Of means and ends

I'm far from the first to suggest that the American Left takes a page from Marx. (Far from the first.) I do try to avoid histrionics about "Democrat==Commie" and so forth, but when evidence like this presents itself:

The health care crisis means we must have Daschle and make an exception to the new raised ethics bar. The financial meltdown means that we must have Geithner and make an exception to the new raised ethics bar. The war in Afghanistan and the comfortability level of Secretary Gates means we must make an exception to the new raised ethics bar and have Deputy Secretary Lynn. The vital need to restore the Constitution (Whoops! Renditions, FISA, the Patriot Act, and maybe Guantanmo are, well, still here.) means we must make an exception to the new raised ethics bar and have Attorney General Holder. So what happened to Bill Richardson? His value to the nation in times of crisis did not justify an exception?

Now, this is Victor Davis Hanson's interpretation of events in the Obama Administration, and so we can infer partisanship. But what reasonable interpretations are possible? Occam's Razor gives us, I think, two: that President Obama called on these people because he thought they were best for the jobs and was willing to overlook their ethics issues as long as they didn't reach the public eye, or that President Obama owed or felt he owed some plum positions to these people (and was willing to overlook their ethics issues as long as they didn't reach the public eye). Neither one is very admirable.

And then we have The New Editor's Tom Elia, who sums it all up thusly:

At the dawn of the Obama Administration we have witnessed: four high-level appointees blow up over various issues, tax and otherwise (Richardson, Daschel, and Killefer get axed; Geitner stays); the appointment of at least 12 lobbyists to positions in the Administration -- in direct contradiction of campaign promises; a pork-laden economic stimulus bill without precedent in US history; and the reversal of campaign positions concerning controversial policies like rendition.

Let me say that I don't believe President Obama and Congressional Democrats are the only guilty parties with regard to the ridiculous "stimulus" situation. Congressional Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for going along to get along.

But there are two points I want to make about these observations. First, the subtext Hanson sees is obvious: if so many Obama appointees have ethical "challenges," shall we say, then how many whose lives aren't in the spotlight must have them? And second, and this harks back to my post on functionalism, when one openly allows the end to justify the means by making decisions that clearly place ends ahead of all other considerations (this is giving President Obama the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he really did believe he was choosing the best people for these positions), one runs the risk of being reasonably accused of ruthless Marxist-like pragmatism.

(The difference I see between these appointee missteps and the Bush Administration's Patriot Act, or better I should say Democrat pundits' response to the Patriot Act - that it was stomping all over our civil liberties, etc., etc., using fear as a motivator to convince everybody that we needed to allow the end to justify the means - is that objectively, the Patriot Act hasn't actually stomped all over our civil liberties, whereas admitted tax cheats really have stomped all over the US Tax Code. For instance.)

UPDATE: But wait - there's more! From the LA Times (to my surprise): "In Washington's culture, unlike the lives of most normal obviously naive Americans, that's [that is, questions of right and wrong] hardly ever the issue. It's about what works. It's all about strategy."

Where is the whirlwind?

This week is the seventh anniversary of Daniel Pearl's murder. (via Instapundit)

Do you remember when it happened? I should say, "when he was slowly beheaded on video," just in case the name rings a bell but the details escape you? I do. I felt suddenly numb; I said to my husband, "They've sown the wind now." As Mr. Pearl's father says in the Wall Street Journal editorial I'm linking,

Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

And yet even in the immediate aftermath, the signs were all there that there would be no lasting outrage, no repudiation of the fundamental error of placing Pearl's killers and, oh, let's just say Israel, or possibly Bush's America, on the same moral footing. The moral-equivalency trap. No sense that being poor and downtrodden was not an excuse for being terrorists. No acknowledgement that being Palestinian, for instance, doesn't afford tacit permission for a person to strap on a vest full of C4 and walk into a bus station. No whirlwind.

Instead, we got a little horror - how not? - followed by a lot of explanation and excuse: what other choice did Pearl's killers have, after all? They needed their message to be heard, and no one was listening, so in a sense Pearl is a martyr not for civilized humanity but to the inexplicable vagaries and far-too-explicable injustices of the global information marketplace. He died so that they could be heard. Terribly sad, but in this unbalanced world...

No. He died because we silly Westerners believe that really, down deep, everybody's basically nice; some people are "driven" to "acts" of evil, but to call the people evil is un-nuanced, simplistic, plebeian. My parents took this tack when I was a kid; even right before the spanking, the line was, "I love you but I dislike your behavior right now."

That hair-splitting was absolutely true when my parents used it. And parenting is perhaps a good place for it. In geopolitics - do we really have to mind the tender sensibilities of those bent on our destruction, either retail (like Pearl, one at a time) or wholesale (via violent jihad, as its proponents understand it)? Is it not appropriate, and a whole lot less patronizing, to assume that our enemies are grownups, capable of hearing and understanding our outrage, and then to evaluate their response at face value - that is, as if they are capable of saying what they mean and doing what they say? Is diplomacy always a game of metaphor and hyperbole?

We all know it isn't. But they, whoever they are in whatever era, know that we prefer to think that "We will bury you!" doesn't mean, "We want and intend to destroy you!" but rather, "We have chosen a different path and think yours is lame!" And they, whoever they are, have learned that they can use this sweet propensity of ours against us, by using the metaphor and the hyperbole to soften us up so that we won't react, or won't react in time, when they actually do what they say they're going to.

