9/11 Is Over

It just occurred to me: 9/11 is over. I don't mean that it is no longer September 11, 2001, the day terrorists crashed jets into the World Trade Center in New York. It stopped being that on September 12. And I also certainly don't mean that the significance and pain of that day are now a mere page of history. In many ways, that day lives with us, and will continue to do so, for a long time. But 9/11 is over in a very real sense. So many things about that day, and about many Americans' reactions to it, have indeed now become notes from the past. It is no longer OK, for one thing, for America to go it alone and tell the world what we are going to do and where we are going to do it. The sneering at the United Nations, the attitude that we don't need Old Europe, the cocky belief that American might makes right -- all of that becomes more antiquated by the minute. It is even more emphatically not OK, anymore, to treat people like dogs, or worse. Americans have elected a visionary, and that says a lot about their state of mind now. It's not just hope they want. They want to shift back to idealism and high purpose. Abridgement of freedoms and disregard for human rights is not cool anymore, not even when it is practiced on non-citizens, not even in the name of national security. People have begun to form, and act on, the belief that this nation's distinctive mark on history should be as much spiritual as material -- that we do, and should, stand for something. 9/11 came near the start of the Bush presidency, and the present degree of national closure on 9/11 suitably marks its end. We missed out on the era that could have been, the Al Gore era in which a global outpouring of sympathy on behalf of the World Trade Center victims could have been translated into a tremendous worldwide consensus against extremism -- an era in which American values could have become highly and widely prized. In the nutty alternative given us by the Supreme Court following the 2000 elections -- and, let it be said, by unbelievable numbers of votes for Bush -- we got an Iraq war and, now, a risk of fiscal meltdown. Goodbye, let us hope, to all that. Obama and his people will have to unwind from Iraq, pull back from the financial abyss, win over an alienated generation of young people throughout the Islamic world, and so much more. They may not succeed. But in any case, let us hope that we have turned a page on silliness: that the idea of God standing behind a presidential candidate makes no more sense now, in this country, than it has ever made, for all the dictators and clerics who have solemnly asserted it, down through history. These dreadful mistakes were not God's doing. The memory of the World Trade Center will always be with us. But 9/11 is over. It is an uncertain new time, but it is ours.

If I Were Al-Qaeda

If I were Al-Qaeda, I would want John McCain to defeat Barack Obama in November. Between the two, McCain seems much more likely to perpetuate Bush Administration policies and attitudes that have been so disastrous for American influence. McCain does not presently look likely to win. It was remarked not long ago, however, that a terrorist strike would help his candidacy. The concept appeared to be that McCain is seen as more of a commander-in-chief than Obama, and a threat to the nation would tend to remind voters of the need for an experienced and steady hand at the tiller in times of crisis. One challenge, for Al-Qaeda, would be to time such an attack just right. If it came too soon, voters might recover and see it in perspective. That seems especially true in the wake of 9/11. That was, in some ways, the first time; that was the true shocker. People would less likely be stunned and at a loss this time; the effect would likely be more short-lived. There is a possible exception if the attack was truly huge. A terrorist attack could be counterproductive for Al-Qaeda, if it conveyed the message that the Bush Administration approach has failed after all. A truly huge attack would be especially likely to send that sort of signal. Obama could easily point out that, all these years after 9/11, the terrorists retain the ability to attack so powerfully because the Republican approach has not really worked. Probably the more successful approach, for Al-Qaeda, would be to mount a more modest attack that would nonetheless be large enough to make voters worry. It may be possible to do so without simultaneously raising the concern that Bush Administration methods are failing. One approach would be to make it a counterattack, in retaliation for some action taken by the Americans. That is, if the U.S. appears to have achieved some telling strike against Al-Qaeda, then an Al-Qaeda counterattack could threaten voters and yet could seem to confirm that the U.S. is winning the war on terror. Suppose, for example, that the U.S. has been free at any time to undertake airstrikes on Al-Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil. It is intriguing that the U.S. has only now done so, killing several leading Al-Qaeda figures in a recent attack there. Why now -- why not years ago, when we enjoyed a cozier relationship with Musharraf? It would be most interesting if the U.S. launched several more successful attacks of that nature, or captured Osama bin Laden, or otherwise facilitated the widespread belief that we are winning both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. McCain could then argue, with ever more confidence and persuasiveness, that the Bush Administration's approach is working, and that Obama displayed cowardice and inexperience in opposing it. The capture of bin Laden, to use that example, could easily be played up as a dire offense against Al-Qaeda -- as an act that calls for retaliation. Their retaliatory terror strike against the U.S. -- taken, say, in the week before Voting Day in November -- could prompt voters to rally around the flag. Moreover, if it was not a massive strike, it could also permit McCain to say, "See? We captured their biggest guy, and this is the best they can do. This is not the World Trade Center over again. We have weakened them." This little scenario is in the nature of a conspiracy theory. I do not have any information to suggest that the White House and Al Qaeda are in any way cooperating with each other. I do read news reports, and I am puzzled at the belated timing of this recent Pakistan strike. I also believe bin Laden has long had enemies who would long ago have turned him in, in exchange for that U.S. reward money. But there may be good explanations for such things. Be that as it may, it does seem that a McCain victory in November would be better for Al Qaeda, not in terms of military tactics on the ground, but in terms of long-term global strategy. I have no idea if Osama bin Laden thinks along such lines. But there may be shrewd and powerful people -- not only in the Mideast, but also in Russia, China, and elsewhere -- who share, with Al Qaeda, an interest in weakening the United States. I would expect persons of that sort to be seeking out ways to continue to reduce U.S. influence around the world. It is conceivable that they would render direct or indirect support to John McCain's campaign. A series of positive developments for the U.S. in Afghanistan could serve such a purpose. So could a well-timed terror strike in the United States itself. Most likely, the autumn presidential campaign will unfold without any such drama. But if events of these types do begin to unfold, it may be appropriate to ask, not what is Al Qaeda doing now, but what will Al Qaeda be doing on the day after the election? John McCain may make a very good general in a war. But as they say, politics is often the continuation of war by other means. Or as Vietnam should have taught us, war is too important to leave to the generals.

