A new life caring for a new life

It hit me today as I was in the thrift store.

I was going through a rack of t-shirts, looking for blank ones to make into band shirts, when I came across a bundle of shirts about "I love my Daddy" and "World's Best Dad." I'd never really paid attention to them before when they were on other people, but now, they make me look twice. Will I be the kind of father who inspires his little girl to wear such a dorky shirt? I sure hope so. And Father's Day? I suppose it will be different when it roles around next year. Instead of running to the store for the usual last-minute "Dad" gift (A DVD, or some bags of M&Ms), I might actually be on the receieving end this year. A strange thought, I admit.

Life has changed around the house here. Our lives are now devoted to this strangle little creature who plays by her own rules at all hours of the day and gets away with it because she does not understand the concept of good and bad. Yet. She sleeps away most of the day, and spends some hours a night complaining to us in her limited way, about various things that ail her (whatever those could be to a 12-day-old). In her own way, she's already living out the teenaged dream life: sit around, eat, sleep, eat sleep, etc. etc.) The only differences are that she talks less, is smaller, and poops herself more. Other than that, I see a lot of similarities.

Our lives have shifted from "being served" to "serving." In a way, I'm glad. I won't claim to know much about parenting, as I've only been a parent for 12 days, but I've learned the following things so far.

1.) Read the instructions on whatever devices you get for your child. Especially breast pumps. They don't work so well when the gaskets are installed wrong because the directions were translated from French.

2.) Babies don't care what you talk about as long as you talk to them. Use this to your advantage, as the baby is likely far more interested in hearing your theories about Star Trek than your spouse is.

3.) When you air out the baby's bottom, make sure to put a diaper under whatever she is sitting on. What can go wrong usually does.

4.) Don't look at a dirty diaper as an annoyance. Instead, look at it as a minature Picasso (or, in some cases, Pollock) painting on a miniature canvas.

An early Christmas gift to the far-right

It seems George W. has given the far-right an early Christmas gift.

In the waning days of his administration, the president declared that “doctors, hospitals, and even receptionists and volunteers in medical experiments [have the] right to refuse to participate in medical care they find morally objectionable,” according to a Dec. 19 L.A. Times article. This “Conscience Rule” includes, of course, abortion, a hot-button, no-solution issue that has served the G.O.P and the Christian Right very well over the years.
This latest ruling is another example of Bush pandering to the religious right and conservative elements that have put him in office. With his political capital and popularity at low levels, he has nothing to lose, and many seem to dazzled with the prospect of President-Elect Obama’s coming to power that George W. doesn’t get the attention he used to. In fact, I think the last time I saw him on the news was when the White House issued the last “Barney’s Christmas at the White House” video, in which George woodenly recited lines to the black little canine.
What really bothers me about this “conscience” rule is that there isn’t really any other job in the world (as far as I know) where you can decline or refuse to do something simply because it is “against your morals.” This is especially where customer service (which, after all, medicinal practice is to a degree) is concerned. For example, what would happen to me if I refused to serve an obese person at McDonalds? I would be fired. What would happen if I refused too help someone at Toys ‘R Us because my personal belief is that video games will make their kids lazy? I would be fired.
I can appreciate people’s feeling on this polarizing issue. But what I do not condone is a way for people to get out of doing something that is part of their job description simply because it goes against their morals.
And as far as being a “pro-life president,” George W. is a sham. It’s obvious the man doesn’t practice what he preaches. As governor of Texas, Bush pardoned one out of 153 prisoners executed on death row during his time in office. Even if a man is convicted by a jury of his peers and is executed, is it not still death? Has not a life, however much the dark side of the human soul calls for blood, still been taken? Even with terrible things on its conscience, a life is a life.

Perhaps it is just easier to fight for the rights of the cute white babies we see on the pro-life billboards on the sides of the nation’s freeways.
I guess I should not be surprised. Bush’s pro-life (which, in my opinion, should be more accurately termed “anti-choice”) policies seem a simple matter of political pragmatism and nothing more. How many lives will that pragmatism end up affecting?

Happy Birthday, Adolf Hitler Campbell!

Looks like little Adolf Hitler Campbell, 3, will be getting a birthday cake with his name on it after all.

I found an article about this (“Cake request for 3-year-old Hitler namesake denied”) published by the Associated Press recently. The child's father, 35-year-old Heath Campbell of Hunterdon County, N.J, claims that he isn't a racist. I find that difficult to believe considering he named his son after Hitler and named another child JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell.
"They need to accept a name,” Campbell said in the article. “A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."
Yes, Heath, a true point; but why do I get the feeling he'd be more than happy should this turn out to be the case?
Apparently, Campbell's wife called the local ShopRite with the cake naming request. The supervisor there, in a completely understandable and rational decision, said it was something they wouldn't do. So, the Campbell's went to Wal-Mart, who were of course happy to do it (why am I not surprised?)
Part of the irony of Campbell's complaining about the matter is that he's asking for tolerance towards his son's name - the same tolerance that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party withheld when they systematically humiliated and murdered millions of human beings between 1933-1945. Tolerance isn't exactly a Nazi virtue. The fact that his daughter has “Aryan Nation” as part of her name makes me less willing to write him off as a random crank. I think Mr. Campbell is narrow minded, and that his children will suffer for it. The article states:
“[Campbell] said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
'Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice.'”
A choice Mr. Campbell is simply go along with? I doubt that. What makes Mr. Campbell's comments interesting in this article is that they try hard to sound like they are not coming from someone who is an obvious racist. He crouches behind lofty phrases, like “I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," that distract from the issue.
I think what really makes me frown after reading this is that an adorable little boy has been named after one of the most evil and forbidden men from the 20th Century, and he has a father who is bending over backwards to justify that choice.

Who wants to be friends with Hitler? How will that work on the playground?

Stirring the Pot

One of the things that bothers me most about the whole idea of the "New Media" isn't that the formula puts more power in the hands of users to generate both content and comment, but that the current format really allows very little control over what those "outside of the box" provide. Here's one example. In a story in today's Pioneer Press about poor people getting medical help at the Minneapolis convention center, one commenter offered his/her/its two-cents on the matter (note: the following comment is unaltered) on the story's comment board.
"This is communissm. If people want things like this then they should get jobs and pay for them. This is the kind of thing what is going to happen more and more and take money from good Christian folks what work for a living now that we have a socialism president like Barak Hussein Obamma."
This isn't the best example I've seen from the half-cocked netherworld, but it ranks up there. Before I get into further detail, let me say this: I'm all for people expressing a rational, well-argued point of view. But whenever stories with any sort of poor people getting help or immigrants convicted of crimes pop up, it's the last thing we get. Instead of nuanced debate, forums like the one on twincities.com (and others) turn from public discussions into bastions of name-calling and pettiness spiced up with views best left hidden behind cutesy (and unrevealing) monikers.
I know my days of working at a publication that publishes an actual tangible product (how 20th century of us) are numbered. I lament this, not because of the format itself, but because of the controls (on our part) that go along with it. There is no sort of vetting when it comes to a comment board. Part of me thinks this is by design. If you can find a way to bring people to your website by any means, you would be a fool not to take it. However, this isn't most professions. This is history. This is what people look back on when they want a mostly-accurate picture of what happened when. It's one thing to write an angry letter to a newspaper, where there is some checking and accountability involved in getting it printed. It's quite another to fire off half-baked theory on a comment board under an assumed name with the desire of stirring the pot.
The New Media is a field worth exploring if you are brave enough, but I wish there was some way of weeding out the cowards who have A.) little to add to any debate or conversation, of B.) the lack of courage to reveal their true identity to stand by their words.
As a reporter, as a professional, I have to cite sources in stories and use my own name. I do not have the luxury of hiding behind a veil of Internet anonymity. I have to be able to justify those words and my conduct with not only my readers, but also my superiors. If one has the power to impact lives with words, this is the way it should be.

