Category Archives: THE WORLD

President Obama’s Speech

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Am I the only one in the country who thought that the speech showed a strong and resolute President? 

Don’t look for passion — that is not his character.  Look for determination and a view toward the future. 

I thought he did a fine job.  Did anyone think that he could speak away the problems?  Did you think the oil was going to go back into the hole in the earth whence it came?

Let’s be real.

Please, please, please, let’s all stop expecting miracles or easy answers.  Let’s be as easy on the President as we are on ourselves.  Because we are soooo good at blaming others and limiting our own culpability in anything and we are so good at complaining but so unwilling to do our part — either through tax dollars or consumption reduction.

We are in the fight of and for our lives and livelihoods. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS CLEANING UP DISASTER UPON DISASTER THAT STARTED PERCOLATING SINCE NIXON — HEALTH CARE, OIL DEPENDENCE, AMERICAN COWBOY-ISM AS FOREIGN POLICY.

Anyone else willing to stand up and say that the speech was fine, that speeches won’t fix the Gulf problems and that we are lucky to have a clearheaded and intelligent leader? 

And, the $20 billion fund was a big coup since, under GOP leadership, liability was capped at $75 million. 

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Going Nuclear with Dr. Strangelove

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How do you get someone’s mind off a headache? A strong punch to the stomach.

How do you take someone’s mind off the environmental disaster caused by the massive oil leak? Detonate a nuclear warhead.

Really? Detonate a nuclear bomb to melt the ocean floor onto itself to stop the leak?  It is ok to try new things, like shooting debris in the hole to plug it, because what’s a little more pollution when millions of barrels of oil are gushing into the ocean each day. But a nuclear bomb? Yeah, let’s compound one threat to our future with an almost certain apocalyptic coda.

Someone said this nuclear fix is safe.  Someone also said deep water drilling is safe.  Someone said the Russians exploded nuclear bombs to stop pipeline leaks, but they never did it with oil, underwater and one mile down.  Oh, yeah, just like top kill was never tried underwater and one mile down.  Gee, I wish Anyone thought through how to fix something, let’s say an oil pipe, that far down below sea level before the accident.  Boy, I never met this Someone or Anyone, but Someone sure is crazy and Anyone should be fired.

But, this is America, where Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels.  So, if we look at everything ass backwards and upside down, it should work.  From that perspective, the nuclear option looks like a plan.  How about if all of the BP executives and the government officials who oversaw deep-water drilling put on some of Ginger’s old outfits and then tried to figure out what to do?  No, it wouldn’t add any brain cells (so still a zero sum game) but it would sure provide needed comic relief in the aftermath of the biggest threat to the safety of all living beings since the Ice Age.

Of course, no disaster is complete without the accompanying political grandstanding and fiascoes.  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote to the President enumerating the number of jobs that will be lost because of the moratorium on off-shore drilling, even as he decries the despoliation of his state’s shorelines and criticizes the administration’s slow response.

Maureen Dowd, who is becoming pathetic, says we got the President we voted for, as if that is a bad thing —  a clear-headed leader who doesn’t lead by his gut.  The President constantly overestimates our intelligence and ability to understand the important things.  And President Obama has to stop what he is doing to go on Larry King so that we are reassured he can feel our pain.  Because we need him to hug us and feel our pain while he is protecting us from our own stupidity.

We deserve to choke on the oil slick.

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This is the media’s Hurricane Katrina

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I believe the Gulf disaster defies analogy.  

But we need to pigeon hole this one for the 24 hour news re-cycle.  Hmmm.  Hurricane Katrina.  Yeah, that’s it!  Let’s exploit another episode of human suffering for the sake of ratings.  That’s why the media asks, “Is this Obama’s Hurricane Katrina?”.  Because that was the most recent large scale disaster.  We can’t remember back almost 10 years to ask if this is “Obama’s 9/11”.

And it feeds our need, in a situation out of control, for symmetry with past events so we can pretend to understand the event and its ramifications and then go back to watching Britney Spears.   The pathology of fear symmetry.

Let’s not make this about President Obama, although it would make it easier if it were.  It is about greed and reckless indifference to our earth.  It is about a problem of unimaginable scope causing imponderable calamity for all living beings.

We elected President Obama because he is unflappable, at least in public.   Now, we are pissed because he doesn’t express constant outrage to satisfy CNN, FOX, and MSNBC and our own fear symmetry pathology.

Everyone, listen up:

Rule 1 of disaster reaction:  If the only people with the machinery to solve the problem are the ones who caused the problem, don’t piss them off.  If you make it so they can never get out from under the liability, they will take their marbles and go home and then all is lost.   Sometimes it feels good to yell at a given moment, but it hurts you in the long run (ever hear the old saw, “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”?).