Decline of the U.S.: Where It All Started

Where did it all start? Where did the United States, superpower of the free world, start to slide downhill? It started last year, in something that the President or the Supreme Court or someone else said or did. No, it started before that, when so-and-so did such-and-such. We can trace it back, all the way to whenever and whomever. But here's my take on it. Logically speaking, the decline of the U.S. began from its peak. Right? It was at a peak, and then it ceased to be at its peak, and that's where the decline started. So, then, when was the U.S. at its peak? There was something resembling a peak in the 1990s, when Clinton balanced the budget and the economy was in a long-term expansion. The Soviet Union had collapsed; the U.S. was the world's sole superpower. But in the 1990s, the world was no longer the property of the United States. Japan had soundly thrashed us in manufacturing in the 1980s. Those jobs were gone, as Bruce Springsteen sang, and they weren't coming back. An increasing amount of our stuff was being made abroad. Billy Joel's song "Allentown," commemorating the decline of the Rust Belt, actually came out way back in 1982. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton of the balanced budget was also the Bill Clinton who was humiliated by thugs in Somalia, and who could not lift a finger to stop the Rwanda genocide in 1994. In the 1990s, wages for the average person stagnated. Families were able to keep up economically, in many cases, only because both husband and wife were now working full-time-plus, while struggling to raise the kids. There was no longer so much money for the poor; people were feeling the pinch and were angry about having to pay taxes (for welfare payments, they believed) that bit into what money they did make. The U.S. did have an international adversary, the Soviet Union, from World War II through most of the 1980s. That Cold War rivalry cost the U.S. a great deal in time, money, and anxiety. We lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Yet we still do, strictly speaking: the Russians still have their missiles, and so do others. We are not preoccupied with this on a daily basis now, and we were not preoccupied with it then. Yes, we have our photos and, in some cases, our memories of schoolchildren practicing for nuclear war by getting under their desks or going down to the basement. But that threat eventually slipped into the fabric of daily life, in the way that you make sure to clean your dishes so you don't get food poisoning. You mostly don't worry about it until something goes wrong. What we had in the 1960s and thereabouts, that we don't have now, is confidence. Things had kept getting better, and we thought they were going to continue to do so. We had surplusage -- we had enough to waste. Cars had fins in the late 1950s and, a decade later, men had long hair. It was not crucial for young people to get their careers together: they could hitchhike around the country; they could be hippies. The United States, as king of the postwar world, had built layer upon layer of security and control to protect itself. We didn't just have NATO; we also had SEATO and CENTO. We weren't worried about Mexicans sneaking into Texas, not nearly as much as we were worried about Communists sneaking into Vietnam, half a world away. Vietnam. That, I propose, is where the downhill slide began. Eisenhower, especially, had built a stable and prosperous country. JFK's assassination cast a long shadow; but the liberal policies of the time continued to march forward under Lyndon Johnson. The country could afford a lot. But it could not afford Vietnam. Not financially, and not politically or socially. People were worried that Vietnam might tear the country apart. To some extent, it did. Construction workers beat, and young National Guardsmen murdered, young college students who were protesting it. There were riots. The international image of the United States took a drubbing. By present-day standards, the country was in flames in 1968. LBJ did not run for re-election in 1968. Primarily because of his Vietnam policies, he was essentially disgraced. The chant of the day, for antiwar protesters across the street from the White House, was "Hey, hey, LBJ -- how many kids did you kill today?" There hadn't been anything quite like that before. Johnson's departure opened the door for Richard Nixon, who kept us in Vietnam -- who, in fact, escalated the conflagration -- and who would eventually lead us into the oil shock of 1973. Nixon's own disgrace and resignation yielded the ascent of his second vice president, Gerald Ford (the first, Spiro Agnew, having also been disgraced). Ford was a good man, but not a great politician. He was defeated by the hapless Jimmy Carter, another good man of insufficient temperament and experience, who was in turn defeated by Ronald Reagan. Thus we passed the 1970s with an unusual number of presidents and vice presidents, bouncing from Kent State to Watergate to the Iranian revolution to a severe recession. In important ways, we started downhill in 1968. The assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that year (and the nationwide riots and city-burnings that followed the latter) had a powerful negative impact. So did the police beatings of protesters at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Many experienced a profound alienation from the Establishment. Rather than participate in the world of Nixon et al., it became increasingly reasonable to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," as Timothy Leary proposed. The generation gap, as it was called, was so large that Jerry Rubin could gain a wide following for his adage, "Never trust anyone over 30." People of greater age were precisely the ones who were sending young men off to die in that absurd, counterproductive war. After 1968, the oil shocks of 1973, and the global humiliation of having to flee Saigon in 1975, the confidence and the power never returned. Ronald Reagan could promise "Morning in America" in 1980, but he could deliver that new day only by adding enormously to the national debt; and when he left office, he left us with a savings and loan crisis that cost more than $100 billion to fix. It had been encouraging to see a confident face in the White House. Reagan was a leader. But he was delivering a pipe dream. Had he not perpetuated the fantasy of an America that could continue to boss the world around, perhaps the next generation of Republicans would not have imagined that it made sense to waltz into Iraq so nonchalantly. This is not to say that the U.S. will have entirely failed in Iraq. Important good things may come of that adventure. Indeed, at this point important good things seem ever more likely to come of it, thanks especially to the leadership of General David Petraeus. But it was an adventure that the nation could not afford. The hundreds of billions (if not several trillion) that it will ultimately cost were badly needed at home, as were the thousands of people who went over there to fight and die. The Vietnam era was the time to face up to that kind of adventure -- to think and talk about it, sort it out, and convert its learning into national policy and consensus. We did not achieve that. People still argue that we should have tried harder to win that war, instead of recognizing that we didn't belong there and didn't really need to be there. It took more leadership than we could find, at the time, to knock our heads together and make us decide what we were all about. None of the presidents during or following the Vietnam era -- Johnson, Nixon, or Ford, or subsequently Carter or Reagan -- were up to that. And so we had to repeat the experience, thirty years later, in a different form and place. God only knows what kind of world we could have produced if we had stood so strongly and had spent so much, not for anticommunism and capitalism, but for human rights and democracy. Especially since 1968 or thereabouts, we have stood, too often, for the bad guys, because they have said and done what our leaders wanted. This has given us a legacy of powerful anti-American movements around the world. In a bid to keep what we used to have, we have done what aging institutions do: we have supported the status quo, which tends to mean the rich and powerful, at the expense of the ordinary person. That's the story of Musharraf in Pakistan, of Mubarak in Egypt, of the Shah in Iran, of Pinochet in Chile, of Batista in Cuba, of Thieu in South Vietnam ... the list goes on. It is also, increasingly, the story of America itself, whose growing gulf between the poor and the super-rich takes us ever closer to the example of Latin America in decades past. Any nation will have many small rises and falls, as it climbs toward or descends from its peak of influence, power, and wealth. A nation has many dimensions, with myriad people and activities underway at every moment. In a very rough and overall sense, however, I submit that 1968 was the year when America reached its peak. Economic and political indicators have lagged at differing rates since then, but that was close enough to the high point. I would also suggest, incidentally, that the nation's decline from that peak has been facilitated, not retarded, by dirty, deceitful, and violent efforts to cling to the past. The United States still stands for special things. One hopes it does not completely squander that reputation, and the power and influence that go with it, in a foolish bid to avoid the future. The future is scary, and it often brings unpleasant changes. But let us not fight reality. Let us rather make the most of it. It is, indeed, morning in America. The nation is older, and some things that were once easy are not so easy anymore. But life is to be lived nonetheless. Let us live it right.

