In N.Y., GOP Hails Its Chief (washingtonpost.com)

In N.Y., GOP Hails Its Chief (washingtonpost.com)

Perhaps I should not have been surprised, but Bush's comment that the war on terror cannot be won has generated criticism from the right and the left. Last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, the conservative-leaning Fred Barnes and Mort Kondrake both assailed Bush's comments as inept and inexplicable. Meanwhile, the President's Democrat challengers are declaring that Bush now has a defeatist attitude.

Personally, I think the President's comments are the most honest words he has ever spoken about the war on terror. For liberal critics to suddenly puff up like Churchill delivering his "never surrender" speech is disingenuous. Liberals have been saying from the beginning that the war on terror is unwinnable, as victory is traditionally defined. We cannot kill all the terrorists; there is no country to which they belong which can sign surrender papers on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. As for the conservative critics, there is nothing inexplicable or inept about admitting the truth. What is inexplicable is maintaining a belief despite reason and (to use a phrase from the Iraq war) "facts on the ground." It would be inexplicable if President Bush actually believed that the war on terror could be won through violent means alone. Actually, that would be perfectly explicable: I would say that the man is a blind fool. The President is not blind, nor a moron, despite the popular caricature of him, and he apparently realizes that violence is only one means to the end, which is a world largely inhospitable to terrorist ideology.

President Bush believes that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a means to that end. A peaceful, democratic Iraq will spread peace and democracy throughout the Middle East, so the formula goes. If so, President Bush has greater foresight than just about anyone else alive today. I do not expect to see such results any time within the next twenty or thirty years. Perhaps he will be acclaimed by history as the first great President of the 21st century. Right now, it is difficult to see that far ahead, and the Iraq war still seems to me a miscalculation—and not just the planning for the occupation, as the President has admitted, but the war itself was a miscalculation. When thinking of the horrors of life under Saddam Hussein, it is shameful to think in such terms as "calculation" or "miscalculation," profit and loss, yet pragmatic considerations have always divided the political world from the world of pure ethics. Have moral people ever been able to fully reconcile the seemingly simple dictates of the Golden Rule with rule by human government?

I was not particularly impressed by the speeches given last night by Giuliani and McCain. The keywords of both speeches are "strong" and "resolute." Some call it "stubbornness," Giuliani said at one point. In some ways, I think President Bush is a prisoner in a cell of his own devising, in this regard. As is now apparent to me, at least, from his comments about the war on terror and the Iraq war in the past few days, he is a more complex character than most people believe. In some ways, he has to be a stubborn, never-look-back kind of guy, because that is what is expected of him, now. But perhaps these really are inborn traits only occasionally leavened by real reflection.

The only other thing I would note about Giuliani's speech is that he really unloaded on Kerry, and he did so fairly early in the speech, as well. The Democrats probably made a mistake by not going after the President more strenuously in their convention speeches. The Republicans are not going to reciprocate. I liked Giuliani's humorous story about the day George Bush came to New York, shortly after the terrorist attacks. The story serves to remind the listener of Bush's response to 9/11—his real response, not this phony "he read The Pet Goat for seven minutes" nonsense of Michael Moore and John Kerry. It also serves to portray Bush as in touch with the common man; in fact, he is just a common man himself. Who would you rather have a beer with, John Kerry or George Bush? And such like irrelevancies. And irrelevent it is, except that it is effective and most people won't bother to see through it. This kind of humorous anecdote is exactly the kind of tactic which is most effective in highlighting Bush as personable and non-elitist.

McCain's speech was not particularly memorable. The highlight came when he invoked the name of the conservatives' most demonized enemy, Michael Moore. A "disingenuous filmmaker," McCain called him. Moore was supposedly in the convention center at the time, though if true, he is a man of greater courage than I believed previously. I have not yet seen Moore's film, so I cannot comment on the veracity of McCain's charge that Moore depicts a pre-invasion Iraq that was an oasis of peace. Other than that, McCain simply reiterated the standard junk about Bush's strength and resoluteness. McCain's comment that the war in Iraq was a choice not "between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war; it was between war and a graver threat" has been reprinted in all the highlights of McCain's speech, but I don't find it convincing. What was the graver threat? As Pat Buchanan, of all people, said on Bill O'Reilly last night, we had lived with this "graver threat" for twelve years—longer, if one counts the eighties in which Saddam actually possessed and used chemical weapons. Like most of us, of whom (thankfully) the media does not require complete cradle to grave consistency, Buchanan has been all over the place in terms of what he has believed and said over the years. He was not exactly profound on O'Reilly last night, but he got it right on that one point.

In conclusion, I think the kick-off to the Republican Convention has been a great success. The critics have all been harping on the same point, that the convention is front-loaded with moderates while the platform is staunchly conservative. I don't particularly fault the Republicans for this. The Republican stars, like Rudy and Arnold, are mostly moderates. If the Republicans had showcased people like Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson, the critics would just as strenuously denounce the convention as front-loaded with hate-filled and intolerant far-right conservatives (as they did in '92 when Bush père invited Pat Buchanan to speak). The convention so far has been a great success, and I think unless something goes terribly wrong, the President might even get a nice bounce out of this.

Bush Revisited (washingtonpost.com)

Bush Revisited (washingtonpost.com):

Nancy Gibbs and John F. Dickerson write (in Time) that "if Kerry's test in Boston was to show voters that he is not weak, Bush's task at the Republican Convention in New York City this week is to show that he is not wrong, that his strength comes not from a six-gun temperament but from judgment that has matured through three years of hard testing. His vital audience is not that portion of the electorate that sees him as a savior, nor is it the inflamed opposition that calls him a liar and a zealot. He needs to reach the voters who are unsure about either voting for him or voting at all; who don't think he lied but may think he made mistakes; who like his manner but question his judgment; who are glad Saddam is gone but wonder if the price was too high; who wonder whether John Kerry really knows his mind but also whether George Bush ever opens his. Those voters aren't looking for an apology. They do need to see the President growing in the job or get a better idea of where he is going, because his task is not about to get any easier.

This describes me perfectly as a still undecided voter.

A gesture towards reconciliation?

I read the following in a Washington Post story this morning:

Bush also acknowledged in the interview that the administration did not anticipate the nature of the resistance in Iraq, and he said that was his greatest mistake in office. "Had we had to do it over again," he said, "we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day."

Democrats tried Sunday to exploit that acknowledgment. "The president is now describing his Iraq policy as a catastrophic success," Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said in Washington. "I, like most Americans, have no idea what that means, but it is long past time for this president to accept personal responsibility for his failures and for his performance."

And this from an AP news report:

In an interview on NBC-TV's "Today" show broadcast to coincide with Monday's start of the Republican National Convention in New York, Bush said retreating from the war on terror "would be a disaster for your children.'"

"You cannot show weakness in this world today because the enemy will exploit that weakness," he said. "It will embolden them and make the world a more dangerous place."

When asked "Can we win?" the war on terror, Bush said, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the—those who use terror as a tool are—less acceptable in parts of the world."

What do these gestures towards complex thinking mean? I think they may mean quite a lot to people who like Bush but are frustrated by his stubbornness, people who want simply an acknowledgement that the President is not infallible. Critics can deride these as mere words, as John Edwards has done, but words have symbolic impact. I am surprised and pleased by these words of George Bush. Sorry, John Edwards, but "catastrophic success" does make sense, enough so that I don't believe George Bush himself came up with the phrase. I would imagine it was coined just for him by Condaleeza Rice or someone else. And late or no, the President is finally taking responsibility for a debacle that has been apparent to everyone else for months. I give President Bush full credit on this.

On the other hand, Bush's "greatest mistake in office" has cost lives. We still need to decide whether to hold him accountable for that. In Manhattan yesterday, protestors carried approximately a thousand flag-draped coffins through the streets while Cheney opened the Convention across the river at Ellis Island. I don't normally give protestors any credit whatsoever, but that is a powerful and effective protest, as opposed to mere displays of childish anger, which is more typical of protestors. I also liked the "Billionaires For Bush" who dressed to the nines and played croquet and badminton on the green at Central Park. That is a very clever kind of protest, I think.

