• Tag Archives Politics

  • Liberalism on the Rise

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    📂This entry was posted in Family GeekWorld Politics 📎and tagged

  • Why Did They Get The Boat With Holes?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden Politics Writing 📎and tagged

  • Making My Soul Hum

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Superior Wolf is underway again.  The other day I hit on the point that had me stuck, a character I’d carried over from another novel.  He didn’t belong in this one, but it took me 25,000 words or so to figure that out.  Now a new plotline, more salient and tight, has emerged with a strong character, a protagonist who will drive the book.

    It feels good to be back at fiction, a long caesura, and I hope the next one is brief.  Fiction speaks from my soul, the rest tends to be, as we said in the sixties, a head trip.  Over the years since then, I’ve learned to respect head trips.  I earned a living with them for many years and they’ve kept me engaged with the world.  They do not make my soul hum, though my  Self speaks through them as well.

    Kate made a trip to the Green Barn, a nursery she really likes on Highway 65 near Isanti.  She picked up composted manure, sphagnum moss and several plants.  We have some new ferns, cucumbers, morning glories (the ones I grew in the hydroponics died outside, though the tomatoes have done fine.) squash and several grasses. 

    Tomorrow morning I’m going in for a breakfast meeting at the Sierra Club, a meeting with the political director of the national Sierra Club. Politics makes my soul hum, too.  Though I can’t say exactly why, water issues matter a lot to me, so I’m angling (ha, ha) to get on the committees that deal with Lake Superior, rivers, lakes and streams.  Watersheds seem very important to me, so I hope to work on projects related to watersheds, too.  One thing I know about politics is that showing up matters, so I’m gonna show up.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Writing 📎and tagged

  • Port-A-Potties A’Plenty

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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?


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • The Things They Do

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.”


    📂This entry was posted in News of the Strange Politics 📎and tagged

  • Obama By Five Percentage Points

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.

               


    📂This entry was posted in Great Wheel Politics 📎and tagged

  • Boring

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    38!  bar steep fall 29.62 8mph N  dewpoint 37  Spring?  drizzle

                  Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

    “The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.” – Robert Frost

    A few years back, quite a few actually, I got acquainted, briefly, with one of Robert Frost’s grandsons.  I don’t recall his name, he and I dated sisters of a Grand Marais family.  Seems that grandpa was a hard guy to like.  Curmudgeon all the time.  Hmmm, come to think of it that could describe me, too.  Oh, well

    Anyhow, the quote above gives a flavor to Frost that fits with what I learned.  I’m with him in the first sentence and I’m with him up to the dependent clause of the second.  Our best rises out of our uniqueness, our realization of the potential in our Selves.  I don’t know about the best people part, hard to sort them out from the scoundrels in my opinion. A homogenized society, the dream of Nazi’s, skinheads, Aryan race purists and other assorted nutjobs has a flaw prima facie without regard to its abhorrent racism.  It would be boring.  God, can you imagine a world where the rules were made Goebbles?  By David Duke?  By swastika waving baldies?  Abhorrent and boring.   A terrible combination. 

    The elitist implications of the cream rising serves as negative a function in society as those who would eliminate everybody but those they consider the cream. 

    Two tours today, Japanese language students again, this time from Edina.  We’ll see how it goes.

    38 is the temperature today.  It was 77 on Wednesday and I chose to work inside.  A poor choice on my part given Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s predicted weather.

    On Saturday, though, I head out to the Arboretum for an Institute for Advanced Studies day long seminar on natural time.  It focuses on a topic near and dear to my heart. 


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • The Tragic Sense of Life

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    51  bar falls 29.82 4mph SSE dewpoint 28 Spring

                   Waxing Gibbous Moon of  Growing

    “To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.” – Miguel de Unamuno

    Unamuno has slipped from awareness, it seems, but this Spanish existentialist, poet and author speaks truth even when it is uneasy and unpleasant.  Here’s some brief information about him:

    Spanish philosopher. In Del sentimento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos {at Amazon.com} (The Tragic Sense of Life) (1913) {at Amazon.com}, Unamuno described human existence as torn between the irrational hope for immortality and the rational expectation of death. Since faith can never outweigh reason, Unamuno supposed, the best we can achieve is a life of authentic struggle with the human predicament.

    Recommended Reading: Miguel De Unamuno, Three Exemplary Novels, tr. by Angel Flores (Grove, 1987) {at Amazon.com}; Victor Ouimette, Reason Aflame: Unamuno and the Heroic Will (Yale, 1986) {at Amazon.com}; and Gemma Roberts, Unamuno: afinidades y coincidencias kierkegaardianas (Colorado, 1986) {at Amazon.com}.

    The house party for the Power 2 Change campaign had three attendees:  Frank Broderick, Bill Sutherland, and Ann, a former school teacher.  Jessica, a Sierra Club worker, attended to explain the campaign.  She fell into a trap the young activist often does, asking too little of her audience.  She kept referring to the things that were easy:  talk to a friend, sign the petition, read the literature, volunteer at the Sierra Club for a phone bank.  George Bush made the same disastrous mistake after 9/11.  He reassured us and asked to go shopping.  That’ll show’em.

