Tag Archives: de-civilization

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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Justice, Souder and me

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http://m.yahoo.com/w/ynews/article/topstories/10?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxml.news.yahoo.com%2Fus%2Fnews%2Frss%2Frichstoryrss.html%3Fu%3D%2Fap%2Fus_congress_souder&.ts=1274229436&.tsrc=yahoo&.intl=us&.lang=en

Representative Souder, a G-d fearing family values man, joins the Rogue’s Gallery of the sanctimonious hoisted on their own petards.  I am not gleeful.  I don’t relish another’s embarrassments and defeats — even those people who would deny me my civil rights.

Each one of these holier-than-thou sinners begs for forgiveness and feels entitled to redemption because aliens must have inhabited his body in order for him to behave so.  Do we as a society enable the hypocrisy by forgiveness and opportunities for redemption?  What if we required that each one of these-who-have-fallen-THUD!-from-Grace accept that he is not the interpreter of G-d’s wills, G-d’s ways and G-d’s Bible?  [That is a way lot of “G-d”s for a religious conscientious objector like me.]

If pride goeth before the fall, then humility will come after it but only if we demand it of those whom we forgive. Humility and a quest for understanding of our common humanity. And maybe we will achieve peace and justice for all.

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If you love someone

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If you love someone, then don’t make him or her executor of your will.

It is one of the most thankless jobs.  Sifting through the detritus of someone’s life is bad enough (you simply don’t need to know some things), but, then, you have to file tax returns and speak to the IRS because one never really leaves one’s affairs in order.  And there are clerical errors and the wrong tax identification numbers are submitted and life gets complicated and you remember that you love this person who died peacefully knowing all was in your care, and you know he or she would never have asked this of you had he or she known what it really meant.  [SIDEBAR: Ok, that was one of those crazy long sentences reserved only for established writers who look elegant in smoking jackets and cravats.  I am just a journeyman lawyer.  If I were Hemingway, I would continue on: “That was a damn good sentence.  A f@#$ing good sentence.  They opened a bottle of wine — a damn good bottle of wine —  and took turns taking swigs from the bottle because they were too proud of that f$%^ing sentence to move from the table.”]

I live my life so government stays far away from me, even as I am willing to pay more in taxes for better education, health care, etc.  I believe in Obama’s presidency and what he wants to accomplish because all of my grandparents were immigrants who struggled to provide a better life for their children, my parents.  And my parents embody the American Dream.  And I represent downward mobility or “regression to the mean” (which means that subsequent generations will achieve the stupidity of Joe the Plumber).  I support the “system” because it really can work (witness my parents and their entire generation in our extended family); I just work hard not to rely on the “system”. Yet now I have to deal with the government for the taxes on the estate of a person whose life is now reduced to a spreadsheet of dividend distributions and capital gains.

Ok, worse is to be guardian of a mentally incapacitated person.  I know someone who took on that burden and I believe there is a place in Heaven waiting for her after what I hope is a long, happy and healthy life on Earth.  But I digress.

POB (partner of blogger) believes that, in light of all of this, we need to rethink our financial future so that we give everything away except for two nickels at the second in time immediately before our deaths. That way, no one needs to do anything for us except have a little shiva cocktail party and light a Yahrzeit candle every now and again.  But the two nickels are really important to her.   I think she never wants anyone to say that we didn’t have “two nickels to rub together”.  Which is why I love her so.  She doesn’t want a “pot to piss in” because that is too crass.  She also expects “a roof over her head” so that doesn’t factor in (although she would consider a reverse mortgage so that there is no fuss about the homestead when we “go”).

She picks her aphorisms and saws to conjure a picture that we timed it all with precision and aforethought.  And she wants to live — and die — by them.  Of course, being the disaster planner that I am, I need to have only “two nickels to rub together” but also a sack of gold just in case.  Don’t tell her I have an extra stash, ok?

I guess the point — and I do have one — is that I am one of the lucky few who can be generally self-reliant and avoid government.  And, I have no expectations of an efficient government because I believe that is frankly impossible to achieve and unrealistic to expect.  If we were looking for efficiencies, we would ascribe to the Wall Street model and we know how that turned out.  No, government is tedious, hopelessly inefficient, and sometimes catches the do-gooders in the web of bureaucracy.  It is easy to complain about government.  It is hard to defend government.  There is a lot of paperwork to get benefits, but remember you are asking for money from the government.  It should be hard to get.

So, SOB (sister of blogger), because I love you, I will relieve you of the executrix role.  You are asking, “no, really, why?” Ok the answer is: (i) you’ll torture me for it and I will never get the last word for ALL ETERNITY and (ii) Mom would not want this to come between her two girls.  I believe BOB (brother of blogger) is also protected because Mom would not stand for that either.

