Online again

I've been offline for the last week, up in the redwoods. Today, after six nights of camping out, I needed a long hot shower, etc., to spice up. (So I was told by a clerk at a gas station/market down the road apiece.) And so here I am online at a motel in Garberville, heart of Humboldt County's "alternative economy." I went to a gathering of the faithful last evening--a folk music fest for the fourth held in a nearby town--and I must say I surely fit right in, appearance-wise. I turned down the repeated offers of "herb," of course, because I simply didn't want to clog my lungs with smoke. But we are indeed a scruffy- looking lot, we hippies, especially when gathered in large numbers.

A travel note: The groves of "un-old-growth" redwood trees extend all the way from a few miles north of Santa Cruz up to the Oregon border. Only a few stands of old-growth remain, of course, but I must admit I thought there weren't that many places where they still grew in any form.

Anyway, apropos the normal content of this blog, know this: Nothing has changed in my absence. The stories--Kagan, unemployment, oil spill, AfghanIraq, to name a few--remain unchanged, as if they didn't see my absence as a chance to amend their direction. Indeed, if anything, they've all headed further south since I've been out of the loop. So, it doesn't matter if I pay attention or make posts to this blog or write letters to the editor railing against this policy or that. Of course I knew that was the case, but it's pleasant to have confirmation.

And so--back into the woods.

Hiatus

I'm taking off for a trip northward from SB--destinations/duration unknown--and will likely be away from the Internet for a spell. OTOH I might find spots to hookup and create some posts on this site. To me, these days, the best rule is there are no rules.

Chew on this.

Is the mind just "a computer made of meat"?

WTF?

Would someone please explain to me the social/economic--indeed, any--value of trading futures contracts on movies' profits? Isn't such trading simply another opportunity for naked gambling by monied folks, allowing brokers another "product" upon which to generate commissions?

A letter to the editor

Here's a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I emailed this evening. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: It was published on Sunday, June 20, 2010.

I have hope for America. Admittedly, negative superlatives dominate our news: the nation’s largest wealth disparity; warmest oceans, smallest glaciers; biggest deficit; highest arms spending; most massive oil spill. One might fairly despair over the incessant reports of disastrous conditions that are the “worst,” “biggest,” “most.”

But I have hope, and it springs from this fact: We Americans are aging—and we are multitudes.

Why hope? Because age renders people wiser. Elders—Eisenhower in his farewell address, Greenspan in Congressional testimony, McNamara in late writings, to cite three famous examples—often achieve in maturity a reflective candor about the true state of things. Eisenhower about the “military-industrial complex,” Greenspan about unregulated markets, McNamara about Vietnam.

We older folks also consume less. We no longer value cars, clothes and computers, but sunsets, sanity and siestas. We don’t count our dollars, but our blessings. We don’t charge things, we care for, and share, things. It’s not the acquisition of possessions but their disposition that rewards us.

Finally, we tire more readily. We grow weary of the drama of interminable rhetoric of war—whether against terror, against drugs, against each other—having learned that each war simply begets more war, and usually a new industry and a new bureaucracy; and that each war fails, leaving an increasingly exhausted and embittered nation.

So my hope is simply this: that we mature Americans, soon a majority, will take hold of our country and guide it with the wisdom, community and serenity that comes with age.

Just imagine for a moment

how the US media would treat a massive gold robbery in a large American city that left fourteen dead. But in Baghdad--just another day in the nightmare.

Hmmm...

I wonder why this is.

Don't look now (and not many Americans are)...

but Iraq is becoming the nightmare that those of us who resisted the US invasion said it would. To be honest, I'm conflicted about this recent violence. On one hand, I'd like Iraq to quiet down and become a decently-functional state so that (1) we could get the hell out with a minimum of egg on our face, and (2) Obama's administration wouldn't remain tarnished by our ongoing presence there. On the other hand, I'd love it if the place would turn into a violent conflict-plagued dictatorship that hated the US, so that the US would learn from that experience and stop its continued intrusion in other countries' affairs. On balance, because I doubt that US politicians won't ever learn the latter lesson, no matter how many failures our invasions create, I favor peace and governance in Iraq, and not for any of the above reasons, but because I feel for the poor Iraqis who didn't ask for any of this, and who deserve a place of decency, security and calm.

Laugh, I thought I'd cry

at the military's decision, as announced in the headline of the article, "New NATO idea to avoid killing innocent Afghans": giving medals for "courageous restraint." Even Orwell couldn't have come up with that one.