In other words, global diplomacy is a lot more complicated than the Left seems to think, because sometimes - not every time, but sometimes - there really is an enemy, there really is no common cause to which to appeal - or at least not without a cost too high to pay, there really is the will to do evil. And no amount of negotiation, no matter how "high-level," can change these facts. Daniel Pearl didn't "pay with his life" to bring this lesson home; his life was not what he was offering, so we could say he "paid" only in the sense that the victim of a robbery "pays" the robber. Daniel Pearl died, innocent and out of his time, and from his death we should have learned about enemies and evil. Did we?

New template - someday I'll customize!

It's funny; I've built (let's see now) somewhere around a dozen websites for one organization or another, never using Frontpage or any other spawn of Satan like that... yet I just blindly accept Blogspot's templates. The fast food of layout.

Sigh. Someday I'll have time to dink around with it.

Turn back, O man...

...as opposed to, "Go West, young man."

Chicago Boyz, a great economics blog, raises the question of whether California has passed an important tipping point:

I think a threshold or tipping point exists in the ratio between the political power of those who pay taxes and those who consume taxes directly. After that tipping point is reached, those who pay taxes become the economic slaves of those who consume taxes.

The power of unions is intrinsic to the question; a union aggregates the concerns as well as the influence of however many members it has toward particular political and economic aims. Shannon Love, one of the boyz, notes that

California has ~2.3 million unionized government workers and ~18.6 million civilians. With so many people organized with a laser-like focus on increasing taxes and spending, the private working citizens of California find it nearly impossible to prevent government workers from voting their own paychecks.

And more:

As far as the state government is concerned, people in the private sector work merely so that they can be taxed for the benefit of the tax consumers. They’ve entered a condition not unlike like that of pre-industrial serfs.

Of course no one is being whipped, but in effect an ordinary citizen of California cannot get their desires for reduced state spending implemented due to the disproportionate power of the State’s employees and allied interest. It appears now that the government unions will not accept any solution to California’s budget crisis except increased taxes in a declining economy. Ordinary citizens have no choice but to either emigrate or just lie there and take it.

I'm conflicted. On one hand, my family and my husband's all live in California; we'd love to return there if we could, not just so that we could see them all more often but so that we could stop spending so much money and vacation time on our too-short, too-infrequent visits. Furthermore, California really is just about the best place in the country for people like us: pleasant climate, beautiful scenery, cosmopolitan all the way down to many of the small towns but still with lots and lots of wilderness ranging from unspoiled to complete-with-cabins for those who want flush toilets, all kinds of outdoor and indoor recreation readily accessible. But on the other hand... I don't really want our household to work for (sorry, bro) my brother's. Real estate, though down from recent years, is still too expensive for us to consider committing income to a mortgage when we have so little control over how much of that income will never hit our pockets.

From the Sacramento Bee, I see that Schwartzeneggar's proposal to have all nonessential State workers take one day off every other week, accruing vacation time but not pay for that twice-monthly furlough, has been axed by the State Controller as being outside the Executive's authority. And here, the Bee speaks with a labor leader from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) about what's "on the table" for labor negotiations in California's current serious budget crisis:

So what's changed [that Ms. Walker sounds "upbeat" about upcoming negotiations]?
Well, we've been trying to be part of the solution all along. But having the controller validate that furloughing isn't legal helps. Maybe now the administration is ready to sit down and have the hard conversation.

...
And money will be part of the "hard conversation"?
It hasn't been so far, but it has to be (now).

What about furloughs?
That I don't know. Certainly you have to recognize it's not something we'd bring to the table, but we're not opposed to talking about it. People need to recognize that we're not just people who take from the general fund. We're taxpayers, too. We understand what's at stake.

So are you saying that holding the line in terms of pay would be considered a win, given the state's money troubles?
That would be good, wouldn't it?

Emphasis mine. I don't get how we reconcile the last two Q&As: "We're taxpayers too, not just feeding at the public trough," and "It'd be good if our pay can stay exactly the same."

This is a loooooong post. But I love California, and its condition today saddens and frustrates me. Sigh.

That which works

Back in oh, freshman year of college or so, I had to do a paper on an important psychologist, with emphasis on his or her philosophy of treatment. Not wanting to go with the obvious, I chose William James, functionalist, who summed up his own therapeutic philosophy as "doing that which works." I'm a fan of that kind of thinking in many cases, but I do think it needs to be tempered by sane judgment and ethics. President Obama is taking a functionalist approach, it appears:

In practice, we know what this [Obama's statement was "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works"] means: Obama wants more federal spending, more federal regulation, more federal mandates, and more federal prohibitions. It means the president—like all presidents—wants more power.

And objecting that the Constitution limits his power, or that more federal or presidential power is inherently corrupting or destructive—that’s out of line. The only legitimate question to ask about the new powers the president wants is “whether it works.”

But that raises another question: Works for whom?

Tim Carney's question isn't the only one. Parents and schools could make a case for corporal punishment's "working" because yes, conditioning does actually "work" in terms of specific behavior change; does that make spanking, caning, hitting with a belt, ruler, or wooden spoon the right way to change a child's behavior? Or is it simply the expedient (and sometimes most satisfying) way, with possibly harmful longer-term consequences? (Not intending to get into a spanking debate; it was just the first example that springs to my mind. My parents spanked, wooden spoon method usually, and not frequently or as their first choice; they are kind and thoughtful people who believed with all their hearts that (a) they were acting in our best interests, and (b) they would do us worse psychological damage if they struck with a hand, because it'd personalize the action. My husband and I don't spank, which makes discipline of our children very challenging and repetitive sometimes, but we believe the research is in and have made our choice.)

