#241 SCALIUS INTERRUPTUS! News Flash Nov. 2, 2012--Romney and Ryan WIN ...

 ... Support and Sympathy of Friends and Family as President Obama Is Re-Elected in Landslide Victory over Republican Ticket (AP 11/2/12). As Predicted More Than a Year Earlier by an Obscure Yet Eerily Prescient Blogger in Raleigh NC

The story begins for this Ass Press reporter (but I DO have an ASSOCIATE two-year degree) in the hospital last summer while watching what "The Blogman" called a  teevee Circus Spectacular of some kind, identified by other people as "The Republican Presidential Primaries."  I had to agree that with clown-characters like Mittens, Newt, and T-Paw--How could it be? Before this, he had long-predicted a lopsided win for Obama's re-election ... to unbelieving friends and family. They even made little circles with their forefingers around their temples, whatever that means.

On his deathbed, The Blogman (as he called himself though he hadn't been at it for a "slothful year") screamed in painful prophecy to any pretty nurse who'd listen: 


Obama landslide! ... Froggie ... Obama landslide! ... the rant trailing off with mutterings of Republicans ... crooks and liars ...  the Gremlin has plunked his Magic Twanger ... Klown Kar ... laughable ... no chance in Hell ... Obama landslide ... Ty Warner ... hahahahahaha ... the manic rantings silenced only as the narcotics took hold.

With his faithful Beanie Baby, "'Smoochy' the Frog" (Ty.inc.)***--which in delirium situ he insisted on calling Froggie the Gremlin--some medical whatnot, and caring Friends & Family, the Blogman pulled through, but was now reduced to street-corner perorations not unsimilar to those above ... cane in one hand and Smoochy/Froggie in the other, often shaking the latter in the faces of innocent passersby. Unbelievers all.

As winter came and went away, as do we all, the outbursts continued, directed at anyone who might listen ... but in no way believe. When pretend-human-being W.M.F.T. Romney (his words) confirmed himself consumptive Presidential Nominee for the revived Know-Nothing Party(his words)--the Obama-landslide rants reached ELEVEN on the Spinal Tap scale. The world standard, I take it.

Still the Unbelievers one-and-all said, "Close race," Blogman, "Close race."

Never happen ... crook, liar, tax-evader ... Obama landslide ... hahaha. Then, more lucidly, 60%-40% Obama ,,, Republicans only have the H-H factor ... 20% HATE and 20% HABIT = 40% ... Tea-Baggers and Lever-Pullers ... haha ... Watch Intrade ...

Then, in mid-August, the announcement of Rand Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate was almost too much to bear for the still-recovering Blogman. Paroxysms of jolting JOY and rattling Rapture threw him into a  diabetic coma, lasting at least several minutes on the couch   

How SWEET it is ...Obama landslide ... George's Prodigal has fucked the dog screwed the pooch for good  ... menage a' deux ... another crook and liar ... caught in the act ... Ayn Rand rampant ... Magic Twanger plunked en finale' ... Obama landslide ... 

And so it was to be, and is, a couple of months later, on this day, Nov 2nd 2012. (Ass Press)

***The Blogman claims to have been sophomore frat-boy Pledgemaster over Ty Warner's pledgedom during his freshman year in college ... which was no doubt the reason that the future Ty(coon) "Toy-Boy" Warner dropped out. [see Mosteller Musings soon about this]
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#222 Sloth

Yeah, this glorious summer-like weather has got to me, I guess. More to do than just write web-log entries ... or less. Can't hope to compete literally with those other "diurnals" in the blogosphere by the likes of Tina Brown or Markos Moulitsas, anyway. Or John Stewart on TV for that matter. I'd have to hire a staff. (Make your contributions payable to my nonprofit organization, Concerned Americans for Superior Homeblogs, by simply making out your check to C.A.S.H.)