Count, count, count again

A quick note here:
I had a thought while watching the news tonight that the 2008 election is 99 percent over, with the exception being the Coleman/Franken race here in my home state of Minnesota. It's strange to think of it this way, but it's the last permeable link we have to the spirit of partisan rhetoric, half-truth and exagerration that are the hallmarks of any down and dirty election season. I get the feeling the many people were exhausted by the intensity of the two-year campaign leading up to the election, with those final weeks in front of the TV set being the worst of all. When the election was (mostly) over, the tentacles of partisan rhetoric, as they usually do, relinquished and receeded, and people regained their senses.
Those connected with the Coleman/Franken recount don't have this sort of luxury. For them, it's Nov. 4 times infinity until the electoral limbo is over. It's the last living vestige of the very worst that politics can out in the human spirit. It's the last living link to "terrorist fist jabs" and "Drill, baby, Drill!" It's the last living link to the sort of maddened frenzy John McCain supporters (sometimes to the dismay of the candidate, as witnessed personally by myself when he visited Lakeville) were able to whip themselves into at the thought of the "socialist" and "Muslim" Barack Obama taking the White House.
At this point, I've been so ground down by years of campaigning that I don't even really care who wins the Franken/Coleman race. I just want it to all be over - to let the past be the past, and to let barking dogs lull themselves to sleep for the time being, until the first faint whisps of an upcoming campaign rouses their animalistic passions again.

Collect Them All

The Facebook notice came in the e-mail, as all of them innocuously do. Upon opening it, I was startled to see a name of a high school classmate I'd not seen (or thought about) in a long, long time. She ran in different circles than I did, had different friends than I did, and generally had nothing in common with me then other than the fact we were both well-cared for (as private school students usually are)carbon based life forms.
"SO-AND-SO wants to be your friend!" the message cheerfully told me.
I opened the e-mail. I went to my Facebook account, and looked at the former classmate's profile. With the exception of the general flabbiness that the past decade has given to nearly all of us, she looked very much as I remembered.
My eyes narrowed.
I moved my mouse over to the "deny" button near a small picture of her vacant, smiling face. I clicked without thinking twice.

I am not to be collected.

Social media is an interesting thing. When MySpace first came out, there were no real rules when it came to deciding which people made the cut and which didn't. With Facebook, the criteria has narrowed. A lot. Thanks to Facebook, I've been able to skip all of my reunions because I've found out who got fat, who failed and who turned out to be the diamond in the rough we'd never imagined. I've been able to reconnect with old friends, amend old injuries, and find that I didn't turn out so badly after all. It's been a mostly positive experience.
However, in moments of weakness, e-mails from those I call "collectors" still bring me down. It's enough to make me ask - you didn't like me then, so why are you bothering now? Now it's OK that we have an association? Now, when we're on an equal digital playing field, you want to be my friend? No thanks. You missed your chance. Most anything connected with that time in my life (which I've written enough about) is something I'd like to forget. I'll put it this way - I like the way I turned out, but I would never want to put anyone else on the road that lead to this point in time.
So, to all the collectors out there, save your mouse moves; I'm not a name on a list, a flag on a map, or piece of the puzzle. If we weren't friends before, don't expect us to be now. It's just easier that way.

A Past Alive In This Week's Headlines

This week, I've seen two news stories that illustrate how, even with all of what is going on in the world, people are fascinated with parts of the past that somehow remain a source of fascination:
1.) Pirates off Somalia
Granted, these aren't the sort of dashing Johnny Depp pirates we might envision when we hear the word, but these guys are the real deal. After all, the open sea is a very, very lonely place, and it wouldn't take much for even a small gang of armed men to take over a ship many, many times bigger than the one they left from. This week, however, the pirates upped the ante by taking over an oil tanker full of crude oil – a first in any part of the world. From what I've read, the oil tanker's crew are being treated well, as most hostages taken by these pirates seem to be well cared for. However, I can see this changing, and I'll give you a historical example as to why.
In the First World War, and in parts of the Second, German U-Boat crews would often surface and give warnings to the crew of the ships they were going to sink. They would give them time to take to the lifeboats, and would sometimes even radio in a distress signal to make sure help arrived.
However, as the war went on, the merchant ships became more and more heavily armed, and would often attack a submarine that surfaced top attack it. So, with this in mind, the submarines would attack without warning, and the whole idea of helping the crew of the sunken ship went by the wayside. So will it be with these pirates. The more heavily armed the opposition becomes, the worse the victims will be treated by their captors. I'm not saying that these pirates don't deserve what they get, but people should read the writing that's already dripping from the wall: this is just the beginning, and pity the poor crews who may find themselves as "guests" of the pirates in the future.
2.) Hitler HAD only got one ball.
The British newspaper Sun reported this week that a former Imperial German Army medic confessed to a priest, shortly before he died, that he treated then-Corporal Hitler for World War One injuries that resulted in the loss of one of his testicles. It serves as confirmation for what the English thought for years (as evidenced by the nursery rhyme "Hitler has only got one ball/ The other is hanging on the wall") What makes this interesting is that Hitler has been dead for (checks calendar) 63 years now. It is interesting to me how much a character of fascination he remains to people. I admit; I'm one of them.
Now, let me put this out in front: there is a vast difference between being "interested" in something and "actively condoning it." But that said, Hitler remains very much an enigma even after all of the books I've read about him and Nazi Germany. Usually, evil is somewhat simple to explain away: Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin were simply bad men who took it out on others. But for some reason, Hitler remains an aloof and detached historical figure. I suppose it makes sense; the people who were closest to him said they never really got to know Hitler as a man, so why should we find any sort of insight through second- and third-hand accounts?

The past, contrary to what some think, is more than musty pages on a library shelf or a dusty exhibit in a museum. It's alive - as these stories illustrate. Pirates remind us that, despite our technical mastery of the world around us, problems from the era of Julius Caesar still remain. Hitler's one ball medic confession reminds us that memory serves us better than we think; we remember that the actions of one man can ripple across both the world and the ages.
Even if he's only got one nut.

A corresponding target value

I think it’s a telling sign that Barack Obama gave his Nov. 4 acceptance speech from behind three inches of bulletproof glass.
Being a leader holds with it a corresponding “target value.” Four presidents have been assassinated during America’s existence, and while the reasons vary, the presidents all had one thing in common: they were simply ordinary men who reacted in the way that many men do when they are shot: they bled, they suffered, and ultimately died from their wounds. It’s a natural thing for any leader to be a target – but I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried about a presidential assassination before. Obama, to many in the white nationalist and supremacist community, represents the sort of pan-international-multiculturalism they abhor, and the fact that he is black only adds to the anger.
News articles like “White Supremacist Rage Boils Over After Obama Victory” (Marketwatch.com) are indicators of a large (and potentially well-armed) portion of the country who are not exactly happy with our new C-in-C. The Anti-Defamation League posted samples of some comments from white supremacist websites in “White Supremacist Rage.”

-David Duke: “I really believe tonight [Nov. 4] is a night of tragedy and sadness for our people in many ways…[we’ve lost] the fundamental values of the United States of America…the country is not recognizable any more.”
-“A person using the screen-name "KOS" declared, "America will become another third-world shithole like Africa if it is run by people like Barack Hussein Obama and other minorities." Another extremist, posting as ‘Himmler SS,’ wrote, ‘America [sic] flags should be flown upside down as the international symbol of distress.’”
-On White Revolution, ‘Fallschirmjager173’ claimed that ‘the recent election of a negroid as president of America, was brought about by dumbed down white traitors, to this nation." An anonymous poster made a similar comment on Hal Turner's blog: ‘Congratulations to all you f-cking sleeping mesmerized race traitors who just made the United States a 3rd world country filled with Illegal Mexicans and f-cking N-ggers who will run free and have a N-gger commander and chief looking over their shoulders. You all make me f-cking sick. I have burnt the American flag in my front yard.’”
- This wasn’t posted on a white supremacist site, but I thought it was telling. Ted Nugent: “I was in Chicago last week, I said, ‘Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!’ Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun!”

I don’t write about these statements lightly, or because I in any way agree with them (I most vehemently do not). But my point in bringing them to your attention is simply to make the observation that there is a lot of hate out there, and the consequences of an Obama assassination would be simply mind-boggling. I believe it would make the late 1960s race riots in Watts look tame in comparison. I remember making the comparison to Bobby Kennedy when Obama received the candidate nod, bitterly noting that he might have a chance “if they let him live long enough.”
The hate stirred up by a bitter election does not simply vaporize once the ballots are counted. No, for every attack ad we watch, for every act of slimy innuendo and distortion we witness, our decency is slowly eroded. I know there are many people out there stewing over what they see as a defeat for the warped racial ideals they may have, and I fear for my president-elect’s safety in a way I’ve never feared for any public figure’s safety before. Obama has great promise ahead of him, but surely he must realize that he’ll be spending his every moment looking over his shoulder, wondering not only if, but when, the hatred might somehow work itself free.
I do not envy him.