GOP Will Showcase Bush's Leadership (washingtonpost.com)

GOP Will Showcase Bush's Leadership (washingtonpost.com)

Bush advisers said not to expect big new initiatives or detailed proposals. Instead, they suggest the president will use a broad brush while raising the stakes of the choice in November. He will offer a vigorous defense of his belief that his aggressive approach to terrorism will keep the country more secure than Kerry's approach.

It sounds to me like President Bush is going to be on the defensive this week. Honestly, I was looking for a big, new initiative, tax reform to be specific. Barring any major announcement on that score, I do not see my thoughts and feelings shifting more towards the President and away from John Kerry.

I think a defensive strategy is a loser for the President. I think most people, like me, have probably made up their mind about what the President has already done. I'd like to know what's next, if he is reelected.

Even if the President choose not to be bold this week, I am still excited and interested in what happens at the convention. I think after it is over, we will be able to better make a prediction, perhaps not to the winner in November, but at least to whether the contest will be close or not. It may be that the President and John Kerry remain in a statistical dead heat and we won't be able to tell anything, or it may be that the President finally overcomes all his deficiencies and pulls ahead. The Gallup poll last week suggests the latter may be what occurs. Kerry has lost ground to Bush by three or four points, and the pundits attribute it to the attacks by the Swift Boat veterans.

These attacks on Kerry's service have been the most damaging negative attacks in my short political memory. They are absolutely without merit, either on the issue of Kerry's medals or his protest of Vietnam upon his return, yet they have been terribly effective. I am irritated that Bush has steadfastly refused to condemn the Swiftees specifically, instead calling for all 507 groups to cease and desist. However, John Kerry has not condemned Michael Moore and MoveOn.org's scurrilous attacks on the President, so I can understand why Bush is remaining silent. This is just politics, but unfortunately, many voters don't see it for the game of one-ups-manship that it is; they give serious consideration to these attacks and maybe even base their vote upon them.

Why am I leaning more towards John Kerry than President Bush at this moment? Not for any particular policy reason. I am conservative, especially on economic issues. I have no problems with the Bush tax cuts, and as a fiscal conservative, probably the only reason I can vote for Kerry in good conscience is that he has promised not to repeal the tax cuts for the Middle Class, only the tax cuts for the wealthiest (those making over $200,000.00). On war, I am a hawk, but a cautious hawk. I believe in the Powell doctrine, which was not followed in the Iraq war. A couple tenets of the Powell doctrine were completely ignored by an administration that is now priding itself on its wartime leadership: the Powell doctrine dictates among other things that before engaging in war, there must be a clear exit strategy. The President tells us repeatedly that our exit strategy is to leave when the job is complete, which really is not so much an exit strategy as a handy excuse. I guess since we are not technically at war with Iraq, the President could say the Powell doctrine no longer applies, but clearly, back in 2002 and 2003, not enough thought was given to what happens after the Iraqi army surrenders or is defeated. Bush essentially admitted as much this weekend, a half-hearted and long-in-coming admission from a man who seems to believe in the doctrine of Presidential Infallibility.Any way you look at it, we went into the war with too high of expectations, expectations raised by the President and Vice-President, and without a clear strategy that would allow us to exit, our goals accomplished. The Powell doctrine also dictates that war is always a last resort. I don't think I need to elaborate on how the Bush Administration violated that tenet. I don't know what doctrine the Bush administration followed in Iraq, but it was not the Powell doctrine, which is all very ironic considering these same Republicans sneered at Bill Clinton's military ventures as ignorant of the Powell doctrine.

On cultural issues, I am more divergent from standard GOP doctrine. I have a real aversion to the moral self-righteousness of the Republican party, but I do not let it stop me from voting Republican when there is a candidate I like. So I am an economic conservative, a hawk on the subject of war, but culturally somewhat moderate to liberal. Still I have to ask, why then am I not a die-hard Bush supporter? On a personal level, I just don't like the man much, and I never have. I felt in 2000 that the primary elections were a joke. Bush was pre-ordained the candidate regardless of his credentials--or lack thereof--mainly as a surreptitious way of sticking the knife into Clinton's back over besting Bush père in 1992. I supported McCain in 2000 because I did not like the way the GOP establishment came together behind Bush and assaulted McCain for daring to challenge the Chosen One. That election would foreshadow the Bush presidency in microcosm, though. So much of the Bush presidency is one of revenge, of turning the tables on Clinton "liberals" and generally trying to reverse the nineties and declare it an aberration. I think the war on terrorism has been consistently mishandled ever since December 2001, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda escaped during the battle of Tora Bora. Increasingly, I think the war on terrorism was always and already solely about destroying Saddam Hussein. I've read accounts that state pretty clearly that by December 2001, when Bin Laden escaped, attention and resources were already shifting towards the upcoming assault on Iraq.

Iraq now seems to me a war in which our great hopes met an uncompromising and cynical reality. Perhaps if we had fought it differently, it would have been different. Probably not. Increasingly, I think it was a mistake, the height of hubris. And any reader of Greek tragedy can tell you the result of an excess of hubris. All this taken into consideration, I feel no safer today than in 2001. And why should I? The threat to American lives is apparently as great today as in September 2001. Ask Homeland Security.

So then, I cannot think of a single reason to vote for John Kerry, but I can think of many, many reasons to vote against George Bush. Critics of that point of view misapprehend the point of an election such as this, which is really a re-election: this election is a referendum on George Bush. I don't have to have a reason to vote for John Kerry; I need a reason to re-elect George Bush. I want President Bush to give me that reason this week. We'll see what happens. I will write throughout the week of the convention as time and reason dictate.

Politics as usual

Just before lunch this afternoon, I attended what I thought was going to be another ordinary meeting, but before it ever began, the subject of politics came up. Why do people bring up the subject of politics amongst a group of relative strangers? And why is it almost always Democrats who do this?

Five of us were sitting around a table waiting for everyone to arrive, and the Creative Writer said to the Supervisor, "Have you seen the cover of this week's New Yorker?" She said, "No.

He said, "Oh, it's hilarious. Cheney is having his blood pressure checked, and the blood pressure gauge is color-coded like the Terrorism Threat Level." The Supervisor laughed, and I thought this would be the end of it, but the Creative Writer said, "Well, you saw that Cheney came out the other day and said he thought the issue of gay marriage should be left up to the states?" The Supervisor said, "Yeah, but the other half of the Administration supports the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage." The Creative Writer said, "This is an administration that swings both ways." Everyone laughed. I just smiled and looked down at the table.

The Supervisor said, "There aren't any Republicans here, are there? We're all on the same side, right?" She was looking around at all of us. No one said anything. Then she looked at me and said, "You're not a Republican are you?" I was stunned for a moment. How does one answer that question from a superior? If I decline to answer, everyone will think I'm a plant from the Heritage Foundation. If I answer it honestly, everyone will be certain in their minds that I am a plant from the Heritage Foundation.

I said, "I'm a registered Republican ..."

Suddenly, the smiles were all gone. Silence prevailed over all.

"... but I don't always vote that way ..."

More silence.

" ... I voted for Al Gore in 2000 ..."

A slight smile from the Creative Writer. Others are busily trying to look through walls.

"... I voted for McCain in the 2000 primary. But previously, I voted Republican throughout the nineties."

"So how are you leaning this year?" The creative writer asked, with a tinge of sarcasm, I think. Or was it contempt?

I said, "Well, towards Kerry. I've never really liked Bush, and I would be voting against him rather than for Kerry."

No one seemed put at ease by this admission. The Supervisor broke the tension by calling the meeting to order early, and I sat there for the entire meeting wondering if I had just blown my promotion potential for the next ten years. What were they all thinking right now? I made an extra effort to contribute to the meeting, as if to make up for my faux pas of admitting that I was a Republican, but even so I still felt as if I had just come out as gay to a group of homophobes, or revealed that I have African ancestors to a koven of KKK members.

