coffee.mill

Health unCare

    In the responses to a prior column, Curt wrote, "...give us the FACTS this time and let us decide for ourselves..." and further, "...no where in there do I see any Passion to get to the truth."

    I do hope that my passion is to get to the truth, and I agree entirely with finding the facts and deciding for ourselves.  And therein lies the problem.  How do we get to the truth?  How do we know that what we read or hear is true?

    Part of the problem lies within; we hear what we want to hear, and believe what we want to believe.  Those things we hear that align with our own opinion, or passion, we embrace; hence the self-named Dittoheads on the Limbaugh show.  Those things we disagree with, well, we tend to give short shrift. 

    I make the same error in this column often enough, not vetting the facts upon which I base my opinions, and I hope to become better at that.  And I hope you will  too, in your responses. 

    For example, people write and talk about "Obamacare," generally it is used negatively, as an invective.  But what is it?  No one really seems to know, and I have neither met nor heard from anyone who has actually read the bill.  I haven't.  There's just the assumption that it is bad.  What specifically is bad about it? 

    One of the reasons that Mr. Obama was elected president, was because a majority of the people thought that health care in this country was broken.  "Ten years ago, the US healthcare system was declared "broken," and it has not improved. Fixes promised by managed care have not materialized. Premiums are rising. Hassles for patients and physicians abound. Nearly 45 million Americans are uninsured." (from an article in the American Heart Association website, 2010, Arthur Garson, Jr, MD, MPH).  There are hundreds of other references to the state of health care at the time, but this one comes from the medical community. 

    My personal experience with the system indicated that it was broken.  Before leaving for Peace Corps, my own private insurance didn't cover required physical therapy after surgery, despite letters from my physician that recovery was not possible without it.  As I write this column, I have been waiting for six months for my private insurance company to decide an abscessed tooth should be treated.  The policy shows it should be, but hoops must be jumped through, roadblocks are erected at every possible intersection.  My situation is the norm rather than being unique.  Thirty-two of thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, according to the World Health Organization, the US being the sole exception.  Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control, April, 2009, the US spends more than any other country for health care as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (15.3% vs the next closest Switzerland at 11.3%).  So all other developed nations provide health care for all their citizens at less of a cost than the US does for just some, in our current for-profit system.

    So of course, President Obama ran into enormous opposition to imposing any sort of control on the money being generated from sick and injured people seeking medical help.  I think it's fair to say that the system needs changing.  I don't know if the system proposed by this administration is the right change, but nobody knows that.  But everybody has an opinion. 

     And that's fair.  It's just that it would be good to back that opinion up with some facts that can be verified. 

    Perhaps you think you have a better fix; I would really like to hear it.  Perhaps you think there are specific things in the proposed plan with which you disagree; good.  Let's hear them.  But like Curt wrote, let's have some facts.   I know of my own personal experience with the system as it is, and I think it's overly expensive and lacking in coverage.  I know from looking at data that we spend more for less than most industrialized nations.  I know that if you are wealthy, you have great coverage, even here in the US.  I know if you are poor, you still have good coverage here, because most hospitals and doctors will take care of you even if you're broke.  But for those of us somewhere in the middle, the system is broken.  President Obama at least had the intestinal fortitude to take the system on.  It might cost him a second term, but I appreciate his courage.

kept man

                I really do appreciate the discussion we’ve been having in reference to the blog on Whirled Peas, and I’ll continue to expand on that idea.  But first, a clarification.

                I offhandedly used the term “kept man” to describe my status here in Florida relative to having a job, and though I thought I was using the term light-heartedly, I hadn't thought how it might sound to Tracy, and I apologize to her for that.

                I looked the term up, and found that I had misspoken (miswritten?), as a kept man is more traditionally a younger man beholding to an older, rich woman, and love is not involved in the arrangement.  I do value words, and try to be careful in how I choose them so the word was misleading on many levels.  Tracy and I fell in love serving in the Peace Corps in Belize and that is the reason I moved to Florida from my Midwestern home.  Other than that, I wouldn't be here.  And we are far from financially rich, being wealthy in areas much more important to us both.  I am living a dream though and I feel very lucky indeed.   Tracy supports my writing and believes in me enough to provide the time I need to get on with it and we are partners in that endeavor, in this life.  It has been easy for me in the past to lose myself in other work.  As much as I like writing, contracting and carpenter work are far, far easier.

