was walking by. Jonah ran into the store and immediately chastised little Armstrong, but then he turned to the Shopkeeper. "Mr. Shopkeeper, I don't know why you are making a big deal about this. Poor little Armstrong walked out with a candy bar, but I've seen lots of boys do that. Why just the other day I saw little Jesse walking out with a candy bar. And Paul, I saw him enjoying a candybar on his way out of the store too."

The Shopkeeper shrugged and said, "Yes but Jonah, both Jesse and Paul bought their candy bars. Little Armstrong didn't."

Jonah shrugged back and said, "I still you should let Little Armstrong off."

The preceding parable was inspired by Jonah Goldberg's latest article, in which he defends Armstrong Williams by suggesting that the fact that Jesse Jackson and Paul Begala have appeared on the air somehow negates Williams' dishonesty. The difference, of course, is that Begala and Jackson haven't hid their "conflicts of interest." They are open for all to see. Armstrong didn't let people know he was being paid to express a certain point of view, because to do so would have eliminated his utility for the administration.

It's in his kiss . . . er, character!

Well the title goes before the story. Anyway reading William Saffires latest vaguely philosophical noodling, and I'm not too impressed. His point is that parties, nations and peoples need to have character to succeed. The Republicans have a character, as defined by their goals. "The Republican Party today is characterized by a mission to defeat terror while exporting freedom abroad, and a policy to restrain taxes while increasing social spending at home." It's hard to know what to make of that second sentence. I assume by "restrain," Saffire means "drastically reduce," but financially, how do you increase spending while cutting revenue? Doesn't that seem like a self defeating strategy in the long run?

At any rate, he does seem to believe that the current character / unity of the Republican party isn't likely to last too much longer. "The G.O.P. personality will split in a couple of years, as all huge majorities do in America. Idealistic neocons will be challenged by plodding, pragmatic paleocons, who, by fuzzing the party's present character, will someday lead it down the road to defeat." Good point, but it ignores the conflict between those who favor a theocratic party and those who do not. But at any rate a split is probably on it's way.

Social Security Sanity

Yep, it's another column by Paul Krugman, in which he brings up that old buggy-boo--transition costs. You see setting up this system of President Bush's is going to cost some money.

The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions, the benefits of privatization wouldn't kick in until most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next 45 years, privatization would cost much more money than it saved.

Advocates of privatization almost always pretend that all we have to do is borrow a bit of money up front, and then the system will become self-sustaining. The Wehner memo talks of borrowing $1 trillion to $2 trillion "to cover transition costs." Similar numbers have been widely reported in the news media.

But that's just the borrowing over the next decade. Privatization would cost an additional $3 trillion in its second decade, $5 trillion in the decade after that and another $5 trillion in the decade after that. By the time privatization started to save money, if it ever did, the federal government would have run up around $15 trillion in extra debt.

These numbers are based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Plan 2, which was devised by a special presidential commission in 2001 and is widely expected to be the basis for President Bush's plan.

We wait with baited breath to see how these facts are reprinted in the mainstream media.

You Go to War with the Army you Have

Frank J. Gaffney has an interesting piece at Townhall.Com on President Bush's unquestionable support for a stronger military. Turns out it is questionable after all.

Even before the Congress formally declared George W. Bush the winner of last November's presidential election, reports began circulating that he would propose a defense budget for next year that one might have expected instead from the loser, Senator John Kerry.

Actually, a President-elect Kerry probably would not have dared to suggest the far-reaching cuts Mr. Bush plans to make. In any event, he surely would have had a hard time getting them enacted, given pervasive concerns about his judgment on national security matters.

Yet, here we have the spectacle of $55 billion in far-reaching defense reductions being made by the man who beat Sen. Kerry - largely on the basis of precisely those concerns. It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Bush will be sworn in again on January 20th because he was widely perceived to be a more credible and robust leader than his challenger when it came to protecting this country.

That's not the most tightly written of passages incidentally. To boil it down, Gaffney would have expected Senator Kerry, who promised two new divisions in the Army, and increases in the funding of Special Forces, to gut the military. He expected President Bush, who made no such promise, to strengthen the military. Turns out he was wrong.