Am I wrong, or are Democrats worse than Republicans about inserting partisan politics into every conversation, regardless of whether the audience might be mixed or not? I think Democrats are worse. I do know one Republican who can make a liberal feel pretty guilty about their political leanings by the comments he makes, but overall, my experience has been that Republicans keep their politics to themselves except in the company of other Republicans. You can interchange Republican for Conservative, Liberal for Democrat, and I don't think it makes a difference.

I keep my politics to myself, unless I am in the company of people whom I know well. I think it was entirely inappropriate to broach the subject at work. The Creative Writer probably thought he could score some brownie points with the boss because he knew of her liberal leanings. However, it was the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong audience for that, in my opinion.

John Fogerty

The John Fogerty website is pretty cool. You can listen to the title song of his new album, "Deja Vu All Over Again," which is an anti-Iraq War song. You can also hear him sing an acoustic version of "Lodi." Good stuff.

I was introduced to CCR by my Dad. Dad had quite a record collection from the late sixties/early seventies, and CCR was his favorite. Most of the best records, such as those by the Beatles and the Beach Boys, are all gone now, either lost, stolen, or broken over the years; but I still have two of them, "Cosmo's Factory" (CCR) and "Smash Hits" (Jimi Hendrix). I also have the Led Zeppelin boxed set that came out in the mid-eighties right at the tail-end of the vinyl era. I haven't listened to a record in years. I have no record player, nor even a stereo system to which I could connect a record player.

Just yesterday, I heard two older co-workers conversing about their record collections. Both extolled the virtues of vinyl as a storage medium, claiming that music stored on well-cared-for vinyl albums sounds better than music on CD. I don't know if I agree with that. Certainly, vinyl has its idiosyncracies-the pops and crackles-that make it a unique way to listen to music. But is it better than CD format?

Fortunate Son

I need a fix cause I'm goin down

After a coffee-less day yesterday, this morning, I could go on no longer. I am supposed to cut down on my caffeine this week, but that can't possibly mean no caffeine at all. Can it? One cup in the morning can't hurt. Besides, it isn't Starbucks, just regular coffee; and I drank it while eating a bowl of Special K with strawberries. That's gotta count for something. That cereal is like eating a pure bran horse turd, even with dehydrated strawberries to sweeten it. I guess I ought to resign myself to a life of bran cereal and Boca Burger, but I cannot give up coffee.

Last night, I had a cup of green tea before I went to bed. I slept badly and got up early for work again. Maybe I should have skipped the tea, but I had a bit of a headache and I thought the tea might help. I figured I was suffering from caffeine withdraw. In times past, I could drink coffee before going to bed and still sleep peacefully. Unless getting older is weakening my resistance to caffeine, I don't think my caffeine has anything to do with my sleeplessness. Last night, for example, I woke up thinking about my work day ahead of me. I think that when I wake up, I just start thinking and my mind does not go back to sleep.

And yes, I am listening to the White Album on my iPod today, as you might guess from the first line of this post. I am up to 1968 on my Beatles playlist. "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" ... what a great song. I also like the lines Lennon speaks later in the song: "When I hold you in my arms / and I feel my finger on you trigger / I know nobody can do no harm / Because happiness is a warm gun mama." Practically every line in the song is a double entendre. Michael Moore uses this song to great effect in Bowling For Columbine, especially in the scene in which a buxom woman in a bikini fires an enormous machine gun.

And while I am on the subject of music, there is something that has irritated me for some time, and I have been meaning to write about it. I am irritated by how this election year, politicians and one conservative talkshow host in particular have blatantly misused one of my favorite songs, "Fortunate Son," by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Every morning, I wake to WMAL, a local talk radio station on the AM dial; and every morning I hear a commercial for Sean Hannity in which the background music and first couple verses of "Fortunate Son" are interspersed with Hannity blusteringly defeating some caller in rhetorical combat. The only verses we hear are "Some folks are born made to wave the flag / Ooh, they're red, white, and blue." Given only that much of the song--which is really all that Hannity can use out of context--one would think "Fortunate Son" is a pleasant, patriotic tune.

Additionally, I know that John Kerry has also used the song to introduce himself at campaign rallies. How appropriate is this song for Kerry? To my mind, no more appropriate than Ronald Reagan using "Born in the USA" back in '84. Do these men ever listen to their campaign theme songs? Or do they think somehow they are turning the song's meaning on its head by appropriating it for their own use. Here are the lyrics to the song "Fortunate Son." Judge for yourself:

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yoh,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no.

I realize the song is a Vietnam War protest song, which does reflect Kerry's past (though not the past he most wants us to recall, which is the past in which he fought in the Vietnam War John Fogerty protested). So I can sort of understand Kerry's use of the song. Anyway, Kerry was not a Senator's son; he was an Ambassador's son. And Kerry wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he just married the owner of the whole damned set of silverware. Yet I can almost justify Kerry's use of the song. Hannity's use of it is shockingly brazen, though. I am thinking about writing Fogerty, if I can discover to where to address my letter.

School Daze

I finally went to the doctor yesterday concerning my sleep problems.
She said its difficult to diagnose the origins of sleep disorders, and
then its also difficult to cure them. Insomnia can be caused by any
number of factors including diet, health, age, mental wellness. Have
I been depressed? She asked. What's my caffeine intake during the
day? What triggers my waking in the middle of the night? And what
prevents me from falling back asleep? On nights that I do sleep all
night, do I wake up but then fall back asleep? If I do fall back
asleep, is there something I am consciously doing that achieves this
desired result? Conversely, when I can't fall asleep, am I doing
something mentally that prevents it?

Good questions, all. I have little hope of answering them. She took
my blood pressure, and it was normal. She said most likely my high
reading last week was triggered by lack of sleep, rather than vice
versa. Same with the headache. The doctor prescribed nothing, but
told me to go to Health Services at work three more times this week
for blood pressure readings, and I am to return to the doctor with the
results on Friday.

Last night, ironically, I slept well all night. I dreamed I was back
in High School. I left my books in my locker; I showed up late for
class. I put my head down on my desk in bored diffidence, and my
teacher asked me to raise my head, which I did with the characteristic
teenage sigh and eye-roll. I was cool. Freud would call this a
wish-fulfillment. All dreams were wish-fulfillments to Freud, a
theory which I have never quite understood. Interpretation of
Dreams is a good book to read for Freud's descriptions and
interpretations of the dreams of his patients. I don't find it as
helpful for interpreting my own dreams. But in the case of last
night's dream, it probably was wish-fulfillment. In my dream, I even
had a pretty girlfriend, a composite of my wife and some other girl I
knew in High School. Obviously, my subconscious carefully elided the
fact that I was having a pleasant dream about a woman other than my
wife by giving some of her features to my dream girl.

Let us probe deeper into this matter ...

The dream girl, whom I will call Sandy Cheeks, had features of my wife
but also of a girl I went to school with, whom I saw just recently.
When my wife and son and I were in West Virginia visiting family, in
July, we took my son to the public swimming pool. There, I saw this
woman, Sandy Cheeks, for the first time in over ten years. She laid
her towel right next to ours, actually, but steadily ignored us. I
never even said hello to her because she refused to look at us, even
though she was sitting so close that a observer might have thought we
were all together. I mentioned to my wife after we left the pool that
I had known her.

My wife said, "Well, she practically sat on top of us and then ignored us the whole time. Why didn't you say hello?"
I said, "She seemed to be pretending that we weren't there."
My wife said, "Then why didn't she sit somewhere else?"
I said, "I don't know. Maybe she wanted me to know that she was ignoring me. I kept waiting for her to look at me and acknowledge that she recognized me. Then I was going to say something."
My wife said, "That's a strange answer. Why would she want you to know that she was ignoring you? How well did you know this girl in High School?"

I could now see where the general trend of questioning was going, so I said, "I only knew her from afar."
My wife said, "Are you sure? Then why would you recognize her immediately after more than ten years? And why would you remember her name?"

We were headed down the slippery slope now ... I had to cut this short. But how?

I said, "I remember her because she had a bad reputation in school.
Rumors were, she was really promiscuous."
"Uh-hunh, so that's how you know her," my wife said.

"D'oh!" I said.