                The ‘kept man’ part of the blog also seemed to hit a sensitive masculine nerve.    

                I grew up in a time when men were generally the primary breadwinners, women generally had the responsibility for the home front.  That is no longer the case.  Sociologists are yet puzzling over how this will all sort out.  Much of society’s decay (as observed primarily by the older generations) has been blamed on the changing family structure. 

                I was raised in a traditional family setting, with Dad off at work, or the Air National Guard, or the Fire Station, or Civil Defense, or Storm Watching, and Mother was home with the kids.  I believe strongly that I was very lucky that I had at least one parent at home full time as I grew up.  I don’t know if it has to be Mother necessarily, but that’s how it was for me.  I have a couple of friends in Lincoln who have a family structure where the Dad is home with the kids.  Seems to work just fine for them.

                But many of the families that surrounded me as my own family grew were not traditional in the sense that I knew.  Both husband and wife worked outside the home to make ends meet.  In some of those cases, the wife earned more than the husband.  And as I wrote earlier, it was rare but not unheard of for the woman to be the one working while the man took care of the house.

                Perhaps we men are just nervous that women are getting out from under Mick Jagger’s thumb.  Nervous that women can do most things just as well as men, many things better.  And women already know that we men haven’t exactly made the world a better, safer place.

                My friend Terry said its one thing to say I was a kept man, another thing entirely to write it down.  He said I was either really brave, or very stupid.  But that’s just a continuation of an ongoing discussion we have, coming down this time deep into the stupid category on my part.  Sometimes in writing this blog I settle comfortably into a space where I think I can take liberties with humor, talking to a few close friends who would understand the humor as a relief valve to my own feelings of inadequacy at not being the primary person bringing home the bacon.  But I'm not alone in that, as he further suggested I was opening Pandora ’s Box. 

             Which gave me pause as I realized how frightened we men seem to be of women, in that both the Greek and the Judeo-Christian theological traditions blame women for releasing evil into the world. 

               Which evil men seem to have embraced with a vengence.

                Case in point, my not considering the effect of what I write on the woman I love.  For which I am sorry.

Whirled Peas

                So, for a couple of weeks I have been thinking more of why I am in South Florida, living the life of a kept man.  Tracy going to work full time.  Me picking up the odd job here and there.  Necessary from time to time, to smooth balm on my pride, but writing in not nearly enough of the spaces between.

                I did get Tracy’s book edited and online… “fivelittlepiecesofpaper” by Tracy Hodson, at Amazon or Kindle…you can down load it for $2.99, and it’s worth the price.  I’m still trying to get it available in paper form, my favorite of course.  Have not yet fallen comfortably into the electronic web.  So it should soon be on Lulu.com.  I managed to get a book of my poetry onto Lulu…and it’s available there too, thanks to constant gentle prompting from Mother.  “Poems Scattered, Collected for my Mother” is available through Lulu.com…..but I haven’t gotten it available cheap online yet.  You can go to Lulu.com, enter my name or the title and it comes up.  $14.97, plus some shipping. 

                Yet that’s not why I’m here. 

                I have more poetry to compile into books and would really like to do some of that.  And there’s the book about Peace Corps Belize, coupled with Tracy’s recollections.  A fun project that Tracy has already plowed through one time, and I have only one lonely page written.

                That’s not why I’m here either.

                I’m trying to find balance here, and it’s difficult, because what I want to write is far from balanced.  It’s actually more than a little bit crazy.  Tilting at windmills.  A Quixotic quest for understanding. 

                Why is war a given, and peace a joke…a raised eyebrow…a smirk?

                Why is that?

                As always it is easier to dismiss the idea of peace with a laugh and a joke.  People like Gandhi and Mother Teresa given some strange veneration as eccentric outliers, a bit odd and whacky but not really serious inhabitants of earth.  Patton, now there was a man.  Joan of Arc.  Warriors.

                That’s  what we believe in.  Warriors, and by simple logical deduction, war.  These are our heroes.  The Lone Ranger in fiction.  Shane, Rocky Balboa, 300 Spartans…the list is long and illustrious, illustrative.  There is a list of the peacemakers too, but even the word Peacemaker most often leads to the Model M1873 Colt rather than the Sermon on the Mount.