It's been too late to re-title ever since I began this blog two years ago, and lately its twin. So look at "daily" this way: current posts and the wonderful archival treasures can be read at any time of day or night. By sunlight, even. Most often the bloggage is produced during daylight hours as well, co-terminus pretty much with my circadian bio-rhythms, too. The latter (and quite recent) compound-coinage is, by the bye, almost pure Latin: circa = "about" + diem (acc. sing. of dies = "day"), modified slightly for adjectival use. Aha. Now there would have been the ideal mast-head: The Circadian Mosteller--i.e., "about" or "approximately" daily. Too late, alas.

So much to write about--and lately it seems, as Hamlet said, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions"--yet sometimes ... you gotta just "hang."
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#141 Health-Care Reform and Communist Threat to America

Yes, to use an old McCarthyite term, we're all "comsymps" when it comes to health care, whether we know it or not. I'm indebted to Bill Maher for picking up on this revealing quote from one of those tea-bagging "bloody hand" protesters (last post) at another "Town Hall" affair in South Carolina: "Keep yer damn gub'ment hands off my Medicare!" I love it. It was in a transcribed (from HBO's Real Time) Huffpost piece about how stupid Americans can be. Agree or not, there's no question at all that the anti-Public-Option (really just anti-Obama for whatever) people are ignorant of, or are covering up the real facts about the extent of government involvement in health care already. And though we may know not ... we love it.

First, indirectly:

And when considering costs of health care, remember the U.S. taxpayer already pays for more than 60% of the American health care bill. this because businesses are allowed to deduct the cost of health care for employees as a business expense, thus reducing taxes on businesses. This puts a greater burden on individual taxpayers as well as paying for government supported health care such as Medicare and the Veterans Administration health programs. [Sierra Club lawyer G.T. Saperstein, Alternet 8/5]

And directly: the V.A. programs mentioned above are, instructively, the ONLY truly socialized health care programs that are in operation now, or, in my opinion, will ever be in future. They do actually employ the medical personnel and provide the hospitals, like no other programs now, to repeat, or envisioned. So much for pure Mao. We do it so well, however. You never hear, as far as I know, of any Republican or Blue Dog congressman objecting to this veritable hotbed of communism operating right under our noses.

Otherwise, while we don't have the Danish cradle-to-grave "welfare state" of my smiling tour-guide friend (DM #139), our federal and state governments do provide direct health-care assistance in the form of Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and children of the poor. Radical Marxism for sure. Problem: you have to be very old, very young, or very, very poor to get it. Solution: if not Single-Payer (my choice), then Public Option.

For, ironically, THAT'S what Bill Maher's ignorant good ol' boy from South Carolina (my home state for 30 years) really wants: the Public Option, even as he rails against it. Somehow for him this wonderful thing called Medicare came solely from the wonderful workings of free-market America, unsullied by the machinations of Uncle Sam. "Hands-off, you commies!" Listen, this guy has had a taste of Medicare, like me (DM #119). In spite of his deluded anti-Obama self, he knows it works just fine ... almost. Costs are too high--blame Big-Med--so there are certain gaps and some co-payments ($150 on a $1500 bill, for me) that ultimately must be fixed/eliminated, in order to make it a perfect system. But it's still a pretty good model of what public health care should be like. You flash your national insurance card ... you get treated. No questions asked. Not even about your politics.
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#137 Health Care and Employment ... or Not

Following up on the unholy alliance of Employment and Health-Care, mentioned briefly in last post, well ... it's a problem. Isn't proper and permanent health care for you and your family really far too important to trust to a JOB? The Great Recession has taught us some hard lessons lately about the vagaries of gainful employment when the Economy takes a dump. People get dumped. And employer-sponsored health insurance gets flushed down the crapper with them. And it seems that, paradoxically, while the economic outlook is improving, employment will be down in the dumps till the last. A feculent situation all around.

Again, the Newly-Unemployed are now faced with the expensive and only-temporary COBRA, or no insurance at all. Job-seeking will be compromised by the onus of "benefits." The new job may or may not have "group." If yes: waiting period. Pre-existing conditions. Different levels of coverage. Loopholes. Far too much INSECURITY for mortal men and women to bear. And completely unnecessary.