So my question is not "Works for whom?" but "At what cost?" We've just been through seven years of argument about the cost of Bush's foreign policy decisions to our status in the world, our national identity, the Constitution... Are we supposed to pass on that question when the maker of the policy is not Bush?

From a CBC News article, first one I found with an image worthy of the day. Congratulations, Mr. Obama, and God bless you and the United States. You're now entrusted with the hardest job in the world. All we can ask of you is that you wake up every day determined to do that job to the best of your ability.

Just a reminder...

...which I sincerely hope will not be required by my side of the aisle: Andy Levy's To-Don't list. An excerpt:

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.
...
DON’T use the word “divisive.” At this point, all that word means is “You disagree with me,” and the English language gets mangled enough these days.
...[and finally:]...
And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.

The husband and I got into quite an argument last night about the outgoing administration, I maintaining that Bush had been treated so abominably by the "loyal opposition" and its enablers in the media that it was impossible to tell what the American public's independent opinion of his policies and actions at the end of his tenure would have been, and my husband correctly, but infuriatingly, pointing out that BDS, ridiculous and unjustified as it is, was nonetheless the card the Bush administration was dealt and that it would live forever in infamy for not having done better against it. In other words, my husband believes that the Republican party over the last eight years managed to lose everything - House, Senate, White House, conservatives, moderates, everybody but the quixotic such as myself - because Bush didn't effectively get the party's message out. I believe that no Republican could have done so. He believes that a reincarnated Reagan could have. I don't know whether that's true; Reagan's time was two decades ago and lots has changed, not least the average age (and therefore era) of the media folk who run the 24-hour news cycle (another difference between our time and Reagan's).

But Levy's point, and it's a better one than either mine or my husband's, is that all of it now is history, and that Republicans must remember to act like the grownups they are, no matter how much we'd like to give in to our inner child as the other side has been doing for eight years.

And that's all I have to say about that. Phthththbthh.

Maybe things ain't so bad after all...

...if CBS thinks $35 is a "shoestring" budget for a home-cooked dinner.

The menu?

Menu

• Beet Salad with Crushed Pistachios & Soft Goat Cheese
  
• Lamb Ragu with Rigatoni and Fresh Ricotta
  
• Greek Yogurt with Blood Oranges, Honey & Mint
  

Ahem. Let's start with the premise: that in a time of economic downturn, recession, financial catastrophe - take your pick - $35 constitutes an acceptably low dinner budget for a family of (I'm guessing, based on quantities) four. As several commenters in the (now closed) comment string point out, this dollar amount totals almost $13,000 a year - for dinners only. Whew! Some shoestring.

And next, the food choices: First let me say that I'd eat this dinner - oh, yes. It sounds delicious. But it doesn't sound like the way to train a palate, particularly a palate on a budget. When I say "train," I'm not talking about training someone to be a food critic, or an Epicure (God help us all if that horrible heresy is returning); I'm talking about raising children who will eat things. All kinds of things. This menu has, I freely admit, "all kinds of things" - and for every child I've ever known, would result in an awful dinner debacle and nonstop post-dinner begging for a "snack," because the child wouldn't eat half enough to feel satisfied until bedtime. Fights all night? Not my idea of a great evening, no matter how much this menu tries to promise that budget constraints needn't mean any kind of pain.

Here's a problem we have with our children: one "doesn't like bread." "It's too dry," he says, but won't use any kind of condiment or moist filling in a sandwich. Hence he rails against sandwiches for lunch. Of the three, only one eats macaroni and cheese in any form; the other two want, respectively, plain noodles with nothing on them and noodles with butter and grated Parmiggiano. All will eat lettuce and certain other salad veggies - but only one will eat only one kind of dressing. All will eat certain hot veggies - but none with any sauce whatsoever (except the butter their grandmother considers God's gift to all foods, no matter how often I tell her they actually like plain vegetables). The point: they all expect ALL food to be delicious, by their own standards, and have trouble downing anything they don't "love." What happens when they eat with a friend? Same thing that happens at our house when friends of theirs come over for dinner: as often as not, we have one of the Big Three, pizza, hot dogs, or chicken.

We are in a now two-year campaign to introduce them to the concept that you eat what you're given, always with the idea that a new palate-pleaser may be on your plate.

The way to accomplish this goal is NOT - repeat NOT - to give them an entire meal of "interesting" flavors. It's to give them a meal they can and will eat without complaint, with one or two twists. The CBS menu stinks for this purpose.

Furthermore. I was disappointed with some of the commenters because they proudly stated that they'd be happy with spaghetti and a can of tomato sauce, etc. - at which the CBS people will snort, roll their eyes, and immediately dismiss their underlying point, which is that CBS has no clue about a "budget" dinner. An alternative:

Make your own sauce. It's cheaper than jars, it's easy, a good tomato sauce can be made in the time it takes to cook the pasta, and if you have a windowsill for herbs you can really up the taste ante with those. A little olive oil, some crushed or whole plum tomatoes from a can, some crushed garlic, a little red wine if you have some that's been open, dried or fresh oregano and basil - I minced my summer basil and froze it in olive oil and now use that as the basis of any winter red sauce; dead easy.