Catching Up: Best of 2005: May

Here's another installment in the continuing effort to distill the best postings from my personal mailing list. These are from May 2005. * * * * * Late-Night Political News from About.com "Laura Bush was a big hit at the White House Correspondents Dinner. This is something new for the Bush family -- intentional comedy." -- Jay Leno "President Bush said today that Social Security could be going bankrupt. He said the good news is that it won't happen for at least 50 years and by that time you won't even have to worry about Social Security because the temperature of the Earth will be 158 degrees." -- Jay Leno "Just 72 hours after President Bush met with Crown Prince Abdullah and held his hand, oil prices fell to under $50 a barrel. Boy, imagine if President Bush had let him get to second base -- we'd be paying like a buck-ten a gallon now." --Jay Leno "I guess you all heard about the big scare at the White House yesterday. You know about this? A false alarm about a plane violating White House airspace caused the Secret Service to evacuate the president from the Oval Office. That shows you how times have changed. Remember back in the '90s when an alarm just meant Hillary's coming?" --Jay Leno "Everybody was scared. The Bush twins were running, trying not to spill their margaritas." --David Letterman "This is absolutely true. During the scare Vice President Cheney was inside working while President Bush was outside riding his bicycle. So it was a typical day at the White House. Remember the last time this kind of thing happened, he was reading a children's book. This time he was riding a bicycle. How old is he -- 12? ... You laugh but as soon as they gave the all-clear he went into the kitchen to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." --Jay Leno "President Bush and Russian President Putin discussed a plan to create a permanent cease fire in the Middle East. And if it works there they are going to try it on the Hollywood Freeway." --Jay Leno "In his biggest decision ever on the environment, President Bush has moved to open up 1/3 of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging, and other commercial adventures. This is part of the No Tree Left Behind program. In fact, if you'd like to see one of our giant Redwoods they'll be at Home Depot next weekend" -- Jay Leno "In honor of Cinco de Mayo down in Washington, Tom DeLay is accepting all bribes in pesos." --David Letterman "The new president of Iraq said that U.S. troops will probably be out of that country in two years. ... The bad news is they'll be next door in Iran." --David Letterman "Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday. Also surprised to be in Iraq on Sunday: thousands of U.S. troops who were supposed to be home by Christmas." --Amy Poehler "The hand grenade thrown at President Bush turned out to be real. The Secret Service said today they're examining whether security changes need to be made. Duh! ... Somebody walks up and throws a hand grenade at the president and I can't get on a plane because I have a nose clipper -- hello? There's something wrong." --Jay Leno "Next Tuesday I have to testify in the Michael Jackson trial. I've been getting ready for my testimony all week. I've been drinking wine and looking at porno magazines." --Jay Leno "Newsweek had to retract a report about the Koran. The article caused violent anti-U.S. rioting in Muslim countries. And that's too bad because up until now they really loved us." --David Letterman, on Newsweek's story about U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushing a copy of the Koran down the toilet "The White House said today the Newsweek report has damaged the U.S. image overseas. And, believe me, when it comes to damaging the U.S. image overseas, the White House knows what it's talking about." --Jay Leno "According to a USA Today poll, 90% of people say prayer works very well for them in curing pain. Which is also the Republican health care plan. Keep praying!" --Jay Leno "In an unlikely pairing, Hillary Clinton made an appearance this week with Newt Gingrich to push a health care plan. The press is making a big deal out this thing with Newt but, hey, if anyone knows how to appear in public with a man she can't stand, it's Hillary." --Jay Leno "We got big trouble overseas. In Afghanistan they rioted because they got wind of the report that American soldiers flushed the Koran down the toilet. This is the kind of thing that makes us very unsafe because it makes jihadists want to kill us. But I got to give it to Halliburton, they make a heavy-duty toilet." --Bill Maher "It's the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. That was the war where our troops defeated the ruthless tyrant and then we actually left." --David Letterman * * * * * Websites of Note Suggested Names of Musical Bands A few examples: Adios Pantalones Afghanistan Banana Stand Almighty Lumberjacks of Death Armed and Hammered Army of Prawns Avenging Lawnmowers of Justice Throwpaper Timewaster Pay attention to which way the fan is blowing Clippings There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?" The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side." A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL OVER!" "NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!" Excerpts from a New York Times article, which I headed with the words "Reminder: Sell Your House": Having been sanguine about real estate in recent years, Mr. Greenspan began to change his tone in March, when he cited some analysts' concern that the housing market might "implode." A nursing dog