A personal story: My ex-girl-(still-a)-friend has/is currently undergoing this kind of Nazi torture. She has several chronic health issues that CAN become life-threatening IF not treated with regular preventative care. Two act drama: When (#1) she changed jobs for the better last year, of undue yet paramount importance were the health-care benefits offered by her new employer. She had to endure the "exclusionary" period, etc., etc. Then this year (#2) she was laid off. Great Recession fall-out. Now she is paying a hefty share of her unemployment check to COBRA--no choice here--which will eventually run-out, along with the unemployment compensation which was needed to pay for it in the first place. Then what?

This simply must not be allowed happen to a good, tax-paying American citizen. And others like her, rich or poor. Health-care security must not be attached to job security--or to the profit-driven insurance industry that willy-nilly goes along with it. Single-Payer is best, but at the very least: Public-Option. Moral imperative: Everyone in this country must be covered from cradle to grave, regardless of means or circumstance, and that includes employment ... or not.
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#119 Health Care Reform and Me ...

... and lots of others. To begin with a "shock and awe" manifesto--any tax-paying American should be able to walk into any hospital or doctor's office, show their ID, and get free health care for themselves and their dependents. Not being able to do that in the richest country in the world outside of Luxembourg, with the best health care in the world (once you're IN) ... is an international disgrace. Cuba might be a better place to get sick. It kills me when some wingnut like Rep. John "Minority Leader" Boehner--please, please pronounce that last name as spelled--says that Pres. Obama is trying to make us "like Britain or Canada." Well cut me a slice of that! ... and serve me up a couple of Scandinavian nations on the side. And don't feed me no baloney nohow about the inefficiency of federal control. Boehner, for instance, grasping at straw-men, likes to ask (he thinks rhetorically), "Would you want to have your medical care entrusted to the US Post Office?" Hell yes, I would. It's a marvel of inexpensive efficiency.

First of all, the "long-lines" objection to tax-paid health care is at best specious and mostly untrue. ( The other tired objection is "Big Gov't between doctor and patient"--Well, can there be any bigger "Betweeners" than Big Insurance and Big Pharma?) Studies have shown that the waiting periods for "privatized" first-time appointments in this country are as long or short on average as those in the "socialized" ones. And here's some anecdotal proof close to home: my late father got free treatment in England for a medical problem when he was on sabbatical at Oxford. Because he was technically an "alien," the only delay was paperwork. Now there's some dreaded socialism for you. Can you imagine that kind of largesse happening here?

Secondly, we've got the "long-line" syndrome right here already with our profit-driven, private-enterprise, health care system--a line that stretches to infinity for the 47 million Americans who are uninsured. (If you don't count the triage line at the ER when the condition becomes life-threatening.) But the situation is only a little better for the "under-insured" (which we ALL are really whether we realize it or not ... watch Michael Moore's "Sicko"), who purposely POSTPONE treatment because of fear of arbitrarily uncovered conditions or prohibitive co-payments. And most "insured" Americans are really at the mercy of their employment situation, anyway (those unemployed or "working-uninsured" are simply shit-out-of-luck)--that is, they are stuck with whatever kind of coverage the company's Insurer provides. For all of this, coupled with the Recession, a study published last week (Center for Health Care Improvement) reported that 17.4% of Americans postponed or delayed medical treatment over the last year and that 40% are going to postpone or delay for at least the next three months. Very sad ... and people will surely die--and have--needlessly.

My Employer of-no-choice-at-all these days is Mr. Social Security Administration, Inc., and his Insurer of choice is called Medicare. Part A is automatic, and I decided to PAY for Part B--none of the extras in C and D (like drugs) which I just couldn't afford, not to mention the expensive, so-called "MEDI-GAP" privately-issued policies that might keep me alive a little longer in hospital, physician-attended and happily drugged-out ... I presume. A simple, arguably naive question: after all the taxes we have paid in, and are still paying even on our SS pension, Why should we be paying anything at all for Medicare, and why-in-the-hell should there be ... "gaps"? For these reasons I recently joined the ranks of those postponer/delayers for fear of under-coverage of a medical condition, and thus additional moneys going this way and that.