If you're going to eat an expensive entree (or salad, or dessert), make the other courses simpler and cheaper. Spread that budget.

Don't eat dessert every night unless it's fruit (this one is, sort of). As for Greek yogurt? We referred to my hips as "tzatziki" for a good year after our long-ago trip to Crete because that's right where it went; I LOOOOOVE Greek yogurt. But lowfat yogurt, drained in a paper-towel-lined strainer, is a great substitute. And (everybody now) lots cheaper.

CBS, still bringing you quality stories... right?

Health care: a subtext

I saw a billboard the other day, here in the sometimes-chilly western suburbs of Philadelphia, concerning PA CHIP - the Pennsylvania Children's Health Insurance Program. The ad proclaimed that now no uninsured child, no matter how much the family's income, can be denied CHIP coverage. My immediate thought was along lines of "misaligned incentives": taken at face value, this program would seem to disincent parents from insuring their children privately. I emphasize that I had no knowledge of premium costs, requirements that parents who had private insurance available actually use it, or any other details - just this ad, which says in essence, "Don't insure your child; Pennsylvania will take care of it for you."

So today I googled "Pennsylvania children's health insurance" - the search I performed is here. The first item that came up (and Google being what it is, it may not be the same one now) was this - the website the billboard sent people to, to learn more. Reasonable.

But the text accompanying the link on Google? That was interesting. I quote:

All wealthy uninsured children and teens not eligible for Medical Assistance have access to health insurance. It doesn't matter how much money your family...

I goggled. (At Google.) Surely they couldn't really have said "all wealthy uninsured children...", could they? I clicked the link. Here's what I read:

Don't assume that you earn too much to qualify.

All uninsured children and teens not eligible for Medical Assistance have access to health insurance.

In other words, somebody at CHIP had the same thought I did, and had access to the metatags. Interesting indeed.

Well, it's "change" at any rate...

The whole Blagojevich thing, I mean. Such as here.
Because so far as even the most rabid of Bush-haters has been able to tell, W.'s gubernatorial seat was not on the auction block once he was president-elect.

Sigh.

You'd think that after this long, politicians on both sides of the aisle would be wary of speaking in absolutes. They have so much faith in our short attention span, though, that the never-to-be-fulfilled promises just keep coming (cf. "Most Ethical Congress Ever"...)

I don't fault a politician for making promises to try things that ultimately fail as long as he or she actually does try them; as everybody knows, the President does not control the pursestrings and so has limited influence over the budget (although in this case even less-rabid Bush-haters seem to believe W. is, again, both blindingly stupid and a malevolent genius), for instance. But when a politician promises to deliver on something that's in his or her basic control, such as how, ethically speaking, he or she will govern if elected, I do expect results.

Bush promised "compassionate conservatism." It's not an approach I think makes much sense, but he did indeed deliver on it. Obama promises "hope and change" (again, what kind of stupid idea is that? But it's what got him where he is); we'll see how well he does. So far the scandals and the Clinton-era appointees and so forth don't bode all that well. I'm willing to cut him a good bit of slack because he has to actually govern, not just pander to the nuttiest among those who voted for him, but I do expect to see something different. Bring it on, Mr. President-Elect.

Notice how I'm off politics?

Yeah, me too. Burnout.

Things I Like, Pt. Deux

But wait, there's more! Song lyrics. I like song lyrics.

Back in high school, I remember laughing over the lyrics of some song or other - "let's take a shower together," something like that. My sister, who I don't believe liked the actual song any better than I did, nevertheless thoughtfully noted that songs of that genre had more heart than the rock songs that were the staples of my social circle. At the time I had to agree. It's hard to argue that "If You See Kay" (that was April Wine) or "The Number of the Beast" (that was Iron Maiden) were as - for lack of a better term - makeout-worthy as, say, "Let's take a shower together," the name of which I can't remember if indeed I ever knew it.

And then I fell for and eventually married (and somewhat more eventually divorced) a young man for whom song lyrics were almost his preferred mode of communication, and I discovered a world to which I'd been blind and deaf before. After this long and a second marriage that's everything the unfortunate first one wasn't for either of us, I still thank him for giving me ears to hear:

• I thought I loved you - it was just how you looked in the light. ("Hum Hallelujah," Fall Out Boy)
  
• I feel the way you would. ("Afterimage," Rush)
  
• I need to feel your heartbeat, so close it feels like mine - all mine. ("Heartbeat," King Crimson)
  
• (Here's a whole verse from one of my favorite songs ever:)
  I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths,
  A classroom's shabby butterflies,
  Flirt in the glow of stranded telephone boxes;
  Planning white lace weddings from smeared hearts and token proclamations,
  Rolled from stolen lipsticks across the razored webs of glass.
  Sharing cigarettes with experience
  With her giggling jealous confidantes,
  She faithfully traces his name
  With quick bitten fingernails
  Through the tears of condensation
  Thatll cry through the night
  As the glancing headlights of the last bus
  Kiss adolescence goodbye. ("Warm Wet Circles," Marillion)
  
• I am the ticket, you the prize; when begins the winning? ("Girl With Grey Eyes," Big Country)
  