foraging for food retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest in Kenya and carried the infant to its litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday. The stray dog carried the infant across a busy road and a barbed wire fence in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forests in the capital, Nairobi, Stephen Thoya told the independent Daily Nation newspaper. The world's oceans have an enormous amount of what is called thermal inertia - a phenomenon that means that the effects of climactic changes are manifested very slowly. The cumulative impact of the past 150 years or so of greenhouse gases emitted during industrial development is only now starting to warm the planet, and that warming will continue long after we have created sensible policies to reduce greenhouse gases. So no matter what we do, a wave of climate change exiles is inevitable. One option for dealing with this is to tighten our borders and inure ourselves to the exiles' cries for help. A more sensible, and just, approach is for the top greenhouse gas emitters - including China and India - to grant entry to the up to 200 million people who could lose their homes to rising seas by 2080. KEARNY, N.J., May 7 - It is the deadliest target in a swath of industrial northern New Jersey that terrorism experts call the most dangerous two miles in America: a chemical plant that processes chlorine gas, so close to Manhattan that the Empire State Building seems to rise up behind its storage tanks. According to federal Environmental Protection Agency records, the plant poses a potentially lethal threat to 12 million people who live within a 14-mile radius. Yet on a recent Friday afternoon, it remained loosely guarded and accessible. Dozens of trucks and cars drove by within 100 feet of the tanks. A reporter and photographer drove back and forth for five minutes, snapping photos with a camera the size of a large sidearm, then left without being approached. In the past 15 years, mortgage and home-equity borrowing has risen from 35.1% of home values to 43.9%. That has made families, especially those with unskilled workers, more vulnerable to a catastrophic jolt such as job loss or serious illness. Personal bankruptcies increased fivefold from 1980 to 2002, with many filers citing a layoff or medical emergency as the tipping point. Borowitz Report Excerpts Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon today that the conflict in Iraq had improved to the point that it could no longer be considered a quagmire and should now be thought of as a morass. . . . The Defense Secretary said that the decision to invade Iraq could no longer be considered "a boneheaded mistake of unthinkable proportions" and should now be thought of as "a colossal error we will regret for years to come." "That's a measure of how much things have improved," he said. "Anyone who takes a look at the big picture over there would come away saying that the situation is disastrous but not catastrophic." . . . Mr. Rumsfeld appeared to bristle at the question of one reporter, Charles Dolgian of the Toledo Blade, who asked if it was still appropriate to refer to the war in Iraq as "a train wreck." "It is most decidedly not a train wreck," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It is a train derailment in which the train hurtles down the embankment and bursts into flames." Mexican President Vicente Fox and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers today announced ambitious plans to collaborate on what they called "the most insulting remark ever made by a public figure." . . . Mr. Fox, who insulted both Mexicans and American blacks in a comment made Friday, and Mr. Summers, who outraged women with remarks made earlier this year, appeared ebullient at the prospect of working together to offend everyone on the planet. "We have been big fans of each other's work for a long, long time," President Fox said. "To finally be able to work with Larry to create what we are hoping is the most retarded gaffe in the history of the world is a dream come true." While most observers called the joint venture of the two loose-lipped public figures an inspired pairing, one leading producer of offensive gaffes, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, said he felt "hurt" and "excluded." Pilot Tests Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!" Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!" Tower: "TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees." TWA 2341: "Center, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?" Tower: "Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?" O'Hare Approach Control to a 747: "United 329 heavy, your traffic is a Fokker, one o'clock, three miles, Eastbound." United 329: "Approach, I've always wanted to say this...I've got the little Fokker in sight." A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, "What was your last known position?" Student: "When I was number one for takeoff." A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down. San Jose Tower Noted: "American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadeloupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport." The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206. Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway." Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop. Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?" Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now." Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?" Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark -- and I didn't land."

