An Outsider’s Perspective of US (and Us)

Posted on September 15, 2009 by 40andover

Yesterday, I spent almost two hours talking with a friend who is a businessman from the Cayman Islands. He is in New York on business. Since his business is somewhat US-dependent, he makes it his business to keep up with the news in the States. He is a Libertarian and a pragmatist. I am Democrat and (I like to think) a pragmatist. We agreed on many things, such as the need to compromise and get incremental reform because it is a matter of conscience that people have affordable access to health care. And I agreed with him that the public option will not pay for itself and should be phased in later if other measures don’t rein in the insurance companies. We simply cannot afford to institute this option at this point, given the deficit.

We disagreed on two points. The points of disagreement fascinate me.

First, he thought that death panels could be read into the legislation because it was not expressly disclaimed. My friend is an intelligent, well-read man; he is not Todd Palin. So I had to think about this more. Here is what I have deduced:

if a person distrusts “government” enough to believe that it would kill its own citizens, well, then you can make that argument.
if a person doesn’t believe that our government would kill its own citizens, you might argue that the panel of experts represented a disguised government take-over of health care.
if a person believes that our government is not trying to kill us and trying to cut down on defensive medicine by setting forth safe harbor protocols, then you think the concern is ill-conceived and politically motivated.

I guess what I am learning is while I am firmly in the third camp, not all of the concern may be politically motivated. Sarah Palin must have hit a chord with many, many people who have a deep, abiding distrust of government. Hey, I was scared of government under Bush/Cheney, so I guess I have to be more open to the fear that this legislation unleashed. Interestingly, it took my Cayman Islands friend — an outsider — to help me start to understand the perspective of blog commenter “Jordana”. We still disagree, but now I understand that we may not be starting from the same point of trust. That changes the dynamics of the conversation considerably.

The other point was related to torture. Some torture is understandable under some circumstances. I have never met someone who held that view. While I can see not prosecuting the CIA, I believe that torture is not understandable under any circumstances. I don’t want to be tortured and I would probably make stuff up just to make it stop. So, I don’t see how it helps get to the truth.

An excellent day

Posted on September 13, 2009 by 40andover

Every morning POB (partner of blogger) brings a mug of coffee for me and puts it on my bedside table, so I have coffee as I am waking up. I am a lucky person.

I am especially lucky this morning because the coffee is delicious and warm and my body is stiff and sore from my run yesterday and our son bounds into our bed and lunges over me to get the remote control lest we miss one moment of the senseless cartoons available to numb our children’s minds. Warm coffee (as opposed to piping hot) spills all over my jammies. Even if it were piping hot, I may not have been able to move. POB is already dressed and going out to get some groceries. No wonder I am tired. POB’s schedule is enough to exhaust TWO people.

I speak to my cousin who is recovering from major surgery and he says some chicken soup would do him good. What does POB do? Starts making chicken soup. I need a nap now and it isn’t even 10am.

By 10:45am, I am able to limp into the shower. Then we dash off to our son’s schoolmate’s birthday party. New school, new friends, new challenges. Our son is a little scared. We go to the amusement park and we meet up with the group and all is good. Except amusement parks remind me of horror flicks, sad clowns and freaky sideshows. There is an odd, clown-like man working at this place and I am as fascinated by him as I am ooked out.

Then pizza and cake and chaotic running around. The kids are so friendly and I can see that our son feels right at home. He has a crush on one girl whom he has known for many years — more than a crush really, because even though he is 7, he asked her to marry him and she said yes. But he is talking up another girl, too. Bad form, dude. It is your first week, so be circumspect with the girls. The other girl’s mom says that her daughter and my son may be competing for the affections of the same girl. I think, wow, this place is too groovy and hip for words. But I can tell already that there are back stories. I’ll ease into those. For now, I am happy because my son is happy.

POB and I are so happy that we do not want to ruin the moment by discussing wedding plans. As founding members of the Bridezombies, we have to set a standard for detail avoidance. We set a high standard. We are proud.

Family dinner tonight, but my sister and brother-in-law bag out. My sister cannot seem to follow doctor’s orders (even though she is a doctor) and her foot is not healing. She over-exerted and now can’t move. Let’s work through this problem together.

Let’s say you are a competent doctor (as in you didn’t get your medical degree from the internet) and another doctor whom you respect (as in it is ok for the doctor to examine you but not cut into you) tells you to use a cane and stay off your feet as much as possible. Then let’s say you have a conference where if you were really healthy you would stand all day and present an interesting case (work with me here; I know we are talking about diseases). So, even though you aren’t healthy, you stand all day and don’t use a cane.