What happened to the Post-War Dream?

The house was like many others on the block 61st block of Third Avenue in Minneapolis. It was older, built post-war, and had withstood the test of time, as the aged trees in the front yard and cracking paint in the windows could attest to.
Looking beneath the faded yellow siding, I could see cracks developing in the concrete foundation of the house, and it made me reflect that it was an anonymous representative of what I am considering to be the decline and fall of the American post-war dream. We’re not the first to go through it; England went through it during the 1980s, as evidenced by the 1983 Pink Floyd album “The Final Cut,” which even has a song on it called “The Post-War Dream.” Now, it seems to be our turn. It was a hell of a ride.
When the bombs stopped falling in 1945, America was the only participant who stood to come out ahead. The industrial centers of Europe, Russia and Asia were damaged or destroyed by the fighting, and the people in those countries were traumatized to varying degrees depending on the severity of the fighting. America, thanks to two ocean borders, was relatively lucky to have not been attacked directly (save for Pearl Harbor, U-boat attacks and the odd Japanese sub shell or paper balloon bomb on the West Coast. Nearly 400,000 Americans were killed in the fighting, which seems a relatively light total compared to those of Germany (7.2 million), Japan (2.7 million) and Russia (23 million). When the war ended, the Americans who served in uniform came home to work, to build, and to raise families. Our neighborhood, built in the 1950s, came so close after this that I imagine that the sweat from war veteran construction workers’ nightmares was barely dry on their sheets. The world, I imagine, seemed a far more optimistic place in the early 50s than it had been just 10 years before. Worldwide conflagrations can sometimes do that.
My wife and I were talking last night about an older woman she met who had traveled around the world, and filled a home with knick-knacks from every continent she had been to. I could not help but envy the time in which she came of age. The Great Depression lived up to its name, but I would like to think that the resulting post-war economic boom and higher standards of living would have been a fitting payoff. As my wife spoke about traveling when we were older and able, I doubted that anyone would afford to be able to travel across the country the way things are going, let alone across the world. I know people who can barely afford to fuel their cars, nevermind their desire the trot the globe.
The pessimist in me thinks we’ve reached the peak of the post-war dream. The harsh reality, put off for so long, is that the standards of living we’ve become accustomed to simply are unsustainable in the long term. I may have been born in a superpower, but I am pretty sure I’m not going to die in one. What I end up seeing in old age remains a unwritten, but I certainly hope it doesn’t turn out as bleakly as the "Mad Max"-meets-Great-Depression imagery that my imagination is capable of conjuring.
Goodbye, post-war dream; you were nice while you lasted.

"The Real America"

At an Oct. 16 fundraiser in Greensboro, N.C., Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the following remarks:
“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.
“This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.”
While I understand what Palin was trying to say, these remarks anger me. The inference, in case you miss it, is that you aren’t a real American unless you are “pro-American,” meaning that you don’t mind that your phones are tapped and don’t mind that Americans are still being killed in Iraq in a war that was started for dubious and politically-based reasons. Get real, Sarah; contrary to what some in your party may believe, those who don’t subscribe to “conservative values” (which, as far as I can tell, revolve around railing against government spending yet driving up record deficits, and telling “Big Government” to stay out of their lives yet demand passage of amendments to the Constitution that would impact the lives of others) aren’t hoping to see America fail. Speaking for myself, I want to see an America that’s different than the one we’ve seen since G.W. took office.
I want an America where I cam be assured that wars will be a last resort, instead of something dead set on before a president even moves his furniture into the Oval Office.
I want an America where any wars that DO happen will be for good reasons, not ones that later turn out to be wildly false and exaggerated.
I want an America where I don’t have to worry about being spied on for my own “protection.”
I want an America where the wealth is shared from the top down, rather than seeing the ultra-rich get even richer while people like me, in the middle, who see that the only number in their life that doesn’t rise is the number of their salary.
Sarah, I’m a pro-American as you. I love this country as much as you. It’s in what we want to see that makes us different. And if this, in your eyes, makes me un-American, then we’ll simply have to agree to disagree.
Before 9/11, I used to consider myself patriotic. I felt that it was a matter of realizing and recognizing the sacrifices made by those who came before you, and remembering that the freedoms we are given are not given lightly. However, in the wake of everything that has happened since, I feel cheated. I feel as though those feelings ended up being used to generate fervor to approve of things that turned out to be less than true. I wanted to believe that Iraq had WMD. I wanted to believe that we were doing the right thing by making this massive undertaking. I prayed every night before the invasion that this war wouldn’t happen. When it did, I tried to get behind it as best I could. My illusion rapidly fell apart, as it soon became apparent that there were no WMDs, that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and that we’d committed to something it was proving impossible to get out of.
So long as I have a conscience, I can’t subscribe to the notion of Palin’s “very patriotic, very pro-American” areas of this country.” Patriots come from all over, in all shapes and shades, and none have completely matching views. It is a narrow mind that automatically separates “dissent” and “patriotism” from each other; the terms are sometimes synonymous.

More than just music

I purged my iTunes library again this weekend, and it’s the latest in a series of add/delete push-and-pulls between the better angels of my nature.
For now, the musical ranks in my 7.7 GB library are dominated by names like Mozart, Chopin and Wagner. I deleted all of my punk and industrial stuff last night while watching “The Sound of Music” with my wife. I’ve added and deleted these types of songs countless times over the past year, and it seems that they end up back there within a week or so. At first, I thought it had to do with music, but upon reflection, I think it had more to do how I’d like to think of myself. I’d LIKE to think of myself as the kind of guy who would like to spend an evening watching “Citizen Kane” with a glass of red wine. In reality, I greatly enjoy watching “Star Trek” movies while eating pudding cups. I’d LIKE to think of myself as someone who can discuss at length the genius of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In reality, I’m more at home discussing the differences between punk music from England in the early 1980’s versus hardcore punk from Los Angeles around the same time.
I am a mixture of conflicting impulses. On one hand, I appreciate righteous anger, and how it can manifest itself in a barking three-chord chorus. On the other hand, I’ve been at best hindered by such anger in the past, and realize that it doesn’t have a place in my future. Classical and choral music calms me. It helps me think in a clear, focused manner, and keeps me relaxed in the sometimes-stressful environment of a newsroom. However, there are limits to the moods it can suit. Sometimes, after an angry day, Nine Inch Nails is the only sound that can tame the savage beast within.
This isn’t about music at all; it’s about me being at a crossroads. I can either proceed down the path of the future, or turn around and head back down the dark path I came in on. It’s an ugly, stark choice, but it seems one that begs to be made with any amount of certainty. The two schools of thought are not compatible; they are fighting for dominance, and control. For now, the better half seems to be winning.
With a CD collection, it’s easy to own a variety of things that you might not be especially proud of (Marilyn Manson, ABBA, etc.) because each CD is its own entity entirely separate from a generic whole. With iTunes, on the other hand, whatever is in the library is a reflection of various facets of the listener’s personality. When I look at all of the ugly on it, it reminds me of the ugly I’ve yet to tame.

Trojan Horse

I thought of an interesting theory the other day. After considering about how odd it was that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate (relative unknown, pregnant daughter, etc.), I realized that it was a calculated move on the part of the GOP. It is calculated due to several factors. The GOP could never hope to get another governor with a narrow resume (a la GW) and strong adherence to conservative Christian values into the White House without being torn to shreds under the laser-like scrutiny of both the Old and New Medias. The comparisons to the Current Occupant would just be too obvious. To get around this, the logical move would be to keep the actual candidate hidden until the last possible moment. In this case, John McCain would not actually be running for president in the traditional sense - he's merely a Trojan Horse for Palin, the actual candidate who, when the time came, would replace him. McCain is no spring chicken - he could very easily step down for health reasons and no one would bat an eye.
In doing so, he would be turning over the reigns of power to an unknown and perhaps easily shaped president who would probably be more willing than not to bring in cabinet members with their own powerful ideas (a la Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) and own agenda. Palin, from what I know about her, seems close to the sort of conservative GW is. She is, using quotes from her own speech at the RNC, suspicious of the media, pro-drilling, pro-Iraq War and anti-tax. If it seems the attention on the campaign trail has shifted to Palin, it's no accident. Now, it's all a matter of McCain bowing out and letting the real candidate come through. The sympathy generated from whatever "accident" or "health problem" McCain "succumbs" to could take Palin to a sweeping election victory.