                Around this we build our culture, our world, with the perception always that the World Is A Dangerous Place, and The Other is always, Always out to get what’s Ours.  We must conquer and subdue first, get along, on our terms, after. 

                And because we believe these things, and the belief is pervasive across cultures, they are true.

                But I cannot help but believe these things are not a given.  And it is about that odd little perversion from the norm that I must write.  It’s really somewhat disturbing, sitting comfortably at a Starbucks on a sundrenched Florida morning, a complacent beneficiary of countless acts of war.  And I am well aware of the sacrifices made by those who have fought and bled for my very existence, yet well aware of the conundrum defined in fighting for peace.  I have friends who bear the scars of torture, friends who bear the psychic scars incurred being part of the machinery of war.

                We love and celebrate our warriors and our wars in ways we do not celebrate our peacemakers and our peace.

                Perhaps this is the way the world is.  But accepted wisdom is not always true and I thank the framers of the US Constitution for believing differently from the accepted wisdom of their time.

Money

                I treated myself to a latte this morning, and paid for it with a couple of dollar bills. 

                Pieces of paper with a picture of George Washington on one side and both sides of the great seal of the United States on the other, the pyramid and the eagle.  It costs about 6 or 7 cents to make a dollar bill, and no one would actually pay 6 or 7 cents for a dollar bill.  The value is in our mutual agreement that dollar bills can be traded for real products… some gum, a latte, and if you pile them up, a car or a house.  For thousands of years, bartering was the only way to trade for goods.  You want a house, bring a lot of cows.  Cows had value.

                Cowry shells were also used around the world for trading, as they had value for body ornamentation, but about 3,000 years ago, the Chinese came up with the idea of using the shells as a trading medium, with little intrinsic value.  Hence the collapse of financial markets now.

                 If we had been using cows on the stock exchange (some irony there for sure), there would have been no collapse.  It’s because we trade on faith, with symbols of value rather than real value, that the market can be as volatile as it is.  It also leads to snake-oil salesmen dressed in spiffy suits selling snake oil, bottled now as “Darling Dan’s Derivatives,” or “Bernie’s Bundles Assets.”    Or in Bernie’s case, bottles with nothing in them.

                On this, our economy is built.

                Once upon a time (as in the beginning of a Fairie Tale) our economy was built on Bethlehem Steel, real estate and the Gold Standard.  Or at least the Silver Certificate.  No more.

                So our economy is pretty much as we believe it to be.  An over-simplification for sure, but not far off the mark.  And that is a postulation owned by both political points of view, augmented by the “Can Do” attitude that has made this country great.  If we believe we are rebuilding and growing, we are; if we believe we’re going down the tube, that also is true.  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, King James).   What we believe, matters.

                In this country, Once Upon A Time, waaaaaay back when, I would like to believe the party out of power labored shoulder to shoulder to move the country forward, never giving up their own principles or desire perhaps for an opportunity in the next election cycle to try things their way, but still getting on with the business of the USA. 

                It’s on our money, on that dollar bill... “E Pluribus Unum.”  Out of Many, One.  It’s true that the motto was intended to show the relationship between the states and the federal government, but I think the definition has grown over time to include We, the People.

                Despite the best efforts of the vitriolic, bombastic pundits on talk radio, most Americans are getting on with getting on in these difficult times.  Despite failed policies and gridlock in Congress and the Administration, most Americans are getting on with getting on.  I have three brothers-in-law in three different states, who are building successful businesses in this very economic climate, through hard work, persistence and sheer stubborn determination.  Since returning from Peace Corps, my partnerTracy has found work as a dental hygienist, first part time 2 days per week, now full time at 4 days a week, affording me the gift of time to write.  I fill in with construction/home repair work to help out, and I keep about as busy as I want to be.   The staid, stodgy Wall Street Journal ran an article last week about how home buyers in many markets are now having a hard time, and in many cases pay more than the asking price just to make sure they don’t miss out (WSJ Apr.27, pg 1, “Stunned Home Buyers Find The Bidding Wars Are Back.”  Car companies are posting healthy profits, as are oil companies.  Banks are rebounding, focusing on profitability rather than expansion (WSJ 4/30/2012 pg C8).

