Arthur Jacobson: Baja Arizona

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:37:55 GMT

Test. To read the rest go to home page

Once a year motorcycle magazines treat us to a retrospective on the six, or eight, or ten best motorcycles of the year. This is all very specialized hardware: Crotch rockets, moto-cross dirt bashers, enduros, motorcycles to ride from Cleveland to Brazil, bikes to cruise to the local saloon, and luxo-tourers like two wheeled cars for America’s endless superslabs.

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:24:26 GMT

Charley Reese, Conservative

A friend recently sent me a copy of one of Charley Reese’s columns. Reese is billed by the King Features folks who syndicate his pieces as a conservative. If all conservatives wrote as well, and as reasonably, we might raise the level of political discourse.

I have searched for a link to this column but failed to find it so copyright be damned just this once:

Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet
by Charley Reese

Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a front man, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.

It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.

But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed that people who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush fooled me once, but he won't fool me twice.

It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don't matter, and that people should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century.

His administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian. It's no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans of supporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and a federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain this or the president will designate you an enemy combatant and you'll be held incommunicado for the duration?

This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race.

America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world, thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration. Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace. I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it.

Go to Kerry's Web site www.johnkerry.com/ and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.

Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.

For a more extensive sampling of what this conservative has to say visit here, and here.

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 20:13:13 GMT

Poet Phyllis McGinley…

…lived just a "short walk from the station" in 1950. Her poems, many of which appeared in The New Yorker, are as good a social history of the American suburbs as your are likely to find on a bedside table. Together they are not a sociological tome but rather a generous, if skeptical, nod in the direction of a society that is now as dead as a coffin nail. I was reminded of her poetry by my memory of Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy

Here, in part, is what she says of that bygone world in the introduction to her 1951, Viking Press collection, "A Short Walk from the Station"

"…it is a commuter’s town, the living center of a web that unrolls each morning as the men swing aboard the locals, and contracts again in the evening when they return. By day, with even the children pent in schools, it is a village of women. They trundle mobile baskets at the A&P, they sit under driers at the hairdressers, they sweep their porches and set out bulbs and stitch up slip-covers. "

"The town has become a symbol of all that is middle class in the worst sense…to condemn suburbia has long been a literary cliché…I’ve lived in the country and I have lived in the city but for the best eleven years of my life I have lived in suburbia and I like it… "

Still, she could write this about the Executive’s Wife:

Her health is good. She owns to forty-one,
   Keeps her hair bright by vegetable rinses,
Has two well-nourished children—daughter and son—
   Just now away at school. Her House, with chintzes
Expensively curtained, animates the caller.
   And she is fond of Early American glass
Stacked in an English breakfront somewhat taller
   Than her best friend’s. Last year she took a class

In modern drama at the County Center.
   Twice, on Good Friday, she’s heard Parsifal sung.
She often says she might have been a painter,
   Or maybe a writer; but she married young.
She diets. And with Contract she delays
   The encroaching desolation of her days.

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 13:57:02 GMT

I Forgot To Mention…

…that I went to a Democracy For America (Dean) Meetup on Wednesday. There were at least thirty people in attendance and all of them were actively working in some way or other to get John Kerry elected. A good sign.

Also a good sign was the fact there was general agreement that after the election we were not, as Progressives, going to go away. Feet were going to be held to the fire.

I thought it was most interesting that seven or eight of the folks there on Wednesday were new Precinct Committeemen. In other words, they were Progressives who were actually part of the Democratic Party structure. It’s a beginning.

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 14:22:59 GMT

Grizzly Bears

Just outside of Salmon, Idaho a roadside sign said: No Grizzly Bear Re-Introduction!

It seems that when ol’ Griz becomes a problem in Yellowstone he’s anesthetized and bundled off to the mountainous camping areas just west of the Salmon River. This practice annoys the locals, who don’t much fancy camping in territory where they are not at the top of the food chain.

I was reminded of a suggestion floated by the Alaska Fish and Game Department.