Ok, so maybe my sister did get her medical degree from the internet.

Bottom line, Sis and the Man cannot come to Sunday night dinner. I call them afterward to tell them about the fun and the food they missed so they feel really bad. It is, in fact, the least I could do. My brother-in-law sends a grovelling email. A little more grovelling ought to do the trick.

A young cousin comes over. My son wants to know why he didn’t become a professional hockey player since he played in college. I want to know, too, because he is depriving the extended family of an element necessary to the true American family. We need a sports star. We already have doctors, lawyers, artists, entrepreneurs, felons (ok, only one), mixed marriages, gays and lesbians (ok, only one), etc. What a crowning achievement for a Jewish family to have a member who suits up in armor and carries a club to do battle on ice and someone keeps score. But, he is taking the easy way out and going to school, going into debt, to become a professional. So old school. Still, he is a lovely guy and it will be great to see more of him.

I am so happy to have (some of) my family together around my table. I think wistfully of a bigger gathering, one that includes my sick cousin, my dear cousin who is his niece, all together. I know my cousins who are uncle and niece need to work out their issues, but I love them both and family is so precious.

Family United

Posted on September 12, 2009 by 40andover

My partner (let’s call her POB, as in partner of blogger) arrived home from a business trip last night and today we are a family happily re-united. Our son was so happy that life was back to normal that he behaved as a typical 7 year-old, with all the toilet humor and “I never get to do anything I want” whines. Ah, life in all its facets.

We were at synagogue today for Saturday school, which is really an excuse for the kids to get together and play and the parents to catch up. POB and I saw the rabbi across the room and thought we need to re-start our wedding plans.

It is a great idea to get married but the details get in the way. We love each other. We will be happy to have a wedding once the day comes. Getting from Point A to Point B is the trick.

Ok, so we need to move forward on this. Stay tuned for painful details of the Bridezombies trying to plan a wedding for a year from now. I am stressed already. POB and I decided that we would discuss it during the period between Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur in order to maximize the self-flagellation that goes the repentance and atonement required during these days.

Obama’s Detractors will come up with anything

Posted on September 11, 2009 by 40andover

Now someone says President Obama is gay. It is clearly meant as an insult even though I thought that we had made strides in that regard.

Because any man who is an intellectual, loves his children and seems to have a good relationship with this wife (at least from the outside) must be gay? And, who cares? Should we start talking about George Bush and his drinking?

So, you can’t fight him on the issues so you go for heckling and “disparaging” comments? So, what if he is? So, what if he had blue skin or purple eyes?

The right wingers can’t fight fair because they have no good arguments. They only have their prejudices.

I hope Americans see through all of this and are disgusted by the absence of decency and fair play and calm discussion of the ISSUES.

President Obama, if you are gay, have blue skin or purple eyes, I don’t care. I’m with you.

Odd things against the backdrop of a sad day for our nation

Posted on September 11, 2009 by 40andover

In New York City, it is overcast and raining. Not just a sprinkle but the bone-chilling, clothes-drenching kind of day that can make a person melancholy. That is fitting for the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

I got my son off to school this morning. 6am-9am are not my “prime time” hours. Let’s just say that for the first two mornings, I returned to the house after drop-off, to sleep a little, shower and get to the office. Given the cost of the various taxis, this is not a sustainable practice even for the “AM challenged” like me. Luckily, his other mom comes home tonight from a business trip. She likes mornings, G-d bless her.

But today I was meeting a friend at a coffee shop at 8:30am, so I had to be showered and dressed BEFORE drop-off. This required success-oriented self-coaching last night. Today I could not hit the snooze button. I had to be fully groomed and ready with breakfast, packed lunch and washed, dressed and fed child. After a successful drop-off (phew) off I went in the whipping wind and drastically cooler temperatures to meet my friend.

Neither of us had been to this coffee shop, which turned out to be a 1950s style, singing coffee shop. The servers (the genderless version of waitress or waiter because “waitron” sounds like a machine) sing. At 8:30AM. Think about that. Most people don’t want to hear another’s voice until the crack of 10:15AM, but these servers are belting out songs at 8:30AM.

Some servers/singers are good, some not so much. The guy who sang Paul Simon’s “Call me, Al” should have had the microphone ripped out of his hands. At the risk of being redundant, it is 8:30am, and he is crooning in full voice WITH microphone in a cavernous space where there are few customers. My friend and I, as 40-and-overs, asked another server to turn down the volume of anything, the senseless movie playing in the background, the background music or the singer. The response was, “well, we are singing servers.” How nice for you, really; how unlucky for us. This is when I wished I had a hearing aid to turn off.