                According to the New York Times, May 2, pg B9, the Dow Jones average "closed at its highest level in more than four years on Tuesday after an index of the nation's manufacturing level expanded at a faster rate than expected in April, easing anxiety about a slowdown in the economic recovery."  And just in case you were worried about the poor economy decimating compensation on Wall Street, an article on pg B5 of the same NYT offers the welcome news that "Median pay for executives at 200 major companies was $9.6 million in 2010 according to a study conducted for the New York Times by a compensation consultant.  This figure was a 12 percent rise over 2009 figures, and the majority of these executives are now being paid above prerecession levels."

                Does this mean it’s all better now?  Of course not.  But it is good news that won’t be discussed on talk radio unless it can be spun to make someone of the other party look bad.  Because good news for the country is bad news for talk radio.

                It’s unlikely that any government policy, any party could have avoided the mess we’re in, or turned it around quickly.  There was too much damage to the faith of the people, brought on by greed, malfeasance, lack of oversight and regulation, and outright theft in high places.  It takes time, and a re-building of that faith.  No party has a lock on truth, but each certainly has the ability to slow progress for political gain. 

                And despite the best efforts of the bottom-feeding pundits, it seems America is beginning again to have faith in America.  I think we never really lost that faith.   But in the constant barrage of half-truths and bias, faith is accepted as valid only when it conforms to a narrow, limited set of criteria approved by the party.  Which sounds disturbingly like something we as a country have fought and died to avoid.

                E Pluribus Unum.

We need each other

                It’s quiet out on a farm in a way it’s quiet nowhere else.

                I hear a clock ticking, the compressor on the refrigerator humming.   Faint traces of sunlight cut a silhouette on the western horizon.  My Mother, my sister and her husband are off to Holy Saturday services; I’m at their home, snuggled into a comforter, fighting rear-guard action against a stubborn cold.  Good people live out here in the Midwest, hard working, conservative in the best sense of that word. 

                When I spend time out here in the wide open spaces of the Midwest, I’m struck again by the generosity of spirit I run into almost everywhere I go, from courtesy in traffic and an index finger raised on the steering wheel signaling hello from total strangers to casual conversation in a Quick Stop.

                This generosity of spirit is one of the things that makes it harder to understand the bile extant in the national discourse on politics and the state of our Union.  It isn’t helpful at all, and it doesn’t jibe with the heart of America.  But there are people making fortunes manufacturing the bile and spewing it over the airwaves.  And if a person drinks of the bile long enough, it becomes instead a drug of choice, and it begins to taste like a sweet elixir.

                As  a contractor, I listened to Paul Harvey  daily, for years, whether I wanted to or not.  Because every radio station on a job site was tuned to Paul Harvey when he was on the air.  And in his down-home friendly style, he presented a conservative agenda, but he didn’t preach, coerce, upbraid or deride others.  His commentary was based on years of news-gathering experience and I never heard him shade the truth to prove a point, or hold anyone up to public ridicule.  And he had that power, with 24 million listeners.  In a 2003 interview with Larry King, Harvey said, “Don't let noisy news distress you. Don't let the headline writers rain on your parade. My goodness, there's resiliency in this country.”  Traveling this country in recent months, it’s that resiliency that I see, not the doom and gloom of the headlines.

                As a contractor, I also have listened to more than my share of the current mix of radio commentators, and the difference between them and Paul Harvey is marked.  The whole purpose of the programs now seems to be to perpetrate an Us-against-Them philosophy, when the truth of the matter is, we need each other.

                This country is built on the competing values of liberal change and conservative resistance to that change.  Both are necessary.  Mark Twain said, “The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”  If you read enough history, you’ll see the wisdom in Twain’s humor.

                We need each other.  We need a foundation and structure to keep us from spinning off into some crazy byway, but we need fresh ideas and insights to avoid stagnation and decay.  We don’t need to point our fingers and deride those who might differ on the ways this country can grow and prosper.  History shows that politics has always been a dirty business, given to back-room deals and tradeoffs.  Out of that squalor we usually can find those gifted individuals who can bring us together.  But now we are also saddled with a pervasive, toxic overlay of babbling rabble rousers whose sole function is to find the worst possible spin on whatever might be happening anywhere in government.

                Politricks has always been messy business. 

                That does not detract from the reality that We the People, need each other.

Concealed Agendas

My adopted state of Florida is once again in the news for legislation on the use of firearms.