Oops

It appears that even Arizona legislators can make mistakes. The two immediate amendments to their recent immigration encactments do seem to mitigate somewhat the harshest of the original provisions, but true to form--their form being the refusal to recognize the correctness of any position taken by the original law's detractors--the legislators claim the law is strengthened. Fact is, the several lawsuits challenging the law as originally passed were clear winners and the Arizona lawmakers wanted to avoid having the entire legislation stricken, which is surely would have been as written.

Wouldn't you know it

This bunch (five of them) on the Supreme Court are more activist than any previous Court. Look out for Jewish stars and Muslim crescents and who knows what going up on every hillside, in every park, in the US. I'm not a huge worrier about the First Amendment "establishment/free-exercise" clause, but I do honor the centuries of precedent which stands against the notion that a clearly religious symbol may stand upon clearly governmental property. This isn't simply the "in God we trust" slogan, or the "under God" phrase--they're troublesome enough on our coinage and our pledge but they're at least neutral as to what/whose God is being referred to--but a cross?

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter I wrote this evening to the SB NewsPress. I'll update this post when/if it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the SB NewsPress on April 29, 2010.

To the editor:

I’m an unabashed liberal who believes that Lois Capps, during the years since she succeeded her husband Walter as our Congressional representative, has served the Central Coast well. She has a strong record on the environment, healthcare, civil liberties—indeed, on many important questions. But of late, on the most critical issue we face—the security of our nation and its place in the world—she has revealed herself to be merely a Democratic Party hack. I’m talking about the war—now Obama’s war—in Afghanistan.

The House of Representatives holds the “power of the purse,” and will shortly be faced, again, with deciding whether to increase funding the war, this time with an additional 33 billion dollars. (The House bill will likely—in a cynical move—include a fund for Haitian relief, in order to wrap it in legitimacy, but that provision can be separated out.) The question is: How will Lois Capps vote? Will she have the guts to say: “No! My conscience, and my constituents, demand that this killing in Afghanistan cease. Our soldiers—and Afghanis and Pakistanis—are dying for no purpose and to no effect except to harden terrorists’ resolve to attack America.” Or will she vote—as she has heretofore—to continue funding this wretched, wicked war because the Democratic Leadership (Obama, Pelosi, Reid—the usual suspects) demand that she comply with the Party Line.

I’m not asking much of Lois Capps. I’m simply asking her to ask herself, “How would Walter vote?”

Whaddya think?

Is the US Air Force just launching this thing for a lark? I must say, if I were Russia--or any other nation--I'd be, as they say, up in arms.

How to raise taxes without much political or economic pain?

A good suggestion, for starters: limit the now-unlimited deduction for home-mortgage interest payments. If you've bought a million-dollar home, financing the purchase with a $750,000 30-year mortgage, you now may deduct the entire interest component of your monthly payment, which could be as much as 4/5 of the payment in the first years of the mortgage. That interest amount is currently deductible, creating a huge drop in income-tax liability for those who inhabit giant, expensive homes.

Why not limit the home-mortgage interest deduction to a fixed sum, say, the amount of interest on a loan equalling a percentage of the median value of homes in various locales? This would leave the deduction intact for those who live in modest homes, but wouldn't allow the wealthy to benefit from their expensive, much leveraged homes at the expense of those who live more modestly.

Tell me, if you can, why that's not fair.

In case you're wondering

why I haven't been posting to this blog lately it's because I've got nothing to say. Actually, I've got a lot to say, but I'm too weary with disgust to say it. I'm close to giving up on this entity we call the United States of America, merely waiting for the next shoe to fall to prove our governance and our media and our citizenry doesn't deserve my further attention. Indeed, so many shoes have fallen lately that my voice would have been drowned out anyway.

What's in a name?

When it comes to Faulkner, not much.

Why do they hate us?

Because we're ruining their birthday parties by digging bullets out of the bodies of pregnant women, that's why.

Seen at Tea Party rallies

Teabonics.

A solution to expensive Internet hookup and slow downloading

Move to South Korea. Ironic, isn't it, that a leading factor in the US's slow speed is our relative absence of competition? It appears that corporations in the US cheer for raw capitalism except when they don't.

A fucking nightmare

Those of us who are old enough to recall LBJ's repeated assurances about progress in the Vietnam war must be--I know I am--wretching over Obama's plans for Afghanistan. After a "success" in the tiny enclave of Marjah, we're now going to assault a major city, Kandahar. My God, Barack, are you that big an idiot? Are you crazy? Or, worst of all, are you just another American Imperial President?