• If I only could
  I'd make a deal with God
  And get Him to swap our places;
  Be running up that road,
  Be running up that hill,
  With no problems. ("Running Up That Hill," Kate Bush)
  
• (Another whole verse, and an uncharacteristic choice:)
  Well I don't give a dang about nothing
  When I'm singing and bling-blinging
  While the girls are drinking
  Long necks down!
  And I wouldn't trade ol' Leroy
  Or my Chevrolet for your Escalade
  Or your freak parade
  'Cause I'm the only John Wayne left in this town. ("Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy," Big & Rich - and it's a laff riot! I love this song)
  
• And the man from the magazine wants another shot of you all curled up,
  'Cause you look like an actor in a movie shot, but you're feeling like a wino in a parking lot. ("Heart of Lothian," Marillion)
  
• (Another whole verse:)
  The sky was Bible black in Lyon,
  when I met the Magdalene.
  She was paralyzed in a streetlight.
  She refused to give her name.
  And a ring of violet bruises,
  They were pinned upon her arm.
  Two hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the hand,
  to a room of dancing shadows where all the heartache disappears
  And from glowing tongues of candles I heard her whisper in my ear.
  'J'entend ton coeur,'
  'J'entend ton coeur':
  I can hear your heart. ("Bitter Suite," Marillion - I think Marillion's former vocalist and lyricist, Fish, was one of the great prog poets)
  
• (One more Marillion. The setting is children running through a sprinkler:)
  Then I heard the children singing;
  They were running through the rainbows.
  They were singing a song for you -
  Well, it seemed to be a song for you,
  The one I wanted to write for you. ("Lavender," Marillion)
  
• Show a little faith: there's magic in the night.
  You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right. ("Thunder Road," Springsteen)
  

Things I like

It's been brought to my attention by this and that person that my Twilight/Mrs. Robinson thing is kind of creeping them out. So I thought to myself, "Self, perhaps it's time - rather than withdrawing - to put a little more out there." Because, well, why not? So the following is some of the mishmash that constitutes my essence.

• I like cloth napkins. We don't have paper napkins in my house; we have old and increasingly ratty cloth ones. (Sometimes we do use paper towels, but usually only because all the ratty cloth ones are waiting to be ironed.) We use napkin rings in their old sense: to mark the family's already-once-used napkins. I'd never use them for company.
  
• I like tiny cute things, like really tricked-out dollhouses and those bitty glass animal figurines. I've never had these things; I just like them.
  
• I like old-school Heinleinian science fiction. I do not like new-school "crystal singer" (which, yes, I know is already old) "science fiction." I like Card, Herbert (up through the third, MAYBE the fourth Dune book), Foster, some Asimov, some Niven, some Clarke, (in an odd departure) some Brin, a few others, in addition to Heinlein; but really my repertoire is limited. I'm actually not that fond of the genre, except for these folks. Not a woman in the mix. Women's science fiction has always disappointed me - the little I've made it through.
  
• I like to read Shakespeare; I sometimes like seeing Shakespeare performed.
  
• I like the men of my romantic fantasies to be young, not because they're at any sort of physical peak, but because they're at a certain kind of emotional peak: wherein they are idealistic, passionate about everything, sometimes thoughtlessly cruel in their black-and-whiteness, but when they realize the cruelty they're profoundly sorry. Probably I could chalk up this preference to the fact that a whole lot of me remains young in this sense.
  
• I like good grammar. I also like messing around with grammar, knowing that I know what's good grammar.
  
• I like Scotch, the dirtier-tasting the better. And lately I like Irish whiskey too; I drink both straight up. I don't care for bourbon, at least not to drink on its own. In other libations, I like Guinness very much indeed, most beers that are darker than (ahem) p*ss, most dry wines - though I steer clear of Merlot generally, because it's too wishy-washy, in my price range at any rate. I like very strong coffee, which I then turn into girly coffee with flavored creamer. I like Diet Coke and will stomach Diet Pepsi if I must. I do not like sugared sodas.
  
• I like making things, usually the hardest way possible. My sister has commented on this fact. If equally tasty tomato sauce can be made by opening a jar or by peeling, seeding, and cooking tomatoes from my laboriously organic garden, mincing (garden) garlic by hand, sweetening with sauteed minced (garden) onion (not sugar), picking (garden) herbs and mincing them too, well, I'd be happiest if I also had an olive tree out back from which I could make my own olive oil. I don't actually have time for what I want to do.
  
• I like knowing how to do lots of things, even if there's no conceivable way I'll ever need that knowledge. I know how to make a dovetail joint; at no time in my life will I ever make one. I know how to find water in the desert; I plan never to get into that kind of pickle.
  
• I like reading on vacation. My idea of a perfect day in Paris has nothing to do with the Louvre or the Rive Gauche or anything like that; it'd be any obscure cafe´ with my well-stocked and charged-up Kindle in hand, weather irrelevant. My perfect day at the beach actively avoids being at the beach, but rather lounging around at the hotel with the Kindle. Actually, I like reading, and re-reading, more than just about anything.
  
• I like being poorly paid. Don't ask me why. If you do ask, I'll probably have to say it's because that way (a) I don't have to feel too guilty about whatever level of effort I make, and (b) people are astonished at how committed I am, considering how poorly I'm paid. Contradictory but true.
  
• I like winning games but I don't like people to know that.
  