Catching Up: Best of 2005: April

Here's another installment in the continuing effort to distill the best postings from my personal mailing list. These are from April 2005. * * * * * Late-Night Political News from About.com "If it wasn't bad enough that it was tax day, President Bush says he's anxious to sign the new bankruptcy reform bill, which makes it a lot tougher for people in financial trouble to get help. He says that we Americans need to learn fiscal discipline. He says that as a young man he only carried one credit card and that was just to chop up the coke." --Bill Maher "Stocks plunged again Friday, suffering their worst day since 2005 and third-straight triple-digit loss for the Dow Jones Industrial average. On the bright side, your Social Security money isn't in there yet." --Amy Poehler "President Bush's approval rating has now dropped 10 points to a record low of 45 percent. Do you realize if the presidential election were held today, John Kerry would have to work twice as hard to lose?" --Jay Leno "President Bush said this week he will ask Congress to further loosen the immigration laws. Apparently he found out there are still some people in Mexico." --Jay Leno "The nation's second-largest oil company, Chevron Texaco, announced it was buying rival Unocal Corp. A spokesman for Chevron Texaco, which made a $13 billion profit last year, says the new company will be called 'Bend Over, America.'" --Dennis Miller "You know the difference between Jane Fonda, President Clinton and President Bush? Jane Fonda's the only one that actually went to Vietnam." --Jay Leno "Between the praying that people are doing for the Pope and the praying for Terri Schiavo, the switchboard is backed up. Christians are furious, they realize a lot of people are just talking to some guy in Bombay." --Bill Maher "They say this time there will be repercussions. The officers who told Bush the lies he wanted to hear will either be fired, suspended, or transferred to work on Social Security." --Bill Maher, on the latest report on Iraq intelligence failures "One in four returning Iraqi veterans have been diagnosed with a mental disorder. I know that sounds high, but it includes everybody who says, 'Am I crazy, or were we sent there under false pretenses?'" --Bill Maher "Anti-war protesters have now showed up at the Michael Jackson trial because they realize, hey, cameras and free publicity. One embarrassing moment, a protesters had a sign the other day that said, 'Bring our boys home.'" --Bill Maher "The College of Cardinals has set the date of April 18th for the secret vote. What they do is an elite group of robed figures meet behind closed doors and they choose the new leader. Today Bush said 'Yeah, that's how I got elected the first time.'" --Jay Leno "Executives at the Fox News Channel announced they're going start a Fox News financial channel. Yeah, the Fox News financial channel will be different because whenever the stock market goes down, they'll blame it on Hillary Clinton." -- Conan O'Brien "It was the biggest funeral ever in the 2000-year history of the Catholic church. People were waiting in line to get a glimpse of the pope's body for 24 hours. By the time they got to the head of the line, they smelled worse than him...Well, they didn't embalm him. He was laying out all week. And he still looked better than Michael Jackson." --Bill Maher "Forty members of Congress also went to the funeral. They said it was great to be out of Washington and to get a break from all that prayer and Bible quoting." --Bill Maher "When President Bush was shown on the giant TV screens, during the Pope's funeral today, the crowd at the Vatican booed. When president Bush heard this he said 'what does boo mean in Eye-talian?'" --Conan O'Brien "Dick Cheney was saying a couple of things to the press, he said he fully expected to see a woman president in his lifetime. And I was thinking, well, hell, he'll be lucky if he sees Thursday in his lifetime. ... Say what you will about the vice president, he is an optimist. He also said he fully expects to see a Hollywood celebrity convicted in his lifetime." --David Letterman "Federal authorities are investigating whether or not Martha Stewart violated rules of her house arrest when she attended a Time magazine gala last week. Meanwhile, there is no news yet on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden." -- Jay Leno "Before Social Security, Americans had to keep working long after they were past retirement age -- kinda like the way Cher has to now." --Jay Leno "In honor of Earth Day, Congress passed the Bush energy bill, which gives billions of dollars in tax breaks to the coal and oil companies and opens up Alaska for drilling. It's hard to hide the glee in the White House. Today President Bush appeared in front of one of those backdrops that just said 'F--- You.'" --Bill Maher * * * * * Clippings WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. penal system, the world's largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004, the Department of Justice reported Sunday. . . . The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population, seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies. . . . Criminologists attribute the growth in the prison population to "get tough on crime" policies that have subjected hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug and property offenders to long mandatory sentences. . . . It costs around $22,000 to lock up one person for a year. . . . In addition, the United States jails around 283,000 people with serious mental illnesses . . . . Mice forced to breathe hydrogen sulphide — known best for its rotten egg smell — go into a kind of suspended animation . . . . Finding a safe way to do this in humans could lead to new ways to treat cancer and prevent injury or death from blood loss, or help people undergo and recover from surgery better . . . . "We think this may be a latent ability that all mammals have . . . ." Many cases have been documented of small children, and the occasional adult, reviving from near drowning in icy water after their body temperatures had dropped, their metabolism rate lowered and they had stopped breathing for more than an hour. . . . After years of telling athletes to drink as much liquid as possible to avoid dehydration, some doctors are now saying that drinking too much during intense exercise poses a far greater health risk. . . . [Runners in the 2002 Boston Marathon] gave blood samples before and after the race. While most were fine, 13 percent of them - or 62 - drank so much that they had hyponatremia, or abnormally low blood sodium levels. Three had levels so low that they were in danger of dying. Budget Living magazine, April/May 2005, p. 81, advises that you can save a lot of money on dental work by getting it done in Mexico. "Right now, the most popular dental destinations appear to be India, the Philippines, and Hungary -- all countries with a surplus of well-trained professionals. Hungary is especially rich in tourist- friendly dental school grads, and getting treated there costs around a third of what it does here -- a crown will run you about $135 in Budapest; $600 in the U.S." * * * * * Unitarian Jihad (Appreciating this item requires a general awareness of Unitarian tendencies.) The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. Startling new underground group spreads lack of panic! Citizens declare themselves "relatively unafraid" of threats of undeclared rationality. People can still go to France, terrorist leader says.