I admit, it's just a theory. But it still scares me.

Illusions of Choice

Obama. McCain. Obama. Biden. McCain. Palin. Paul. Obama. Lather, rinse, repeat.
At this point in a ridiculously long election cycle, I’m tired of all of it, and try as I may, I can’t put my heart fully behind any of the candidates. It wasn’t always like this. In 2004, I felt something for the candidacy of John Kerry, because he seemed an intelligent man who offered us something other than what our faux cowboy president had given us. In 2000, I voted Bush because, unlike Al Gore, he seemed to have a personality. I regret that vote. I regret that I didn’t have the foresight to see what could have happened down the road when a blank man who seemed to project whatever we wanted to see in him (as a “compassionate conservative,” whatever that means) revealed himself for what he really was: a dynastic phony with a very narrow band of interest. I used to consider myself a conservative, but that changed in the years after 9/11. I’m not a conservative anymore for the following simple reasons:
1.) The war in Iraq is a poorly planned affair based more on the charisma of the Bush Administration than on the actual facts at hand. The war in Afghanistan, on the other hand, had a clear objective and point.
2.) Our civil liberties are being infringed now more than ever in the name of “our freedom.” What’s the point of trying to defeat our enemy when we become more and more like him with each passing intelligence bill?
3.) A grossly offensive terrorist attack on New York City and Washington, DC. in which thousands died, has been used for political gain ever since.
4.) The very planet we live on is being chewed up and spat out by companies whose foresight seems to be where their hindsight emanates from.
5.) The gap between the rich and the poor grows wider with each passing year.
6.) An American city was left to drown after rampant cronyism proved less than successful at minimizing the damage.
I’m not a conservative. I’m not a liberal. I’m not sure what I am. But I know that I’m angry. I’m angry because my electoral choice this fall isn’t much of a choice at all. Which is worse: voting for someone who you know will screw you, or voting for someone who says they won’t but probably will anyway? Obama, for all of his charisma, is untested. The last thing we need in office after eight years of Bush is another man with a fairly narrow resume. McCain, for all of his fighter pilot heroism (justified, to a point), has been in Washington for 26 years but only now claims that the system is broken. Biden, before he was chosen by Obama, talked a lot of trash about Obama’s lack of experience, a tune that changed markedly once he was picked as vice president. And Palin? A good speech does not experience make. She’s the Republican version of Obama – good at getting people’s passion stirred up, but lacking any real sort of qualifications to make her the next president of the United States.
I’m reading poll figures today that are saying McCain is pulling ahead in the race. How is this even possible? How could Barack Obama, who seemed to have the world on a string a few months ago, have fallen to this point? Why is this even a race anymore? It shouldn’t even be a contest by this point. What does it matter to me? I don’t like either of them. McCain, for all of his “maverick” tendencies, has voted more with President Bush than against him. I’m not comfortable with that. Obama, for all of his rhetoric, doesn’t convince me of much of anything concrete. This Election Day, I’m going to vote for “None of the above.” I’m not happy to have come to that conclusion, but so far, it’s the only choice that makes sense to me.

A Double Standard on Political Affairs

This week, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been (rightly) criticized after finally admitting to having an affair with a woman who worked on his campaign. While much of the coverage on this story focuses on the possibility of an illicit love child born earlier this year, I find marked inconsistency from right-wing blogs (and to some extent, the mainstream media) in coverage on this event. Let us not forget that John McCain, too, cheated on his wife, divorcing her after she was in a car wreck and later marrying a woman 20 years his junior.
I'm not saying that either of these men can be defended for what he'd done. Cheating in any circumstance is completely wrong, but it is even worse when your spouse suffers from some sort of affliction (Elizabeth Edwards - cancer; Carol McCain- disfigurement from car crash). The fact that McCain ended up marrying his mistress does not change the fact that he cheated on the person he was married to at the time. The fact that he's been married to her ever since is not an ablution to the stain of the original sin.
Both of these men cheated on their wives. Time notwithstanding, one is getting off lightly, and another is being strung up on the front pages of every major publication in the world. Now tell me: both crimes being equal, how is that a balanced response?

A Different World View

My baby girl hasn’t even come down the chute yet, and I’m already turning into an overprotective father figure.
The ultrasounds were pretty clear, when Evelyn wasn’t squirming around or playing with her hands. The clarity of the image was striking – and a clear line between her legs made any doubt we had about her gender assignation seems moot. She is very obviously a girl, and part of me sat there watching the little TV baby knowing that my view on being a parent had shifted gears from “carefree” to “serious” in a matter of minutes. In a matter of minutes, I felt something within me change. I was well on my way to becoming like Walter Stratford, the protective (to put it mildly) father figure in the 1999 movie “10 Things I Hate About You.” Stratford, a gynecologist, is obsessed with keeping his daughters safe on prom night.
“Kissing? That's what you think happens? I’ve got news for you. Kissing isn't what keeps me up to my elbows in placenta all day long,” he says. “I’ve got news for you. I'm down, I've got the 411, and you are not going out and getting jiggy with some boy, I don't care how dope his ride is. Mamma didn't raise no fool.”
I love his character for two reasons – one, he obviously cares, and two, he lamely tries to relate to his teenage daughters using “hip” lingo, which, as happens when most parents seems attempt it, turns out sounding unintentionally hilarious, like listening to tourists two almost, but can’t quite, carry a conversation in English. Since my wife has been pregnant, I’ve looked at things in a different way. Those movies scenes where a guy’s family is held hostage? Yeah – not funny anymore. Little kids gone missing? No longer a subject that provokes little response in me. Now, the empathy is heartbreaking. On our way home, we saw two teenage boys on bikes waiting for a stoplight to change. They were skinny and slightly insolent looking, wearing aviator glasses and plaid shorts. Normally, I would have just seen “teenagers.” Now, knowing I’ll be the parent of a daughter, I saw something else: “sexual threat.”
This sensation reached its apogee last night when Karla and I were watching a Wal-Mart commercial (of all things to find meaning in) featuring a mom dropping her daughter off at college. We, soon-to-be-parents, started to cry. We get it now.
Seriously though, finding out that I’m having a girl makes me look at things differently. First, my mind is burdened with the thought of what it is going to be like when she is a teenager, when teenage guys (who can get girls pregnant merely by being in the same state with a girl) will start calling for my beautiful (of COURSE she’s going to be beautiful!) little girl. I’m going to be that CIA-style dad who interrogates every date, who insists on regular communications checks with his daughter and who waits up until she gets home.
Yes, I’m going to be the biggest jerk those teenage boys have ever seen. And I can’t wait.

