Category Archives: Politics

Family, GeekWorld, Politics

Liberalism on the Rise

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Double tree has computers, but they come out in this really big font and I can’t figure out how to decrease the size.  So, I’ll. just. shout. it.  out.  o. k. ?

When I left Jon and Jen’s last night, Barb was still at the ER at University Hospital.  I’m headed over there now to help with housecleaning, so I’ll find out what  happened.

There’s a line now at the computers.  That’s what comes with socialism, when everything’s free.  Or, at least when the cost is hidden.  Gal just stood, drinking coffee, looking at me.  Passive aggressive.

Read the newspaper this morning about the economy.  Bad news.  Which is  good news for Democrats.   Also, an interesting article by somebody named Jonathan Goldberg.  He’s an editor of the National Review and author of a book, Liberal Fascism. 

His perspective is that conservativism will rise again.  He said over and over that Republican does not equal conservatism.  The current administration spent like “a pimp with a week to live.”  A colorful metaphor.  I suspect the gut of his argument is correct, however, and that is that conservatism is a part of the American ethos and will only be challenged by a liberal ascendancy, not obliterated. 

We can only  hope that first, the ascendancy will happen, and that it will produce affects that have a long shelf life, like Social Security and Medicare.  Which do need to get fixed.  Amen.

OK.  Out for now.  See you on the flipside of the bris.

Family, Garden, Politics, Writing

Why Did They Get The Boat With Holes?

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66  bar falls 30.06  6mph NE dew-point 38  Beltane, cloudy

              Waning Gibbous Hare Moon

The grocery store on Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, quiet.  I suppose all those up norther’s have abandoned the first home for the second.  Made for an easy trip through the check out lane.  Though not purchasing much, I thought, I still rang up $155.  Surprised me. 

Some shrimp, a walleye fillet, milk, bread, snacks, some fruit (that $10 bag of cherries maybe not such a wise purchase), butter, turkey for the dogs.  That’s about it.  Combine that with the $42 it took me to fill up the Celica, around 11 gallons, and you can feel the pincers of rising commodity prices clamp down. 

Kate and I can afford it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m thinking about the person who checked me out at Festival, who put the items in the bags, theWalmart employee, the person who works in the convenience store, janitors and other back of the shop employees we rarely see.  Or, the  unemployed.  Or, the person whose income each month comes fixed by an annuity, social security, a meager pension.  Consider a person making 30-40,000 dollars a year.  With two or three kids.  A mortgage and a commute.  Thank you free market capitalism.  Why did they get the boat with holes?

Planted a couple of ferns in the shade garden underneath the river birch, then went over to the second tier, where I began a shade garden 3 years ago.  Gophers have eaten much of the hosta and the daylillies, survivors from my attempt to clear them out back then have overgrown a lot of the rest.  I’ve decided to treat daylilies in this half moon shaped garden as weeds.  I’m moving them to other places, places where their wonderfully dogged lifestyle will help us rather than get in the way.  Any that grow from tubers left behind, though.  Out they  go. 

Spent 45 or minutes or so writing on Superior Wolf, too.  Keeps on coming.

Garden, Great Work, Politics

Jazzed Up and Ready to Rock

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63  bar steep rise 29.90 0mph NNE dew-point 40  Beltane, sunny

Up at 6AM.  It’s light!  Out the door at 6:30 AM.  Drive fast to Hwy. 252.  Stop, edge forward.  Repeat.  Repeat. Repeat.  All this fossil fuel going up in exhausts of vehicles barely accomplishing anything. 

It took me an  hour, as I thought it would, to get to the Sierra Club office on Franklin Avenue for a meeting with Cathy Duvall, the national Sierra Club’s director of political activity.  It was worth it.  Cathy is a political insider, in this case, too, a Beltway insider.  That means she takes politics for what it is, not for what it could be in the best of all possible worlds, but as a place where competing forces drive against each other for power and resources.

The non-profit world, including the church, often works much like the traffic jam going into the city this morning.  Every body gets revved up, drives fast, then gets stuck in the resolutionary lane, confusing action with intention.  And a lot of political energy goes up in the exhaust, barely accomplishing anything.

Not for Cathy and the Sierra Club.  She understands the numbers, the people, the zeitgeist and still believes this could be a transformative year for the environmental agenda.  Could be.  Could be if we put the effort into a ground level campaign to educate the public.  Could be if we identify voters sensitive to our issues and see they could get to the polls.  Could be if we identify those races where a bit of extra oomph, in allies or dollars or both, could make a difference and deploy our resources wisely.  Could be.

