Celebrate 23 June

On 23 June 1894, the International Olympic Committee was formed, largely under the impetus of Baron Pierre de Coubertin; the first modern Olympics were held two years later in Athens. Over the years the Olympics have had their political troubles, and certainly the IOC has not been the model of a well-run non-profit organization (or a well-run anything) of late. But the Olympics themselves have proven to be a special and worthwhile event, one that is certainly worth celebrating, even in the midst of anti-Chinese torch demonstrations and questions about air pollution, we can look forward to this summer's games and all the excitement and pageantry therein. I'll drink to that.

Today's Reason to Celebrate

I'm trying out a new feature. In order to get back towards regular posts, I'm going to try a daily post about a reason to celebrate. This may last for a while or not at all, we'll see.

Today's reason to celebrate:
June 22 is the anniversary of the day the Cuyahoga River caught fire, in 1969. It had actually burned on other occasions previously, but the 1969 fire got into Time magazine and galvanized support for clean water nationwide. The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire ultimately resulted in the Clean Water Act and a large number of state and federal clean water programs. Clean water is something we can all drink to.

But seriously... the river caught fire. It actually burned. Damn. Nowadays the upper reaches of the river are clean enough that the area surrounding it has become Cuyahoga Valley National Park, so that's a nice turnaround.

Incidentally, the above picture is of the 1952 river fire; there apparently aren't any pictures of the 1969 one.

The Jesus People

Every Saturday morning for some time now--at least a year I think--we've had the pleasure of having the local pentecostal evangelical church or some such conduct a Saturday morning feed-and-proselytize-to-the-homeless in an empty public parking lot a block away from our house.

They've been very annoying at times, I won't lie. When they first started, they clearly either A) didn't know there were people living in downtown who might like to sleep in on Saturdays, or B) they didn't care. I don't like to impute bad motives to people so I'll assume that they, not without reason, just didn't figure anybody actually lived downtown. I say even though the parking lot they use is right across the street from a building called "The Residences at Franklin," and around the corner from another building called "One Laurel Place Condominium." I mean, what did they think, that a building called "Residences" was just empty? Well, again, I can't blame them for thinking that since even now a year later the building is still maybe 50% occupied. But it's right across the freaking street. It casts a shadow over the parking lot they're using for goodness sake. Who in their right mind would think it was appropriate to come into a residential neighborhood at 7:30 on a Saturday morning and blast amplified bad religious music? I mean, really? Is that decent? Is that the Christian thing to do?

Anyway. Several calls to the police over a number of weeks later--and when I say several, I mean, several from this house, several from our neighbors on either side, several from our neighbors down the hall, on different floors, in other buildings... I mean we're talking hundreds of phone calls from dozens of people--they finally got the point and chose a later start time. So now we're already awake, more or less, by the time they crank up the speakers at 9:30.

Since they pushed the start time back I've been neutral about them. I still doubt they actually have a permit for amplified music, and for the most part the music they play is bad. I mean, really bad, almost comically bad, but the thing about comically bad singing is that, if it doesn't stop after that first laugh, it stops being comic and just becomes horrid. But they feed and amuse the homeless and pass out shoes and clothes and as far I'm concerned that is an excellent thing to do. I'm more than willing to put up with bad music on Saturday mornings if it means the homeless get a decent meal and an uplifting message.

But the message has been a problem sometimes. You know how some preachers are just angry? Like Jeremiah Wright? I mean, occasionally over the course of about two or three months recently, there was a woman out there preaching who was just a big angry women. She clearly was upset at... everything, apparently. She didn't talk or even preach to the homeless, she shouted at them. She yelled at them. Not for nothing have the crowds been a bit smaller recently. Even a free meal and a pair of shoes aren't always worth having a large angry woman yell at you for two hours.

But even with that, she's not a permanent presence there, and the last couple weeks I haven't heard her at all. No loss, certainly. So, like I said, I'm happy to have them there doing their good works and proselytizing and not waking me up at 7:30. That's fine.