I’m sure by this time you’re well aware of the case of Trayvon Martin, shot and killed by George Zimmerman.  It has become a media feeding frenzy, and of course, the usual suspects align with the usual right and left wing extremists to obscure as much as possible any semblance of truth or justice.

What appears to be true is that 17-year-old Martin, walking home from a Quick Shop-type store, was shot and killed by a 27-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer Zimmerman.  It also appears to be true that Martin was unarmed.  Zimmerman remains free under the Florida “Stand Your Ground” self defense statue that reads:

776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm.—

 (3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

 

     According to a March 20 Palm Beach Post article by Dara Kam,

    “The Martin shooting is the latest in a string of controversial cases in which shooters like Zimmerman invoked the law in their defense, including at least six Palm Beach County cases in which killers were not punished.

      “In 2007, Norman Borden became the first Palm Beach County defendant to beat murder charges under the law. In that case, Borden fired 14 shots at three men, killing two, who he said shouted threats at him and tried to run him over in a Jeep as he walked his four dogs.

      “In 2010, a jury acquitted Timothy McTigue of murder charges in the 2007 shooting of Michael Palmer, who was unarmed. The strangers exchanged words and fought briefly before McTigue shot him in the head.

      ”Last year, a judge dismissed two first-degree murder charges against Michael Monahan, who shot Raymond Mohlman and Matthew Vittum to death during a dispute aboard a sailboat.”   

 

      The article goes on to report,

“…. But one of the sponsors of the 2005 measure defended the law, citing reports that Zimmerman ignored the advice of a 911 operator who told Zimmerman to stay away from Martin.

“Invariably when there’s any adverse incident, it’s open season for anti-gun factions to disseminate this idea that there’s something wrong with ‘stand your ground,’” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, who sponsored the measure. “There’s nothing in ‘stand your ground’ that authorizes anyone to pursue and confront an individual. That’s the problem in this case. Let them do a bill about that.”

NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer, who pushed for the law, agreed. She said the call for action is premature, because the law allows an arrest to take place after an investigation.

“So for law enforcement to rush to judgment just because they are being stampeded by emotionalism would be a violation of law,” she said. “This law is not about one incident. It’s about protecting the right of law-abiding people to protect themselves when they are attacked. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the law. And if the governor wants to waste time looking at it he can knock himself out.”

      I do think the last few paragraphs here are one of the keys to understanding the killing of young Martin.  Zimmerman was not following usual procedure for neighborhood watch groups, most follow the procedures similar to those outlined by the Tampa Police Department: “The confrontation of suspicious persons…should be left to the police.”

     But the incident also shines a clear light on serious flaws in the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law, in a state where it is legal to carry a concealed weapon as administered by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Licensing.

      Florida does not require a NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) background check, according to the website for USA Carry: “There is a background check but not NICS. Your permit is currently issued by the Department of Agriculture which is not a law enforcement agency, and therefore cannot do the NICS check required by federal law. Only “law enforcement agencies” can access NICS, and therefore the federal exemption that normally applies to concealed weapon permits, does not apply to those issued in Florida.”

      It is possible that in states requiring NICS clearance, Zimmerman would not have been able to carry a weapon, I don’t know the answer to that. 

      But in a state where you can “Stand Your Ground,” and those standing their ground can both be carrying handguns, it seems we have a recipe for unwarranted escalation in the possible deadly result of what should be non-lethal confrontations.

      I do think that if I am putting myself in a place where I so fear for my safety that I think I have to be secretly armed, I should either change my location, or the environment in which I live.  Neither one an easy task, but both preferable to dancing in the OK Corral.

...again, the forwards.

                Since we’re still in election season, and no matter which party is in power someone is always displeased, scurrilous emails about the current resident of the White House often crowd my inbox.  As I voted for the current resident, I usually just delete them.  But on occasion, on a slow news day, I check them out before I delete them.  Of that sampling, I am from time to time compelled to respond, either because of the breathtaking stupidity presented as thoughtful commentary, or because of the overt and malicious lying presented as fact.

                Two recent examples come to mind.

                The fact that oil is a finite commodity seems to escape the notice of the Deep Thinker in the first.   Or, he has failed to connect the dots as to what that means.  The internal combustion engine, meaning “cars and trucks” in their current configuration, are as much dinosaurs as the fuel they consume.  We will find a replacement, or we will cease traveling the way we do.  There are much more valuable uses of the limited amount of petroleum than setting it on fire to visit grandma or buy another pair of Nikes.