What he doesn't go into is why President Bush is doing this. Surely he would like to build the Army, but unfortunately for us all, he just doesn't have the money. The pressure on the budget exerted by his short-sighted tax cuts makes further military spending difficult. Mr. Gaffney hints at this in the final lines of his essay. "The public understands the need for, and is prepared to make, sacrifices in time of war. President Bush must ask them to do so - and avoid unduly increasing those already being asked of the U.S. military."

He's not wrong.

The Carrot and the Stick

This is how you motivate Donkeys and People. And these techniques are not foreign to those who are trying to convince America to accept President Bush's Social Security Phase Out Plan. We've talked a lot about the stick, i.e. that Social Security has no hope of surviving and will bankrupt the treasury. So let's talk about the carrot.

The carrot is that these private accounts will give Americans a lot more money. That's the promise. The promise does not take into account set up costs and administrative costs which will be paid for, one way or another, by the American people.

The other problem is summed up in this line from Ms. Star Parker's latest article on Social Security reform. ". . . the fact is that investing over 40 years in a highly diversified fund of stocks and bonds is not a risky endeavor." And there's the rub.

This is generally true, but it raises any number of questions. For one thing low risk does not mean no risk, and the truth is that some people will definitely get it in the shorts. What are we going to do about that? (That's the cue for the right wing to murmur about personal responsibility)

A second question concerns what options are going to be available under this privitization plan? And will American citizens be able to take advantage to them to the fullest extent? Will their be training to let first time investors figure out how best to use this set up? (That's the cue for the right wing to grumble about Democrats not trusting the people)

One further question. This is Star Parker talking. A few weeks ago she wrote about how she wanted to see Social Security shut down entirely. Has she had a change of heart? Or does she see President Bush's privitization plan as akin to her desire to shut it down entirely?

How We Look

Whenever I read an article by David Limbaugh (the brainy Limbaugh Brother), a certain word beginning with the letter "F" springs to mind. That word is, of course, foolish. Consider this passage from one of his recent articles.

Tell me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't one of their primary complaints that President Bush blew a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the world, and especially Muslims, how much we care about the victims and how much compassion we have?

The point was not actually to care or do something altruistic and constructive, but to show how much we care. (You can read the New York Times and other liberal editorialists and commentators to confirm this.)

You see the foolishness here. Of course what many editorialists said was that we need to send money because it was the right thing to do, because people were suffering and we needed to help them out. There is also a political reason to do this as well, which many pointed out.

Let's be clear about something. The United States government has very little mandate to give yours and my money away, even in the face of this unprecedented tragedy. It's nice, but they can only send the money by taking it away from the people, so there are considerations. On the other hand they do have a mandate to work towards our foreign policy goals, one of which has to be to improve our image in the Middle East and the Muslim nations of the world. Seen in that light, offering $15 million was a serious misstep.

But, according to Mr. Limbaugh, the real fault comes not in the Bush administration in making this mistake, but in the Democrats and Liberals of America for criticizing the President for making this mistake. See, if we really cared what the rest of the world thought of us, we would be telling the rest of the world how generous the United States is, instead of criticizing the President.

Similarly if we were really interested in presenting America in the best light, we wouldn't have opposed the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. We wouldn't be looking into voter fraud in the 2004 election. Frankly it's hard to know what we would be doing if we were a moral party (in Limbaugh's Eyes). Probably very little.

Overreaching

This story I didn't touch on last week, but many of you have probably heard about it anyway. Representative Chris Smith (R, NJ) was removed from his position as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs committee. Apparently, Mr. Smith got it in his head that it was his job to fight for better benefits and support for America's Veterans, and, even worse, he was pretty good at that fight. This upset the House Leadership, who characterized him as a "liberal," despite having a 71 percent rating from the American Conservative Union. To be fair, I'm sure it is frustrating to have a guy like Rep. Smith around when you are trying to manage budget deals to ensure a maximum of pork goes to your districts. I mean some of your pork might end up on a veteran's plate.

Anyway Robert Novak writes on this depressing situation this week, and states, "Obsession with centralizing authority by the leadership does not precisely fit the pattern set by Democrats during 40 years of ruling the House. But the new majority party resembles the old one in this sense: having long been in power, they act as though they are sure they will keep it forever."

As people become entrenched in their positions of power, they start to forget how they got there in the first place. It's only natural, if unfortunate.

New Quote New Format

New Quote and New Look, but haven't updated the quotes page yet, because I am doing on this on my laptop while I watch Once Upon a Time in China. The logo this week is from a special guest contributor!