Then this morning while walking Jackson I dug up a couple of little flowers of a sort that we used to have at Smittywife's old apartment. When wild, they have tiny little succulent leaves and little flowers about 3/4 the diameter of a dime. But if you dig them up and put them in a pot and water them consistently they grow much bigger and flowers will be a good inch and a half across. And there will be lots of flowers. They're really nice little plants, although I'm sure they're just a weed to most people. Anyway...

So I went out on the porch after I brought the dog back in and planted the little plants, and I happened to hear the preacher going on. And here is what he said: he said, you may have heard people tell you that if you can just let go of the bottle, or just get off the drugs, everything will turn around for, everything will get better. And that's just not true. If you don't have Jesus in your life, getting off the bottle won't help you; getting off drugs won't solve your problems. Only Jesus can do that for you.

What?

This is the problem I have with some of these preachers. Guess what, fella: Jesus or no Jesus, getting off the bottle and off drugs will definitely help you, a lot. Tons. More than the advertising suggests. It's not cool to tell people that they are powerless to help themselves. And what is the value of doing so? He basically just told those people not to bother getting clean and sober. He basically told them that all they really had to do was accept Jesus and... I don't know, some kind of mystical power would either make them quit drugs and drink without really working at it, or it wouldn't matter whether they'd quit because God would make everything hunky-dory for them.

I know many good and faithful Christians. I don't know many who would claim that there's not inherent value in getting sober. It's preachers like this who turn me off from organized religion. I don't mind you telling me that without Jesus I'll always have an empty space in my life I'll be trying to fill. I do mind you telling me that I am incapable of doing anything to help myself, that I have no power to improve my situation in life. That is not a positive message.

I'm calling the cops again next Saturday. I was fine with them when I thought they were being decent people. Now I'm not so sure.

On Time

You know, I just changed the books over there in the righthand gutter, replaced Don Quixote with Bartram's Trail Revisted, and I noticed that I've had Buddha is as Buddha does over there for nearly two months. Why is it taking me so long to read that book?

No really, I don't know. I'm asking. I enjoy the book. It's very thinky, by which I mean I can't sit and read 50 pages straight because I have to stop and think every few pages. Which is sort of the point anyway. It's a good book, too, well-written, and certainly something I'm keenly interested in. But I mean, I'm barely over half way through it. It's not terribly long, about the average length of most of the books I read actually.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of reading lately. Which is odd; my subscription to The Economist ran out two weeks ago and I'm not restarting it until we move, so I should have more time to read books. I've been reading the Bartram's Trail book more, actually; it's quite good as well (thanks Mom & Dad!), but I seem to spend too much time doing... um... ah, there's the problem. Wasting the time. Grr.

I can't wait to get out of here. I'm stuck in this awful rut and the sooner I leave Tampa and get started on something new (a job, you know, would be nice) the better. Here's hoping I get a job soon and we can move.

Tribble?

So... this morning Smittywife suggested the name Tribble. Tribble works. She's small and furry. She makes little squeaks and purrs. She's full of love (although right now she mainly expresses her love by attacking our feet and ankles). She emits ear-piercing squeals when she's near a Klingon... or, well, when she's hungry. And she's hungry all the time--although, since she's a carnivore, our vast stores of quadrotriticale should be safe.

Smittykitty!

Are you ready for more cuteness than you can handle? Then follow the jump to see pictures of the newest member of the Smitty family!

This is the first picture I ever saw of the new kitten. Smittywife sent it to me while I was in South Carolina to close on the new house. She was out walking the dog one morning and these two little kittens had been abandoned outside the condo complex. We're guessing their 3-4 weeks old at this point. She took them upstairs, and one of them went to our next door neighbors (who'd been thinking about getting a second cat).
Smittykitty is on the left in this photo.

Incidentally, Smittykitty is not her name. It's a placeholder name. We're not even sure she's a she; she might be a he, but we can't really tell. Don't laugh; you turn over a five-week-old kitten and tell me the sex why don't you? Because we aren't sure she's a she we haven't really settled on a name. I like Schroedinger. Smittywife had picked Tumbleweed a while back, but she hasn't continued using the name. I called her "Tumbleweed Schroedinger, the Quantum Kitten" for a while, but she's not nearly as small now as she was so Quantum isn't quite right. This picture was taken shortly after I got home, about two weeks ago.