Why the Tibet Protests Are Important

The Chinese leaders will not back down on Tibet. The Chinese people will not let them. The people of China are convinced that Tibet belongs to them. So it seems unlikely that protests on Tibet will make things better in Tibet. They may help, but they may also hurt. The protests are important because they provide a focal point for the world to treat China as a superpower. The sooner the people of the world become sensitized to the dangers that a superpower poses, the more likely they are to unite against it. It's not that people should just band together against a superpower for the hell of it. That's not the nature of the situation. People do, or should, band together against superpowers when they abuse their power. Power tends to corrupt. It seems almost inevitable that, when a country becomes strong, it begins to throw its weight around. "Appeasement" was the word used when, in 1938, the leaders of France, Britain, and Italy caved in to Hitler's demands to annex part of Czechoslovakia, claiming that it rightfully belonged to Germany. It took another year or so for those leaders to realize that, when you feed the tiger, the tiger becomes bigger. The world does not need any more Munichs. China has entered onto the world stage. It is taking superpower-level actions; it is stirring superpower-level irritation; and it is generating superpower-level unity, not only among its opponents, but also among those who were previously undecided about it. This process is healthy. The sooner the world can unite against China, the less likely China will be to commit the kind of costly mistake that, for instance, the U.S. made in Iraq. The world is going to continue to deal with China, and China is going to continue to grow. But, with luck, it will grow not only quickly, but well. The best that could happen, for these purposes, would be that the world would become truly outraged, and the Olympics would become a tremendous embarrassment for China. That way, ten or twenty years from now, the Tibetan incident will be remembered more clearly, and will be likely to have more influence, than the Tiananmen Square massacre has had. The bigger the problem, the harder it is to sweep under the rug. Ten or twenty years from now, China will be a superpower indeed. With luck, it will have the lessons from its "Wild West" period held up for reflection within living memory -- not just weakly resurrected from history books, like in the U.S. Let China take a very large, very visible fall on its face -- not because there is any joy in embarrassing anyone, but because the world does not need any more Tiananmens either.

Iraq: What Happens When They Neglect the Peace Corps

This item has been moved to my ideas blog.