Rule 2 of disaster reaction:  There is no easy resolution to this problem because no one prepared for this disaster.  Not BP and not the United States.  Preparation would have required years of research and development by top scientists and hundreds of millions of dollars.  So, blame Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.  Even throw Carter, Ford and Nixon under that bus while you’re at it.

Rule 3 of disaster reaction:  Everyone wastes time pointing figures at others.  And take out the mirror.  All of us.  We are the problem, too.  Consume too much?  Vote for the Drill, Baby, Drill ticket?

Rule 4 of disaster reaction: DON’T TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH.  WE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH (Jack Nicholson was right in “A Few Good Men”).  We also expect that everything will get fixed for us, preferably within a day’s trading session at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rule 5 of disaster reaction: The media feeds our ridiculous expectations and our hubris.  So, Anderson Cooper, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, Jack Cafferty, Wolf Blitzer and whoever else:  stop with the comparisons and come up with ways to heal our earth, ways to help our fellow Americans, our wildlife, etc.  Set up a disaster relief fund.

Reality No. 1 of Disasters:  The man in charge — President Obama — wanted this gusher plugged the minute it happened.  You think he wants to go down as the president who screwed up this disaster response?

Reality No. 2 of Disasters: Everyone is an armchair quarterback.  If you can help, then help.  If you can’t, then shut up.

Reality No. 3 of Disasters: If there weren’t a disaster, the media would create one. So, for the 45th President of the United States of America, what will be your Gulf Oil Spill Disaster?

This Blogger’s No. 1 Fear: If it is ever over, we will forget about it in a New York minute.

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Rand Paul, the Prophet with the Pitchfork

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That crazy Tea-Party-er is good for America.  You’re thinking: some crazy person is guest blogging.  Nope.

Rand Paul is a false prophet.  He is rationalizing our nation’s three-decade long drift into a selfish, ego-centric theocracy.  He is giving us a way to rationalize and even celebrate our nation’s screw-your-neighbor-because-it-is-your-G-d-given-right hypocrisy.  Yes, if we listen to him, we will surely perish.

He lays bear the essential pathos of the Tea Party movement — the fight for white supremacy and control over diminishing resources.  Neo-Nazis and Neo-Klansmen with an apocalyptic rapture.

I am over-reacting, maybe?

  • He said that the President’s criticizing British Petroleum was un-American.  Does being American mean I have to applaud and support corporate greed that despoliates the earth? (Psssst, Randy, BP is headquartered in Switzerland to avoid US taxation).
  • Then he drew a line in the sand — saying that an individual’s right to be a racist is improperly impinged upon by the Civil Rights Act.  (If a black proprietor refused to serve a white man, I don’t believe Mr. Paul would be so sanguine about the protections of the Civil Rights Act.)

No, I am not overreacting.

After thousands of years of human civilization and evolution, it still all boils down to the epic battle between good and evil.  On one side of Mr. Paul’s line is our common humanity and sense of decency, justice and fair play.  All the things that — we say — define us as Americans.  On Rand Paul’s side of that line, there are only Freud’s id, chaos and brutality.

Good versus Evil.  Yes, it is that simple.

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One thing leads to another

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I started the weekend early by slipping out to go to the ear doctor.  Most people wouldn’t call that the start of a weekend.  But my ears have been clogged and itchy on and off for some time and more and more people have told me that they’ve been to the ear doctor and the problem was wax.  Deriving from a deep-seating egotism or martyrdom — I am not sure — I assumed that the ear doctor would look into my ears, faint at the sight of the wax and then, once regaining consciousness, would suit up (a HazMat, of course) and begin excavation.

He looked into my ears, my ears and my throat.  He said, “No wax.  Your ears are clean.”  He looked at my expression and asked, “You were hoping for serious wax, weren’t you?”  I nodded.  He felt bad.  He said, “I am really sorry, but your ears naturally dispose of excess wax, just the way they are supposed to.  And it just may be allergies causing the itching and clogged feelings.”  I was so dejected.  He started to feel really bad.  He continued, “Look, I kept you waiting for 30 minutes and there was no wax, so I am waiving the co-pay for the visit.”  I protested, after all, it wasn’t his fault about the wax and he apologized for being late the moment he walked in the room, so my anger at that was assuaged.  “No,” he insisted, “give it to charity.”

I walked onto the street and tried to hail a cab during that ridiculous time of day when ALL cabs are “off-duty” — why every cab company must have the shift changing times is beyond me.  I inadvertently cut in front of a guy and ran to an off-duty cab because sometimes the driver will take you if the destination is on his way to the designated shift-changing location.  I felt bad — I don’t usually cut a line and this was right after the doctor waived a co-pay.  The guy looked odd but harmless enough.  So, I offered him a lift to his destination — Port Authority. This is a very non-New York thing to do.  A cab is one’s (rented) private domain from the beginning to the end of the ride.  Don’t get between a New Yorker and his or her cab.  It would get ugly fast.