At first all she did was cry and sleep. Then gradually she started to eat. She actually started to play with stuff last weekend, which was fun. She likes my sandals, I don't know why.

She's certainly grown a lot in the last couple weeks. We can pet her now, without it bothering her, and she doesn't fit in the palm of my hand. But she still fits in the pocket of my old BDUs.

I mean come on. How cute is this?

Den of Rebellion

Tampa is in the news again, not surprisingly for a rather disappointing reason. Seems the local Sons of Confederate Veterans has decided that the intersection of Interstate and 4 and Interstate 75, just east of Tampa, is a fine place to display the largest Confederate flag in the country. Bully for them. Enjoy the photo.

Oh, where to begin. I'd like to get this written today. The rest is after the jump.

First off, the flag itself. This particular design was probably not much used in the actual Confederacy, if at all. It echos the Battle Flag, which was typically square. It may not always have been square (at least two contemporary illustrations, though no photographs, depict rectangular battle flags), but contemporary literature and events indicate that it was nearly always square. In fact, when the battle flag was incorporated into the Second National Flag in 1863, it was a square; clearly the square battle flag was the recognized symbol of troops on the battlefield throughout the CSA. Although it was pictured on the later national flags, this battle flag design was nonetheless never an officially recognized symbol of the CSA; it was the flag flown in battle so confederate troops could recognize each other. In fact, as union troops flew the union flag, the confederate battle flag came into being because the first flag adopted by the CSA, the ""Stars and Bars," was considered to similar to the U.S. flag. Thus the battle flag was developed, and used in battle rather than the Stars and Bars, and later was incorporated into the second and third National Flag designs. But again, it was square. It was probably square to help differentiate it from the U.S. flag. I have never understood--and probably never will understand--why the current Confederate Flag (hereinafter CF) is a design that was never actually used. It's the same shape and design as the second Navy Jack, but, instead of light blue it uses navy blue. I have seen so CFs with the lighter blue, and I wonder whether the people flying them know that they're flying the Second Navy Jack. Perhaps they had family in the CSA Navy. That would make sense; that would be heritage. But the CF as it stands isn't. It's rather absurd to me that people would make a big deal about a symbol standing for heritage and ancestors when the ancestors in question never actually saw that symbol. Why not use the Third National Flag, which incorporates the battle flag and was an official symbol of the Confederacy?

It's tough to say what flag the earliest incarnation of the KKK used. Probably the battle flag, as the founders of that organization would most likely have had such flags, and the organization was as much as anything a guerrilla outfit for people who didn't want to let the fight die. Public display of any of the official symbols of the CSA was outlawed for many years after the war (including public wear of a CSA uniform), though these laws were largely overturned after Reconstruction. What flag was flown during Confederate memorials and by both honest veterans proud of their heritage and loathsome racist bigots engaged in lynchings and other denials of human rights to blacks is a matter of pure speculation. But the fact remains that the CF in its current form was never an official symbol of the confederacy; in my view, therefore, claiming it is a symbol of "confederate" or "Southern" heritage is baloney. It's an afterthought.

There is no question but that in its current form, the CF resurfaced during World War I, when divisions with Southern-inspired nicknames or with primarily Southern personnel began using it in their regimental flags and other symbols and insignia. It has continued to be flown since that time. In fact, the flag was raised on Okinawa after the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 by a member of a Marine company with primarily Southern members. It was ordered taken down by General Simon Buckner, son of a prominent Confederate general, who said "Americans from all over are involved in this battle."

On this basis you could argue that, initially, the CF was raised as a symbol of Southern heritage, and nothing more. Okay. I'll buy that argument. That works for me. But at least as early as WWII, some black soldiers (and possibly others) had lodged complaints about the use of the flag, such that formal investigations had been undertaken regarding how the flag was being used. By the end of the war (Okinawa not withstanding) the flag's use was apparently comparatively rare. I would argue that, if the flag was removed on the basis of complaints by blacks, then right there you've got not only clear evidence that some people didn't see the flag as a symbol of heritage at all (or if they did that the heritage was not one worth celebrating), but also that the flag was being taken off display on the basis of complaints related to race.