                Mr. DT  took President Obama to task apparently for suggesting that it might be wise to invest in electric cars, or other  forms of alternatives to petroleum powered transportation.  “Obama wants us to pay 3 times as much for a car that costs more that 7 time as much to run and takes 3 times as long to drive across country,” he wrote.  Then followed it up with a clever “REALLY?” 

                In red letters, and capitals, just in case we missed his witty satire. There are problems with electric cars and with most forms of alternative transportation.  As there was the last time we lived through one of those changes, back in the early 20^th century.

                From the book “The 1900s”, “The motorcar emerged in the first decade of the 20^th century.  At first the car was a toy for the rich.  It was expensive, noisy, and frequently broke down.  Early models were started with hand-cranks, had no windshields, and suffered flat tires every few kilometers…In 1907, the Calgary city council set the speed limit at 16 kilometers per hour…On Prince Edward Island, cars frightened horses so much that in 1908 the government banned automobiles.” 

            If Mr. DT were alive in 1908, he would have been one to ban automobiles for sure.  What could be better than a horse?  Working through the enormous difficulties inherent in developing the automobile into the seemingly indispensible mode of conveyance it has become would have been outside the narrow confines that bind his imagination.  Rather than risk the uncertainties of research and development, Mr. DT would drive his vehicle to the last drop of oil, cars and trucks rolling quietly to a stop on interstates and highways as he peers out his windshield, dumbly cranking the starter over and over and over until the electric battery is dead. 

                As the 19^th Century rolled into the 20^th, President William McKinley in his report to Congress said, "Our future progress and prosperity depend upon our ability to equal, if not surpass, other nations in the enlargement and advance of science, industry and commerce. To invention we must turn as one of the most powerful aids to the accomplishment of such a result."   A line of thinking far outside the grasp of our good friend Mr. DT.

                The second email contained an alleged quote from President Obama, "Look, it’s an all volunteer force.  Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice?   It doesn't compute...  I thought these were people who were proud to sacrifice for their country.  I wasn't asking for blood, just money. With the country facing the worst financial crisis in its history, I'd have thought that the patriotic thing to do would be to try to help reduce the nation's deficit. I guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow Americans.”

                This was followed by some incisive commentary “I'm guessing that other than the 20-25 percent hardcore liberals in the US, we all agree that this is just another example why this is the worst president in American history,” and the advice to pass the email on to every vet I knew.

                Why would I write that this email is both overt and malicious lying?  Overt, because whether Democrat, Independent or Republican in affiliation, conservative or liberal in thought, to think that a sitting president of any persuasion would commit political suicide by saying such a thing, is beyond stupid.  The sender has to know the statement is untrue.  It has to be a willful act of character assassination design only to inflame and enrage those who might believe differently, or give a self-satisfied smirk to true believers locked into a mindset of hate. 

                It is malicious because it is easy to check out the veracity of such a statement, either though Snopes.com, which most conservative true believers castigate as a bastion of liberal thought, or through FactCheck.org, which most liberal true believers castigate as a bastion of conservative thought.  Both sites track the statement to a satirical commentary delivered by one Jon Stewart as part of a political comedy sketch.   

                So whoever started this poisonous screed on its way knew it was false and sent it anyhow.  This is yet a free country.  Political satire is good fun and pokes holes in self-righteous and pompous windbags.  But intentionally spreading lies about the Commander-and-Chief ought to disturb anyone who cares about that freedom, and it is a slap in the face to the armed forces who are bound to follow that Commander-In-Chief in protecting that freedom.  Veterans, of whom I am one, can agree or disagree with our Commander-In-Chief, but we ought to be stalwart in defending him and that office from lies and slander.

Ray & Carol

                The email read “Ray and Carol Miller passed away February 22.”  That was about it, other than an apology for the mass mailing, and a link to a Lincoln news report on the deaths.  It was from Ray and Carol’s daughter Charly.  Charly, who is also a friend, and one-of- a-kind like Ray.