• I like confession. Does it show?
  
• I like making lists. Sometimes I even use them as tools to help organize my overly committed life. It seldom works very well, because I make too many of them.
  

That's some of it. The great wonder of it all is that my dear husband married me knowing my "bag of crazies," as some nearly-as-dear friends call it, and has stayed married to me for going on fifteen years so far, and assures me he'd do it all again. What a fella.

Happy V-I Day!

Zombietime hath declared it so: Today is Victory in Iraq Day!

The nature of this conflict is such that there's no meeting where one general surrenders to another; all violence does not pass from the region; civil liberties do not blossom unchecked in the heart of the Middle East. But what we have is this:

• No more Saddam Hussein, no more sons of Saddam Hussein, no more terror tactics aimed at Iraqi citizens by their own government.
  
• A democratically elected government, we must add.
  
• Constrained, we must add, by a constitution ratified by an overwhelming majority of Iraqis.
  
• Civil society rises; illiberalism diminishes.
  
• Violence falls to the point where it can no longer be considered a concerted effort on the part of Iraq's enemies, internal or external; they have been soundly defeated.
  
• Trust in government's monopoly on the use of force - which means not only a sense that government should have that monopoly, but also that government will not abuse that monopoly, is now a majority opinion - and not a bare majority but a commanding one.
  

There is more. There's much more. But I have something to do - so go celebrate!

I saw the mooo-vee, I really liiiiked it...

So I went to the midnight showing of Twilight last night with a non-Twilight-fan friend - loved it! It was pure lovely escape. I'm not blind to its flaws (not enough time spent on developing the relationship that's central to the story - to all four books' stories, in fact, special effects reveal the film's low budget, the detail of the book's plot doesn't come out in every instance in the movie), but boy, did I have a good time!

***************** SPOILER ALERT for anyone planning to see it ******************

Notes, faves, and observations:

1. I was fascinated by audience reaction to several scenes: nervous laughter. I'll have to see it again to pinpoint all of the scenes, but my middle-of-the-night recollection is that it was during the moments of greatest intensity, where we're supposed really to sense Edward's difference - his deadliness, the fact that, "vegetarian" or not, he's a vampire. The one I can recall for certain is the first scene in biology, when he first catches Bella's scent and is nearly overcome by a desire to kill her. The scene does a series of short cuts throughout biology class, in each one Edward glaring murderously at Bella as Bella, bewildered, surreptitiously sniffs her hair and clothes and otherwise tries to figure out how he could hate or be disgusted by her on sight. Edward... never... moves. You have the sense that if he were to move, it would be - well, terrible.

There were giggles from this corner, then that row, then a little ripple from over there, at each short cut - as if the audience was trying to defuse the horror of the scene. I say "nervous laughter" with confidence, because (a) I know what I was feeling during that scene - "don't move, Bella - don't move, Edward," (b) it didn't have that "OK, this is kind of funny, I guess..." sort of weariness to it, and (c) it never grew. It cropped up - it fizzled; over and over, in a number of scenes like that one. Veddy interesting.

2. The movie had one major drawback: given the constraints of the medium, it couldn't show enough relationship development for either the non-Twilight person (who might be left, as my friend was, a little puzzled as to what these two saw in one another) or the Twihard (who wanted EVERY LAST LINE of dialogue represented). As such, it had to rely very heavily on the much-discussed chemistry between Bella and Edward. And I thought they did a very workmanlike job: the wordless scene when they're lying in the meadow, just looking at one another, not even touching, is tender indeed. The scene in the treetop, where they circle around and around the trunk, clambering up and twisting between branches, was like watching them make out (no nervous laughter in the theater there, only utter silence) - the tree limbs were like surrogates for their own limbs, their motions around and through them like an awkward physical exploration they could not actually have with one another. They had, I thought, a next-to-impossible task in trying to portray their growing love, but at the very least they managed to portray their growing desire!

3. Favorite scenes: First kiss. The final trailer before the movie came out showed about half of it, and that was good enough - two fraught seconds of almost-contact, two seconds of kiss. But there's more: maybe three seconds of Bella losing her grip on the fact that she's supposed to be holding perfectly still, grabbing Edward's face and smooching him, and then the critical one second of Edward throwing her backwards and diving on her with something between groan and whimper, then rocketing away from her as he realizes how close to the edge he is. Tasty.

Prom kiss. Even knowing that Edward will not be biting Bella at this time (which is a paraphrase from The Princess Bride - "He doesn't kill Westley at this time. I say this because you looked nervous"), the moment when he bends over her neck, asking her if she's ready right now to be turned into a vampire, is - whew!

And venom-sucking-out. Bella is losing blood; Carlisle has tourniqueted her thigh, the femoral artery of which has been severed. So she's in and out, and her eyes are crossing both with the in-and-out-ness and with the pain of the venom and, though I didn't see the shot administered, with the morphine Carlisle is supposed to have given her. Because Carlisle is dealing with her injuries (and they should've made him have to do more, because my recollection is that he's just kind of sitting there watching as he tells Edward he has to be the one, though he, Carlisle, has the greatest control of any of them), Edward has to suck the venom out of the inside of her wrist (which is WAY hotter than her being bitten on the hand, as the book says). He spends precious seconds telling her he'll "make it go away" as he gathers his courage, shoots a desperate glance at Carlisle, and yanks her arm to his mouth. And drinks. And drinks, moaning. Bella, still in and out, eyes rolling back in her head - is she losing consciousness, or is she overcome (if you know what I mean)? Edward's eyes, vacillating between wide-open horror at what he's doing and half-closed pure ecstasy. The fire of James's destruction in the background. If the treetop scene was surrogate makeout, this is proxy sex. And it's so intense it was almost painful to watch. And I want to watch it over, and over, and over, because voyeurism is fun.