Did that make the white soldiers who wanted to fly the flag upset? Who knows. Did those soldiers make a point of flying the flag once they got home? I'd bet they did. It's human nature that when something you care about, and which you take as a symbol of your identity, is criticized, you dig in and support it more. It's why people who fly the CF now get so persnickity when somebody complains. On a rational basis most people I've met who consider the CF a symbol of heritage in no way (at least on a conscious level) wish to defame or insult blacks, northerners, other minorities, Jews, or anyone else (including urban white liberals) by displaying the flag. Instead, they feel their heritage as a Southerner is worthy of celebrating, and the flag is to them a symbol of that heritage. Take the symbolism away and most of these people would probably be willing to find another way to celebrate their Southern heritage that would not offend people; but because of the symbol's potency for them, and also because of the quarter the first complaints usually come from (let's admit now that the first people who show up complaining about the flag are usually not very polite), these people are themselves offended and dig in and defend the flag and its display. And so we have trench warfare and nothing gets done; everybody feels like any attempt to change their mind is a personal attack not only on them but on everything they stand for, and so nothing can be done. It's a lot like most political debates in this country these days; we have a dysfunctional politics, and display of the CF is a part of that and no more.

Two questions present themselves here. One, is Southern heritage worth celebrating? Two, is the flag the right way to do it? If we could resolve these questions we might find a solution to display of the flag.

I don't have much Southern heritage. At least half of my family came to the U.S. after the war was over, although they did settle in the South once they arrived. At least one of my ancestors fought in the war (at least one fought in the Revolution, too, a war we really need to spend more time focusing on instead of the damned Civil War), though I don't know which side (the family was in Southernillinois at the time, and regiments from that area were in both armies). Hey, it's tough to do much serious digging genealogically when your surname is the most common one in the country and has been since at least 1840.

I've certainly spent most of my life in states of the old Confederacy, and I consider myself a Southerner, although not Southern (a distinction that admittedly most people would find too fine to be worth making). I also like the South, and I find that people who are Southern--who have been in the South for a few generations and would call themselves Southern--are really nice, decent people, frankly the nicest and most decent I meet. Southern manners are genuine, although the South has so many non-Southerners it's not that common to find them anymore. You have to be in a rural area, but not an area so rural as to be nativist. That's tough to find anywhere in this country these days.

Anyway. I think Southern heritage is worth preserving, and for several reasons. I think all of American history is worth preserving. And there are things about the South that can and should be celebrated as a vital part of our collective heritage as Americans. I'm not going to run through a laundry list but any Southerner who can define what it means to be Southern knows that the South gave more to the world than sweet tea and fried okra. One of the features of Southern culture that I think is still among the strongest is the willingness to fight for a cause. I refuse to be dragged into a debate about what the "average" confederate soldier was fighting for; fact is, at the most basic level, most of them were fighting to defend there land against invaders. Never mind that the invaders were the people they used to be; if folks from St. Paul invaded Minneapolis under force of arms, regardless of how much Minneapolis deserved it, people in Minneapolis would take up arms against them. Doesn't matter that they both root for Vikings.

Okay, I'm starting to stretch credibility with my analogies so we better move on. Let's assert that Southern heritage is worth saving and celebrating, at least some parts of it. We don't need to celebrate slavery or lynch mobs, which are part of Southern history--but both things were plenty evident in the rest of the country as well. Abolition as a movement developed in the north when it did because slavery as an institution had ceased to become profitable by that time, so society was not underpinned by slavery. Being an abolitionist in 1850s Georgia meant publicly working to undermine the entire local economy, including your own. Whether you owned slaves or not the wealth of the South to which you owed your livelihood was still at least in part due to slavery. Put another way, it's easy to tell other people to stop smoking when you neither smoke yourself nor farm tobacco.