Catching Up: Best of 2004: August

Father Knows Best In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War. "Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq....There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Late-Night Political News from About.com "The Republican Convention is coming to town. It's coming up at the end of the month. Everyone is getting ready for the convention. The crack dealers are switching to Viagra." —David Letterman "The federal government reported that despite much higher expectations U.S. employers only added 32,000 jobs to the payroll this month. Even worse, folks, the jobs were all in India." —Conan O'Brien "Did you all hear former President Clinton's speech Monday night? It was great. ... You know it made me kind of nostalgic. It reminded me of a different time -- when presidents could actually talk." —Jay Leno "CBS did not carry the convention last night. You know you're in trouble when you're too dull for CBS." —David Letterman "Democrats were reluctant to allow Al-Jazeera in their convention, because they thought their coverage would be biased and hostile. Then they realized it couldn't be any worse than Fox News." —Jay Leno "Michael Moore was in attendance at the convention ... which explains the extraordinarily tight security around the buffet." —David Letterman "As the Democrats get revved up at their convention in Boston, President Bush is fighting back the only way he knows how: by going on vacation! Ah, it's nice to take a rest, replenish your supply of smirks. The vacation was expected, because Bush traditionally takes a month off every summer to relax and avoid reading National Security Warnings." —Craig Kilborn "President Bush spoke with the Amish. He didn't want to, but it was the only group he could find that wasn't upset about the high price of gas." —Jay Leno * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mental Health Excerpts Researchers studied 156 older adults diagnosed with major depression, assigning them to receive the antidepressant Zoloft (setraline), 30 minutes of exercise three times a week, or both. ... Blumenthal and his colleagues ... found that the group who exercised but did not receive Zoloft did better than either of the other two groups. A very interesting finding concerns the group that received both Zoloft and exercise. These subjects were more likely to again become depressed than the subjects who only exercised. A 1976 study found that physicians spent an average of one minute giving advice and information in a 20 minute office visit. When these physicians were asked to estimate the time that they had spent giving advice and information, they estimated 8-10 minutes. ... Medical students at the University of Arizona College of Medicine have been getting sensitivity training in an unusual way. The class "Medicine & Horsemanship: An Introduction to Human Nonverbal Interaction at the Bedside" teaches them to improve their communication with patients by teaching them to communicate with horses. Combined pharmacotherapy and psychological treatment of depression is more effective than drug treatment alone. This may be because of an increased adherence to antidepressant regimens. Researchers found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease. ... People with heart disease were less likely to recognize humor or use it to get out of uncomfortable situations. They generally laughed less, even in positive situations and they displayed more anger and hostility. ... "We could perhaps read something humorous or watch a funny video and try to find ways to take ourselves less seriously," Dr. Miller says. Older adults who feel they have control over roles they value live longer than those who don't, according to a new study. Being a parent, grandparent or provider can add value to an elderly person's life. And having control over such roles appears to be more important to people as they age than feelings of control over life as a whole. The latest findings on the ability of pet dogs to reduce cardiovascular stress in persons living high-stress lives -- in this case those caring for brain-injured spouses -- shows that dog owners experienced one-fifth the rise in blood pressure during stressful, care-giving activities compared to those without dogs. Moreover, when participants without dogs acquired them six months into the study, their average blood pressure and heart rate during stress- producing situations dropped to match that of the initial group. "Even when controlling for factors like ethnic group, education and occupation, subjects with high leisure activity had 38 percent less risk of developing dementia," according to study author Yaakov Stern, PhD. Interestingly, the study also showed that participation in leisure activities may have a cumulative effect, with an additional 8 percent risk reduction associated with each leisure activity engaged. All three activity categories [i.e., intellectual, physical, or social leisure activities] were shown to be beneficial, although the intellectual activities were associated with highest risk reduction. Depressive symptoms, which include feelings of fear or loneliness, irritability, lack of concentration, and sleeplessness, occur in 19 to 30 percent of people age 65 years or older -- about 5 million Americans. Yet only one percent of those affected receive treatment. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Sell Your House Now (my prediction) As interest rates climb and wage globalization continues, U.S. workers will not be able to afford as much of a home purchase as has been possible in the past. Prices will drop. [Seems I was early. But rising interest rates, due to resetting ARMs, and wage stagnation did turn out to be relevant. Note that it was unheard-of to predict, at that time, that home prices would drop.]

War: The Timing Was Off

We got out of the Great Depression, in good measure, by gearing up for World War II. Declaring war against Iraq in 2008 might have made economic good sense. Now that the money is already spent, someone will have to think of a new way to revive the economy if, as appears increasingly possible, we again wind up in a financial trench. Or perhaps we will discover a different sense of what a good economy is all about.

Fools and Their Money

In the late 1980s, we had a savings & loan (S&L) crisis. It seems to have been caused by President Reagan's decision to reduce regulations on S&Ls. Hundreds of banks wound up more or less bankrupt. I worked in the Resolution Trust Corporation, a government agency created to clean up the mess. Sometime in the late 1990s, I saw an estimate that the S&L crisis cost the nation at least $160 billion. I did a calculation. That appeared to be about the same amount as the total of all federally insured student loans through 1995. In other words, the S&L crisis cost this nation as much as if we had just given out grants, instead of loans, to every student who got a federally insured loan in the 30-year (or so) period ending in 1995. When I made that calculation, I thought it was just a convenient way of conceptualizing what it meant to waste $160 billion. But now I'm thinking about how much we're spending on Iraq and tax cuts and all kinds of things we can't afford, and it occurs to me: this is the classic situation. This is a fool and his money. When your money burns a hole in your pocket, it then falls out onto the ground and troubles you no more. But if you aren't carrying around that money in your pocket, then this scenario does not apply. If you have already invested the money someplace where it was badly needed, then you don't really have the option of throwing it away. What I mean is that I am beginning to think the government really should have spent that $160 billion on giving grants to college students. Or if not on that, then on something else comparably productive. And if the government had kept on doing that -- had kept on giving grants to students, say -- then, when it came time to march off to war, President Bush would have had to explain to parents why they would now be paying the vast sums needed to prop up the universities. And then middle-class Americans would have had a strikingly more informed concept of what overthrowing Saddam Hussein might entail.