We didn't really argue, my wife and I. We were going back and forth
more in a half-joking manner, really, but the incident must have stuck
in my mind. Seeing that face from the past there at the pool, so
unexpectedly, I thought to myself, "She seems attainable now."
That might seem like an odd thought to think about someone who is determinedly ignoring me, except that I knew that if I had wanted, and if I had been free, I could have spoken to her and gone on from there. Twelve years ago, I would never have been able to look at her straight in the face. Today, I am not the boy I once was. It helped that to me, in terms of her attractiveness, she seemed perfectly average now, whereas ten years ago, she seemed definitely out of my league. Of course, you'll remember that up to that point, one of my few romantic achievements in "my league" was going steady with a one-eyed girl in grade school (see Young Love in the archives).

Thus in one way, my dream was a wish-fulfillment in the sense that I
was having the chance to relive High School with the extra ten or
twelve years of experience I have accumulated since 1991. I was bold,
I was non-chalant, I was cool. In some ways, probably every man
wishes he could do the same, not just correct the mistakes of the past
but correct himself. Why? Well, as with everything involving men, it
comes down to sex, really. Every man knows that armed with the
experience of a thirty-year-old, his fifteen-year-old self would be
quite the ladies' man. Would a man really rend asunder the fabric of
time itself in order to have had more and better sex in High
School? That question is best left unanswered.

In another way, my dream was occasioned by my own son starting
pre-school yesterday. Actually, his first day was Friday, but it was
just a "transition" session, only an hour, and I attended with him.
Yesterday was much more difficult. When his mother and I left him, he
cried so hard. He grabbed his mother's shirt and wasn't going to let
go. The teacher had him around the waist and was trying to pull him
away, but he had a good grip, and all the while the tears were
flowing. We stood outside the door until he stopped crying, which
only took about a minute (the teacher asked him if he wanted to feed
the class Guinea Pig). His mother was crying, too, and I felt sad
myself.

I worry most about how he will get along socially in school because I
myself felt like such an outcast. Thus perhaps my dream can be
interpreted as a wish for his happiness in school. That may be
slightly incorrect; I don't know that anyone is really happy in
school. As for myself, I hated it, which does not explain why I later
became a teacher for a time. Or perhaps it explains everything, I
don't know. Perhaps what I should say is that I wish him happiness in
his relations with other children. That is a good thing to wish for,
I think.

iPod Unbound

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My iPod arrived Thursday of last week. Unfortunately, my blog has been on hiatus since then, though not for any particular reason. I am very happy with my iPod. The picture above is not great, but I wanted to show as much as possible what it was like to open the box. The box itself was a plain, brown box, with the words "Genuine Apple Refurbished Product" on the side and top. For $291.00, I got a refurbished 30 GB iPod, a remote, a dock, a firewire cable, an AC adapter, earbuds, and an Apple-brand iPod case. I also got a disk with Musicmatch jukebox on it, which tells me that my iPod must have originally been sold as a PC iPod. Anyway, it's in a Mac household now, right where it belongs and will be happiest.

The iPod itself is pristine. When I took it out of the box for the first time, the metal on the reverse side was so shiny and slick, I could have used it as a shaving mirror. It would be an expensive shaving mirror, but nonetheless the thought did cross my mind, if only fleetingly. The irony is that now I have an iPod with a hard drive bigger than both my computers combined. I have an iBook and iMac at home, both of them getting long in the tooth at this point. The iMac is the elder machine; we bought it in summer 2000. It's an iMac 400 Mhz DV Special Edition. Nothing so special about it these days, but it still works for me. The iBook is a May 2001 Dual USB iBook, the first in the white iBook line. The iMac has a 12 GB hard drive, and the iBook only has a 10 GB hard drive. Theoretically, I could completely back up both hard drives to my iPod and still have space to spare. The age of my computers might be surprising, except that they are Macs. When people judge Apple Computer based on its paltry market share, one factor not often considered is that Mac Folk don't upgrade as often as PC folk. We don't need to upgrade as often. My two Macs still work well for me. I could never play any recent games on them; that is, if I played games. But for Word processing and Internet, they still run like champs. The hard drives could be larger. That is my only complaint. On the flip side, my PC-using step-brother buys a new HP or Dell every two years or so. I don't know that it is necessary for PC users to upgrade as often as that, but it does seem a common trait among that breed of computer users.

So I passed the weekend ripping CDs and purchasing music from iTunes. I even bought a couple audiobooks from Audible. One can buy Audible books via iTunes, but I'd rather buy direct from the Audible site. Audible allows one to re-download purchased items at any time, as many times as one desires. iTunes makes no such allowance, which I have always thought is a fault of the Apple music store. If I lose my music from a hard drive crash, I ought to be able to go back to iTunes and re-download the music I bought there. As it is, I back up my purchased music routinely, in addition to the "backup" on my iPod. But still, it would be nice to know that Apple is looking out for me, too, in case of data loss.

So what am I listening to on my iPod now, as I write? I am listening to an audiobook, "The Classic Fifty Poems." Specifically, I am listening to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." Afterwards, I may listen to the Beatles. I ripped all my Beatles CDs and organized the songs according to year of release, so I am looking forward to about five hours of listening to the Beatles from "Love Me Do" through "The Long and Winding Road" in 1970 (the original version, not the new version with the orchestra removed).

Oh, and I did indeed name my iPod Brian.

Kerry Decries Bush's Military Realignment (washingtonpost.com)

Kerry Decries Bush's Military Realignment (washingtonpost.com)

Kerry's reception by Veterans was apparently pretty cool. Here are the relevant excerpts:

Kerry received his most enthusiastic response from 6,000 VFW members when he strongly advocated improving health care, disability and other benefits for veterans. But overall, he was received here far less enthusiastically than was Bush, who generated two standing ovations during his speech. By contrast, Kerry's audience offered cordial and polite applause, with one detractor heckling the Massachusetts senator.

The article goes on to quote some of the veterans' opinions of Kerry. Overall, I felt the Post was going out of its way to present a fair depiction of the event. The article could have been simply about Kerry's words, rather than about the reaction he received. Here are what some of the veterans said:

Robert Belding, a Persian Gulf War veteran, said he boycotted the speech because Kerry's "promises don't reflect his Senate record. He says he supports troops, and then he votes against the $87 billion request to help them."

"I heard he missed 75 percent of his votes on the intelligence committee," said World War II veteran Gerald Kulligan, echoing the e-mails being sent out by the Bush campaign. "Who wants a president who works 25 percent of the time?"

Some said they have not forgiven him for protesting the Vietnam War when he returned from the war in 1969. "That was a bad time for guys coming back, and he come back and was hooked with Hanoi Jane," said Elmo Pennington, a Vietnam War veteran, referring to Jane Fonda's war protests. "He never made no friends with that."

Still, others here mobbed Kerry at the stage and praised his push for veterans benefits and his comments protesting the troop realignment. "As a Korean War veteran, I don't think we can pull out of Korea," said Jack Carney of Florida.

CBS News goes into more detail (Kerry Slams Bush Recall Plan), stating that the Veteran who heckled Kerry called him a "liar" and was told to keep quiet ("admonished" is the word the reporter uses) by the VFW Sergeants at Arms. CNN reports that two men turned their back on Kerry while he spoke, in imitation of how he turned his back on his Vietnam veteran comrades in 1972.

On WMAL this morning, I heard that last night, CBS News with Dan Rather reported that Kerry's criticism of the troop withdraw is his biggest flip-flop yet. CBS News reportedly showed footage of Kerry and Edwards on their campaign bus shortly before the Democrat convention. In this footage, Kerry says blatantly that troops should be withdrawn from the Korean peninsula. This has been reported nowhere else.

To find the evidence of this flip flop, I had to turn to--you guessed it--right wing radio. Neil Boortz (he's a libertarian, not a Republican, if that makes a difference) cites a Boston Globe article from August 2nd, Kerry Edwards Defend Their Agenda, in which Kerry is quoted as saying,

I will have significant, enormous reduction in the level of troops. We will probably have a continued presence of some kind, and certainly in the region. If the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work, I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just there but elsewhere in the world -- in the Korean Peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps.