"Everybody's talking...and I can't hear a word they're saying"

My musical absorption has been off-key since I bought my first iPod in 2006.
It was a tiny silver 2 GB Shuffle model, packaged very cleverly in a plastic box with instructions so simple that anyone with half a brain could figure out how to use it. I wondered at is sleek lines, its logically arrayed controls, and above all, the hours and hours of music I could store on it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Let me explain.
Musical technology has changed a lot over the years since I bought my first record album (“Thriller”) in 1984. While records were always around me growing up, I didn’t feel any true appreciation or ownership of an album until I received my first tape deck in 1987. The first album I ever bought was the “Beverly Hills Cop” soundtrack, and I can remember being very proud of having that off-white cassette with black writing on it. It was something cutting-edge, something I could take around as a badge of coolness. I used cassettes for the next eight years, learning how to dub and do my own remixes of songs using two different players. By the time I’d finally joined the CD revolution in 1994, I was at the height of my mixing powers.
CDs had been around for years, but for me, they took ownership to a new high. Not only did the album come with its own plastic case, it came with the promise that they shiny disk it contained would provide crystal-clear sound forever. The height of this “CD love” was reached in 1999, when a friend of mine tried to borrow my copy of New Order’s two-disc “Substance” set, and I was unable to part with it for more than 12 hours. The sad part was that I was utterly serious; I could not bear parting with something that had bored itself a tiny home deep within my soul. It wasn’t just New Order. I felt the same way about my Joy Division boxed set, and especially about my Germs “Complete Discography” album, which I loved so much I carried the booklet around and memorized.
I purchased my first digital album (two albums by the German electronic group And One) last year. I felt futuristic at the time, but upon reflection, the experience was lacking, and empty. Digital music is exactly that – it is digital, meaning there is no physical product to take home. There is no “thrill of the hunt” with iTunes. It’s not like hunting for a rare CD or vinyl album. If it exists, chances are that it can be had, which isn’t as great as it seems. If something is really rare, there is probably a reason for it (like there isn’t enough demand for it to actually be made on a mass scale; the “Terminator” soundtrack and TSOL’s “Beneath the Shadows” fit this scenario in my experience. Both were better in theory than in fact).
With iTunes and Internet music blogs, there is so much to listen to that I really doubt I am really hearing any of it. It strikes me as an endless all-you-can-eat buffet with multiple servings. By the end of the “obtaining” process, you are so gorged with food (or in this case, product) that you can’t remember if you were even hungry to begin with. For me, the temptation on my iPod to try to listen to everything at once is simply too great, and it is rare that I make it more than three songs into any particular album. Some days, it just seems there is too much to hear at once.
More than ever, portable music is the soundtrack to our lives. But is it a soundtrack, or a backdrop? Are we really listening to the sounds we hear?

A year later, bridge collapse shakes foundations of confidence

A year ago today, a bridge crumbled in the August heat, taking with it a bit of our confidence in the system we’ve built over the course of years and take for granted.
I was getting home from work. After changing into work clothes and making my way to the Nordic Track, I was stopped by a phone call from my friend Adam, asking me if I was all right. At first, I was confused; why wouldn’t I be all right? I asked him why, and he told me that the Interstate 35W bridge fell down.
“Which part?” I asked.
“The whole thing,” he replied, sounding oddly fascinated.
My heart sinking, I raced out of the room to flip on the TV. The scene was the same on every channel; footage from helicopter nose cameras showing smoke pouring out of crushed vehicles, dazed survivors being rescued by people unconcerned by tons of tipping concrete and re-bar. The talking heads of the TV news stations babbled over this surreal scene, but their words were not needed. The photos told the whole story – which wasn’t so much about the bridge collapsing as it was about the every day event that had gone horribly wrong that day. Commuting has become a part of American Life, and every time we buckle our seatbelts, we subconsciously assume that our commute is going to be two-way; otherwise, why would we do it? The bridge collapse not only snarled traffic for weeks after the disaster, it punched a hole in the idea of the mind-numbing typicality of a daily commute.
For the survivors, it became a game of “what-ifs.” For the rest of us watching our TV screens, it became a matter of “how many.” In the end, the toll was remarkably light (13 dead) considering how many people had been on the bridge at the time. As with any disaster, response from political leaders was to blame the other party, and use this tragedy in the shameless way most politicians use tragedies. The story spread all across the world; I even recall reading about it in Der Speigel, a German news magazine. There was a very good reason the world found this story so interesting: bridges don’t fall down in America, pure and simple. We’re the most powerful country on the planet, and things like this seem completely impossible for a might eagle built on a foundation of steel and concrete.
The whole thing made me wonder how strong our infrastructure is. Infrastructure is a natural last-choice for funding; people can’t usually see the repairs the way they can a shiny new building. Infrastructure is like bathroom fixtures – so long as everything works, people don’t think about it, or how it all goes together to make modern life possible. The new 35W bridge, built in record time, should be open by September. I’m not sure what I think about this – I almost wonder if the hurried pace of construction will lead to another tragedy down the road. I’m no engineering expert, but common sense would lead me to think that rushing anything, from a batch of brownies to a multi-million dollar bridge, is probably not the smartest idea. I’m hoping time proves me wrong.
All I know is that every time I drive over that new bridge, I’m going to remember the sounds and images of a hot day in August 2007, when our hearts plunged along with a falling span of concrete over the Mississippi River.

Memories fizz from long-dry soda cans

Sometimes the only way to realize how much the little things in life have changed is to see something designed purely to be a well-timed product of its own era.
My wife brought something strange home the other day. The corrugated cardboard box was unremarkable, sitting with flaps carefully closed on top of the kitchen table. I didn't recall putting it there, and I didn't know where it came from. I called out to Karla, asking her what this mysterious package was. It was, she cheerfully replied, her soda can collection from 1986-1992. Now, I'm a man who collects many things (military surplus, action figures, model kits, vinyl LPs), but soda cans? I didn't get it.
Shaking my head, I opened the box, and I was shocked at how much I actually enjoyed looking through and seeing what she'd thoughtfully saved over the years. It seems banal - indeed, soda cans are meant to be, as their lifespan once opened isn't long - but there are an awful lot of memories connected to the mundane. Here are some of the highlights.
- Mountain Dew can, circa 1988: Surviving another little league game, and realizing that the parent in charge of purchasing post-game soda had made a smart choice. Twelve ounces of anything has never tasted so sweet.
- Mendota Spring Water: Sitting in the back of my mom's new 1993 Ford Explorer, feeling oddly proud that her hip new car was featured in a big summer movie that involved a park with dinosaurs in it.
- Tangerine Diet Rite: "Can't my parents buy real pop? This stuff tastes terrible!"
- New York Seltzer: I really liked this stuff, but that changed after a can of it fell out of the fridge, landed on my big toe and bruised it so badly I had to get a hole drilled in the nail to relieve the pressure. Thankfully, stores stopped stocking it shortly thereafter. I'm pretty sure these two things are directly connected.
- The infamous 1990 Pepsi summer can that, if stacked on another, allegedly spelled out the word "sex" if held just right (look this one up if you don't believe me): "I can kind of see it. Wait ... there! Oh man, it TOTALLY does!"
- Squirt: "Hurry up and suck that thing down. The first bell is about the ring!" Drinking Squirt in a hurry is nearly impossible, as the combination of citrus and carbonation are strong enough to remove paint from a park bench. It has the same effect on a human throat.
In a way, these aren't just soda cans. They are threads in the tapestry of both of our childhoods. The world around us changes so slowly that the only way one can even notice is through looking at something from not even that long ago and noticing differences. These aluminum creations weren't meant to be anything but containers, but through the passage of time, they've become more.
After sitting on the kitchen table for a week, the box still hasn't been moved. Neither of us has mustered the energy to actually set up a display for these everyday works of art, but we've figured out where in the basement they'll end up. In fact, I actually enjoy having it in the kitchen, because they give a pleasant excuse to handle a tangible piece of what was, in my rather short existence, a rather peaceful and thoroughly pleasant time. Those were good years - and anything I can do to keep them more alive and close to my heart is worth the work.
So, laugh if you want, but I think these soda cans are worth their weight in gold. Seeing as they are aluminum, the amount of treasure that would actually translate to be fairly insignificant, but the memories and feelings they bring to the surface more than tips the scales in their favor.

(This column was originally published in the July 31 issue of the Lakeville-Sun Current).