My friend and I called on our powers of concentration and focused. We giggled about things, talk business some, and talk family (the latter is always bittersweet). At one point, all the noise — oops, I mean music and singing — stopped and I realized was yelling over the din. So, I guess I did get the experience of what it must be like to have a hearing aid.

Apparently, one goes to the place for the entertainment and not for the food. Which makes a person wonder how this place survives the recession.

But it was a great place to have coffee because it created a bloggable moment. And the guy who sang, “Call me, Al” really should look for another line of work.

Could it be 8 years already?

Posted on September 10, 2009 by 40andover

Tomorrow is September 11, 2009. Eight years since the attack on our nation.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, we were strong, we were scared, we were compassionate. The world rallied to our side.

Then came the anger, the blood lust for revenge, the ramp up to war that stoked our desire to strike back at the aggressors, the use of 9/11 as a political tool to divide us just when we needed unity most.

We hit back blindly — at the wrong despot and at each other. We lost our way.

Eight years later, the question remains: how do we move forward as a nation, united and committed to making sure this doesn’t happen again for us and for any nation?

The Shonda Chair has become a Couch

Posted on September 10, 2009 by 40andover

What is SO crazy is that these ideologues get tripped up by the very things they rail against.

Move over Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign, we need to make room for Mike Duvall, a GOP legislator in California on the Shonda Chair. Maybe we need a Shonda Couch.

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By JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer Juliet Williams, Associated Press Writer – 40 mins ago SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A pro-family values California lawmaker who resigned after being caught on tape boasting about his sexual conquests denied Thursday that he had extramarital affairs, saying “my offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling.” Mike Duvall stepped down Wednesday after a videotape surfaced in which he was overheard telling a lawmaker about having sex with a lobbyist and another woman, including salacious details about how one mistress wears skimpy underwear and likes to be spanked. The 54-year-old Republican is married with two adult children. Duvall said Thursday his “decision to resign is in no way an admission that I had an affair or affairs.”

[text deleted]

The lawmaker had received a 100 percent rating from Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group, for his votes on legislation considered pro-family during the 2007-08 legislative session.

Say it ain’t so, Joe

Posted on September 10, 2009 by 40andover

Joe Wilson, GOP Congressman from South Carolina, broke protocol by yelling at the President, “you lie!” when the President was giving his address to Congress last night. Of course, this is the same guy who supports Sarah Palin’s assertions about death panels that will decide care for elderly.

Look, I wish some people called out Bush on the false claims of Iraq’s buying WMDs and plutoniun from Niger in his speech to Congress, so maybe protocol breaches are ok every now and then.

The problem with Wilson’s outburst is what it lays bare for all to see:

the discussion of health care reform has become an exercise in name-calling and fear mongering;
there can be no debate while people are screaming to score points with constituents; and
the ideologues (on either side of the issue) will not bend to acknowledge the facts and realities “on the ground”.

Ideology without common sense (and some sinister malfeasance, thank you, Dick Cheney) got us in the guagmire known as the Iraq War, where debate was stifled by fear-mongering and name-calling (“unpatriotic” was often used) and people afraid to be unpopular with constituencies that just wanted revenge (as in “round up the usual suspects”).

Trying to bring the likes of Joe Wilson into the bipartisan tent is a fool’s errand. Similarly, if bringing in armchair “Progressives” into the bipartisan tent means clinging onto a public option come hell or high water, then close the tent flaps to them, too.

Actually, let’s have both sides of the extreme ideologies in an arena and let them scream at each other. We’ll sell tickets, televise it (and get advertising revenue) and the proceeds will help pay for health care reform. We’ll call the show “Extreme Dysfunction”.

Fox News, Shame On You.

Posted on September 9, 2009 by 40andover

A friend emailed me that I should blog about Fox News Network’s being the only network NOT to air President Obama’s speech.

Fox News Network: it was very classy move, really.

Ok, it is so despicable that I can’t even write something merely sarcastic or facetious. I know why people think that the owners and talking heads on Fox are evil. Because they are.

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

Monthly Archives: September 2009

An Outsider’s Perspective of US (and Us)

An excellent day

Family United

Obama’s Detractors will come up with anything

Odd things against the backdrop of a sad day for our nation

Could it be 8 years already?

The Shonda Chair has become a Couch

The lawmaker had received a 100 percent rating from Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group, for his votes on legislation considered pro-family during the 2007-08 legislative session.

Say it ain’t so, Joe

Fox News, Shame On You.