Ahmadinejibber-jabber

I was home sick, so I got an opportunity to hear the Iranian’s president speak at Columbia. I had to turn it off, so nauseated had I become. I’ve never had much room for little Hitlers, whether they be in the work place or international politics. Especially not the smug and flippant variety.

The man calls himself an educator, but refuses to believe that one of the best documented and most heinous travesties in the history of man (the Holocaust) ever happened. “We need more research” was his excuse.

Research for what? The documentation’s out there, down to serial numbers that were tattooed into peoples’ flesh. How much food they ate. When did they get there and when was their file “closed”. The Germans were obsessed with keeping detailed records of the carnage they were perpetuating.

What’s left to research?

And no homosexuals in Iran? Maybe that’s because they get executed. If you kill them, of course they won’t be there.

I had a lot of respect for Columbia University until that speech. To give someone who will do nothing but spout lies, half-truths and evasion of human rights concern a forum to propagate his lies, half-truths and human rights abuses is irresponsible at best and most certainly dangerous.

While I expect that most Americans will take his comments with a grain of salt that gets quickly tossed away, the same isn’t so for other countries. Particularly ones with any significant fundamentalist Muslim population and organizations.

Perhaps Columbia’s goal was to let him make a fool out of himself. Most American’s realize that he did.

But it ain’t gonna play the same way in Saudi Arabia.

Maybe the powers that be at Columbia don’t realize that most of the middle east has satellite TV. What got said at Columbia didn’t stay at Columbia, and never could have.

This is one of those times I just want to slap somebody and ask “What were your thinking? How has this helped anyone? And don’t you just have some common sense?”

I’m guessing the answers would be “Don’t know. Don’t care. Refer to answer #1.”

Here endeth the rant. I’ve said my peace.

Recycled

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
--Sir Winston Churchill, on the eve of his 75th birthday

The Scarlett O'Hara Principle of Time Management

I’ve been watching talking heads all morning holding forth on what to do about Iraq. I won’t dignify their exchanges with the label of “debate”. We haven’t had a real debate in this country since Nixon. His sweat-laden performance on TV reshaped how politicians let themselves be presented on TV.

Funny that it comes back to Nixon. He didn’t like Vietnam, didn’t start it, but got the brunt of the blame for it. He was faced with two options: keep on losing or pull out and lose. The first meant the continued death of American boys. The second meant almost certain genocide.

Granted, the Iraq war was conceived and contrived by a controlling Vice President and Secretary of Defense. They exploited a weak President in a time of national crisis to achieve their own ends. Other than settling old scores, I’m still not sure what their motivations were or why the executed things so badly.

Shock and awe we were promised. I’m pretty damned shocked by the incompetence and in awe of the utter lack of foresight that has been evident every step of the way.

That’s the only shock and awe I’ve experienced.

Still, we have a mess on our hands today. And like Nixon’s Vietnam quandary, there is no good answer.

Call it delayed shock and awe.

I watched the bombing of Baghdad online, and hoped for the best. I thought it was a mistake at the time, but hoped for the best. I thought we had other priorities that should be higher, but prayed for a good outcome.

But we’re back where we were 35 years ago. I remember seeing footage of Vietnam on TV as a kid. Then the last helicopter lifting off the roof of the American Embassy in Hanoi. I didn’t understand the significance of it, then. I was only 5 or so.

Since then, I’ve learned what happened after that last helicopter lifted off, and it ain’t pretty. The atrocities that started in Hanoi spread to Laos and Cambodia. Genocide became a reality, one that we were either powerless to intervene in or ignored.

So we come back to the talking heads. They’re still talking around the real issue: is it worth enough to keep troops in Iraq so that genocide does not occur again?

And would it if we were to withdraw, and to what extent? Would Iraq’s neighbors step in an prevent anarchy? Would the majority of Iraqi’s who oppose a civil war stop it?