Sometimes, the target just isn't big enough

I was reminded of this idea when I was covering an archery group giving youth classes in Lakeville. While the last (and only) time I’d ever shot an arrow was 15 years ago in Boy Scout camp (a miss by a wide margin, if I remember correctly), I was confident that, if put to the test, I’d be at least as good as Kevin Costner’s stunt double in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Well, I was wrong.
First off, I made the mistake of not taking archery very seriously, as my instructor did. Apparently, there is no smiling involved in archery, which was news to me. Anyway, I listened intently as he instructed me how to properly load the bow (by taking the arrow and raising it up the right side of the bow to drop it down the left side) and how to pull back on the string (firmly and calmly). I was not comfortable with the idea of brushing my chin with the feathers of the arrow (having pulled it back far enough), but I took the instructor at his word, and was unharmed when I launched my projectile of doom to what I thought would be a bull’s-eye.
I was wrong. Not only did the arrow not hit the bull’s-eye, it seemed to travel like a tiny senior citizen on the feathers was controlling it. It traveled listlessly, with a peculiar nose-up attitude that made it seem almost lazy. It hit the target with a subdued “TWUNK!” It hung limply from the lower left quadrant of the target, nowhere near the bull’s-eye, but at least impaled on the board. I lowered the hot pink bow (the color the guy selected for me), and walked back to the bow rack dejected.
There’s a reason for my hand wringing. My plan for the apocalypse was that I would somehow find an arrow in the rubble of what used to be Minneapolis and use that to defend my beef jerky from my mutated neighbors, who (unlike me) would have been drastically affected by the nuclear bomb that wiped out our city. The more I look at it, the more holes I find in my theory. For one, if a bomb hit Minneapolis, I would more than likely be wiped out of existence (an oddly comforting thought after seeing “Threads” and “The Day After), and that shooting a bow and arrow would be the least of my worried. Second, what are the odds I would actually find one in the rubble, let alone be able to shoot it well?
I finished the story feeling slightly deflated. I guess things that look easy on TV shouldn’t automatically be considered as easy in real life. And, come to think of it, I should really stop watching post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust movies on YouTube. Like I don’t have enough to worry about. Besides, the only one who would benefit from combining the apocalypse with a bow and arrow is Ted Nugent, and he would most likely be HUNTING people like me, not helping them. Just kidding, Ted - don't shoot!

Spilling the Beans

Sometimes, to get the real deal, you’ve got to go the extra mile.
I just made myself a cup of coffee. Now, a typical cup of office coffee comes from a machine that makes a pot using a pre-determined amount of coffee and water. The only thing a coffee drinker has to do is load the thing, press a button, and five minutes later, there will be coffee. As simple as this is, you’d be amazed how people can screw it up.
Office coffee is all about convenience. Unfortunately, office coffee tastes like crap. Whatever flavor the beans had when they were picked and ground has been smashed out the them by the packaging process. They are so dry when we get them that none of the natural oils even seem present in the beans.
As a fan of office coffee, I don’t stand for this. When I make a cup of coffee, I don’t screw around. First, I don’t use the ground beans if I can help it; I’ll grind my own, right in the office, with a little grinder I have. Second, I won’t bother using the industrial machine that plops out the same pot over and over again with the push of a button. I’ll use a French Press, which has the potential to A.) make amazing coffee or B.) make the worst coffee you’ve ever tasted. There’s more of a human touch in the entire process. Is it a lot of work? Sure, but it is work it in the end, because I’m getting more of what makes the product good.
I think this process can serve as a metaphor for what’s going on in the news and newspaper industry. As a coffee junkie, I don’t limit myself to what kind of coffee I drink. I take chances. I take in information from media outlets the same way. Every day, I’ll spend at least a few minutes looking at CNN, FOX News, Free Republic, the Nation, Al Jazeera, the Daily Mail, Der Spiegel, the Weekly Standard, the North Korean Central News Agency and the BBC. I don’t agree with all of what I read, but at least it is a rounded list. One of the reasons I think newspapers are having a tough time with things is that people aren’t taking the same amount of time they used to stay informed. Sure, you can go to a website (like Drudge Report or Huffington Post) or a TV website (like KARE11.com), but the whole idea of having a “one stop shop” for news is really something better suited to a commodity – like toilet paper.
My coffee ritual takes time. My media ritual takes time. In the end, however, the flavors of both are always interesting, and I am glad I took the time to grind my own beans and so my own legwork, so that way, I’ve got more control over what goes into my palette and into my brain.

Taking action....by not taking action?

Presidential leadership styles can vary, and it is interesting to look at how presidents react differently to similar situations.
At a press conference today, President George W. Bush said he wouldn’t call on Americans to conserve gasoline, saying that consumers were “plenty bright” to figure out “if they should drive more or less.”
“It’s a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives,” the president added. “I've got faith in the American people. (I find this ironic, seeing as Bush seems to have few qualms about dictating how other people live their lives; his views on gay marriage and abortion come to mind). It seems like it makes sense to me to say to the world that we’re going to use, you know, new technologies to explore for oil and gas in the United States ... to send a clear message that the supplies of oil will increase.”
I would like to compare this message of taking-action-by-not-taking-action with remarks made by then-President Jimmy Carter in his “Crisis of Confidence” speech in 1979. In it, Carter tried to set “a clear goal” for the energy policy of the United States to never use more foreign oil than it did in 1977. He said new additions to demands for energy would be met from U.S. production and conservation, and promised import quotas, a massive investment in alternative energy solutions, and the creation of the country’s first solar bank, which he said was important to meeting a goal of having 20 percent of the country’s energy come from solar power by 2000. Carter, unlike Bush, wasn’t shy when it came to asking Americans to sacrifice for what he saw as a common good.
“I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel,” he said. “Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense – I tell you it is an act of patriotism. Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.”
In comparison to this soaring rhetoric, I find Bush’s comments both lacking and entirely expected. This is coming from the same administration that, in the wake of 9/11, told Americans, shocked and eager to do something to help the country, to spend money, to live their lives as if nothing happened, to “keep America rolling.” Now, when those wheels are in danger of stopping because the gas tanks fueling them are running on fumes, we get claptrap about “new technologies” and pious rhetoric about not telling Americans what to do.
I may have been a mere fetus when this Carter speech was given, but I know what happened to Carter in 1980: Americans voted him out of office, choosing former California Governor Ronald Reagan in the election Nov. 4, 1980.
Regardless of what historians may think of Carter, I admire his courage. He at least tried to get the American people to do something unpleasant (but, in hindsight, fortuitous and wise). The energy crisis we faced in 1979 didn’t go away; if anything, it came back with a vengeance (for different reasons) in the past few years, when we’ve seen the price of a gallon of gasoline has quadruple in 10 years. Now, when the American people could possible use a little bit of “control over our own lives,” our president instead gives us words as empty as our gas tanks.

I propose a moratorium

I read on cnn.com today that President Bush is going to lift the executive ban on offshore drilling. I'm mixed about this. While I realize the idea might have some potential, I also realize that it's not going to have any impact for some time, as I don't think there are drilling rigs queuing up outside of the forbidden areas waiting to get in (like losers at an exclusive dance club). We'll see.

While he's lifting moratoriums, I think Bush should propose one: I think he should outlaw the use of the phrase "pain at the pump." It was lame three years ago, and now it just makes my skin crawl. OK, maybe it was clever for five minutes or so, but now, it's something that comes merely as an annoyance to an already annoying situation. I GET IT, major media outlets - you feel our pain. You get that the American public is upset with paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline. I've been able to determine this from the number of useless stories I've seen on TV news where gallant news crews will go out to local gas stations and interview people filling up their gas tanks. The typical complaint seems to be, "Yeah, it sucks, but what are we supposed to do?" Please, do us all a favor and stop. It's not like you're going to get any quotes worthy of the next King Lear doing these stories.

I think it's more likely that we'd be able to get a break from the phrase "pain at the pump" than we will from high gas prices this summer. Call your local congressperson today - tell them to say "no" to the phrase "pain at the pump." At this point in the game, it's merely sand in the Vaseline, and an insult to injury.

* p.s. - don't really call your congressperson, silly; I'm sure they have better things to do.