Warning

In light of the rising frequency of human-grizzly bear conflicts, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is advising bikers, hunters, and fishermen to take extra precautions and keep alert for bears while in the field. We advise that outdoorsmen wear noisy little bells on their clothing so as not to startle bears that aren't expecting them. We also advise outdoorsmen to carry pepper spray with them in case of an encounter with a bear. Outdoorsmen should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear dung.

Black bear dung is smaller and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear dung has little bells in it and smells like pepper spray.

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:24:01 GMT

Arizona Republicans Caught in Electoral Fraud.

It may not mean much to folks living elsewhere, but here in Baja Arizona Democrats are pleased to learn that what they have always believed is true: Our ultra conservative Republicans are simply sanctimonious fakers.

The ‘Pubs are forever complaining about voter fraud committed by non-citizens. As a matter of fact no election has ever been put in question by evidence that non-documented immigrants have voted, attempted to vote, or otherwise stuffed a ballot box.

Our state Republicans recently ‘voted’ to decide who would be a national committeeman. Tucsonan moderate Mike Hellon was up against a conservative Phoenician, Randy Pullen. Pullen squeaked out a five vote win in an election that party officials later investigated and determined was fraudulent.

It seems that delegates to the ‘Pub’s state convention used other delegates’ credentials to vote more than once for Pullen. Hellon has not challenged and the party has decided to sweep the whole fiasco under a handy rug.

What is interesting to me is that no moderate member of the Republican party has seen fit to challenge the election in the interest of simple justice.

Watch out, gang, there’s no living with these people.
Read the Arizona Daily Star story, by columnist Ernesto Portillo, here: link

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:20:43 GMT

The Language of Cats

I seem to have been thinking about language and linguistic philosophy lately, probably sparked by something I read at "What happens when you tell a lie?" At any rate, I remember hearing or reading that cats have a surprisingly large repertory of "vocalizations." Something like fifty grumbles, rumbles, chatterings, yowls chirps and meows.

My cat, Mr. Squeak, is seldom quiet. He is a sixteen-pound lumbering vocalizer. Even walking around the house he seems to be commenting to himself about whatever undertaking he is concerned with. He has learned (or have I?) that a certain very distinct sound announces a desire to be let outside. If he makes this sound and I stand up, or make a move in the direction of the door, he will streak there and wait to be let out.

I came in today from running errands and sat down at the laptop to do some work. I did not want to go outside in the heat and keep an eye on him while he prowled around grazing on plants and hunting for lizards, but he began to circle my chair legs and talking to me. He put his front paws on my leg and gently scratched at them with his claws sheathed.

I looked down at him. He looked up at me and said, "Meow?" I reached down and scratched his ears and assuming, as most cat owners will, that he understood perfectly I explained to him we would go out later.

This routine of circle, scratch, Meow went on for a minute or two, getting louder and more insistent each time untill it began to sound less like "cat talk" and more like English:

Meow…meoowt…MeOUT.

Finally he jumped up on the desk and put his nose right at my ear. His breath tickled. Then he let out one deafening howl: MEOUT!! And jumped down. It seemed unfair under the circumstances, when he had learned what seemed very much like a linguistic trick, not to let him out. I had coffee in the patio while he browsed and nosed out lizards under the flower pots.

Language? Linguistic behaviour? Wittgenstein once commented that if a lion could speak English you wouldn’t be able to understand it.

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 18:05:01 GMT

The Meaning of Life

There are people whose lives are tormented by the question, "What is the meaning of Life?" If only they could answer that question! Then, they believe, they would be freed of the sense that their lives were soul-crushingly dull and aimless. We probably all ask this question of ourselves sometime…a time when we scream out in frustration, "What the fuck is the point?"

Some few of us finally decide that there is no point and bid a fond farewell to the emptiness.

I have always suspected that the question is meaningless, and that to obsess about it is to make some sort of weird linguistic mistake. But let’s suppose it makes sense. Why, then does no one ever ask, "What is the meaning of Death?" We have rung the changes on the Life question until it's pretty well wrung out. (sic) Perhaps we would discover something about the meaning of Life if we started at the enquiry from the back end.

What is the meaning of Death?