Those are the real questions, but no one is addressing them, at least on the Sunday morning shows. Their still employing the Scarlett O’Hara Principle of Time Management: “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Don’t deal with the real issues.

Delay. Delay. Delay.

After all, tomorrow is another election.

They need to go back to the scene where she's holding the roots she just dug up and swears that she'll "never go hungry again." They need to take the drapes down and make some sort of coherent policy, even if they have to weave it from scratch.

Tomorrow is another day, but we can't wait that long. After Rhett Bulter has walked off into the fog, we need something done yesterday.

Maybe Scarlett rebuilt her life, but if she hadn't taken that laise' faire attitude, maybe she wouldn't have had to. And in the end, she didn't seemed to have learned anything.

We cannot go back and correct the past. I know that all too well from my personal mistakes in judgement.

But we can change the future.

We can step up to the challenge, stop calling names and assigning blame, and get down to the dirty work of figuring out where we stand and what we should do.

Tomorrow may be another day, but I want someone to talk about what it's reallity is.

Scarlett may have changed her destiny by making a dress out of drapes, but a foreign policy based on whole-cloth just ain't the same.

Why?

This has been a trying time. I’m trying to put things into perspective, but damned if I can find it sometimes. Perspective seems to elude me in an almost-premeditated way. Once I think I have it, something changes.

And there it goes. Out the window. Down the street. Wafted aloft by a gentle hurricane.

Daddy’s gone, and I still don’t have the peace about it that I want. I’ve said I did, but I don’t.

To date, no one knows why his liver failed. They just know it did. And I have no complaints about his medical treatment, once he was so sick that the big guns got called in.

I just wonder how things might be different if the big guns had been involved earlier.

It’s a question I’ve told Mama not to worry about or dwell on. She and Daddy did the best they could.

Still, the question bounces around in my head so much that it keeps me from sleeping.

Somehow, a car wreck would have been easier. At least I would know why.

Well, maybe not the why, but at least the how.

“Why” still eludes me.

My perspective is unalterably skewed. I loved him, he’s gone and I’ll never understand why.

Of all the questions I’d like answered, that’s chief: why?

One Moore Time

Going on 20/20 and repeating the same unsubstanitated and disputed "facts" about the Cuban healthcare system makes those claims no more real than the very sweet Mustang I wished I had parked outside my apartment. While I do have a Ford that I'm very happy with (almost ecstatic, actually), it ain't a Mustang and never will be.

As I have long suspected, Michael Moore has an ignorant, cynical, self-promoting ego where his heart should be.

Granted, the American healthcare system needs reform. We have far too many people without access to it than any industrialized country should allow. Denying that there is a problem is kind of like Bush, Sr. saying (too many times) "there is no poverty in America." We all know it's there. That's a big part of why he lost the election.

There's one fact that can't be disputed: poverty and lack of access to healthcare walk hand-in-hand.

While drawing attention to the crisis in American healthcare, skewing, distorting and misrepresenting facts when it's convenient as opposed to taking a more objective view is not just insincere: it's a disservice to the country as a whole. It does harm, while moving no real solutions forward.

Tell me what you'll do. I don't give a rat's ass about what you think.

Anyone who has to access healthcare knows there's a problem. And the ones that don't know it even better. We don't need another self-agrandizing "documentary" by a smug bastard that doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

Especially a film that plays fast and loose with the truth.

Visiting a hospital in Cuba that caters to the wealthy and politically connected and holding it as a standard of Cuban healthcare is like going to Cedars-Sinai or MD Anderson and saying that all medical facilities in the US meet those standards.

They don't. But they're among the best of the best. I'm quite sure that the best of the best of Cuban facilities can't compete with a decent research hospital in the US.

So, Mikey, hop down off that soap box, put the megaphone down and wipe that smirk off your face. You are the hollow man, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Provocativeness for liberal causes does not equal intelligence, and never will. Provocativeness for the sheer sake of being provocative equals stupid.