4. How did my non-Twilight friend like it? And why did I like it so much? Hmm. She enjoyed it and came out of it thinking she'd read the books, so even though some references were lost on her and some short scenes - obviously included for the Twihards and for the sequels - didn't make a lot of sense to her, that's a win for Stephenie Meyers. As for me... well, as previously discussed, I never actually got older than seventeen, so the books and now the movie enable me to relive, in safe vicarious fashion, the wild torments and unearthly joys of that age. An age, I should add, when I was very horribly in love with the wrong person, convinced that I would literally (and I almost do mean "literally" - not just in the teenage figurative sense of "literally") die if he left. Which, of course, he did, and I didn't die, so I was in good shape for meeting my husband eventually and being able to fall hard for him without fearing I was shortening my life. So in addition to my proclivity for peopling the landscape of my mind with younger men like the very pretty and rather scary Rob Pattinson, I loved all that intensity.

Funny. There's way more in my life today for me to feel intensely about; I wonder why I don't feel as intensely about all of it as I did about what, in the end, was a one-year hardly-worthy-of-the-name "relationship"?

Because seventeen, that's why.

The good won't be interred with his bones

I Think Therefore I Err is having "I Love George W. Bush Day." I've taken a lot of heat even from my own husband about the fact that my support of President Bush has never wavered; I think it's high time the crosshairs moved off this man and onto someone who actually deserves the epithets, insults, sneering, and scorn he has received. (Maybe the news media. Wait - some members of the news media, like perhaps Chris "Tingles" Matthews.)

During Bush's eight years, the dot.com boom crashed into the basement (not his doing, as we all know); 9/11 was perpetrated on us (not his doing, ditto); Katrina tried to destroy New Orleans (not his doing, and the much-less-horrible-than-anticipated aftermath was largely the fault of the Mayor and Governor, but who took the fall? Uh-huh); and now the credit crisis has begun to ripple through the world's economy (the original bad idea was emphatically not his, and when his administration and Republicans in Congress tried repeatedly to make Fannie and Freddie behave as private lenders have to, they were stymied at every turn by Democrats with some foolish Republican help - but who'll be blamed? Uh-huh).

He's been called a chimp, a Hitler, a hick, a cowboy, a frat boy, a coward, a drunk, a criminal, a war criminal, the worst President ever, the stupidest President ever, a puppet of Halliburton or Big Oil, a puppet of Karl Rove, a puppet of the Religious Right.

And he's been gracious to those who have abused him, optimistic in the face of terrors and troubles, reasoned and reasonable in foreign policy (somebody out there is screaming, "No blood for oil!" or something; but if Bush were the bigoted trigger-happy whacko the Left would have us believe he is, we would've preemptively gone to war with the entire Muslim world, not just the country that was constantly violating its truce and apparently threatening our safety, while costing us lots of money keeping it ineffectively "contained"), compassionate in foreign aid, determined in pursuing and upholding America's interests overseas, steadfast to our old allies and our new ones. Has he made the correct decision every single time? No, but which President ever has?

Please. Give this man the credit he deserves. As I have and do.

A metaphor for the day after the election

So today I was the mom who signed up to bring a "healthy snack" to my child's pre-K class. I brought clementines - juicy, sweet, no seeds, easy to peel (and I pre-peeled them because the rule is that the "healthy snack" should be entirely ready to eat, saving time at snacktime), child-sized, and above all, healthful. And the biggest Obama booster I know, who told me on the day before Election Day that "tomorrow is going to be the happiest day of my life!" (I glanced doubtfully at her daughter; she rolled her eyes and said, "Well, besides the day she was born, of course"), brought Election Cupcakes. Yummy, sweeter than the clementines, messy, not at all healthful.

I just suggested to the teacher that the children be offered the clementines first, so they wouldn't think they were sour if they tried them after the cupcakes. Nonetheless, more than half the clementines came home with my son. Sigh.

So as I see it, I offered the choice that was good for the children, and it was rejected by half the class. She offered the choice that was yummy but bad for them; it was, of course, embraced. And sigh, again.

Which One?

And again I ask: Which Obama will show up on inauguration day: The One who's on the side of the poor, or the One who leaves his aunt in a slum and his half-brother in a hut in Kenya?

Update: Let me add that I don't advocate yanking people from their homes even "for their own good." But like Bob Krumm, whose post was the first I referenced, I think Obama's Auntie Zeituni was known to Obama's campaign and told not to talk until after the election... and that's shameful. Her freedom of speech ought not to be curtailed, or her silence coerced, no matter who she is.

So far I've seen nothing that is explicit about this woman and any contact Obama's campaign may have had with her. It's certainly possible that she's so fond of her nephew that she's muzzled herself until after the election; who wouldn't at least consider keeping quiet to avoid harming a loved one? So let me present another way to look at this story, that downplays the character attack aspect:

If Obama has however-many poor relatives who aren't benefiting from his good fortune, that points to two things in my mind: 1. A certain amount of hypocrisy, since he's running on compassion and family values as surely as on "Change" and "Hope"; and 2. A reliance on government programs first, family charity somewhere down the list, to care for loved ones. And while #1 is ugly enough, it's #2 that, policy-wise, should give us pause.