                 Ray directed the Men’s Glee Club at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and in 1969 and the early 70s, for a couple of hours a week, I escaped into rhythm and harmony with Ray and some 50 other guys.  Ray took his music very seriously and whipped us into an excellent, competitive Glee Club, never forgetting however, that we were a Glee Club, and as long as we were making good music, well then, we ought to be having fun.

                Every spring we would go on tour, putting on many concerts a day traveling to high schools around Nebraska, getting the kids fired up about vocal music.  We would run onto the risers from off stage, shout out a short intro, and then break into a rousing 4-part harmony version of the UNL school song.  Ray would then lift his baton and we would forge ahead with an eclectic mix of show tunes, popular music and the occasional classical piece.  As the tour wound on for days, and we began to tire, Ray always found ways to get us smiling and enthusiastic.  Late on one tour, after our fight song, before he lifted his baton, he reached into his scarlet blazer, pulled out a folded up piece of paper, and with his back to the audience, revealed to us just part of a Playboy centerfold.  We smiled.  Broadly.

                Each concert after that, he revealed just a little bit more.  But by the last concert there was no more left to show.  Again Ray reached into his jacket, and this time he unfolded a full-sized picture of…himself.  We started laughing so hard we could barely sing.

                We sang in music contests around the country and we sang at the halftime show at the Orange Bowl when our Cornhuskers defeated Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide. On the way home we sang in front of the Magic Kingdom in Disney World.  Where ever there was Ray, there was a good time. 

                Over the years I did some work on Ray and Carol’s house, a cozy A-frame he had built himself, laying up the fireplace stone by stone, a trade he learned from his father, if I remember correctly.  I rebuilt his deck when a drunk-driver left the road and slammed into it in the wee hours of the morning and I framed up a house for his son.  I would stop by Ray’s house from time to time over the years, as many from the Glee Club would, and spin stories.

                I stopped to see him and Carol before I left for the Peace Corps, and their health wasn’t good.  I heard he had recently had a stroke.

                I knew Ray and his wife Carol were inseparable, that they did everything together, but when I read the email that said that they had passed away, it stuck in my brain like a sandbur sticks to a pant cuff in passing.  So I clicked on the link to KLKNtv News and learned that the deaths were ruled a double suicide.  Ray and Carol were found dead in their garage.  He was 78.   

                According to the news story, many of Ray’s friends and acquaintances said Ray had often said he “wanted to go out on his own terms."    What with the miracle of modern medicine able to prolong life past all common sense, at great expense in the most miserable of circumstances, perhaps Ray and Carol made a good choice, while they still could, before they were stripped of their dignity and the right to choose. 

                I mostly remember Ray smiling.  That’s what I remember.  And I think he would be pleased to hear that.  Most times I think of suicide as cowardice; but on occasion I think of it as a rare form of courage.  This, I think, is one of those times. 

Of Cows and Super PACs

                Six below zero in Fremont, Nebraska Saturday morning last.

                It had warmed up to 10 before I headed north to Wayne in the ragtop Jeep Wrangler my niece was kind enough to lend me for my visit back to Nebraska from Florida.  It is possible I will be banned from winter trips to the Midwest, as up til now, the weather has been mild.  Unseasonably warm even.  The day I landed in Sioux Falls, a storm dumped 10 to 16 inches of snow from Denver to Omaha. Temperatures plummeted and stayed plummeted until I boarded the plane to leave on Monday.  Tuesday the forecast is for moderating weather in the 40s.  I do apologize.  

                But I got to thinking about the difference in temperature between Fremont, Nebraska and Jupiter, Florida, and the twenty-three and a half degree tilt of the earth on its vertical axis that causes that difference.  That tilt gives the temperate zones of the earth their seasons, and provides a steady stream of snow birds heading south in the fall, some like myself relocating permanently.

                It’s not much of a difference, that tilt.  But without it, the seasons wouldn’t change, and temperatures would remain in a relatively constant range traveling from the equator to the poles.  And that got me to thinking about the fragility of our life here on earth.  A little research shows that that tilt isn’t really a constant.  It oscillates from 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year-cycle. 

                I can write all this stuff about the earth’s tilt, and know that to a high degree of probability, you’ll believe me.  However, if as a contractor, I put a sign on a wall that says “Wet Paint”, you’ll probably have to touch it, just to make sure. 

                This brings me to politics.