If Kerry is on tape saying this, you can bet this will make it into a Bush advertisement within the week.

Ignoring History In Iraq (washingtonpost.com)

Ignoring History In Iraq (washingtonpost.com)

In this editorial by a noted Conservative columnist, George Will suggests through implication, if not directly, that the American invasion of Iraq ranks in Imperial hubris with the war with Mexico (1846-1848) and the war with Spain (1898). Comparatively, as Will points out, the war in Iraq has already lasted longer than either of these two wars, and even longer than American involvement in World War I. Will quotes the President of Princeton University in 1901, on the eve of the annexation of the Philippines, an event which provoked an uprising that lasted 14 years and cost 4000 American lives:

The East is to be opened and transformed, whether we will it or not; the standards of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples who have stood still the centuries through are to be quickened and to be made part of the universal world of commerce and of ideas.

And he quotes Woodrow Wilson on American military actions taken against Mexico, that "every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America."

Will goes beyond mere comparison with history, though his comparisons have a point. Past paternalistic efforts at correcting a nation America believes is headed in the wrong direction have inevitably led to a disaster, more or less. One can say, well, we own Texas now, thanks to the Mexican war. But sometimes I wonder, do we really own Texas, or does Texas own us. But that's a topic for another day.

George Will predicts civil war for Iraq, and though that may or may not come to pass, he may be closer to the truth in predicting, ironically, that "[democracy] might succeed ruinously," since democracy can just as well lead to instability and division as stability and unity.

The election in November will be decided on many issues, ranging from George Bush's personality to John Kerry's military record; however, for myself there are only two paramount issues deciding my vote. I still don't know if I have reached a conclusive answer to either of these questions: 1. Are we safer after three years of a War on Terror conducted by George Bush? 2. Was the Iraq War worth the expenditure of American lives and wealth? As these questions should make apparent, inasmuch as these second-term Presidential elections are always and only a referendum on the incumbent President, I think this election, ironically, has very little to do with John Kerry. Ultimately, either George Bush has been a good President and deserves reelection, or not. Has he made us safer? Did he make the right choice in invading Iraq? These are the only valid questions in this campaign. There being no other serious contender for the office, if a voter answers these questions in the negative, then voting for John Kerry must necessarily be the logical conclusion, his war record and his politics notwithstanding.

The latter question above--was the Iraq War worth the expenditure of American lives and wealth?--probably makes me sound selfish, considering all the Iraqis who lost their lives to the dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet with genocide in the Sudan seemingly unnoticed by our President, I do not feel that the Bush Administration has the moral high ground on rescuing nations facing mass extermination. The issue of Saddam's brutality is a red herring in the argument over whether invasion and occupation of Iraq was either necessary or practical. Most wars are wars of choice, so why did our President choose this one, and did he make the right choice?

The Iraq War was based on what appear now to have been a number of false assumptions, all well documented, from the assumption that the Iraqis would welcome invasion, to the assumption--yes, assumption, not fact--that Saddam still possessed WMD. I was a wavering supporter of the Iraq War from the beginning. By "wavering" I mean that every week or two, I would have my doubts, but most of the time, I believed the logical proposition that if Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who possessed WMD, then the United States should take action to eliminate this threat. Besides, Saddam was a butcher, a monster, and the world would be better off without him. All true propositions.

Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple as a syllogism with two propositions and a valid conclusion. Since the central proposition is an "if" statement, it must be backed up with reasonably conclusive fact. Was it? It seemed like it at the time. Increasingly it seems that the assumption that Saddam possessed WMD was based on received wisdom rather than observed fact. How many times have we heard, "It was a common belief among all the governments of the world that Saddam possessed WMD?" As if because everyone believed something to be true negates the fact that everyone was apparently wrong.

Anyway, the chief issue leading up to the Iraq War was not whether Saddam possessed WMD--everyone believed he did have them--but whether invasion and occupation was either right or necessary in and of itself as a way of combating this perceived problem. Could the U.N. inspectors do the job of containing Saddam and preventing the proliferation of WMD? The inspectors consistently found little or no evidence of WMD, but to the Bush Administration (and to myself, unfortunately) this was merely used as evidence of the inspectors' incompetence. Critics of the inspectors reminded us that Iraq was a totalitarian society; Saddam would kill any scientist who told the truth about the WMD program.

Thus the only solution was total invasion and occupation. Drastic means to achieve a doubtful positive outcome. I say "doubtful" because the goal was never just to eliminate the threat of WMD emanating from Iraq, but to build a bastion of Democracy in the Middle East, a Shining Beacon that would eventually illumine the Middle East with Democracy and (supposedly as a result) increase friendliness towards America among Muslims. The goal of preventing the spread of WMD seems dubious now, especially since the administration itself keeps trying to find evidence that Saddam gave his WMD to Syria before the war (is that supposed to make me feel better? Is that supposed to justify a war waged, in theory, to prevent the proliferation of WMD?). And if that goal of the war seems now hopelessly out of reach, then the scenario of Iraq becoming the first blooming of Democracy in the Middle East seems even more hopelessly idealistic and fatally flawed today, as George Will notes. One need only look at today's news reports to find evidence of how tenuously Iraq clings to the vestiges of stability. Barring a civil war that we do not prevent, Iraq may well become a kind of democracy, but will it be the kind of democracy that results in greater friendliness between Muslims and America? That seems a risky assumption, too, at best. Considering how every assumption about the war in Iraq has proven incorrect, what can we expect of these last strands of hope? Increasingly, on the issue of Iraq, administration officials and their die-hard supporters sound more and more like Herbert Hoover (or George Bush). They expect any moment to turn the corner and find the glorious outcome we were promised. Me, my illusions are all gone.

The Front-Porch Chat: Birth of a Harding ... er, Kerry Campaign Tactic

The Front-Porch Chat: Birth of a Kerry Campaign Tactic

John Kerry was on vacation this past week at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho. If I were one of the staunchest of the Bush-haters, I'd be feeling a little perturbed. Important hand-shaking and baby-coddling time is being lost here, People! Can't he skip vacation until after the election? Who knows, he might have more time off than he desires.

Even on vacation, though, Kerry still managed to stick his head out the door of his summer home for a comment or two on recent events. For example, in the aftermath of this weekend's hurricane, Kerry suggested the President travelled to Florida too soon and thus risked interfering with the efforts of First Responders. Somehow, I think if President Bush had waited, Kerry would be criticizing him for not acting soon enough. Well, that's politics.

I don't know that the media broadly reported where Kerry was vacationing last week, let alone that he owned a home there in Sun Valley. I had no clue he and Teresa owned yet another home, this one out there in Hemingway country, until I saw it on Fox News this morning while in the depths of my sleep-deprived dementia. Now that the media has exposed the inconvenient fact that he owns a home in Sun Valley, Idaho (and a home in Boston, and a home in Washington, and a home near Pittsburgh), Kerry decided to play a populist trump card in the form of the Front Porch Campaign. Enter "Front Porch" in Google, and all you get are articles about Kerry, most of them crediting him with inventing the idea.

In fact, he is copying, with some variation, another Presidential victor whose aura most candidates would try to dispell as quickly as possible: Warren Gamaliel Harding. Harding's brief Presidency was known mostly for scandal. In fact, while campaigning for a second term, he died of possibly a stroke or possibly a heart attack, after receiving a cable informing him that all hell was about to break loose in the Teapot Dome scandal. Harding is remembered for keeping the alcohol flowing in the White House during Prohibition and for the cronyism that led to Teapot Dome. He is also known for his libidinous frolics in White House bathrooms and closets with his many mistresses, one of whom later claimed that he sired a child on her during one of these trysts.

And oh yes, Harding's first campaign for the Presidency was called the "Front Porch Campaign" because he regularly met with supporters and gave speeches from his front porch in Marion, Ohio. If Kerry has not followed Harding's campaign formula to the letter, it is probably only because he would not know which front porch of which of his homes to choose from. Even so, on close inspection, there do appear to be hitherto unrecognized Harding/Kerry links. Following is a passage from Harding's official biography at the White House website:

A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, called Harding's speeches "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea." Their very murkiness was effective, since Harding's pronouncements remained unclear on the League of Nations, in contrast to the impassioned crusade of the Democratic candidates, Governor James M. Cox of Ohio and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Irony is our only mode of discourse

I went to bed last night with a thumping headache, cause unknown. I could not find an aspirin in the house when I went up to bed at ten, so I just had to hope that lying down would relieve the pressure. I hardly ever get headaches, so this was a new experience for me.