I got jazzed up by the meeting, ready to rock.  The political committee, it turns out, has not yet formed and I may have a chance of getting involved.  This kind of energy is so different from the MIA, fiction creating and scholarly work.  It’s also different from, but closely related to the gardening energy.  This energy has an edge, a buzz.  It makes my finger tips tingle.  Old neuronal paths, long abandoned, have begun to fire.  We’ll see where it goes, if anywhere.

That said, there’s still plants to get in the ground, weeds to kill and dig up and trees to cut down, land to level.   All things in their time.

Great Work, Politics

Port-A-Potties A’Plenty

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58  bar falls 29.65  4mph N  Dew-point 27  Beltane, cool

                       Full Hare Moon

Those tiny baby bunnies born under the Hare moon gotta shiver in their bunny nests.  This has been a cold spring.

Went to the State Capitol grounds for 2 hours of volunteer work for the Vote Yes campaign.  We’re pushing a constitutional amendment to dedicate funds for clean water in lakes, rivers and streams.  There is also a dedicated funding stream for the arts.

For a major sesqui-centennial event, this was kept secret.  Who knew about it?  Hardly anyone apparently.   They had port-a-potties for a large crowd, but they all had green on the go in tab.  # of porta potties is a good estimator for how many folks event organizers anticipated.  It was a cool, blustery day.  The crowd seemed hurried and the tents poorly organized.  Not an up day.

Kate made Omaha Steak Company steaks for supper, a gift from Annie.   Mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and a tenderloin–a regular heartland meal.  That is, its destination was heartland via my circulatory system.  If God hadn’t meant us to eat meat, why would she have made it so good?

News of the Strange, Politics

The Things They Do

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65  bar steady 29.95 0mph ESE dewpoint 30 Beltane, sunny

           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon 

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.” – E. B. White

To underline the suspicion note in the EB White quote I gleaned articles from today’s news stories.  The ones who govern us on the basis of that 50% + 1 majority do some strange things.  And so do their spouses.

“Cindy McCain, whose husband has been a critic of the violence in Sudan, sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds whose holdings include companies that do business in the African nation.

The sale on Wednesday came after The Associated Press questioned the investments in light of calls by John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, for international financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership. ”

“…woman accused of booking clients for a high-priced call girl ring pleaded guilty Wednesday to money laundering and promoting prostitution in the federal probe that brought down former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Temeka Rachelle Lewis, who worked as a booking agent for the Emperor’s Club VIP, is the first defendant to admit guilt in the case that led to Spitzer’s resignation.”

“WASHINGTON (AP) – Hold on, NFL. Spygate isn’t over. Not if the “incensed” Pittsburgh Steelers fan in Congress has anything to do with it. Sen. Arlen Specter on Wednesday called for an independent investigation of the New England Patriots’ taping of opposing coaches’ signals, possibly similar to the high-profile Mitchell Report on performance enhancing drugs in baseball. “What is necessary is an objective investigation,” Specter said at a news conference in the Capitol. “And this one has not been objective.”

The Pennsylvania Republican was unforgiving of his criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, saying that Goodell has made “ridiculous” assertions that wouldn’t fly “in kindergarten.” The Senator said Goodell was caught in an “apparent conflict of interest” because the NFL doesn’t want the public to lose confidence in the league’s integrity.”

“Can Bob Barr become the next Ron Paul?

Mr. Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia who on Monday announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party nomination, certainly hopes so. It is a prospect that could give Senator John McCain’s campaign fits, threatening to siphon critical Republican votes away from him in important battleground states.

The situation is purely speculative. But Mr. Barr is keeping close to the script that has had Mr. Paul, a Texas congressman, drawing votes long after Mr. McCain became the presumed Republican presidential nominee.

Mr. Barr is trying to tap into the fervent band of followers who were attracted to Mr. Paul online and donated generously to his campaign by hiring the same Internet firm that ran Mr. Paul’s Web site. And he is hoping to spread his message to those fans, by running online advertisements on their Web sites, proclaiming: “Advance liberty? Learn more about Bob Barr!””

“The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

“Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac,” says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was “dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose,” according to an airline crew member’s written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards “taking down” a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.

In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse’s account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, “Nighty-night.”