                The Republicans aren’t yet done beating up on each other, but the attack ads on President Obama have already begun, thanks to the bilious, pestilent super PACs.  And the Democrats are beginning to fill the airwaves with their own version of the same.  And they all intone with absolute authority how their particular candidate knows and cares about global warming, international finance and relationships, hydraulic fracturing and oil exploration and energy in general, and the price of a cup of coffee in Wayne, Nebraska.

                The next time your jaw tightens as you discuss the relative merits of your candidate or your party versus another, and the grand promises and omniscience they profess, give some thought to Wet Paint.  Give it the touch test.

                I am from the Midwest.  Typically, Midwesterners aren’t prone to hyperbolic bloviating.  And I use the last two words intentionally, because as a Midwesterner, I typically wouldn’t.  It’s overstated and pretentious, but sounds good.  But if you listen to the sound of it, you hear “hyper”, which makes sense as a lot of unnecessary gaseous ventilation, and “bloviate” which sounds a bit like “bovine,” which we in the Midwest hear as “cow.”   

                The next time your jaw tightens as you discuss the relative merits of your candidate or your party versus another, and the grand promises and omniscience they profess, give some thought to Wet Paint.  Give it the touch test.  Or simply think of gaseous cows.  That would be a good working definition of Super PACs.  In my humble opinion.

Economy

                As a newspaper, the New York Times is among a select few publications at the very top of the journalistic heap.  Despite the virtual flood of print, TV and internet information sources, reading the Times is a reminder of what journalism used to be about.  That’s not to say that mistakes aren’t made, or that the editorial board doesn’t have an opinion. But at the Times an effort is made to limit opinion to the opinion page, which can’t be said about many “news” sources today.  In particular, along with the Wall Street Journal, it is a valued source of business information.

                In the February 2 edition, business section, the Times reported, “New-vehicle sales in the United States were unexpectedly strong in January, an early sign that the auto industry could have its best year since 2001, carmakers and analysts said Wednesday.”

                “The Chrysler Group beat forecasts with a 44 percent increase in monthly sales and Honda posted its first year-over-year gain since it began struggling with inventory shortages after last year’s earthquakes and tsunami in Japan…Toyota, Ford Motor and Nissan each reported modest increases, while Hyundai and Kia set January records.  Volkswagen reported a 39.5 percent gain, its best January since 1974.”

                Another article in the same paper stated that “Manufacturing activity in the United States grew in January at the fastest pace in seven months…Consumers are buying more cars and trucks, while businesses ordered more machinery and other equipment.  That has driven manufacturing, which expanded for the 30^th consecutive month.”

                “Both new orders and order backlogs rose to nine-month highs.  Increasing order backlogs suggest manufacturers are lacking the capacity to meet demand. That could mean more growth in production and employment in the near future, economists said.”

                An AP story in the Norfolk Daily News reported “A drop in the unemployment rate to its lowest level in three years propelled the Dow Jones industrial average Friday to its highest close since May 2008, before the financial meltdown later that year.  The Nasdaq composite index hit an 11-year high.”

                  As I drove into Lincoln, Nebraska yesterday I saw 6 tower cranes in the downtown area.  They looked to be on about 4 separate jobs.  In construction, a tower crane means a big job; they are not portable in the sense you can drive them from job to job.  They build themselves on the job anchored to a concrete base, as the job grows, so do they.  When you see a tower crane, you are looking at a multi-million dollar project.

                One of my friends in Lincoln owns a custom cabinet shop; he said last year he was finally able to pay off most of the debt he had accumulated in the economic slowdown, and his shop was now filled with cabinets they have built with orders to install.

                All these things seem to me to be good things, and perhaps even signs that things are improving.  But you certainly wouldn’t know it listening to the talking heads or listening to the debates in the primary campaigns.  Now, it’s possible that nothing the current resident of the White House has done has anything to do with these tidbits of good news.  But it’s also possible that some of the things he’s done are working.  It’s worth a discussion rather than a diatribe but it’s unlikely we’ll hear that discussion.

                Mr. Obama came into office with an economy heading downhill at a breakneck pace; I think most people agree with that.  It had taken quite a few years of irresponsible business and government policies and to get us to that point.  It wasn’t going to change overnight, and it wasn’t going to be painless.  And it isn’t over yet.   But I think there are signs of life. 

                And regardless of the politics, I think that’s a good thing.