I slept restlessly until about 2:30, at which time I woke and did not go back to sleep. I was too preoccupied with my aching head. Then, as usual, I started thinking. That's always a problem. If I can't keep my mind clear long enough to go back to sleep, I am usually up for the rest of the night, thinking. I think about work. I think about politics, or the books I'm reading. I write blog entries in my head, over and over. Last night I wrote (in my head) an entire blog entry about the choice facing us in the coming election. If I had to explain succinctly what I like and dislike about Kerry and Bush, what would I write? Maybe I'll really write that down sooner or later.

About 3:10, I got up, thinking maybe sitting upright would relieve some of the pressure in my head. I sat up until nearly four reading a new book I started yesterday, The Great War and Modern Memory, by one of my favorite writers on war, Paul Fussell (London: Oxford UP, 1975). I picked the following quote out of the book as especially memorable:

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends (7).

Last Wednesday, I watched the movie Gallipoli, a World War I film starring a very young Mel Gibson. This film confirms Fussell's point that irony is the central mode of discourse on war of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Every aspect of the film is a prime example of irony. Take only the attenuated ending. Gibson's character never wanted to go to war anyway, but through a combination of peer pressure and exposure to patriotic propaganda, he joins up and is eventually sent with other Australian soldiers to the trenches at Gallipoli, in Turkey, on the eve of yet another great disaster of a battle in a long, disastrous war. There he witnesses his friends slaughtered one by one as they are hurtled forward out of their trenches towards the Turkish lines. Finally, his CO, a mild, middle-aged man already broken by the senseless, suicidal battle, sends Gibson as a runner back through the trenches to ask a General to call off the attack. Gibson does not make it back in time, and the CO himself leads the soldiers over the top one last time. Gibson's best friend, a runner who gave up his safer position to Gibson in order to fight, is shot down while running towards the Turkish positions. The scene is shot like the other marathon scenes earlier in the film, before the war. One fully expects the boy to win his race, though how he will win, one is not sure. The movie ends with the bullets impacting his body, killing him.

After reading Fussell until about four, I lay back down in the dark, thinking I might still sleep a little. I gave up at 4:20, showered, shaved, and dressed for work. I ate a bowl of oatmeal and drank a glass of orange juice while watching re-run news on Fox. I was at work by a little after six.

When the Health Services office in our building opened at 9:00, I stopped in to ask for a pain killer. My headache had subsided some, but not entirely. The nurse also took my blood pressure. She said it was high enough to cause concern and that I ought to come back around two for another checkup. My blood pressure may well be the cause of the headache that kept me up all night

Tonight, I think I will watch Kill Bill 2. My wife and I watched it together on Saturday. She likes the "Kill Bill" films much better than I do, but even so, I'd like to watch it again.

Movie Review: The Contender

Last night I watched one of my favorite political movies, The Contender (2000). Jeff Bridges plays a Democrat President nearing the end of his second term of office. When his vice-president dies, he has to choose the successor, one of only a handful of times this has ever happened in United States history. He foregoes the obvious candidate, a Governor played by William Peterson (now of C.S.I. fame). Instead, the President chooses a woman senator, Laine Hanson, played by Joan Allen. Immediately, the Governor's backers in the Democrat party take out the long knives. The chief antagonist is Senator Sheldon Runyon, the head of the vice-presidential confirmation committee, a character played by an unrecognizable Gary Oldman (he has thinning, curly hair, and wears thick, black, plastic glasses, making him look like a cross between Adlai Stevenson and Alan Greenspan). Soon, Runyon's investigators uncover witnesses who claim to have been present during a college gang bang in which the vice-presidential designate participated. Thus the confirmation hearing turns into a McCarthyesque witch trial.

Couple things worth noting about this film: first, the movie does not pick on Republicans. The only Republican character in the film is Laine Hanson's father, a protagonist. The most evil people in the film are all Democrats, and they are only portrayed as evil to the extent their ambitions outpace their idealism. Senator Runyon seems genuinely to believe that Hanson is the wrong choice for vice-president, and he looks upon her sexual history as the only way to eliminate her.

Second point: the film clearly exposes the double standard that still exists in politics, and in life, which forbids to women the kind of sexual freedom that men enjoy. Clearly, the movie illustrates despite its happy ending that a female politician could never recover from a sex scandal as easily as a man. One of my favorite lines from the film is spoken by Sam Houston, who plays the President's chief of staff, Kermit Newman. He says in the heat of anger: "The people of this nation can stomach quite a bit. But the one thing they can't stomach is the image of a vice president with a mouthful of cock!"

Like most (all?) movies about Washington going back to Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith, The Contender juxtaposes idealism and pragmatism, integrity and corruptibility. Laine Hanson never admits or denies publicly what happened at the gang bang. She refuses to dignify the accusations with a response, which in my opinion is unrealistic and too morally rigid for most people (myself included) to understand. The scandal only widens the more she refuses to address the matter. Perhaps it would not go away with a denial; perhaps it would not go away even with the release of exculpatory evidence. But there is nothing wrong, as far as I can see, with defending one's self against charges of moral turpitude.

Hanson is also idealistic politically, and this also stretches the bounds of imagination. At her confirmation hearing, she tells the Senators she may be an atheist, but she goes to church every day. Her church is the shrine of democracy, the Capitol of the United States, etc., etc, yadda yadda yadda ... only problem with that is, in real life the papers next day would all run screaming headlines: "Vice-Presidential nominee declares she is an atheist!" She also tells the Senators in a straightforward way she is for the abolition of firearms and the prohibition of cigarettes. She also states, in defense of her atheism, that she believes in separation of Church and State for the same reason as the Founding Fathers: not because the Church needs protection from the Government, but because the Government needs protection from religious fanaticism.

This woman has about as much chance of being confirmed as Vice-President as I have of becoming President through the normal lines of succession.

Setting these couple unrealistic elements aside, the film is quite good. Bridges should have won an Oscar for his portrayal of the President. Oldman also does quite well portraying a typical United States Senator, blinded by the power he has accumulated over his years in the Senate. Runyon is eventually demolished personally and politically by the President himself, an ending which highlights another facet of the film, which is the glorification of the Executive Branch and the denigration of the Legislative. The false dichotomy of idealistic politician and venal politician is a bit tired at this point in history, even when enlivened by a great cast and a good story; however, this film is still definitely worth watching.

The future's open wide

Howard Kurtz in his Media Notes today draws attention to the fact Election 2004 looks a lot like Election 2000. Depending on which newspaper you read, the advantage goes to either George Bush or John Kerry. Duh. Kurtz first references the Cook Political Report for an analysis of the polls that concludes that President Bush is in a world of hurt. Meanwhile, an article in Kurtz's own newspaper, Shirt Sleeves Style Is A Strong Suit For Bush, describes the energy of the Bush campaign and casts doubt on the picture of BC04 as running on fumes, perpetually on the defensive. Bush is a crowd pleaser. Read the article in question; at the very least, you'll get a kick out of the funny picture of Bush holding a baby. I don't know whose expression more invites an off-color caption, Bush's or the baby's. Bush looks like he's thinking, "Did this kid just shit himself?" And the baby looks like he's thinking, "(Grunt)This one's for you, Mr. President." Or the kid could be thinking, "Wait! Wait! I thought my tee-shirt was in support of Busch Beer! I can't spell! I've been made a fool of!"

This election is anyone's call. I know someone who has a hundred bucks riding on President Bush, but as for myself, I'm not daring enough to wager five bucks on either candidate. Bad enough whoever wins will take my money in taxes next April. I usually lose at Poker, and I've never voted for a winning candidate for President, so a vote from me, even if made as a bet, is a sure sign that candidate is going to lose. Maybe I've just thought of a good way to earn some unearned income: I could sell my vote. Kerry supporters could pay me to vote for Bush, and vice versa. My one vote could well determine the outcome of this election.