"Petrol is Blood!" - "The Battle of the Bulge"

When it comes to energy solutions, it seems even the slightest hindrance renders the whole concept unworkable.
I was watching a news segment the other night about truckers slowing down to 55 mph to cope with the price of fuel. This raised the concept of lowering speed limits on Minnesota’s highways, to which Rep. Amy Klobuchar responded with a comment to the effect that people weren’t ready to have the speed limit drop from 65 to 60 mph.
If this is true, then we are doomed. The problem facing requires drastic action, not piecemeal commitment from lawmakers seeking re-election and therefore not wanting to rock the boat or cause people to frown on them in any way (this is a blanket statement; I’m not sure what Klobuchar’s plans are in the future).
I would love to see a politician come out and talk about real solutions – not begging the Saudis for more gas, not promising corporate innovation, and not promising some miracle of bio-fuel science that’s going to let us keep driving with the windows down, A/C cranked, at 70 mph. For a moment, I’ll pretend to be that politician.
“My fellow Americans,” I would deeply intone, “the free ride is over. We’re at a tipping point in a petroleum-based world. The rising gas prices you see are not going down anytime soon. If you have memories of driving a muscle car on gas that cost less than a quarter a gallon, do your best to remember them. That situation will never be repeated. We face stark choices ahead – we can either act proactively, or we can bury our heads in the sand.
“This isn’t a problem that can be solved from some miracle on high. The truth seems to be that there aren’t any knights in shining armor on the hill. Biofuels take more energy to produce than they contribute, and seem to be having an effect on the world food supply. In short, even if it were a perfect solution, it would not slake our thirst for consumption. Guess what, America? We’ve got a problem. We’ve built a house of straw. Our entire world runs off a product that, at best, is becoming prohibitively expensive, and at worst is in danger of being exhausted. I have several solutions I think might help to adapt to our present situation.
“First, slow down. There is no good reason anyone needs to go 65 mph, unless you are an ambulance or a fire truck. So, from now on, the speed limit is going back to 55 mph. Second, I’m going to tax the hell out of gas-guzzling cars. If you want to drive the Hummer in this situation, it’s going to cost you. The taxes will go to a special fund that will build solar panels and wind turbines across the county to somehow make up for the power that’s currently being shot out of your tailpipe. Third, car companies? Wake up. Stop making the Escalade, and start making the Geo Metro again. Fourth, gasoline will be rationed. I know this will be deeply unpopular, but let’s face it – the planet is a bit more important than running your boat to go fishing or traveling to the cabin for a long weekend.
“I don’t want to watch the world fall apart any quicker than it has to.
Have you seen the movie ‘The Road Warrior?’ Well, on a bad day, that’s where I think we’re headed. Anything we can do to make our supplies last longer is to our benefit.
“How else will this affect us? Well, if it becomes more expensive to ship groceries to market, we can kiss cheap produce goodbye. So, to ensure that families can at least get proper fruits and vegetables, I encourage people around the nation to plant gardens. We did it in World War II, and we can do it again.”
Of course, I would be immediately dragged from the podium and impeached for having the wherewithal to suggest that the world might be to blame for building a house of straw. That’s probably the reason that Klobuchar hesitated to suggest that reducing the speed limit (surely one of the simplest ways to save fuel) might be a good idea. She’s got a career to look after, and frankly, any politician with sanity would have done the same thing.
Still, it would be nice to see one of these people suggest anything resembling sacrifice for a greater good. As small as it might be, it would at least give me the sense that someone out there is trying to allow us to have a tiny amount of control over our petro-based future.

FOX News: Number one in America's heart

I read something today that made me shake my head (taken from www.mediabistro.com)

"For the 77th consecutive month, Fox News Channel [FNC] finished first in total day and prime time ratings during May. FNC was the sixth highest rated cable network on all of basic cable during prime time for the month (CNN and MSNBC finished 19th and 26th) and the seventh rated network in total day (CNN and MSNBC were 19th and 27th).
FNC also had 11 out of the top 13 programs in cable during the month in Total Viewers. The O'Reilly Factor was the #1 program in cable news for the 90th consecutive month, and saw gains in Total Viewers year-to-year (26%).
America's Newsroom (9-11amET) was up 30% year-to-year, with the program averaging more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined during the time period. Meanwhile, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren has been #1 for 73 consecutive months in Total Viewers while Hannity & Colmes has been #1 in its timeslot for 54 consecutive months."

As a news professional, this makes me look at my viewing audience a little differently. If I were to go by these figures, and determine the mindset and makeup of my audience based on their preference for a network that fails to meet its own "Fair and Balanced" declaration. The mindset of this audience is that:
-America is right. 24/7, 365 days a year, including holidays.
-White people aren't to blame for anything; in fact, they are the only ones that matter. Look at the largely Caucasian staff of Fox's talking head staff, and see if you can draw a different conclusion.
-We're out for blood, and we aren't ashamed of it.
-The weapons of mass destruction are still out there. Somewhere.
-'Osama' and 'Obama' are really the same person.

Need more ammunition for that last one? Well, I've got that. During a live interview May 25, FOX contributor Liz Trotta not only "make the mistake" of calling Obama "Osama," she took the job one step further.
Trotta: "And now, we are having what some are reading are a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, umm, uhh, Obama."
Hemmer (FOX newscaster): "Obama?"
Trotta: "Well, both, if we could." (Laughs gleefully).
Hemmer: (mumbles) "Well, talk about how you really feel."

This is what passes for news on America's top rated "news" channel? This is the sort of "Fair and balanced" coverage that some people actually ingest as their sole source of news nutrition? Rupert Murdoch isn't about improving the quality of journalism; he's about adding to his media empire, already worth billions, and spreading his own Republican views all over it. it's no accident that FOX is this way; judge the rest of the body from the head of the snake. It would be one thing for FOX News to display this sort of blatant partisanship under an admitted conservative banner; newspapers in England and Europe have been doing this for years. But hiding behind "We report, you decide?" Come on! How dumb do you think we are? By the time something has been reported on your channel, it's no issue of deciding - your own internal machinery is quite capable of passing judgment by the time a report hits the viewer's retina.
It's bad enough that such a station even exists; it's worse when it tows the line from a White House that has led the country into two wars with no foreseeable end, a justice department that plays by its own rules, a population seeking relief from high energy prices and finding no support at the top (Come on, George, why should the Saudis help us? We're putting their great-great-great-great-great grandchildren through college), a tarnished image around the world, and an unspoken fear of a future that, before 9/11, seemed bright. I don't know about you, but I'd like to have my country back, please. While all news organizations are guilty of their failures in vetting the White House's spin leading up to the Iraq War, at least some of them (NBC, CNN) have tried to make up for this by having coverage that is more skeptical/critical of what the powers-that-be-are saying. For an example, look at all of the news that came about about government incompetence at all levels when it came to Hurricane Katrina.
If FOX wants to be a Washington mouthpiece for a conservative agenda, that is their business. I just wish they'd be honest about it and not pretend to be anything else.

P.s. - And a final reply to those survey results and bumper stickers that suggest one can live guilt-free as a conservative? That's great - but the reason the rest of us are feeling guilty is because we still have a conscience.

Historical fact-fudging

Today, I caught a slight re-write of history. It was so small most people won’t catch it, but I sure did, which earns me my gold star for the day. Earlier today, President Bush made comments basically inferring that Barack Obama would be an appeaser. I found the quote at www.HuffingtonPost.com.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Presidential hopefully John McCain was quick to jump on the bandwagon and support Bush’s remarks – and this is where the red flags go up.
“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'' Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. "I believe that it's not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn't sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.”
When I did some research on this, I found that Mr. McCain overstated Mr. Reagan’s role. According to my research, the prisoners were released after the U.S. and Iran signed the Algiers Accords Jan. 19. 1981. The chief U.S. negotiator on this was Defense Secretary Warren Christopher – who, as a member of the Carter Administration, served until Jan. 20, 1981 – the day Reagan took office.
I’m sorry Mr. McCain, but what did Ronald Reagan have to do with releasing the hostages? If anything, it would appear that negotiation succeeded here where armed resistance (namely the ill-fated April 1980 Eagle Claw rescue operation) failed. McCain is partially right in one of his statements: Reagan didn’t sit down and negotiate with religious terrorists. He didn’t do this mainly because he was not even president at the time. The 53 U.S. prisoners were returned after 444 days of captivity minutes before Reagan was sworn in as the new president. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine that this was done to make former President Jimmy Carter look bad. I would say that to a large extent, it worked.
I think this is another example of I’ve come to call the “Reagan Halo Effect.” He wasn’t directly responsible for the release of these prisoners, as John McCain said. Nor was he solely responsible for ending the Cold War. He worked towards the aim, true – but it’s unfair to every president since Truman to believe that it was a sole Reagan effort.
I was able to throw all of this together after 10 minutes of research on the Internet. Now, I don’t know anyone who can track everything that a political candidate says and verify it for accuracy, but in this case, the facts plainly speak different than Mr. McCain’s statement. It makes me wonder what else we might be missing.