Be stupid on your own time. If you want to take up mine, go a little deeper. Don't just point out what we all already know. And leave out the stunts and theatrics and clearly unsupportable half-truths.

Consider your sources and evaluate their reliability before accepting them. We're talking about the Cuban government here, which allowed all that to be filmed. It's not a government that's really known for a free flow of information.

Tell me something I don't know and base it in reality, the one I live in. We all know what the problems are. Tell me something new.

What is this? Freshman Composition all over again?

What I Need

I'm so tired these days. Going to Tennessee twice in as many months took its toll. The eleven hours it took to get there by plane and rental car were no easier than the twelve hours it took me get back by car the first time, when I was alone and didn't have to worry about a pokey sister and her dog-zoo.

And my family always seems to be in some sort of uproar over something. Right now, it's my little sister Jill's boyfriend. Mama kicked him out of Jill's place (Mama owns and is still paying for it), but Jill let him come back. Her youngest, Nick, has gone to live with his father in Indiana. So Jill's a wreck, and when she's a wreck, it tends to bleed over into as many other lives as she can let it.

Things are tense up there right now. They were tense when I was there, but they're much worse now.

At work, our annual financial audit starts tomorrow (we got a 3 day reprieve because Margaret had to go out of town), and no matter how well one prepares for an audit, one will always have to pull some document out of one's ass (cleaning it before handing it over, of course) that one would not have expected anyone to care about. And every year they get obsessed with small matter that will probably contradict what they said they year before.

Also, we're supposed to be rolling out a new web site October 1. We have a framework for it, but no content. We (the employees) are supposed to add the content. In addition to all the other stuff that takes up more time than we already have. We got our first training in performing that miracle (and it will take one to get it out on time) on Tuesday. We have 24 days left.

I spent my day creating web forms and an online store. Not exactly in my job description, but most of what I do isn't. And I'd rather do it myself and make sure it's right than try to explain to someone else how and why it needs to be done a certain way. They tend to want to complicate things, but my goal is to roll out the basics and complicate it later. And since they all have their assignments, they won't be looking too closely at mine.

Needless to say, I'm a little frazzled and need a vacation. One that doesn't involve a death. I figured it up the other day, and I have to take at least 2 weeks of vacation between now and June 30, 2008.

I'm hoping that Shannon and I can get to Bastrop for a few days in October or November. Just sit and enjoy the quiet. Grill overpriced hotdogs and maybe a couple of steaks. Build a nice fire. Pretend we're the only people in the world.

It's been a hard Summer, and for once, I'm ready for Fall. I don't normally like it because it's always put me in the mind of death. This time, I'm hoping it puts me in the mind of rebirth.

Or at least out of the mind of anything but the immediate. It's not that I want to deny the reality of the present, but I need some time in limbo, where the only things that are real are right in front of me.

Everything else can just fade into the background to the sound of embers crackling in the fireplace and the mysterious animals making their mysterious calls in the dark of night.

That's what I need.

Just Not Right

It’s been a long weekend. The first time off work that didn’t involve death in far too long.

It’s only been 6 weeks (less, actually: July 24, 2007) since Daddy died, but it seems like decades. I’ve traveled more since then than in most of my life. 3,000 miles by car, and at least as many by air.

I’ve gone from worrying about Daddy’s health to worrying about his health insurance coverage to how well his life insurance will take care of Mama. I’ve worried about everything I think needs to be worried about and tried like hell not to think of the things that aren’t important.

Or at least aren’t too important just quite yet.

I’m just plain-old, old-fashioned depressed. I’ve done what I can for my family, and now I’m just tired.

I made peace with God about the “How” part of Daddy’s dieing, but I still haven’t made it to the “Why” part.

Yes, I was privileged to help make decisions about his care and the ultimate withdrawal of it. Yes, I was privileged to be there when he died and help ease him into his next life.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So many yeses and so few answers.

My question is still “Why? Why? WHY?”

He was a good man who still had things to give. He always gave more than he got from anyone. He was always ready to do what he could to help someone else.