Did you think there would be a point to this? Are you a new reader?

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Some questions actually tell us so much about ourselves

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Poor Solicitor General Elena Kagan.  Just because she is single, unattractive, overweight and intellectual, she must be a lesbian.

Laura Ingraham is single and, to some, intellectual.  So, she isn’t unattractive or overweight.  Is she . . . .?

So, former Secretary of State Condi Rice is single and intellectual.  She is not unattractive or overweight either.  Is she. . . ?

Ok, I get it.  If Elena Kagan were hot — or at least not unattractive and overweight, it wouldn’t be an issue.

If she were a man, like Justice Souter, no one would raise the issue.  How do I know?  Because no one did (loudly, anyway).

Has anyone looked at all of the unattractive and overweight women who are married and heterosexual?  Has anyone looked at all the gorgeous heterosexual women who are single?  And all the gorgeous lesbians who are “married”?

Maybe she is; maybe she isn’t.  But if unattractive and overweight were the markers, there would be only five heterosexuals in middle America.

Who will be the first politician to own up to this attitude?  And this “litmus test” only pertains to women.  Overweight and unattractive men?  Just look at the Congress.

GOP senators don’t have gaydar.  How do I know?   They didn’t figure out about Family Research Council George Rekers, who hired a gay male escort to carry his bags on a trip to Europe.  Or that televangelist.  Or the Senator who sits wide in aiport bathrooms.

Democrats assume that the Republicans will raise the issue, so they — including the White House — are “getting out ahead of it”.  In some publications, the Democrats are being criticized for not getting out ahead of it sooner.

So, even among the enlightened of our generation — including those in the White House — it is still a “smear” to say that someone is gay.   And being gay is deviant but fixable, or so says the Family Research Council.  Maybe it should rethink its view in light of the scandal rocking its founder.

We will allow gays to serve in the military so long as they hide under a rock.  Think of the patriotism of these men and women.  They are willing to shed their blood and give their lives to a country that won’t allow them to live, fight and die in dignity.

Aint that America.

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Another typical day on the road to Utopia

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I went out to lunch again with a colleague — one who indulges my need to document life around me.

These photos don’t really need a narrative.  A tender moment (?) on not-so-tender 6th Avenue and 50th Street.  Is this where you want to tell your children that daddy proposed and mommy said yes?  I guess that I’ll leave up to you to decide who is crazier.  I think it is the girl for saying yes. And the outfit requires a 911 make-over.

As if that weren’t enough, I read the Radio City Musical Hall promos and juxtaposed were:

Ok, Chelsea Handler shares billing with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  And we wonder why our civilization is rounding the drain.

Hey, I just show what I see.

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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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The Health Care Debate

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Let’s just hold this space for my rant, once I get it under control.  Setting aside what you believe, there are people in the country who have behaved so abominably in the tactics they used and the violence they unleashed.  And they are maybe worse than unpatriotic, because what they did undermines our system of government and our society.  I believe that these people are traitors to our nation and its government because they want to win at all costs, without thought to the preservation of the union.  In contra-distinction, those opposed to government action under the Bush-Cheney years did not physically and verbally attack lawmakers who put us in debt for generations, have rifle scopes put on where lawmakers live, and say things like, “you’re a dead man!”

Sen. McCain wants to repeal some of the very things that were part of his platform, until he changed with the direction of the wind.  Some maverick.

Many of our representatives have breached their oaths of office.  And in the process, they have stoked class warfare and racial distrust and enabled fringe groups to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

But, still, I haven’t gotten my thoughts together yet, so stay tuned.

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A New York moment

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Ok, no one is going to believe this. But I think it is clear already that I attract the bizarre and inane like mosquitoes to carcasses. But POB (partner of blogger) is my witness. (And she agrees that I have a certain magnetism that I might want to have reversed.)

A woman is walking ahead of us on our street on this beautiful spring day. She is shouting into the phone. I look over because my attention is drawn to the noise. At that moment I notice:

that toilet paper is making a paper tail from her pants.

She feels something flying around at just about the same time and looks around as she is grabbing the toilet paper.

Our eyes meet for what seems an eternity. I think of Gilda Radnor doing a 1970s Roseanna Roseannadanna (Saturday Night Live) skit about Princess Lee Radzwill (Jackie O’s sister) with toilet stuck to her shoe. Except in this case, IT WASN’T STUCK TO HER SHOE!!

I am also shell-shocked.

She keeps yelling into the phone as she grabs at the toilet paper and her slightly horrified look dissipates.

Another New York moment.

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