Veterans Day

I have never been too interested in Veterans Day. I think we can blame some of that on the state of affairs in our household when I was a teenager. Dad was among the worst right-wing idiots on the subject of the Vietnam War. He never did quite catch on that the hippies, peaceniks, and protesters were right – that we were wasting tens of thousands of American lives on a struggle that would not have begun if the French had not colonized Southeast Asia, which they had no right to do; if President Johnson had not lied to the American people about the events of Tonkin Gulf; if corporate money in America had not been so terrified of anything resembling socialism. We got a horrendous backlash on all points – in the socialistic steps of LBJ’s Great Society, for instance, and in riots and the growth of factions promoting violent overthrow of our government.

If we were going to fight in Vietnam, we should have fought to win. Otherwise, we should never have started. Same thing in Iraq. I see these generals making a hash of things – not counting Petraeus, who seems to be playing a bad hand very well – and I think Veterans Day is one more occasion when those who send kids (but not their own!) to die can pretend that they really do realize it is a matter of life and death. So when Dad would hold forth on his ideas (e.g., that we should just line up the peace protesters and shoot them), I think it was understandable that I would not merely reject his views, but would to some extent reject the American military too. It seemed to me that he did not understand what America was all about. I wanted no part of him and his Army, and I had some justification for that attitude.

But today, on this Veterans Day 2007, I am willing to make an exception. The immediate reason is that I just watched a tear-jerking Veterans Day commemoration video. A related reason is that Dad died two days ago, and he was a dad for whom few things in life were as important as the years that he spent in the military.

There is no denying that the miliary is what keeps the country safe. The military has been the vehicle of horrible and atrocious behavior, from the war with Mexico to My Lai to Abu Ghraib; but this is what you get – it is what all armies get, at some point or other – when you train people to kill and destroy. It’s awful stuff to learn how to do, and it needs to cease as soon as there is no longer a threat that other people want to do the same to you. The military’s excesses may stoke that desire on their part, and that prospect needs intensive attention; but there are always going to be freeloaders, abusers, and megalomaniacs who will think that subjugating the people of another country is a fine idea.

This morning, I went for a run in the park. I felt wonderful. It’s because I got eight or nine hours of sleep; and I did that, I think, because I was just worn out at the end of the day yesterday. I can’t say that Dad’s death was the sole reason, but it was clearly a weight that I carried with me for the day. Today, some things seemed to have fallen into place.

It was fitting that I went on that run, and that I felt wonderful doing so, because the Army was not Dad’s only preoccupation. His book, which I have been annotating for some time, is a testament to his years in World War II, but also to his years in the Civilian Conservation Corps. As a CCCer, he planted trees and, as I was thinking on my run this morning, he helped to build a state park somewhat like the place I was running in. He loved trees; and while his taste in books did tend toward warfare and historical battles, his behavior over the past 50 years was much rather in the direction of CCCish trees, stonework, and parks.

Dad fought in a war. The Army impressed him because, I think, it told him exactly where he stood. There were (to him, anyway) none of the picayune, Byzantine politics and innuendoes that would so often ensnare him in civilian life; he was free just to be a man, as he understood the term: to destroy things, to run over things that got in the way, to replace them with the things he preferred, and to build on that basis. In that sense, for him the best of civilian life (both in the CCC and after the war) was that which allowed him to just bust in, ram ahead, and get it done.

So he built a park; he cut trees; he grew and trimmed trees; he took the family on vacations, predominantly to national parks; and he built a home, insofar as he was able to construct a sense of what that might mean, that was surrounded on all sides by sawdust, wood blocks, gardens, trees, bees, stonework, raspberry vines, flowers, and grass, laid out in the way he wished. There, he found a refuge from the outside world, for which he shared a passion with his wife for some 55 years, until they finally gave it up as requiring more work than they could manage in their old age.

In those regards, the house and the war against Japan ran together. There were these outside forces that needed to be repelled, mostly by blood and steel, and there was a vision of better things, done in the American way, that could be constructed on a new beginning. For while I fault Dad’s book as focusing overmuch on his wartime years, as though that were the main thing in his life, I also recognize, within that focus, a preference for telling about the positive, helpful things that one can do within the hell of war. One can pour sulpha into the wound on the leg of a prisoner of war; one can have a conversation with a Japanese person, even though one will be unable to stomach dinner in a Japanese restaurant a half-century later.

Those GIs who gave chewing gum to kids in WWII, who are now embarked on armed social work in Afghanistan and elsewhere, were not originally there to be nice. But they discovered, as Dad did, that the larger purpose behind war is peace. You can train your soldiers to kill, but you cannot necessarily prevent them from crossing the lines to join the Germans in singing hymns on Christmas Eve. I saw some research, recently, in which they seemed to have found that an unbelievable number of soldiers will not be able to make themselves shoot straight at the enemy, even when their failure to do so leads to their own death. We may have an image of what war is, but it ain’t always what it’s supposed to be, and it wasn’t with Dad either.

So my dad built a park, fought a war, built a home, and nursed his trees. I resisted against a war, left that home, and, this morning, ran in a park that someone, probably someone like him, built. I can’t quite piece together all the threads that run in and out, among such observations. But I can tell you that I felt great on my run; that I am aware it is Veterans Day; and that I am sorry for what the world’s veterans have had to experience, and am glad for what they have been able to achieve nonetheless. I am sorry they have had to shoot at each other, and I am glad for all the times when their shots have missed. That may not be a suitably morose reaction from someone whose father has died, nor is it a very rah-rah kind of Veterans Day sentiment. But I can’t help that. That's just the way it seems to me.