Having eaten my weight in potato chips...

...I thought I'd comment briefly on that ridiculous hack Terry Gross. First let me say it ticks me off to no end that that station sees fit to call itself National Public Radio, while never giving so much as lip service to my side's points of view.

Second... Terry. When she sticks to pop culture, she's only annoying in her transparent desire to be the hippest hipster around; when she dips into politics, which she manages with disheartening regularity, I feel I need to cut caffeine out of my diet altogether. Today she had Seth Meyer from SNL on, talking at some length about the really funny Sarah Palin stuff last week. She tried and she tried to get him to say something bad about Palin, Republicans, the McCain campaign; Seth gave her a little assist toward the end of that piece of the interview, but overall her frustration was almost tangible as he had to admit that Sarah Palin was there to play, a great sport, and really nice.

Recreating one question from memory: "Were there a lot of ground rules, going in, about topics you had to stay away from?" Seth's response: "No, not really; the campaign was... pretty game. Actually we've found that Republicans tend to be more game than Democrats."

Terry: "Huh. Why do you think that is?"

Here's the assist, from Seth: "Well, I think it's because Democrats are afraid if they do certain things in a segment, Republicans will use them against them in a campaign, and Republicans know Democrats won't." End of segment - Terry got her soundbyte.

Excuse me? Have these people no self-awareness whatsoever?

Don't mind me; it's just the chips talking. Six days. Six days. Six days. I can hope that the wild variability in polling will enable a squeaker victory for McCain, but now is the time to keep my powder dry, I'd say - my taxes are about to go up-up-up. And my freedom to express myself in the public sphere, down-down-down. Thanks again, O.

You moderate Dems out there - exactly who do you think will show up to be inaugurated if Obama wins next week: the Obama you want, or the Obama who is? The One who says he's "post-racial," or the One who sat in Wright's church for two decades? The One who is measured in his responses, or the One whose campaign threw a hissy fit every time he was questioned with anything like vigor or determination? The One who will restore America's good name worldwide (because we've had that throughout our history, except since Bush took over - oh, and Reagan before him), or the One who has said he's willing to invade Pakistan, give Russia a pass over its aggression toward former SSRs, negotiate with state supporters of terror, and listen in that measured way of his to arguments about the legitimacy of Israel? The One who will "cut taxes for 95% of Americans," or the One who knows that the strikingly large percentage of Americans who don't pay the kinds of taxes he implies in that statement are counted in this number - and therefore the One whose little slip about "sharing the wealth" is a portrait-in-miniature?

Use your franchise wisely, and not after taking cold medicine or drinking that great new O!-flavored Kool-Aid.

Why conservatism doesn't just die, already

This is really simple. Conservatism, frequently declared dead or dying by "progressives," is the equivalent of Darwinism in the natural world, functionalism ("Do that which works," in essence) in the world of psychology, and trial and error in the world we all inhabit day-to-day. It's the tautology "Survivors survive." It's the preferential preservation of that which has shown itself to be effective, versus the preferential throwing out of baby with bathwater in a sometimes inchoate desire for "change."

And this is also the source of that bit about "If you're not a liberal in your twenties, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative in your forties, you have no brain," that's variously attributed to Disraeli, Churchill, and probably others. What smart and humane young person doesn't believe that she could arrange the world better than it is right now? What person in her forties doesn't have a clearer picture of both her and the world's limitations than she did twenty years earlier?

And thus my hard-won relative conservatism, not "in spite of" but because of my desire to see people's prospects improve as continually as possible: radical change is revolution, revolution is by its nature a gamble, and even when it does succeed (cf. the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution), it takes on a life of its own. It has consequences beyond its planners' and supporters' intent, and not all of those consequences are a net positive to those the revolution was supposed to benefit.

But wait - we're not talking about revolution this November...

True. But we are talking about a candidate whose platform is based on "change," without much regard to which direction the change should take - or, more accurately, without much regard to what the American people believe about which direction change should take, since Obama's plans are for more confiscatory and redistributionist government policy, both of which fail miserably in the court of public opinion. And the other candidate, whose version of "change" involves a return to "that which works," particularly in hard economic times: tax minimally, regulate minimally, read the Constitution in an originalist fashion, respect States' rights by not arrogating to the Federal government powers not explicitly granted to it. The old guy is for the (former, or as I prefer to think of it, once-and-future) status quo; no surprises there. The young guy is for the long-discredited approach of the New Deal and the Great Society - which would come as a surprise to his most fervent followers if they knew anything about those eras; sadly, the best-funded education system in the world, as Shieffer pointed out in the final Presidential debate a few days ago, somehow fails to teach very well.

It's a great disappointment to me (I'm trying not to let it be more than that - I'll certainly keep my wits about me in a way Bush-enemies have not, but it is a little scary to consider what the next several years will bring, economically) that Obama may well end up as our next President, since I think his fiscal policy, especially now, will be a disaster. It's been almost a hundred years since the last Great Depression, but the market certainly seems to be anticipating that this is our moment. Thanks, O.