Is the current incarnation of the confederate flag the right way to celebrate Southern heritage, though? Hmm.

The flag, like many symbols, means different things to different people. There is no question but that to the vast majority of African-Americans, it is a symbol of slavery, hatred, racism, lynching, and all manner of awful things. It is also a symbol of the KKK, and of the neo-Nazi movement in this country (and elsewhere). In this case it is a symbol that has been adopted by those movements to symbolize what they stand for--and what they stand for is rather a nasty business. Because of these groups' selection of the flag for themselves, people like me, who frankly could care less one way or the other, tend to associate the flag with racism, hatred, bigotry, and the like, sometimes violent forms of those things.

Where I grew up, there was a Klan march annually in a town down the road. They marched through town waving their Confederate flags and what-have-you. Now I certainly know what the Klan is about, silly little marches aside, and I find their beliefs disgusting and their actions despicable. Because the Klan celebrated their beliefs with displays of the Confederate flag, I associate that flag with the Klan. Can you blame me? Where I grew up, people didn't display that flag unless they sympathized with the Klan. They might couch it in terms of white heritage or "standing up for white people" when everybody was against us, and they probably wouldn't ever dream of actually participating in a lynching or burning a cross in someone's front yard. But they flew that flag (or had it on their truck bumper) because the sympathized with the softer edge of what the Klan claimed to stand for.

I'm not alone, folks. Lots of middle-class white people regardless of where they were raised look at the flag and think: Klan. And think: racism. Lynching. Hatred. When I somebody with the flag flying outside their house, I wonder: how deeply do they agree with the KKK? Would my wife be welcome in their household (not that she'd go in anyway)? We would be welcome in their neighborhood? I think the same things when I see the flag on a truck bumper or license plate. I can't help it. That's where I was raised, and that's what the flag means to me.

Now, supposing you were raised in an area where the flag didn't have those connotations, but was simply a way to say I'm a Southerner and I'm proud of it. For you it is genuinely a symbol of your heritage, your culture, who you are. So you want to fly it. Fine. When I see it, I assume you're a racist.

That's not fair on my part of course. It's never fair to pass judgment on somebody without first getting to know them well, and perhaps there's not a bigoted bone in your body. But because you're flying that flag, I assume there is. The question is, am I alone? What do most people think when they see the flag?

Believe it or not, no quality polls have been taken on this issue. If I had money I'd commission one. Lots of internet polls are out there and other polls with questionable methodology, and of course flag supporters have produced plenty of polls that wouldn't pass scientific muster supporting it as a heritage symbol only. A good scientific poll is desperately needed to see what the majority of Americans (and let's get it broken down by region and state, gender, race, education, income, age, etc) think when they see that flag.

I have a feeling--based on my own limited and flawed experience--that more people see the flag negatively than positively. I suspect it's by a fairly wide margin, too, probably about 3-1. I might be wrong, but what if I'm right?

Would you still want to fly the flag in that case? Would any decent, upstanding unbigoted person still want to display that "symbol of heritage" if three fourths of the rest of the country would see it and assume it implied hatred? I would hope not.

That's my problem with the confederate flag, anywhere it is displayed (except as part of battlefield memorials) but especially in the case of our new gigantic one. I believe, and have no reason not to believe, that most people, when they see that flag, view it as a symbol of hate. So unless you really mean it that way, you shouldn't display it. Leave the flag to the people who have appropriated it to their own nefarious ends, and find a better symbol to celebrate your heritage, one less likely to be taken the wrong way.

Okay, but the flag, you say, is not a symbol of hatred or oppression, that's just what some people have read into it, and that's their problem, not mine. Sure.

Let's say you're a Jew in Palestine. You've lived there for many years, generations even, you're a shopkeeper in a town that your family has lived in for centuries. There've been Jews in Palestine for thousands of years, after all. Your customers are Arab Palestinians, Muslims. You get along with them, they are you neighbors and customers. You feel no ill will toward them. Should they feel ill will toward you? Of course not. You are members of a community.