It turns out the stranger in my cab was a doctor and a sheep farmer near Binghampton, NY and was in the city for a medical conference.  He hates the city and the thought of living on a farm gives me hives.  So, total opposites and that does not bode well for the 20 minutes remaining in our time together.  That is an eternity in a small space with a stranger who somehow feels beholden to make conversation.  And he was clearly not a natural conversationalist.  For example, he mentioned that not only does he get wool, milk but he also gets hides.  Picture a dead Bambi starring in the movie, “The Silence of the Lambs.”  He had noooooo sense of humor and seemed somewhat sad.  When we got to Port Authority, I declined his offer of payment and told him that my doctor waived the co-pay, and telling me to give it to charity and so I am doing the same here.

As the cab driver and I continued on to my destination, I said congenially, “Was I crazy to give a stranger a lift?”  The cab driver looked at me in his rear-view mirror and said, “You seem like a very nice spirit and a professional, educated person.”  I knew that that was a compliment and a way to say he thought I wasn’t crazy doing a good turn for a stranger, but it is fascinating how different cultures and the “immigrant experience” shape our language.  He then asked rhetorically, “You are Jew?”   Turns out Moustafa is a Muslim from Egypt and a civil engineer.  (A weird factoid: he is the third cab driver — all were Egyptian — to ask if I were a Jew.)  We had a wonderful chat about life, happiness and universality of humanity.

It is crazy how a doctor’s waiving a co-pay led ultimately to a conversation with Moustafa.  A conversation that lifted my spirits and reminded me of our common humanity.

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Into America

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I had to go to heartland for a meeting.  I didn’t really know where I was going because I keep myself on a “need-to-know basis” — I don’t need to know details until just before I really need to know them.  It turned out to be a perfectly lovely and forgettable place.

At the lunch meeting, for salad dressings we had a choice of ranch or (violently red) raspberry. You know you’re in “America” when you would kill for a bottle of Wishbone Italian dressing.

Also the plane was so small that, instead of the pilot’s saying “flight attendants, please take your seats for landing,” he said, “Andrew, please take your seat now.”  And during the flight, I kept watching the propellers as if by sheer force of will, they would keep whirling.

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Out at Work

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I “out”ed myself today at work — not as a lesbian [remember, I am here, I am queer and I am over it] but as a blogger.

While I didn’t give away the site, apparently some of my coined phrases, like “schlepic” — in the passages I cut and pasted for a colleague — can lead straight to this blog.  So, the secret is out.  I will never be on the Supreme Court as a result of my writings.  That’s okay.  First, I am not qualified.  Second, I am one of the few New Yorkers who doesn’t look so good in basic black.  Phew, intellectual and sartorial disasters averted.  Our nation is safe again.

Although, come to think of it, I would dispense justice, tempered with mercy.  As in, “would you like extra fries with your LAST meal?”  I fear that most people would be horrified if every opinion from the bench started with, “Schmuuuuuck, what were you thinking when you . . . ?”  I would imprison people who tortured the words of laws or statutes beyond all recognition to fit their desired ends as violations of the Geneva Convention.  You know, the Geneva Convention, the so-called “quaint” doctrine discredited by Dick Cheney and his highly educated legal “scholars”.  Just using fancy words doesn’t make an idea good; it just makes it high-fallutin’ bullsh@t.  But I digress.  See, I would get on a roll and mayhem would ensue in my court room.  Maybe I should get the Presidential Medal of Honor for having the patriotism not to seek a judgeship.

Anyway, today was a regular day without many gross things to report.  Other than the fact that the Virginia governor forgot that slavery was part of Virginia history.  That’s like a Texan forgetting the Alamo, for G-d’s sake.  But the governor’s omission did hit an impressive trifecta:  gross, idiotic and inflammatory.

And then there is the mining company that put profits ahead of lives and now 25, possibly 29, miners are dead. I think Lady MacBeth found that blood stains your hands forever.  That crazy Bill Shakespeare.  Our very own Elizabethan Nostradamus.

Starvation in the Sudan is at a humanitarian crisis level.  (There are so many centers of humanitarian crisis, wouldn’t it be easier for the UN to list where there ISN’T a humanitarian crisis?)  We really should think about how lucky the majority of us are in this nation (and remember and help the less fortunate).  But, tea party-ers are crying over taxes, which most of them don’t pay anyway.  Children starving in the Sudan.  Spoiled Americans are protesting a functioning government that protects their liberties and provides a safety net from starvation.  Let’s put these two concepts on the scales and balance them.  Ok, why are the tea party-ers still talking?

Associate Justice 40andoverblog of the United State of America.  It has a nice ring to it.