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 15:20:46 GMT

Defense of Marriage

The people of Missouri are about to go to the polls to vote on whether to amend their constitution to define marriage as existing only between a man and a woman. Kent Ostrander of the Family Foundation in Kentucky is reported to be watching the results of this vote very carefully.

Ostrander argues that (are you ready for this?) passing this amendment is crucial if we are to save children from being raised in motherless or fatherless families!

Two comments. First, this is clearly an attack on Muslims and Mormans around the world who either do now, or have in the past, sanctioned and practiced polygamy. Second, if you want to protect the sanctity of mariage and prevent children from being raised in "motherless or fatherless" families you had better ban divorce.

Listen to an NPR report. link

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:36:27 GMT

Keynote Address

I seem to be the only Democrat in my immediate circle of Democratic activists who was less than overwhelmed by the Kerry acceptance speech. Frankly, I was puzzled by my own reaction, which was absent any urge to leap to my feet, shout "Right On!," and wave a banner.

I have to be honest and say I don’t think I can say what it is I wanted to hear, or tell you what I would have said had I been Kerry’s speechwriter; perhaps some idea of what dream for America we should be dreaming, rather than simply fixing the mistakes of the Bush administratation.

The speech was essentially defensive, saying "Hey, we’re a faith based party, too." Or, "Hey, we’ll go to war if necessary." Or, "Hey, we’re not about to rescind middle class tax cuts." Or, "Hey, we’re going to have a different Attorney General." (But leave unsaid any commitment to radical reform of the Patriot Act)

The Republican propaganda machine actually dictated much of the content of Kerry’s speech.

Not one word was spoken by anyone at the convention about that concrete and razor-wire abomination…the "free speech" stalag. At the very least someone should have said, "We may recognize that the threat of terrorism can require extra ‘precautions’ but Democrats want to guarantee the safety of Americans so we can quickly return to a condition of full and free protest rights.

Some Comments From Elsewhere

Naomi Smith, in an article that originally appeared in The Nation, and available at the Guardian web site, argues that progressives are distracted from the real issues by their scorn for Bush:

"…. there is something about George Bush's combination of ignorance, piety and swagger that triggers a condition in progressives I've come to think of as Bush Blindness. When it strikes, it causes us to lose sight of everything we know about politics, economics and history and to focus exclusively on the admittedly odd personalities of the people in the White House. Other side-effects include delighting in psychologists' diagnoses of Bush's warped relationship with his father and brisk sales of Bush "dum gum" - $1.25.

"This madness has to stop, and the fastest way of doing that is to elect John Kerry, not because he will be different but because in most key areas - Iraq, the "war on drugs", Israel/Palestine, free trade, corporate taxes - he will be just as bad. The main difference will be that as Kerry pursues these brutal policies, he will come off as intelligent, sane and blissfully dull. That's why I've joined the Anybody But Bush camp: only with a bore such as Kerry at the helm will we finally be able to put an end to the presidential pathologising and focus on the issues again."

"I have no illusions that the left will have "access" to a Kerry/Edwards White House. But it's worth remembering that it was under Bill Clinton that the progressive movements in the west began to turn our attention to systems again: corporate globalisation, even - gasp - capitalism and colonialism. We began to understand modern empire not as the purview of a single nation, no matter how powerful, but a global system of interlocking states, international institutions and corporations, an understanding that allowed us to build global networks in response, from the World Social Forum to Indymedia. Innocuous leaders who spout liberal platitudes while slashing welfare and privatising the planet push us to better identify those systems and to build movements agile and intelligent enough to confront them. With Mr Dum Gum out of the White House, progressives will have to get smart again, and that can only be good. "

Read the whole commentary. Link

Michael Moore in Boston

If you haven’t read a transcript of Michael Moore’s Cambridge speech during the convention week you can read it, or watch it, at the Democracy Now site. Link

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:26:43 GMT

The Flip Flop Man

Arianna Huffington reminds us who the Flip Flop Man really is and it’s ol’ number 43.

In September 2001 Bush said capturing Bin Laden was "our No.1 priority." By the following March he said he didn’t know where he was, didn’t care, and it wasn’t that important anyway.

In May 2002 Bush opposed the creation of a 9/ll commission. Four months later he backed it.

During the 2000 presidential campaign he said gay marriage was a states’ rights issue and then four years later calls for a constitutional ban of gay mariage.

Other flip to flop moves: For and against trade tariffs; for and against CO2 caps; we found WMDs and then we didn’t; we didn’t need the United Nations and then we did.

Political action suggestion: buy a cheap pair of flip-flops. Send one to the White House. Keep the other to wave during anti-administration demonstrations.

One of Life’s Little Ironies

By God! Bush really is a uniter and not a divider.
He’s united every man woman and child in the
Democratic Party, from old guard Lefties to
Rockefeller Democrats!

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:44:52 GMT

Thanks, Ed Gilespie

The Republican National Committee chairman has sent Katherine and me an "autographed" photo of the President, thanking us, as grassroots leaders, for working to build a better, stronger, more secure future for our nation and all Americans.

Well, the ‘Pubs are right about one thing: As lifelong Democrats we’re certainly going to try to do that; just not in the way they suppose. These guys know even less about their mailing list than they did about what was going on in Iraq.

Wow!…yesterday a personal call from my Congressman and then a color photo (suitable for framing) of the President. Our cup runneth over.

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 18:03:03 GMT

Wonders Never Ceasing

I have just received a nice phone call from my Congressman, Republican Jim Kolbe, urging me to apply to vote by mail. It was a recorded message, but I still appreciated the thought…and I think the thought is "Randy Graf scares the stuffing out of me!" It was a recorded message, but it’s the thought that counts.

The usually well-oiled Republican machine seems to be squeaking a lot lately: I’m a registered Democrat and a precinct committeeman. How likely am I to vote in the Republican primary.

Graf, of course is the ultra-con Republican who has launched a primary campaign against Kolbe. It’s the first serious challenge Kolbe has had in any election since former mayor Tom Volgy ran at him in the general election some years ago.

And have I missed it or have our local papers not noticed that Graf put up a slew of campaign posters way before he was legally entitled? Tacky little notices urging independents to vote for him in the primary and suggesting that Democrats should re-register as independents and vote for Graf.

Might not have been a bad idea. Graf would have been easier for the Democrats to defeat in November.

Thu, 27 May 2004 15:32:18 GMT

Well, That Was Fun!

Back to the Blog after time off and a trip on the bike up to Arizona’s Rim country to attend a BMW Motorcycle Rally on the outskirts of beautiful Heber Arizona.

Rallies have changed some since I started riding to them nearly forty years ago, but basically the project is still to ride three or four hundred miles (some do more) and camp for the weekend with other motorcyclists. Then kick lies and tell tires.

There may be field events, poker run, and awards for such accomplishments as being the youngest rider or the oldest rider, but the main event is meeting old friends, and "old" is the operational adjective. The "sweeties" of what seems only yesterday have become matronly, and the guys are beginning to lean bellies over the belt. But they continue to ride and in this subculture that is all that matters.

God knows it matters to me, I do love it so.

Something Not Fun

I notice that Ashcroft and the Bush gang have trotted out the old "Watch Out For Terrorist Attacks" hustle again. Am I the only one who notices that these warnings seem to float when the poll numbers for the Doofus In Chief start to sag and the only string to the re-election bow is the war on terror?

What a bunch of hippo poop. Something might happen, we don’t know what exactly, or where, or when, and we don’t need to change the alert color, but we’re on the job keeping you safe. What’s the point? And can’t we sort of figure out for ourselves that in a summer with lots of important events scheduled we might expect, maybe, possibly, this would be a sort of good time to blow something up, or spray it with ricin?

These guys are like a burglary detail that can only warn us that burglaries are possible but never catch any burglars.

Wed, 05 May 2004 20:03:36 GMT

Cinco de Cerveza

This is one of the Southwest’s favorite holidays. I’ve always been here in the desert when it’s rolled around so I can’t tell you how it goes down in Maine or other small dark places, but it’s big here.

My pal Jimmy Black loves it. Jimmy loves any holiday that gives him a chance to float booze into his brain pan, but this is a favorite and one which he nearly always spends with a "designated driver" tag on his wrist.

I ran into him one year sitting at a bar in a saloon full of plastered college boys and their wobbling girl friends. He had the DD tag on his wrist and was wearing an eye patch.

Very romantic, Jimmy, but what’s with the eye patch and what are you doing sober?

--- I am performing a socially useful and very well-paid service for some of the louts you see around you. I am their designated driver, a service for which I will be very well paid. And I am not entirely sober. Who could endure all of this sober?---

The bar was serving some sort of chocolate marshmallow coffee drink. Jimmy got one free.

---I am about to provide you not only refreshment, but enlightenment. I have provided you with refreshment, but first I must piss.---

Jimmy clutched my coffee mug in both hands and wandered off to the men’s can. It didn’t really occur to me that he was taking coffee directly to the "Gent’s" without first passing it through his alimentarium and out his organ of joy. Besides, it was my coffee. He returned with it and passed it to me.

---Drink and become wise!---

It was laced with tequila, actually a pretty tasty combination. So what about the eye patch?

---I have found it truly useful at the end of a long evening of sobriety and community service to cover one eye for the drive home. There is no point in seeing two of every drunk on the road. And besides, what cop would ticket an old guy with an eye patch and a DD tag?---

Cinco de Mayo was actually a local celebration not much made of apart from the Mexican city of Puebla and Mexican-American communities of the Southwest. In it’s present bloated form it is a monument to the commercial enterprise of the brewing industry and the makers of bland frozen enchiladas.

Cinco de Mayo

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 01:51:24 GMT

The Electoral College

Under the Electoral College system a minority of the votes cast may be enough to elect a President. Set aside, for a moment, all argument about confusing ballots, hanging chads, and systematic disenfranchisement: Al Gore got 51,003,894 votes and Bush got 50,459,211 votes and was elected President.

The Electoral College system "systematically" disenfranchises voters in each state, whose ballots never count toward the election of the candidate of their choice. You did realize this, didn’t you? But of course.

Voting for Electors (the guys you are actually voting for when you’re hanging chads or misreading your ballot) is a winner-take-all proposition. If your party or persuasion is in a minority in your state your vote will never influence the outcome. The other guys win and your state’s electoral votes goes to their candidate.

So why not abolish the Electoral College, something no fair-minded person should object to? The answer is that we are not dealing with fair-minded persons, we are dealing with the leadership of political parties at the state and national level.

Each state is allotted as many electoral votes as it has Congressmen and Senators. In states with small populations, currently many of the "red" or Republican states, the fact that regardless of population those states get two "senatorial" votes gives their voters a disproportionate edge. For Alaska it only takes 94,000 votes to get an electoral vote. In California it takes 210,000 votes to get an electoral vote.

In looking at electoral votes per state, and voting patterns, it appears that states with 8 electoral votes or less are benefited by this system because the two extra (for Senators) weigh more heavily on a small population. States with more than 8 electoral votes get screwed. We count 28 states with 8 electoral votes or less. So counting DC as a state the vote against a pure popular vote would be 28 to 23. Nowhere near the 38 votes needed.

Please note, in a popular vote if you have 20 parties someone could win the popular vote with a little over 5 percent of the vote so that is not a sure cure unless you assume the continuance of the two party system. If we went to a popular vote we would hope it would have a runoff provision so one of the top two vote getters would have to get over 50 percent.

Conclusion:

However much we want it, we’ll never get rid of the Electoral College.This arrangement especially benefits the small population "red" states, most of which vote Republican.

                                                                          Submitted by: Hot Eye Research Group
                                                                                      G.S. Factor, Director

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 19:15:32 GMT

Funny Label

Sat, 03 Apr 2004 02:56:34 GMT

Cold Mountain

I am in the position of the man who was asked if he’d seen "The Passion of The Christ."

No, he’d replied, but I’ve read the Book.

I suppose the movie made of Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain may be wonderful, but I suspect I’ll never know. It is hard to believe that cinematography can catch the evocative delicacy of his descriptions of the natural setting of the novel.

I think, too, that I’ve read no better description of the redemptive power of music…not the listening to it, but the making of it.

Reading the dog-eared, floppy-covered paper-back edition delighted in its own right, but there was the added pleasure of discovering, too, the pleasure of other readers.

The book had been given me by a friend, who dug it out of a used book bin at his local library. He insisted I take it with me to have something to read on my ride home. When I started to read it I found that it had been read and annotated by at least two others…one who left small strips of post-it markers on prized passages, and another who marked with yellow hi-liter.

They pointed me to pleasures I might otherwise have missed and I felt part of a community of readers. Odd, isn't it?

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 19:11:26 GMT

A New Civil War

Overheard at a Paddy’s Day party: "This isn’t going to be an election, it’s going to be a civil war!" I asked the woman who made the comment exactly what she meant. Was it, "Look out, we’re going to attack and destroy"; or was it simply "The ratcheting up of political punch and counter-punch will reach really unpleasant extremes."

She wasn’t quite sure what she meant. She was just reacting to what she sensed was an entirely different tone to the political combat. I think she’s right. Something is different about this political cycle, and I seriously wonder if it won’t leave the nation more radically divided than any previous ‘campaign.’

I need help getting clear about this myself. What do you think? Let me begin by trying to give some shape to my concerns.

The Republicans attack with the "class war weapon", accusing the Democrats of refusing to engage in serious, reasoned debate. Poor babies! They treat every democratic counter-punch and criticism as unfair, as stirring up class divisions and hence class warfare.

But of course the Republicans, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt (you, not me,) started it by following an economic doctrine that benefits one percent while savaging the welfare of most of the rest of us. Maybe they didn’t intend to make war on the rest of us, but that’s the way the rest of us see it. 87% of American taxpayers, for instance, will get about a hundred bucks apiece as a result of the Regime’s tax policies.

Is it class warfare if we point out to people the many ways they are being screwed?

For the first time in my memory Liberals are striking back with the same force that has characterized the conservatives; and with a level of energetic fury that I don’t remember seeing since the peak of the union wars. What concerns me, though, is that when the election is over…whether we win or lose…there will be no coming together of any sort whatsoever. The next election will begin the day after this one.

I make no bones about being an old lefty, a Liberal who believes in the positive role of government. But liberal also means generous and open minded. Will we still be that after our political Appomattox?

What do you think?

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 04:26:49 GMT

Riding To "Lost Wages"

Spring, or what would seem like summer to you if you lived in Chicago, has come to Tucson. The maps are out…even though I’ve made the ride to Vegas so frequently that ‘the horse knows the way’…and I’m checking how to get to an old riding buddy’s house.

This is the first long ride of the season, although "long" is misleading since it is only a skosh over 400miles. A day’s ride. And beautiful.

The reason for the trip? Well, the old buddy. The added incentive: Seeing a woman I knew years ago, worked rallies with, rode with. She’s flying in from the cold to visit. Karen still rides, but she is one of a declining band…riders that I go back forty years with, many of whom have taken their last ride.

This summer I’ll cram in as much riding life as I can…even if my last destination is Samarra.

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 20:47:13 GMT

It’s St. Patrick’s Day…Let’s Blow Something Up!

Paddy’s day is not one of my favorite holidays. It ranks right up there with Arbor Day as a must miss celebration. The idea that "we are all Irish on St. Patrick’s day" strikes me as one of those absurdities that beer companies and bartenders want us to believe.

Spare me, please, saloons full of barely post adolescent young men drinking…God save the mark… green beer they are incapable of holding down like real Irishmen.

My grandfather, James Black, was a Protestant Irishman. He stood barely five feet, six inches tall. Wringing wet with a stone in each hand I doubt he weighed 130 pounds. When I got to know him his black hair had turned a pure white, but his sharp blue eyes still had the snap and crackle of youth.

Jimmy Black loved St. Patrick’s day, and I think having to give up his Paddy’s Day ritual when he got older saddened him more than any of us knew. That was the day when he would leave work early, in honor of the occasion, and head to an "Irish" bar.