But you are proud of your religion and your heritage, and one day you decide it is entirely appropriate for you to be proud. So you purchase an Israeli flag, and fly it outside your shop. Do you suppose your customers might drift away? Your neighbors might stop visiting? Your shop might become the target of threats, vandalism, violence? Duh. Of course. That flag symbolizes something more to Arab Palestinians than it does to you, and no matter your reason for flying it, it isn't going to be taken well by them.

You wear a yarmulke when it's appropriate though, and have for years. It's not as if your customers and neighbors don't know you're Jewish. They just don't associate you with the state they view as an oppressor. When you suddenly associate yourself with it, it's not going to be seen as a matter of pride or a personal statement of heritage, it's going to be seen as you've decided to support what the flag stands for to those people.

The confederate flag suffers from the same thing. It's not that you have no right to be proud of the South or your heritage; it's not that other people conflate your heritage with hatred. It's that the symbol you've chosen to demonstrate your heritage is already associated with hatred and bigotry. When I say I think the confederate flag is a symbol of hatred (I don't; I think it's a sign that the displayer of the flag is probably a bigot. The flag itself I view as neutral because it's a pseudo-historical item with multiple meanings) that doesn't mean I think Southern heritage and culture are nothing but hatred and bigotry. It's just the way I view the symbol you've chose. I don't see why it isn't obvious to people to just choose another symbol not already loaded with negative connotations.

Unless, of course, the people fighting for the flag really are bigots.

A Brief Political Post

So Barack Obama secured the necessary number of delegates to claim the Democratic nomination last night. And Hillary Clinton gave a speech that sounded like she thinks she won the nomination herself. Some wags are saying she's refusing to concede because it gives her more power over Obama, and she wants something (presumably the VP slot).

Honey, Obama won. He has more power over you than you will ever have over him. He has the power to say, hey, I'm going name somebody else my VP--anybody else. Anybody but Hillary. He can say that. What is she going to do? If he were to give a press conference today and say, it was an honor to run against Sen. Clinton and she's been a terrific candidate and competitor, and I look forward to the day when I am president that I can begin working with her in the Senate to take America forward. And now I'd like to introduce the person who I've asked to stand with me as my Vice Presidential nominee..." What the hell would she do? What could she do?

Would she seriously then go on the attack and attempt to bring Obama down before the convention? Would she do that? What would her justification be? Would she actually expect that the delegates pledged to Obama would then decide to vote for her instead, and not for somebody else? Does she think she would make friends among the superdelegates by doing that?

Does she think she's strengthening Obama in any way by saying I'm not going to concede in case he stumbles before the convention? All she's doing is putting out there the expectation that he will stumble before the convention, that there is something about him so awful that he shouldn't be nominated regardless of how many delegates he's won. That damages him meaningfully should he be nominated; it has, in fact, already damaged him in a way that won't really be in evidence until after August.

And that's the rub. Clinton has by her words and actions the last few months and especially yesterday (and I expect it to continue) done nothing but damage Obama as a general election candidate. She has not helped him. She clearly does not intend to do so. It is clear that she believes that by doing so, she increases the chances that she may yet somehow manage to win the nomination. But if she should do so by hook or crook (I'm going with crook), she will alienate the people who've supported Obama, far more than Obama has ever alienated any of Clinton's supporters.

She has weakened him. In doing so she has proven that she is interested more in her own needs than the party's needs, that she is driven more by self-interest than by the public interest. She has proven that she does not deserve the presidency, and that she does not deserve her party's nomination for the presidency.

But she still won't go away. That is why it would be a colossal mistake on Sen. Obama's part to name her to the Vice Presidency. She won't go away. She thinks she should be president, not vice president. Her husband is an even bigger problem. Both of them will work every day to undermine Obama's presidency, publicly and privately, to boost themselves. Obama cannot share the executive office with the Clintons; indeed, no one can. They wouldn't allow it.