He loved children, and even though he wouldn’t admit, had a special affection for animals. Daddy fussed all the time about one of our cats when I was growing up, but, if you got up early enough in the morning, you could hear him making “that damned cat” her own eggs. Then they had breakfast together. He talked to her the whole time like he would have to anyone he considered a friend.

When my little sister couldn’t take care of her kids anymore, he insisted that he and my mother take custody. Daddy was able to see the two of them graduate this past spring.

We’re all left without him. None of us have a good answer to why, other than a liver disease that we still don’t have any answers about, either.

None of it seems right. Even after making the decisions, watching him die, making burial arrangements and picking out a headstone, none of it seems real.

It’s not right.

There’s just nothing right about it.

911

I will never forget Tuesday, September 11, 2001. A normal day until Shannon called me at work to tell me a helicopter or something had crashed into on of the World Trade Center towers. He was not doing so well at the time, and called me at work just to hear a warm voice on the other end of the line when he was anxious.

I don’t remember how events unfolded that day—whether he called me after the second plane hit or if I was watching it on TV. I don’t remember exactly when I found a TV or when I started watching.

What I remember is that Margaret called payroll in early because she was afraid the banks would close and people wouldn’t get paid on time. I kept her updated on the news while she worked away. I pulled up a map of Afghanistan so we could both figure out where in the hell it was.

Within a short time, the TV got moved to an unoccupied office so that everyone could come and go as they pleased, but still keep up with what was going on. It was mostly standing room only.

And I don’t remember whether it was the first tower or the second that fell and I saw it on the TV screen from down the hall. All I remember is running towards it screaming “Nooooooooooo.”

Daniel, my assistant, paced around wondering if there would be a war. He was young and confused. I told him that “Yes, there will be a war. There has to be. There’s no other option. This is as big as Pearl Harbor.”

The rest of the day is a blur. We closed up early with the caveat that the next day would be business as usual. That I do remember.

But I mostly remember riding home on the bus that was unnaturally quiet. No one said anything. They were all in shock, just like me.

When I got home, Shannon met me at the door. He’d been waiting for me to get home ever since it started.

We hugged and cried and thanked God for both of us still being here.

There are so many things that I don’t remember as far as what happened when, but the images of that day are burned into me in such a way that I will take them to my grave.

We all take baggage into the here-after, and we can and should thank God that he isn’t as fussy as the airlines have come to be. Our checked luggage doesn’t have to fit into one of those little bins where He’s concerned.

I’ll take that day with me when I exit this earth. I don’t see a way to unload it or a reason that I should.

Needed Pleasures

I talked to Mama last night. It's strange how roles change: after 40 plus years of needing my parents, my mother needs me. She didn't say that in so many words, but it was apparent. What is not said is often more important than what actually gets said.

She felt guilty about spending some of her insurance money on a car. She needed me to tell her that she got a good deal and that, now that Daddy's gone, she needs reliable transportation. Her old car was 11 years old, and Daddy always kept it running. Its days were numbered, and Daddy's not there to nurse it along another 50,000 miles.

She knew that all along, but she needed someone else to tell her.

We also talked about what to do with the money left over. One of my uncles is going to help her get it into an annuity. The return won't be huge, but it's a safe place to park more cash than she's probably ever had. She needed me to validate that decision, also. I told her that, at her age and in her circumstances, she needed an investment option that was safe, even though it might provide a lower return than putting the money in mutual funds.

I'm waiting to see how much money I've lost from my 401k this quarter. It's all in mutual funds, and over the long haul, it's doing well. In the short term, if the market doesn't improve dramatically, I'll lose money.

She can't afford to do that. I have another 25 years until I can even touch the money, so I can look at long-term growth. She can't do that.

After years of being semi-estranged from my family, I'm needed again. It's kind of strange. I feel like the prodigal son who's come home after too many years of being away.

I have new reponsibilities, but I don't really mind. Being needed is well worth it.