Dreams, Politics

Have You Ever Had Culloden?

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60  bar steady  29.68  1mph S dewpoint 45 Beltane  overcast

              First Quarter of the Hare Moon

After I read several articles about Obama’s running mate choice, I came away convinced that Bill Richardson won’t be his choice.  The most interesting article I read suggested Wes Clark or Bill Bradley.  The prevailing opinion seems to be that he needs gravitas on foreign affairs in a Vice President.  This disturbs me since the most recent example of a naif at foreign affairs coupled with a strong VP is George Bush and Dick Cheney.  Do we really want a shadow presidency when it comes to conduct of foreign policy? 

The argument for a strong woman makes sense to me, but the candidates didn’t.  I don’t know.  If I had to choose among the folks bandied about so far, I’d go with Bradley, then back to Richardson.

Another planting day here on the homestead.  And a good one, it appears.  Good planting, transplanting days are overcast, low wind and cool.  They put minimum stress on plants being transplanted and conserve moisture.

In a dream last night I traveled to Wales.  It was an island in this version, with an interior river that followed the coast line.  You could rent boats and just let them float along.  I went through several small towns and villages.  They were mixtures of theme park and historical village, like Williamsburg.  At one point I stopped in a village and spent the night in a hotel. It cost $80 and had all natural wood done in a folk culture style.  A young guy took me to my room and said he would be back later with culloden.  What’s that, you wonder?  So do I?  He said it was boiling water with holes in it.  He never brought it so I don’t know what it was.  There were snacks, but you had to pay for them.

In the morning I woke up and went down for breakfast.  A waiter pointed out the menu to me.  It was a traditional meal, but I didn’t recognize any of the dishes.

At several points I said, “Yes, my family’s from here.”  It felt good to be home. 

The only dark spot was that I had forgotten to pack my tooth brush and tooth paste.  Kate had them, back on the mainland at a conference.  I figured I could buy some, but I hadn’t seen a drugstore.  Didn’t solve that problem before I woke up.

Garden, Politics

Country Gentleman with Corn Rows

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61 bar steady 29.69 0mph WSW dewpoint 47 Beltane cloudy, cool

              First Quarter of the Hare Moon

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” – George Bernard Shaw

Love it, or leave it the bumper stickers used to say.  I bleed red, white and blue.  These colors don’t run.  WWJD?  George Bush and Dick Cheney keeping the world safe for democracy.  Shaw is a genuine prophet, witty and ascerbic.  We don’t have his equal today, at least none that I know.

The Country Gentleman corn fit neatly into three rows, three feet apart, running east and west.  All the little onions are now in a bed by themselves, tucked in for the growing season.  The garlic looks great.  It’s a strange crop.  Sow it in the fall, reap in mid-summer.  We have peppers, tomatoes, onions, corn and beans planted.  A perfect garden for mexican cuisine.  We also have some beets and  carrots. 

I like these day where we work in the garden in the morning, then it rains in the afternoon.  Perfect.

Art and Culture, Politics

He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins?

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62  bar falls 29.85  3mph NNW dewpoint 29 Beltane

             Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon 

“The capitalist bookkeepers’ theoretician was German sociologist Max Weber, whose 1910 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argued that the key feature of capitalism was that making money becomes ‘a calling’, an end in itself. The bourgeois worked for the sake of work, denying himself the fruits of his labour. The pre-modern man would have been flummoxed by this, says Weber: what is the point of this, ‘to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods’? ”  from an article in Spiked

I love this quote from Weber.  What is, after all, the point of sinking into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods?  None, as far I can see.

I disagree with Weber though about the state of pre-modern people.  Many, many cultures not only thought this was a good thing, but literally did it. Those wealthy or high born enough took servants, food, furniture, money, painting, all manner of things to the grave.

Two tours today.  Winnipeg kids on a band tour.  They had been to the Mall of America and Bubblegum, a restaurant there and had lots of other places to visit.  They didn’t think the Days Inn where they were staying were showing them very good hospitality, though they did admit that having that many teenagers in one place created a lot of ruckus.  This was a bright, attentive and thoughtful group.  We saw the installation with the children’s photos, Frank, Magritte, Van Gogh and Goya.  They were talkative and had many ideas.