There was a time when this wouldn't have concerned me as much as it does today. I still have mainly positive feelings toward John McCain. He supports a carbon-trading system and other moderately green initiatives. In the past he supported raising taxes to fund a war--and while I don't support the war, at least he recognized that all Americans, not just those in uniform, should be sacrificing in time of war. But of late he's backed off that stance, and now he supports extending Bush's tax cuts; flights of rhetoric aside, John McCain no longer seems to believe in giving Americans something bigger than their own self-interest to believe in. That was what I liked about him; he's always been more conservative than I am, but he used to be the only person on the national stage who talked about America needing more than the collected material self-interest of its people to reclaim its greatness. He still talks about that, but he no longer demonstrates any serious belief in it.

Perhaps that's just for crass political purposes, but what does that prove? Even after he had the nomination sewn up, McCain went on preaching his support of further tax cuts, and talking about having a military mission in Iraq for 100 years if necessary (look up the context, the man never said we'd be there for 100 years, only that if it was necessary, we should commit to that, rather than leaving a worse mess than we entered) without suggesting that anyone but the grunts in uniform would have to pay for it. That disturbs me. That has made me lose faith in the man.

And then he went and talked about the Supreme Court. And that sealed it for me; at one time I would have been relieved that he was the nominee, because I could have lived with him as president, because he was a reasonable man. But then, after he had the nomination, he went out and said that he would only nominate far-right anti-choice pro-executive Bushite wingnuts for the Supreme Court. And that I cannot support.

If he'd said he would prefer judges in the mold of a Kennedy or an O'Connor, that would have been terrific--and it would have supported the notion that McCain was a thoughtful and moderate Republican. Instead he said he'd appoint a bunch of Roberts/Alito wingnuts. Granted, he was talking to a bunch of wingnuts at the time, but he already had the nomination in hand. Why does he feel the need to comfort extremists? The right-wingers aren't going to defect from McCain to Obama (or Clinton). They aren't going to join up with Bob Barr and the Libertarians. And they're not going to jump ship to support some wingnut on a fourth-party ticket, no matter how much they threaten to, because A) they know they wouldn't win, and B) it would demonstrate incontrovertibly the impotence of their once mighty political movement (which they fear more than anything else). They may threaten to, sure. But in the end most of them are going to come home and support a Republican because they believe he's better than Obama (and they think Clinton is evil) and because it will give them leverage over McCain.

And what if they did jump ship? So what. Those people haven't given the Republican Party anything worth having, and if McCain owed his presidency to them, then it wouldn't be worth having. I used to think McCain actually believed that, too, and actually believed that the presidency wasn't worth having if to get it he had to prostrate himself before people whose beliefs he didn't support. But like most other politicians, he seems to have concluded that the presidency is a prize so valuable, so important to his sense of self-worth, that it's worth having no matter who you have to whore yourself out to to get it.

The question now is, is Obama of the same sort? Will he whore himself out to the Clintons, accept Hillary as VP and ensure four years of constant attempts to undermine his position and plan for America? Does he want the presidency so bad he'd take their bitter pill just to get it? Time will tell.

Senator Obama, please, I beg of you: don't take her. You don't need her. You don't want her. You will never be president in your own right if you have her (and Bill) in the office down the hall, and you will never be able to raise this country up with two crass, political leeches bent on sucking you down.

Unemployment is bad for your health

You may remember back in March I was sick. When I wrote a post about it we thought it was a head cold, but later we decided it had been a sinus infection. Penicillin took care of it but it was unpleasant and annoying.

Well evidently it's back. Same symptoms, same feeling, same unpleasant annoyingness. And here it is Smittywife's birthday and I don't have the energy to do anything special... plus I'm all stuffed up and sound like I've been swallowing charcoal. It isn't pretty, and it isn't nice. And it's not even three months since I got over the last one.

I never used to get sick often. Certainly not this often anyway; for a long time I could count on getting the flu every November, but even that has faded the last decade or so. I occasionally come down with acute gastroenteritis, usually from not smelling the milk before drinking it when I come back after a vacation or TDY. But this sort of thing, I mean, shoot, I'd never had a sinus problem of any sort before the one this spring, and here it is again. This is ridiculous. The only thing that's changed, really, is that I'm not gainfully employed. So that must be it; unemployment is bad for your health. Need to do something about that...