    People want to sacrifice, to do the difficult thing.  Why?  Because when we sacrifice, or do something that stretches us, we become engaged.  We know in our gut; this is important.  If it’s not important or significant, don’t bother me with it.  If it is important, figure out a way I can take action.  Help me find others, then assist us in getting our handles on the levers of power.  That’s the way change happens. 

    As often happens to me, as I write this, especially with Unamuno dangling just above these words, the pointed finger takes on an impossible curve and aims straight at my chest.  I know in my gut that climate change and the energy issues are important, perhaps the important issues of my generation and certainly ones in which we are culpable and therefore responsible.  So, in addition to the work I need to do on other writing projects and at the MIA, I need to pick up this challenge, too, as I agreed to do last September in Iowa.  I’ve done too little and I can do more. 

    Kate’s snacks and party layout, on the other hand, were delicious and beautiful.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • Megafarm Hydroponics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    54 bar steep fall 30.20 0mph SSE  dewpoint 18  Spring

                   First Quarter Moon of Growing

    A 28 degree spread between 8:00 AM and right now.  We still have patches of snow, but they lie now mostly in the shade or north facing slopes.  The tulips, daffodils and iris should continue their growth.  The magnolia buds look pregnant.  Some of the garlic has broken the surface, about 7 bulbs.  It’s starting.

    The generator now sits on its little pad on the west wall of our garage.  The electrician has been here all day.  He cut into the garage wall with a reciprocating saw to splice the transfer switch into our electrical panel.  This transfer switch plus a sensing device discovers a power outage, waits a beat or two to be sure the electricity is really off, then turns the generator on and transfers itself as the power source for the house.  When the power comes back on, it senses that, too, then transfers the generator off-line and runs it a bit longer to cool it down and allow it to shut down smoothly. 

    It’s not ready to go, yet, however.  The next step is to run the gas line from the new gas meter (not installed yet) up through the garage ceiling and down to the generator’s fuel intake.  The next step after that is–pay for it.

    The Megafarm hydroponics (the second and larger plastic tub) has begun to function, too.  I filled the reservoir with seven gallons of nutrient solution, smoothed out a kink in the tubing connecting the pump.  It needs to get set on a two hour cycle soon, but right now, I’m filling the growing bed and shutting the pump off by hand.  It has a few lettuce plants and three tomato plants.  This is all still experimental, but it feels like we’re headed in the right direction with it.

    Kate has prepared snacks and drinks for the meeting tonight.  All I have to do is meet and greet.  Should be fun.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • My Y Chromosome

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  bar steep rise 30.08 1mh NNW dewpoint 27 Spring

                  Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

    This  invitation is also for any of you read this blog and would like to come.   I’d love to see you.

    Sierra Club Power 2 Change House Party Monday, April 14th 

     7:00-8:00PM

    Hosted by Charles Buckman-Ellis 3122 153rd Ave. NW. Andover.Learn about the Power 2 Change campaign, an effort to educate the public about what is at stake in the 2008 elections. High gas prices and America‘s dependence on foreign oil have made energy one of the most pressing and important issues of this political season.  We face a crossroads, and we need to challenge all of our elected officials, including the next President, to provide the leadership we need to move America in a new direction on energy.  Between now and Earth Day on April 22nd, the Sierra Club is working to get the word out that we need leadership who will make the right choices.  Join us for refreshments, meet your neighbors and learn how you can take action.  RSVP to Margaret at 612-659-9124 ext. 306 or Margaret.levin@sierraclub.org Visit the web site to learn more about this important effort: http://www.sierraclub.org/power2change/minnesota/ 

    Note: This is NOT a fundraiser.

     Come to the event if you can.  I’d love to see you.  (Anybody who reads this is welcome.)

    Whenever Kate comes home and I’m watching a football game or a basketball game, she’ll say, “Aha. Caught you with your Y chromosome in action.”  Doesn’t happen often, but had she not been in San Francisco, she could have found me watching the last half and the overtime of the Kansas/Memphis game of the NCAA finals. Whoa.  What a game! Kansas, down by 9 with 2:12 left to play and down by 3 with less 2.0 seconds left to play. Chalmers hits the three.  Tie.  In overtime Kansas takes advantage of a missing big man (Dorsey) and goes on to win pulling away.   

    That wasn’t all though.  Tonight was also Woolly night at the Istanbul.  This is a y-chromosome only club.  We talked about Rome, about China-Tibet, Danish desserts and Pawlenty’s veto of the Central Corridor light rail.  Stefan and Bill celebrated birthdays.  A guy’s night out. 

    Talked to Kate when I got home.  She’d called the home phone, left a message and said she forgot I was the Woolly’s and that she’d call tomorrow.  I picked up the cell phone, called her cell phone.  She answered.  I said, “I just called to tell you we’re old farts.”  “Why?”  “Because I could have had my phone turned on and you could have called me at the Istanbul.”  “You called me on the cell phone just to see if I’d answer?”  “Yeah.  If you hadn’t, that would have meant we were O.F.’s for sure.” 

    Mailed another package to the serviceman in my life.  Still strange.

    .


    📂This entry was posted in Family Great Work Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged