Dead Senators and Conditional Freedom

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy

Senator Ted Kennedy passed away early Wednesday morning. He had been suffering for over a year from the effects of brain cancer. Kennedy was a fixture in Congress, where he was known as the “Lion of the Senate.” He was a great champion for those causes he believed in. To me, Kennedy’s is a story of trial, struggle, and personal redemption. I cannot imagine the agony of losing two brothers, and that loss is made particularly bitter by the fact that Robert and John Kennedy were both taken by assassin’s bullets. Ted’s own career was not without its share of controversy; the low point coming when he drove a car off of a bridge in a stupor. That accident which took place in July of 1969 caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28 year old woman who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. Since that time, Ted Kennedy went on to be a prominent Senator. He took an ill-fated run at the Presidency in 1980 when he ran against the Incumbent Jimmy Carter. Carter won the Democratic nomination handily but went on to lose badly to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan. Throughout the 80’s and early 90’s Kennedy seemed to become embroiled in one embarrassing event after the next – all sexually tinged and apparently fueled by copious amounts of alcohol. Frankly, in reading through the litany of minor and major personal scandals Kennedy was involved in, I’m surprised he could have held a position as the local dog-catcher – much less serve in the Senate for 46 years! But I digress. Somehow, during the Clinton years, Kennedy managed to reform his image as a lecherous boozer and continued to be a prominent champion of the Democratic Party. Through it all Kennedy was vastly productive. His influence is imprinted on tomes of legislation. A few lasting pieces include Title 9, which granted women’s athletics in schools the same resources as their male equivalents, the vote being extended to 18 year olds, and an array of civil rights legislation. In recent years he stood against the Iraq War and was an ardent advocate for healthcare reform. Along with Eunice, Ted represents the passing of a generation of the Kennedy family.

Obama – Multi-Tasker in Chief

President Obama boasted during his campaign that he would be able to do more than one thing at a time, and to a degree I’d have to say he is keeping to that promise. In the midst of the raging health-care debate, the Obama administration decided to jump into the controversial torture debate. By releasing classified documents that detail the torture techniques employed, the administration has enflamed passions on both sides of the argument; the liberals are seething about the human rights abuses, and the right-wingers are pissed off about the release of materials that they feel compromises American security. The most prominent proponent of the harsh interrogation techniques, former Vice President Dick Cheney, went on a speaking tour before the release of the memos; stating his opinion that, from the interrogations, the Bush administration was able to glean actionable intelligence that saved lives.

Give Me Liberty, but not if it’s too Scary Out There!

This kind of gets under my skin; what Cheney and company are proposing is a sort of “smoking gun” scenario. The example I hear time and again is this: “what if your mother or sister were kidnapped, and you were able to grab one of the kidnappers? If the lives of your relatives hung in the balance, would you torture the kidnapper to get information?” It is such a disingenuous argument on so many levels. By claiming we are at war with this amorphous group of people called “terrorists” who are purported to be always plotting the death and destruction of Americans and America, the right-wingers have essentially declared that there is a constantly smoking gun, and that the kidnapped sibling scenario is always in play. Following that logic through to its conclusion, there is no reason for them to draw a line anywhere. They are suggesting that they have the right, no, the obligation, to stop at nothing to insure the security of Americans from an eminent threat of attack. It is a stunningly dubious proposition.

The torture of foreign “enemies” is one thing; the abridgement of our fundamental rights here in the U.S. another. Our founding fathers were not interested in limited freedom depending on the circumstances of the time. The founding fathers knew that there was a risk that came with being a free people – and that risk was so great that it often involved death. But they were willing to die for the cause they believed in.

Don’t let the bastards scare you.

madbob@madbob.com

Be Good To Yourselves, and Each Other

Here We Go Again

Well it has to be said, so we may as well get it out of the way right off the bat. Welcome back returning students, and welcome to those of you first year students who have just been dropped into our cozy little berg here in the Northern California valley. You may not realize it yet, but you’ve done well for yourselves already. Chico can be many things for you, it’s up to you to get out there and figure out just what those will be. There aren’t too many places I know of where you can spend the day by the river, the evening in a pub, and the nights soaking in a rich, rocking local music scene. Take advantage of everything Chico has to offer.

The Sad Saga of Jerry Springer

Most of you are probably familiar with late-night talk television show host Jerry Springer. Some of you may be aware that Springer was once the mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio; and those of you familiar with this detail of his political past may also know that he was discovered to have been frequenting a brothel in Kentucky. What facilitated this dubious discovery was to the fact that he’d paid for the services offered therein with a personal check. The popular sentiment is that, this personal check, and the fact that Springer was busted visiting a house of ill repute, ended Springer’s political career.

This is erroneous. In fact, Springer’s prostitution/personal check episode took place well before he was actually elected to the office of mayor; it happened when he was a member of the Cincinnati city council. Springer actually managed to rehabilitate his image after the prostitution scandal, and did it so well that he was elected mayor a few years later. After serving effectively as the mayor, Springer moved into a role as a local newscaster. He was extremely popular and drove the ratings of the newscast he joined from worst to first. It was in his role as newscaster that Springer coined the catch-phrase that ends each episode of the Jerry Springer Show: “Be good to yourselves, and each other.”

Political insiders will tell you that Jerry Springer was one of the very best natural politicians they’ve ever seen – right up there with Bill Clinton. He had that innate ability to get people to support him, even when they didn’t agree with him. He has a personality that builds bridges. Springer is still active in Democratic politics and will make occasional appearances at fund-raisers and conventions. He has never lost his desire to play the politics game.

When Springer started his talk show, he envisioned it as another “Phil Donahue” type show – a biting show that would delve into the pertinent issues of the day. Early guests included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson. Unfortunately, the ratings were low. A new producer came in and decided to turn things around, and the modern incarnation of the Jerry Springer Show, complete with shoe-throwing and a regular parade of freaks, was born.

Don’t be Hard

My advice, for what it’s worth, to those of you starting out in school and figuring out who you are is this: Be kind. Don’t screw the next guy over, don’t act hard. It seems like there is a lot of pressure these days to act tough, hard, gangster. Forget that noise. There are people who have to be hard, because life has been cruel to them; and life has a tendency to harden us all over time. Eventually, no matter whom you are or where you come from, life will deal you a vicious blow, and it will be difficult to get through. You will become hardened by events that befall yourself and others. The battle at that point will become fighting to stay supple, un-cynical and kind. In the mean-time, don’t pretend to be hard. Be careful with the people around you. Understand that relationships you form, with friends and lovers, family; they are precious, and they can be damaged irreparably.

As you go through this world understand that your actions, and your inactions, affect those around you.

Keep in mind that when something needs to be done, and you don’t do it, someone else will – because someone else has to. Be the one that acts consciously and with compassion.

I cannot guarantee that by living this way your life will be made any easier. More likely, if you choose to be the one who acts with consciousness and compassion, your life will be that much more difficult than the life of the next person. But hell, if you wanted an easy life you picked the wrong planet to be born on.

madbob@madbob.com

A Funny Story about Para-Gliding

I was just remembering this time when I lived in North Lake Tahoe and this friend of mine convinced me to help him go para-gliding off of a mountain-side. He totally looked pro - he had a jump-suit and a helmet, and the parachute and everything, and he needed me to help him keep the parachute unfurled while he ran down the mountain-side and theoretically caught air, then updrafts, and floated around for awhile.

I couldn't manage to keep the parachute spread out and unfurled very well on my own, so we flagged down these two passing tourists who were heading up the road to Reno. They were curious and sort of amazed by the whole process, and more than willing to help. With the three of us it was no problem to keep the parachute spread out and unfurled.

My friend gave us the signal and went running down the mountain side and we let go of the parachute. It filled with air and he managed to get off the ground; but he didn't get very far off the ground. Instead he floated along about five or ten feet off of the ground until he got hung up in some trees about 30 or 40 yards down the mountain.

Well the tourists high-tailed it out of there pretty quick, maybe sensing some kind of pending litigation or something, and I was left to help fish my friend out of the tree.

That was funny.

Media Distortion and Misogynistic Tendencies

I listen to news on the radio for the better part of my workday. Then when I go home I tune into the network newscasts, and I sometimes catch the morning talk/news programs before I head out the door. I primarily tune into those television programs in order to see how they are distorting the news of the hour.

Every piece of media news is a distortion; but the television programs really have to twist and compact a given story in order first to fit it into an allotted 3-5 minute segment, and second to lend the story a sense of drama and entertainment value.

Two stories cycling through the media have caught my eye recently, and I’d like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on them.

The first is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “outburst.” Clinton is in the middle of a massive tour of Africa. This is a historic venture, and she is traveling to some of the most war-torn and dangerous regions in the world. While she was fielding questions in East Congo, a question was mistranslated but essentially it seemed that Clinton was being asked how her husband, Bill Clinton, felt about a certain issue. Clinton was visibly perturbed by the question and responded that she was the Secretary of State, not her husband, and that she would give her opinion and not his.

That’s it – this is the “story” that has been run on every major, and many of the smaller internet and independent radio, news program. Now I don’t know about you, but it isn’t news to me that Hillary Clinton is a tough person who can occasionally have a temper. She is a politician at the highest level of the game – is she supposed to play nice all the time? I get sick of this nonsense. Not withstanding the fact that the question was apparently mistranslated, it is fundamentally misogynistic, and Clinton had every right to be angered by it.

But aside from all that – is this really a story worthy of major media attention? It is over-shadowing the whole reason Clinton was even in the region, and that is to highlight the rampant sexual violence being perpetrated against women and children in the Congo – sometimes this despicable behavior is being carried out by government forces.

The second story is the anger and outrage boiling to the surface at various town hall meetings throughout the United States. Of course, as far as I can tell this outrage consists of about a half-dozen episodes caught on video that are being played on endless loop. Even in a 3 minute news story, the networks are running footage of the same episode 2 or 3 times.

Don’t get me wrong, there definitely is outrage out there – people are scared and confused. The government has had to act fast, and that naturally scares people. It scares me. The last time the government acted this fast was after 911 when the Patriot Act was rammed through – of course no one made a peep back then because we were all cowed by the fear of terrorists. But the media is latched onto these handful of outburst and are trying desperately to turn them into a real story. Senator Clare McCaskill of Missouri was on the Today Show this morning being interviewed by Ann Curry. McCaskill astutely pointed out that the one violent outburst that occurred during her recent town-hall meeting overshadowed the other 2 hours of healthy, rigorous debate that went on – that questions were asked and answered and that the meeting was actually, in her opinion, very productive. That didn’t satisfy Curry, who brusquely moved past McCaskill’s optimistic statement and ended the interview saying “that must have been very hard for you” in reference to people booing and being rude to the Senator.

Once again, I think Senator Claire McCaskill can take it. She is a powerful politician who has fought tooth and nail to attain the position she has. Curry’s “poor little woman” tone offended me. She didn’t ask a single question about the health-care plan being debated – the story has just become about a bunch of misinformed, talk-show driven yokels who think that by yelling at the top of their lungs they can obfuscate the issues and steer the train off the rails.

And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem like the bastards might be right.

madbob@madbob.com

No Competition

Healthcare Reform

I haven’t written much about the current healthcare debate that is literally raging across America right now. The reason for that is that, frankly, I don’t have a very clear understanding of the proposals and the potential results of those proposals. I do know that something has to change. From my personal point of view I know this: My healthcare costs have gone up like clockwork every single year since I’ve carried health insurance. My healthcare insurance premiums have doubled over the course of the last decade. My wages have not really adjusted at all over the course of the last decade. That could be my own fault; but even if I were a competent, productive member of society, I doubt very much that my wages would have doubled over the last decade.

I also know that the Republicans are suggesting that they have a number of their own proposals that they say will reduce health-care costs. This makes me angry. The Republicans had their opportunity to pass whatever legislation they wanted, and they chose not to act on the issue of health-care. For them it was apparently not a priority. Now that the Democrats are choosing to address a growing problem that affects nearly every citizen, the Republicans want to chime in and say they have a better plan. Well where was their plan four years ago when they had control of the Congress and the White House? To me, through their inaction, the Republicans have made it clear that they don’t mind the status quo, and that they side with the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

My wife and I also have had the misfortune of dealing with a major medical issue – one that has involved multiple surgeries and treatments. Even with a good insurance plan, including our premium payments, a solid one-third of our income has gone to medical expenses over the course of the last three years. This is untenable, and luckily we are seeing the light at the end of this horrific tunnel. Our current system literally adds insult to injury – the very worst situation befalls you, and you get a nice fat bill for it that can put you in the poorhouse; unbelievable.

I don’t know; I get that we’re in a capitalist society and that the free market is supposed to be the driving mechanism behind everything we do – but health, it feels like there is an ethical dilemma in there somewhere.

Speaking of Insurance

I should start an insurance company. What an incredible racket. You charge your customers an ever-increasing premium; even if they make no claims their rates go up every year. Then, if they should ever actually make a claim on the insurance, you fight tooth and nail to deny the claim, drop their coverage, or raise their rates to a point where it is unaffordable. I think if I had the discipline to just pay into a fund every year, my own interest baring bank account, instead of paying the damn insurance over the last 20 years – I’d probably be able top pay any medical claim or automobile accident out of my pocket and still have money left over. Of course discipline is the missing ingredient. I’ve never had much of that.

Garbage Collection and The Majors

In New York City, all private businesses are responsible for hiring their own garbage disposal services, and by, the early 1990’s, the mob essentially controlled the entire industry. They had what has been referred top as a garbage cartel. Well a New York City police officer ended up infiltrating the mob almost by accident, and his investigation and the ensuing evidence that he turned up completely disintegrated the mob and their garbage cartel. As a result of competition being renewed in an industry that had been monopolized, businesses in New York enjoyed a 40% reduction in the price of private garbage collection. This was because suddenly there were a number of small businesses all competing with one another for the collection contracts.