Right now, neither candidate for President should feel comfortable that the election is his to lose. President Bush must wake every morning thinking, "What happened in Iraq?" The situation never seems to get better. Al Sadr, that "upstart cleric," as the New York Times so affectionately refers to him, is still causing trouble. He was apparently wounded during strikes on Friday. He showed himself at a press conference, one arm in a sling. That reminds me of a magnet my divorced mother has on her refrigerator: "I miss my ex-husband. But my aim is improving all the time." Keep trying, Boys, you'll get him eventually. That is, if the Iraqi government lets you.

From the perspective of an armchair hawk, I find it frustrating that we fight for a day, then the Iraqi government negotiates. Then when Al Sadr rejects all offers of a truce, we fight for another day. Then the Iraqi government negotiates again. Allawi is practically on his knees begging Al Sadr to join the government. How many times does Al Sadr have to reject these offers? I can't imagine being a Marine and fighting under the aegis of this Iraqi government. Iraq has turned into Bush's worst nightmare: a war that is not only unsatisfying and worrisome for the Doves, but unsatisfying and worrisome for the Hawks, as well.

Today is eighties day on my iPod. I am sitting here at lunch, drinking Starbucks Breakfast Blend, listening to "I Melt With You," by Modern English. All the best songs somehow end up as commercials. This one, I believe, is used in a Microsoft commercial which, given the title of the song, might be appropriate. Except that beyond its title, the song is about love, and no one but Steve Ballmer can love Microsoft.

Back in the winter when Apple and Pepsi were running their iTunes promotion, my wife and I assembled a pretty massive collection of bottlecaps for free songs. My wife redeemed hers for about fifty songs from the eighties, which she has lovingly assembled into a great playlist on my iPod. When I hear them, I remember the songs, but I have no knowledge of titles or artists. My wife, on the other hand, can even tell you the dirty, drug-abusing secrets of Aimee Mann, if you ask her nicely. She remembers the eighties much better than I, and being three years older, she even remembers the seventies. I have no real memories of the seventies, as such, except for this Welcome Back Kotter doll I played with as a child. For some reason, I can remember the store and time of day my parents bought me this doll.

Where's the RIAA on this one?

Oh look, someone has helpfully made available the MP3 of the Cure's Friday I'm In Love.

Monday You Can Fall Apart

My iPod is officially scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Just in case,
I taped a note to the door yesterday evening, addressed to the FedEx
person, stating that if we are out, he or she could leave any packages
next door. FedEx requires a signature, so if we miss them, which is
likely since they usually deliver during the afternoon, I would have
to wait another day to receive my package.

I am now quite anxious. This is the height of consumer pleasure for
me. The question I have been mulling in my mind now is, "What shall I
name my iPod?" My First Generation iPod, purchased so long ago now, I
named Podman, a perhaps not quite transparent reference to one of my
favorite horror movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Since I have already succumbed and am unashamedly one of the Pod
people now, with this newest iPod, I am leaning more towards the name
Brian. Brian would reference both the Monty Python movie, and it is
the name of the dog on The Family Guy. Yes, I like Brian.
It works quite well.

In the meantime, nothing to do but wait. The song on my hopelessly
antique, soon-to-be replaced iPod is the catchy, but completely
inappropriate "Its Friday I'm in Love" by the Cure.

Where art thou, iPod?

I am still waiting for my iPod. I am beginning to think I should have been less cheap and paid for a faster shipping speed. Apple pays for Standard Shipping, which I suppose means it is coming by mule train. According to the FedEx website, my iPod departed Sacramento August 11 at 10:38 AM. The tracking information has not been updated since. Scheduled delivery date is next Tuesday. When the iPod comes, I am going to take a sequence of pictures depicting the Grand Opening. I'll post them here. I've already given up on the idea of letting it sit on the table, unopened for a few days.

Kerry 'couldn't think' on 9/11

Kerry 'couldn't think' on 9/11 / The Washington Times

The low-point of the Kerry-Edwards campaign for the Presidency was John Kerry's recent comment that had he been President on 9/11, he would not have sat idle in a school classroom for seven minutes after learning of the terrorist atttacks. Kerry's second-guessing was arrogant and self-righteous. Everyone remembers 9/11; everyone remembers the confusion, the horror, the stunning nature of the event that left us all transfixed to the television. I do not believe anyone except the most extreme Bush-hating Democrat would blame President Bush for his response in those minutes immediately following the attacks. Is that the constituency to which Kerry is appealing?

The response by President Bush to Kerry's critique, as detailed in this article, is only fair. It further shows Kerry as simply an American, one of us, who responded in much the same way we all did: we were stunned, in short. When asked that question about how he would have responded upon learning of the 9/11 attacks, Kerry should have declined to criticize the President. This was a chance for Kerry to truly demonstrate the more positive attitude of his campaign by crediting the President, or at least saying that the charge of inaction (it was seven minutes people!) is grossly exaggerated. Instead, Kerry chose to falsely pump himself up, and so he failed the test of his character posed by the question of how he would have responded to 9/11.

Lately, I have felt some worry for the Kerry campaign. Following the Democrat convention, I had begun to feel a real affinity for the candidate. In these past couple weeks, Kerry has made two missteps that have really turned me off. First was how he would have responded to 9/11. Second was his inept response to Bush's challenge about whether knowing all that he knows today, would he still vote for the resolution authorizing force in Iraq? His response to that question has given the President his greatest weapon yet to use against Kerry. Does John Kerry really have the agility, the optimism and positive message that it will take to win this election? Does Kerry deserve to win the Presidency? Or is the Kerry-Edwards campaign rapidly turning into Dukakis-Benson II?

High Court in Calif. Nullifies Gay Marriages (washingtonpost.com)

High Court in Calif. Nullifies Gay Marriages (washingtonpost.com)

This is no victory for those who are opposed to gay marriage. The California Supreme Court has decided nothing that will lay this issue to rest once and for all. Indeed, I suspect it has only galvanized the strident homosexual activists who have made marriage their cause in life, We will still be debating this ten years in the future, even longer, because there are going to be more challenges to the law, and more proposals to ammend state constitutions, and more challenges to those ammendments. I wonder, do the opponents of homosexual marriage have the energy to keep up their opposition for years to come? Is there even a defensible reason, other than to protect a heterosexual privilege, that they want to oppose gay marriage? In the past decade, mainstream popular culture has facilitated growing tolerance of homosexuality. It seems unlikely this trend will suddenly cease now, or any time in the near future. I would predict that within another decade, Americans will be ready to accept the idea of two men or two women marrying under the law. Like it or not, it's coming.

I hate this issue. I think it's small beans in a country rapidly ripping itself apart at the seams (and I do not view ordinary gays as part of the team doing the ripping--radical gays, maybe). Our leaders like for us to be divided as a country. Division and polarization further the interests of both parties, and this is a great issue with which to divide Americans against Americans.

Singles queue for man pillows

Singles queue for man pillows (August 5, 2004)

A man pillow? That leaves me feeling rather superfluous today. And of course the "vibrating alarm clock" on the man pillow is really, honestly, just an alarm clock. Mmm-hmmm. Before you know it, the world is going to look like Wonder Woman's Amazon Island. White Goddess of the Dark Jungle ... She offered ECSTASY and DEATH!"

White House Backs Off Bush Sales Tax Quip (washingtonpost.com)

White House Backs Off Bush Sales Tax Quip (washingtonpost.com)

This is a story buried in the regular Washington Post, but I read it in the Express edition on the way to work this morning. Back on August 2, radio talk show host Neal Boortz reported in his blog that according to Matt Drudge, President Bush is going to make complete tax reform a priority in his second term. Considering how Drudge totally exploded what little good reputation he had when he misfired on the Kerry affair with an intern story, I would not normally take Drudge seriously. However, the idea of a National Sales Tax, or any kind of flat tax, really, has been near and dear to my heart since the lost days of the Steve Forbes Presidential candidacy. When did he run for President, anyway? 1928? I can't remember.