Moments of glory, made for the big screen

One man’s trash is another man’s genre.
I love movie soundtracks. They are the product between a fine balance of classical music and pop accessibility. Most of the time, the music produced for movies is as forgettable as the previews that sometimes run before the movie itself, but on rare occasions, the music produced for a movie is good enough to take on a life of its own. The “Indiana Jones” theme and the “duuuuu-DUM” motif from “Jaws” come to mind. When properly done, a soundtrack not only scores a movie, but enhances it. There are scenes in movie history that would be less without the music that makes them – like the scene I am about to reference from “Apollo 13.”
When the signal is given that the mission is “Go for launch,” James Horner’s score starts with a horn motif underscored with an insistent-yet-purposeful synthesizer baseline. Horner is an interesting composer in this way, because he can use a synthesizer in a way that does not detract from the classical musicians working on the rest of the piece. His score for “Titanic,” which sold millions of copies, is proof of this. In “Apollo 13,” the music builds until the astronauts step onto the gantry leading to their capsule, and the music bursts forth in a triumphant brass explosion that somehow combines heroics with the tension and adventure of the situation. It sounds, in short, like the kind of music that would play if God were to ascend from a cloud to the Earth. The film perfectly couples this music with little details that underscore the sheer heroics of the situation: the astronauts are embarking on a voyage that could well be the pinnacle of their career (and lives), and are dappled with CG-sunshine as they move their bulky, suited selves from the gantry to the capsule.
This scene and the music in it resonated with me so much that I wanted to become an astronaut in high school. I wanted to taste that pinnacle of success. I wanted to be brave, and have talented composers write stirring music for my adventures. I wanted to be an astronaut not because I wanted to go into space – I wanted to be an astronaut they way they were portrayed in “Apollo 13.” This is the effect that a good soundtrack can have. As I was exercising and listening to the “Apollo 13” music yesterday, I felt emboldened, and full of pride to the point of bursting. I wasn’t merely exercising – I was voyaging bravely into the unknown realms of my own tolerance and discipline. This piece of music moved me to tears (as it sometimes does), as if the heavens were blessing my pursuit of fitness. In short, I wasn’t getting on to a spaceship, but the soundtrack behind my efforts made it seem so.
Soundtracks are often (sometimes rightly) thought of as a throwaway accessory to the movie they are made for. In many cases, this is a true statement: how many times have I seen copies of the “Varsity Blues” and “Last Action Hero” soundtracks at thrift stores? Most of these work belong in the very places they are found, but some composers consistently rise above the pack with works that not only stir the emotions, but stand as works of their own. John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith – the list pretty much ends here. It’s a specialized field, and in it, these men have perfected the art of making a good film score. In high school, Williams’ work with the “Star Wars” trilogy was able to open my mind to classical music. Much of his work incorporates classical elements (like using a motif that plays each time a character is on the screen) in a way that is easy and digestible at the same time. In a way, he prepared me for bigger musical adventures.
It’s easy to think of soundtracks as a dorky sort of genre. However, despite this handicap, they can sometimes move the human spirit in ways their creators might never have imagined.

Slow and steady wins the race

I’ve been driving so slow lately that even old people pass me and shake their heads.
I’m not kidding. This actually happened today while I was driving on Interstate 35 through Burnsville. I was puttering along at 55 in a 65 zone and a gold Buick pulled up behind my bumper. I knew the driver was older because he was wearing those huge blocky black sunglasses that senior citizens often seem to sport behind the wheel. They are like welding goggles without any welding to justify them. The Buick sat behind me for about 10 seconds, then flipped on its blinker and took 15 seconds to change lanes. Then, it passed me at a snail’s pace. I caught the driver’s head shaking, and could almost read his mind.
Slower than me? Jesus!
I’m not driving slow to tick people off – I’m driving slowly because I’m trying to conserve the precious gas that makes my job possible. I got the idea while reading a news story last week about an airline saving $13 million a week in fuel costs by slowing down its jets. The five-hour flight was eight minutes longer as a result, but the savings seem to justify that. I’m don’t fly a jet, but my car uses a full tank of gas (14 gallons) a week, and I drive to and from Lakeville a few times a week. Sometimes, it’s twice on the same day (as it will be later today, when I head down there for a City Council meeting). With gas at well over $3 a gallon, my pitiful journalist’s wage doesn’t last very long when I have to put nearly $50 worth of gas in the car a week. So, in the interests of making that fuel last a little while longer, I’ve decided to slow down.
The results have so far been remarkable. My vehicle topped out at 375 miles to the tank this week compared to it’s usual 330. This averages out to 26.7 miles per gallon compared to 23.5 miles per gallon. That will add up over time. Most people don’t seem to take much notice of my stingy rebellion; most are too busy blowing by me going 15 miles faster than I. I content myself by thinking that they are burning up their precious fuel to no end. I’m reminded of one of Robert Shaw’s lines in the movie The Battle of the Bulge: “Petrol is blood!”
He’s right. American life as we know it thrives off of the ability to jump in the car and travel however far or fast one wishes. Our underdeveloped (in comparison to Europe) mass transit system is a testament to this. We’ve known since the early 1970s how unreliable the international fuel market can be; yet we continued on a petrol-based system anyway. I wonder how much farther ahead we’d be if research on alternative energy has begun back then. Now, we’re between a rock and a hard place. Personally, my company pays $0.22 a mile in work-related trips. For a 50-mile trip, that ends up being $11. It sounds like a lot, but factor in the wear and tear on the car along with that, and it’s not going very far. I’ll put it this way: the IRS guideline is for a $0.475 reimbursement rate. With prices going up the way they are, it won’t be long before people like me might be paying more into their tank then they end up getting out of it on payday.
I wonder how much farther it can do. How long will it be before industries (like trucking) start to shudder to a halt due to prohibitive costs? Until then, I’ll keep going as best I can – and as slow as I can. After all, petrol is blood.

Pastor Wright and 9/11

Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has come under recent fire for speaking opinions many find offense. One of these quotes has particularly infuriated commentators around the county. It's about about 9/11, from a speech five days after the event on Sept. 16, 2001: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
I can see why, on one hand, people would be offended by this. Sept. 11 has always been a very personal event for my family, as we lost someone we loved in Tower 2. However, I think the moral hand wringing on what he's actually saying is perhaps overblown. It is, after all, one man's opinion. As much as the thought is difficult to accept, the United States has been involved in many other countries affairs since the end of World War II. Installing the Shah in Iran after a CIA backed coup in 1953 is one example. The Bay of Pigs Invasion is another. In short, we've been active on the world stage in one way or another since we've had the power to do so. It is simply what superpowers do; the Soviets did the same thing while they were able. In the process, we've created enemies - enemies who have long memories.
The events of 9/11 weren't the first attack on the United States by terrorists; they weren't even the first on U.S. soil. In February 1993, the World Trade Center was struck by a truck bomb, killing six and injuring hundreds. In 1996, the Khobar Towers apartment complex was bombed in Saudi Arabia, and more than 20 American servicemen and women were killed. In June 1998, two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Nairobi were bombed. In 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. Osama bin Laden was around before 9/11, but after that day, he was impossible to miss. My point is this: terrorism has been a gathering storm for years. It's not limited to America, either. Just ask the British about that.
I think Americans sometimes have a short memory when it comes to world affairs. It was easy for many people to think 9/11 was a random attack that had come out of nowhere. I've cried bitter tears over that day - and this column is in no was any sign of affirmation for those horrible attacks or the tremendous amount of pain they caused. However, it would be foolish to think that America hadn't made enemies after 50-plus years of activity on the world stage. It would also be foolish to think there aren't those who wouldn't hesitate to attack us if the opportunity arose. On 9/11, we were reminded that, despite our superpower status, we were vulnerable to those enemies.
The attacks in 1993 on the World Trade Center should have opened our eyes that the landmark was a target. Terrorists can be persistent enemies, and, having failed once, it was perhaps inevitable that another group would try again. It was simply too good a symbolic target to not strike. So, plan they did, and when the second time came, the attack succeeded. Only then did many people seem to grasp that we were indeed hated in some parts of the world. The fear was a reaction that seemed to pass over us in 1993, but in 2001, it changed everything. That sense of fear has ended up changing the world, and history will be the true judge of its outcome.
So, Wright's message may be inflammatory to people, but there is also a kernel of truth in it. That, more than anything else, might be a reason why people have responded so poorly to this particular statement of his.