Then a handful of massive, nationwide garbage services came in and bought up all the small private garbage collection businesses. Then, once those companies had firm control of the industry, they jacked their prices. The 40% savings businesses had been experiencing evaporated. Prices are now as high as they were when the mob ran the industry.

The mob guys refer to the themselves as “the Boys,” and they refer to the corporations as “the Majors.” It sounds to me like a term of respect.

madbob@madbob.com

Crappy Neighbors...

I have some crappy neighbors right now. I'll go into more detail later. They aren't the worst neighbors I've ever had, but they probably are in the top 5. Anyway, in pondering these crappy neighbors I started thinking back through all the different places I have lived and all the crappy neighbors I have had. I had the bright idea to start writing these anecdotes down, and then I thought that probably everyone has a "crappy neighbor" story.

So to make a short story long I came up with the idea to start a zine or a blog focused on crappy neighbor stories. Do you have any good crappy neighbor stories to share? I would love to hear them. You can e-mail them to me at: madbob@madbob.com and I will format them into the aforementioned zine/blog and then we'll see what happens from there.

Driving While Stupid

I just answered the CNN poll question: “Should Texting While Driving be Outlawed?” 92% of people said “yes.” You know darn well a lot of those 92% have texted while driving. Personally texting and I have nothing to do with one another. I don’t even have a cellular phone. But the question to me seems to be: “should it be illegal to drive while staring down at your hand?” or “should it be illegal to drive without actually paying any attention to the act of maneuvering the 2,000 pound hunk of metal and fiberglass that is hurtling through space and time at speeds of thirty miles an hour and up?” I know, I know – I just don’t get it. Those text messages are so important! They can’t wait 5 minutes until you are actually at your destination.

There’s an App for That!

You’ve heard this all from me before – I’m just not sold on all this technology. Yes I think if the technology is used efficiently and for the intended purpose of increasing productivity, then sure, it’s a good thing. I simply don’t think I’ve met a single person who doesn’t overuse technology in order to procrastinate, over-communicate, or just to make themselves feel cool and important. On that note, I recently received FaceBook updates from friends of mine who were on a camping trip! Does anyone else feel the irony in that moment?

Drunk and Productive

So I’ve been getting down on myself lately because, after being a good, responsible citizen, and working my ass off all week long, I have been tending to spend my weekends seeing how many Natural Lights and clamato juice I can suck down over a 48 hour period. As a result I haven’t been spending any time writing, creating art, or essentially doing anything remotely productive. I was getting close to giving up the beer when I had a break-through. My wife had asked me to build a bonsai display stand for her burgeoning bonsai forest. I poached a design from a recent visit to the Chico Garden Center and spend Saturday and Sunday knocking together a simple but effective piece of outdoor furniture. I also managed to build the stand, level the ground, wrestle the thing into place, and paint it, while drinking copious amounts of wine cooler and the aforementioned clamato beer. This worked out to be a cathartic moment for me. I don’t have to give up my weekend binge drinking – I just have to do more while I’m drunk! Kids don’t try this at home; I am a trained professional.

The Birds and the Bees

Our garden is absolutely stunning this year. Trish has been cultivating a sweeping variety of salvia and other long, flowing types of flowering plants. As a result, at any given moment the yard is populated with dozens of different pollinators: hummingbirds, native bees, honey bees, and a host of butterflies of differing sizes, shapes, and coloring. The plants dance from all the pollinating going on, even when there isn’t a lick of wind. We have also managed to grow a handful of tomatoes – this is the first year we’ve tried hanging them from a scaffold over the compost pile. I didn’t select enough large tomatoes though – we primarily have heirloom varieties of smaller tomatoes. There is one particularly interesting Russian variety that seems to be producing a large, dense tomato shaped like a heart. These are just starting to turn a deep orange color. The best part of this is that the tomatoes are growing high enough that Bill the dog can’t reach them. Our 100+ pound Labrador has a tendency to decimate certain tasty crops.

At Odds

Man I feel like I have been at odds with the world around me lately – like the chakras are clogged or the energy is jammed up. Sometimes all I want is a little peace and quiet; and all I get is a ton of noise and distraction. Interactions that used to be smooth are grating. My teeth grinding has kicked into high gear. My nubs are sore and crumbling. I have entertained thoughts of living in a box car, or on the sheer face of a hillside. This town living is starting to get under my skin. I’m feeling the confinement acutely, and the wanderlust is creeping in. My life is a little bit like Groundhog Day without the security that comes with monotony. I was actually never aware that you could have boredom and insecurity – but it turns out you can. You can be worrying ulcers into the lining of your stomach while at the same time getting so tired of the same four walls staring back at you that you want to scream. Who knew?

madbob@madbob.com