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Doctor, heal thyself

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The urologist who put up a sign saying, “if you voted for Obama, go somewhere else,” got his information from the Internet and . . . wait for it . . . it was misinformation.  We did not “misunderestimate” him (my favorite moment of the otherwise bleak Bush years).  He was flat-out wrong.

The Internet is an amazing tool.  It also must be viewed in its context.  Opinions — informed, ill-informed and maliciously disinformative — are out there.  It is up to each person to glean the facts, evaluate the sources and come to one’s own conclusion.  Just because I can write an opinion that you might read doesn’t mean that I am right, that I have all of the facts or that, quite frankly, I am interested in the truth.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but that doesn’t mean that each opinion deserves equal weight.  I spoke to a tea party goer about a year ago that heard on an unnamed “news” station (ok, FOX) that the health care bill would give social security benefits to illegal aliens.  Ok, let’s set aside the fact that we are not talking about E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial, or Martians, and that they are humans deserving at least the catch-all phrase of “illegal immigrants”.  I asked this woman if she ever dealt with the government.  She asked me to get to my point.  I responded that even if President Obama were seeking to give away the money in the Treasury (which he can’t because there is a 3 trillion dollar deficit), that the government needs a social security number to take any action with respect to a person’s benefits.  So if someone doesn’t have a SSN (let’s assume that an illegal immigrant hasn’t stolen one because why impugn someone who is seeking a better life here, while there are native born executives of Enron and Madoff enterprises who have committed heinous crimes and haven’t yet had their days of reckoning), then it is impossible to give that person social security benefits.  The commentator was either mistaken or intentionally misleading.

Ok, let’s be honest.  MSNBC is slanted the other way and sometimes uses inductive reasoning — basing a hypothesis on one fact — and gets the whole analysis wrong.  For me, sometimes, it is analogous to watching a show about law or maybe a doctor watching ER or Grey’s Anatomy.  It strains credulity and sometimes is farcical.

However, when I realized that I paid more in 2009 taxes than most, non-celebrity, tea party-ers pay in two decades, I realized that I put my money where my mouth is.  I believe in universal health care, medicare and a safety net for those like my grandparents who slept at night knowing that, if they lost their jobs in sweatshops, their children would not starve.  As a child of those children — the embodiment of the American dream — I pay my taxes for those like my grandparents and my parents, and not for the ungrateful masses who are the tea-party-ers.  Why?  Because this is America, the greatest nation on Earth.  But if you don’t want to buy in, that’s ok.  But there are consequences.  How about we mess with your medicare?  Would you be partying then? I hope you get along with your neighbors because if I join your group, there won’t be money to pave the roads outside your homes.  But because of my belief in America, and my indebtedness to my forebears, you get to be parasites sucking on the dream of America.  To tell you the truth, I cannot wait to heave the yolk of your entitlement of my already heavy burden.

How about that?  Let the generous, gentler and kinder America (thank you, Bush I) reclaim what is America.  I live America — I work hard, I pay my taxes, I pray that the government is good, right and just, I do not believe in torture and I give charity to those who need help to jump start their lives.  Yes, what Jesus would do.  And I am a Jewish, lesbian, Ivy League educated, Northeastern elitist.  And I embody the promise and opportunity of America more than most of the greedy, uncharitable, talking heads that pollute our airwaves.

Bring it on.

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A Night at the Museum

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Last Thursday, I had the honor and pleasure of attending a celebration of the Iranian/Persian New Year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  As we walked into dinner in the magnificently lit Temple of Dendur, I was overwhelmed by the beauty, power and the antiquity of the objects in the room.

Of course, most of the night I was thinking that I looked and felt like sausage stuffed in taffeta. I have this great dress; it looks so beautiful on someone else. Unfortunately, I was wearing it. I wore the dress a year ago and, well, I learned that strapless doesn’t work on me. Let’s just say I have too much to expect a poor little dress to hold up.  Since last year’s event was my sister’s wedding, there are plenty of photos about which I will be embarrassed for decades to come.

I had straps sewn into the dress for this dinner to avoid flashing anyone and possibly forcing them to recoil in horror and into the shallow moat surrounding the Temple.  Still, a little too much cleavage. Next time, I will wear a nun’s habit.

I also couldn’t see because my black purse is small and I had to choose between my blackberry and my glasses.  My blackberry won.  Now, I can’t wait to go back to the Museum and read about the history and customs of the Persian New Year, without the kaleidoscope effect that happens when your vision is blurred and mascara is creeping into your eyes.

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I get it, no one wants to comment on my blog

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Why? because everyone is traceable these days.  Hey if Israeli operative can be photographed prior to an assassination, then our lives are open to the world.

The truth is I am too stupid and I have too much to say that no one would voluntarily listen to, so I need a blog.  Maybe I should call it my Blab or my Blah-Blah.

An option.

Hmmmm.

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