Perhaps because he was a quiet man, standing alone at one end of the bar, it took a number of beers before any of the Shamrock wearers noticed that Jimmy had an Orange cockade in his button hole. "And what would that be?" someone would ask.

"It’s an Orange cockade," my grandfather would reply. And then he would hoist his beer and continue, "and I hope you will join me in a toast to His Majesty, The King." At which point the saloon was up for grabs.

There is a lot of my grandfather’s trouble making spirit in me…for which I am grateful.

My grandmother once observed, long after my grandfather’s St. Patrick celebrations were behind him, "Why he always did that in his good suit I’ll never know."

Erin, go braless! And get to the bar.

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:28:27 GMT

See It Now: March 9^th, 1954

"Fifty years ago this week, one of the most influential news programs in television history aired. It was an Edward R. Murrow report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his campaign to root out "unpatriotic" Americans. Walter Cronkite remembers the occasion as the night network television shook off its timidity to call the bluff of a bully."…NPR

If you missed last night’s "All Things Considered," and the Cronkite story, I urge you to go to the NPR site and listen to it. The story’s pertinence to our political situation today I leave you to judge for yourself. My own view is that we could use more TV and Radio journalists like the old CBS crew

Here it now, hear it here.

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 17:42:37 GMT

Tucson Notes

The Weather-Wimp

When you live in a desert you become a Weather Wimp. Temperatures that the hardy New Englander would welcome as balmy and spring-like seem wintry and depressing to the desert rat.

I am put in mind of this because the desert has at last returned to Tucson with pleasant temperatures in the high eighties and with the promise of ninety degrees just around the corner. Decent weather came just soon enough to yank me from suicidal depression and despair.

We’ve just passed through several days of rain and clouds with temperatures in the low fifties. This is the sort of weather when we get overtaken by the "cozies," when we huddle in our sweaters before open fires for comfort, imagining our fire-lit dens to be the mothering caves of our glacial age relatives. We are cozy, but we pray for the sun.

Good News From The Third World

Tucson is rapidly becoming the call center capital of the desiccated west. It was announced today that Citi Group is bringing yet another call center to us. I suppose we can use the work, but it is dispiriting to think that this undoubtedly means that wages here are lower than in Bombay.

Serious Political Comment

Arizona is currently struggling to draw a redistricting map for our state’s legislative districts. No one wants to give up "safe" districts, the judiciary is demanding that the map be drawn so that either party has a fair shot (but not necessarily a sure thing) at winning an election.

The result is that my Gerry, er legislative district, is even more grossly Mandered than before.

I’m beginning to think that community of interest based on geographical propinquity is more important than party balance. Pima county (my county) is about the size of New Jersey. I’m not sure how much I have in common with folks who live in the Gerrymanders tail while I’m living in the head.

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 02:34:50 GMT

Bestiality, Angst, and Political Transvestites

What a hoot! My previous post received a record number of one day hits.

With the possible exception of the use of the F word, and a minor lapse into sprightly colloquialism ("ain’t"), I thought the post was even-handed, chaste, and Victorian.Nothing that would bring, as Dickens once said, "a blush to the cheek of the young person."

Could readers have been googled there by the title? We’ll see.

Mon, 08 Mar 2004 14:43:22 GMT

Sex, Religion, and Politics

It is sometimes said that while at pleasant social gatherings people of breeding should refrain from discussing sex, politics, and religion. The reason? To avoid giving unwitting offence to people of gentle sensibility.

Well, what the fuck! These are three of the most interesting topics, if not the three most interesting topics, of conversation.

In a democracy, if that democracy is to thrive, a discussion of political issues ought really be common to our social gatherings…at least as common as sports, one would think.

But we avoid talking politics, and because we do we often live in ignorance of what our fellow citizens feel about what is going on in the political realm. More importantly we lose a chance to explain why we take the positions we do and oppose the rascals we oppose.

Don’t just preach to the choir, gang. Be willing to raise your political concerns in venues where you suspect those around you may have doubts they are unwilling to express.

It ain’t treasonous. It’s good politics.