Anyhow, apparently a supporter at a rally yesterday asked President Bush about the matter. Bush said it was "an interesting idea" that would bear looking into. When Kerry attacked with his spurious claim that a National Sales Tax would be an added tax burden on middle class families, the President caved and said he was not considering tax reform of that magnitude.

This is disappointing. When I first read that the President might be considering this kind of heavy-duty tax reform, I said to friends that this might be the issue that clinches my vote and puts me firmly behind President Bush. In these weeks leading up to the Republican convention, President Bush is supposed to be laying out his domestic agenda for a second term. I said to myself, maybe he will propose a bold move to completely overhaul the tax structure. Now it appears it ain't going to happen, unfortunately. It's more than disappointing, it's disheartening.

I believe President Bush could have found in this an issue that would have energized a pretty lacklustre campaign. Some would have been violently opposed to the idea; some, like me, would have found a good reason to support Bush for President. The boldness of the idea would have sucked the energy right out of all other issues, though. Boldness has been a hallmark of the Bush Presidency, to the point that considering all that has happened, he seems to have served a full two terms in four years. Apparently, on issues not involving National Security, he has no guts, however.

Neal Boortz has carefully analyzed the idea of a National Sales Tax in his blog for August 3, so I will not spend any time reiterating what he says there. Yet I do want to add that the claim made by Kerry and other critics, and left unchallenged in this Washington Post story, is totally spurious. A National Sales Tax would not add to the tax burden on middle class families, primarily because at the same time, the Income Tax would be totally eliminated. To me, not having to worry about my taxes every April would be a reason to support the Fair Tax plan in itself. But Neal Boortz breaks down the idea this way, in terms of what it would mean for the poor and middle class, as well as every other American:

1. They get their entire paycheck.
2. Even with the sales tax ... they'll be paying essentially the same for everything they buy.
3. They get a check from the federal government every month to rebate any sales taxes they had to pay.

Sounds good to me. And President Bush rejects this idea out of hand? Personally, I begin to think the whole story, from Drudge's first report about it, to Hastert's suggestion in his book, were all just plants in an election year to drum up support for Bush among fiscal conservatives. I don't like having the ideas that are important to me used simply as a vote-getter. I hope at least Hastert is serious about the issue.

The iPod Plays a New Tune (FOX News)

The iPod Plays a New Tune

While we're on the subject of iPod, Duke University has decided to give a new iPod to all incoming freshmen. Apple may be making deals with other schools as well, even as I write.

Geez, I attended West Virginia University, and all I got was this stupid diploma! Shoulda gone to Duke, I guess.

Let them have iPods

Yesterday, I ordered a new iPod. Well, not a "new" iPod, but new to me. In the end, I decided to order a refurbished, slightly older model, rather than the brand new iPod with click wheel. Perhaps my reasoning bears some explanation, since this is probably the first time in my conspicuously consuming lifetime that I have ever deliberately foregone the purchase of a brand new toy in favor of a less expensive, slightly used toy.

I have been debating for about two weeks over whether to buy new or refurbished. I checked the on-line Apple store every day to assure myself that there was no danger of Apple running out of refurb models while I decided. Finally, yesterday, I was ready to buy, and so I called them up and put the salesmanship of a customer service representative to the test.

A new 20 GB model with click wheel, but without accessories, is $269.00 plus tax (I get an educational discount through my wife, a teacher). A refurbished 30GB iPod with lots of accessories is $279.00, plus tax. I asked the salesman, Troy, a simple question: "Why should I pay more or less the same price for a newer model 20 GB iPod, with 10 GB less storage and fewer accessories?" His answer was, "Well, the newer model comes with the click wheel technology that debutted on the iPod mini. And generally, it's always best to buy the newest product available." I could have stretched his powers of persuasion to the breaking point by simply asking, "Why is it always best to buy new?" But I let it go and said, "Well, as much as I like to buy the latest and greatest toy, I'm going to go with the refurbished model." Then he added desperately, "Oh wait, I forgot, the new iPod has a longer battery life, up to 12 hours." I said, "No thanks, I'll take the 30GB refurbished model. It will be fine."

I bought a 30GB refurb model with numerous accessories including dock, remote, and carrying case for $291.00 (including tax). The new 20GB model would have been $10 less, but the carrying case alone that I am getting with the 30GB model costs thirty bucks if bought separately. I think $291.00 is a great deal. For the first time in my life I chose wisely and economically instead of impulsively and emotionally.

So somewhere in Calee-forn-ia, some Apple employee is preparing my iPod for shipment. Already, the post-consumption depression is settling in. Maybe it's just me who feels depressed after a major purchase, but I've always felt the real joy of buying a new toy is in the anticipation. I felt the same way as a child, waiting for Christmas. By 8:00 AM Christmas morning, the presents lying unwrapped around me, I would be in a deep funk at the hollowness of this easily purchased triumph over unhappiness. By New Years, I would feel better because I could begin anticipating next Christmas.

I remember one Christmas in particular, probably Christmas 1979, my parents bought me the Kenner Millenium Falcon. That was the supreme gift a parent could buy a child who liked Star Wars in 1979. I remember the excitement of opening it and putting it together and playing with it for awhile. Then I remember this feeling of unhappiness, unhappiness not with the toy but with the emptiness that accompanied the attaintment of this Hope Diamond of the Star Wars universe. After this, no other toys would quite be able to match the Falcon in terms of the excitement and happiness I had felt opening that present. What would I ask for next Christmas that would please me even half as much? Oh, I could continue collecting the action figures one by one, but nothing would equal the pleasure I felt opening the package containing the Millenium Falcon.

I imagine that feeling of Christmas excitement--and especially the anticipation of Christmas excitement--is a compelling motivator for all those thirty-five year old men who assiduously seek to collect, at the cost of thousands of dollars, all the minute pieces of the Kenner line of Star Wars toys from the late seventies, early eighties. Not finding it, they go on to collect the new toys from the new films. They go to the prequels expecting the same childish thrill they felt the first time they sat in the theatre and read the words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ..." Not finding it there, either, they curse George Lucas. Ultimately, the original trilogy was also not as good as they remembered, but these men keep the dream alive nonetheless, putting hope in the upcoming DVD release of the original films.

I am acquainted with a man roughly my own age who has an entire room of his house devoted to his Star Wars toys. He buys multiples of Storm Troopers and Battle Droids and common rebel soldiers and sets them up in battle lines like a collector of old, who might design an elaborate mockup of the Battle of Gettysburg with tin soldiers and fake grass and trees bought from hobby stores. This acquantaince of mine suspends Star Wars vehicles from the ceiling with fishing line. His bookshelf is lined with different editions of Star Wars books from the very first to the most recent. And then there are the unopened, "carded" original figures, on which he has spent untold hundreds of dollars. There's the blue (or is it purple?) Snaggletooth from the original late seventies release, a one-of-a-kind supposedly. There's the Jawa with the cheap, plastic cape (mine came with a cloth cape, which I always thought provided a unique tactile experience but actually makes the figure nearly worthless in terms of rarity). My acquaintance also owns multiple copies of the recently released figures from the new films. All of these figures are even less than worthless in a glutted market where scores of thirty-ish men have bought them up and stored them away in the vain hope that history will repeat itself and, when they are sixty-five and ready to retire, these figures will sell to a future generation of thirty-something men raised on the prequels. Good luck, fellas. The movies just ain't that good.

My Star Wars toys are long gone. There are times I wish I still had the Millenium Falcon, even though the radar dish would not stay on, and the relatively unarticulated action figures did not fit in it well. I don't wish for it for any greedy reasons; used (and it was well-used), it would fetch no more than thirty dollars on eBay. It was just a cool toy, and it was mine, and so I think it would be nice to have even if it did sit in the bottom of the closet.

I think when the iPod comes, I will leave it unopened, sitting on the kitchen table, just to see how long I can prolong the anticipation. If my wife doesn't open it first, maybe that's what I'll do. Or maybe I'll open it prematurely and get it over with. Sometimes its better to skip the pleasure and get right to the pain of loss.