The Weber tour had three people, a couple and Stacy Pydych.  Stacy had to leave early, but the couple stayed on for the whole tour.  He had been to Japan when he was 24 years old and a serviceman.  They, too, were attentive and talkative.  We saw most of the exhibit because I skipped part of my usual tour in teaware and Tale of Genji.  They thought I was a professor of Japanese history.  I assured them the museum taught us what we needed to know.

Got a thank-you card today from Robbinsdale Japanese language students.  The teacher wrote a nice note and each kid signed it and some offered comments.  Amazing, when you consider these are high school students.

Great Wheel, Politics

Obama By Five Percentage Points

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52  bar rises 29.84 0mph NW dewpoint 30 Beltane

        Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon

The Hare moon stands in the west, just above the treeline a ways off our deck.  The night is misty and the crescent has a faded glow around it.  These nights, still cool, and days that don’t get too hot, ideal.  I like the cool days for garden work.  Today I stayed out in the sun too long and got a little woozy.  Just because the air is cool doesn’t mean the sun isn’t out to get ya.

I wrote Hillary asking her to get out quite a while back.  Now the hounds are at her heels.  Money won’t come in.  The math doesn’t work.  Superdelegates have begun to flee.  Yet, she has decided to press on.  Why?  Pride, maybe?  Certainly a commitment to being the first woman presidential candidate and then the first woman president.  Both laudable and signficant, but by themselves insufficient to keep her in the race.  She may not believe what’s happening.  She will.

My own take is that Obama will look like very different against McCain than he has against Clinton.  He embodies change, as she did, too, but he will look younger, stronger, less hidebound, though he will also look less experienced, less weathered by fate and circumstance.  The race will hinge on his ability to pick up some of the Reagan Democrats who swung so decisively behind Hillary.  How can he do that?  VP is one strategy.  I still think his best shot is Bill Richardson, but I read some pundits who think a strong woman would be a good choice.  Maybe John Edwards? 

Obama by 5 percentage points in the end.  That’s my prediction.  And I have no basis for it, other than hope and gut instinct, neither too reliable, but there you are.

           

Faith and Spirituality, Politics

I’m with Rev. Wright

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44  bar rises 29.89 0mph SW dewpoint 23  Beltane

              Waning Crescent Moon of Growing

A first tonight.  A salad made from lettuce I cut from the plants in our kitchen.  Enough for two with plenty left on the plants.  So, one test of the hydroponics down, a few more to go.  I want to produce tomatoes and herbs on a year round basis, while also using the setup to start plants for the outside garden.  Flowers, too, would perk up the kitchen and the inside, especially in winter.  Slow, steady.  Learning as we go.

Kate has tomorrow off, unexpectedly, so we’re going to go over to NOW fitness and buy a new treadmill.  Tres exciting.

Looks like a couple of good days for outside work Sunday and Monday.  I have plenty to do.

I haven’t said anything here about Rev. Wright and Barrack Obama.  I’m with Rev. Wright.  I know, I know.  He comes off like a fruitcake, an angry voice untethered from day to day reality.  His sermons are strident, cut deep.  His critique of American society as a racist, vicious culture seems to describe a place none of us know.  And we don’t.

Preaching has a long and complicated history.  Its strongest and its most dangerous form comes when a minister decides she must speak truth to power.  This always, always comes from a particular situation which the minister holds up to the Christian tradition, most often scripture in the Protestant community of which Rev. Wright is a part.  The preaching task is never done in the abstract; it is always a spoken word to a people, a spoken word shaped by the scriptural and historical roots of today’s Christian church.  When the community to which you speak and from you yourself come have experienced marginilization, unearned disadvantage, then the spoken word will express the truth of God’s justice to the powerful forces aligned against your community.

This type of preaching is never easy.  It costs blood.  It often produces pain.  Clergy who insist on prophetic preaching, because they feel they can do nothing else, often lose their jobs, get branded as crazy, misguided, idealistic, out of touch.  This is just power talking back, trying to press the truth to the margins again, where it can be contained.  We, that this those of us in the white upper-middle classes do not know what it means to live as marginal persons, bereft of influence, beholden to power.  We are the main-stream, the influential, the holders of power.

Naming truth hurts.  But, as Jesus said, the truth shall set you free.  But, he might have added, only after a really long painful time.  Even so, it doesn’t make the truth any less true.   

I never served a congregation as a minister for just this reason.  I knew my politics were too radical for a congregation of Presbyterians.  The tension and pain would not have had  a constructive outcome.  Rev. Wright made a different calculation and I support him in it.