Here was the situation: after 3 weeks of futile, self-help healing I was forced to consult my family physician, Dr. E.R., and after a surprisingly short wait was X-rayed and medicated and released for what turned out to be a relatively minor problem: cellulitis in my left foot. I thought I had been self-treating a hair-line metatarsal fracture, since I had one of those earlier in my life, and the symptoms looked just the same. My diagnosis was totally off-base (I'm not that kind of Doctor), but you know what?--it could have been necrotizing fasciitis (easily mistaken for cellulitis), the gruesome, flesh-eating bacterial disease, made infamous on a couple of episodes of "Scrubs." Point is: delayed treatment ... not good. Death and all that.

I was lucky ... and the Medicare co-payments (yes, there were some) proved to be manageable. But my goodness ......
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# 112 The Blogman's Back!

Along with some Blogman-ipulation, date-wise ... forgive me. Real-time is actually June 11th, but I got so stuck on the narcissistic March 6th date (birthday numerology and all that)--that I thought I'd just fossilize it in a sort of hyper-entry announcing the true and authentic return of the Daily Mosteller in my very next blog.

Rash words ... considering the virtual half-year lacuna since the DM was fairly rockin' and bloggin' along with pretty regular regularity. I missed the March "comeback" because of some rather intransigent problems with computers, domestic partnerships, finances, living quarters, and mainly: Health (oh, quit whining)--all solved and salved now, and all of it ultimately having a kind of reverse-salutary effect such that the siren song of blogmanship seems to beckon even more loudly. Like my little piece of the blogosphere, the whole Earth-sphere has been in a state of ill-health for some months now, and needs some attention.

And June 11th is a birthday of sorts: My Very First #1 Entry (more of a test-pattern, really) was on that date and entitled "Of Youth and Age" (but in Latin--shamefully betraying certain scholarly pretensions for the blog ... but I'll never shake that)--comprising my aphorism: It's not you getting old ... it's OLD getting YOU! Now one year older for the blog and me, that little bit of chiasmus takes on even (ohwhatthehell) graver implications.

Moreover, there's a LOT to talk about!--so much more now since since I said that in my hopeful last blog in February. The true June 11th blog will, however, take us back to some unfinished business broached in the abortive DM #105--the post-election speeches of McCain and Obama in November of last year. Looking back at those endings for one of them, and beginnings for the other (and vice-versa?), may provide some insight as to how the contrasting venues and values represented have worked themselves out in practical terms over the succeeding months ... or not.

(Note the new template and a cute little thingamajig for forwarding e-mail, too. Hope the Myriad Readers approve.)
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#111 Saturday Matinee: COMING SOON!

... TO A THEATER NEAR YOU!

THIS WEBLOG! ... wide screen ... technicolor ... cast of thousands ... if the Myriad Readers can only wait a bit longer.

Still some problems to FIX.

Taken some logistical LICKS.

Not to panic,

Nothing satanic,

But the number is six ... six ... SIX!

New target date for total resurrection of the Daily Mosteller mews up a trifecta of my lucky number: upcoming March 6 marks the 66th anniversary of my birth event, and the rebirth of this here blog thing.

Vicissitudinality of healthitude, economitude, domestitude, techno-cybernetitude ... and some attitude have blogged the Blogman down, but he shall rise again.

Watch for it.

There's a lot to talk about.
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#110 Bloggus Un-Redivivus...Until 01/01/09

Sorry ... blogged too soon last post. Will have to take a grievously unwanted vacance from the DM and its Myriads till target-date 1 Januarius 2009. Just too painful to type, especially for a hunt-and-pecker (or so she said) ... like me. The "neuritis/neuralgia" (or whatever the bejeebies it is) has spread to left neck and shoulder blade. A good sign. It's still only a flesh wound. And will continue its progress till either neuro-homeostasis or brain death. One or the other by 1 Januarius 2009.

Meanwhile, in this dead, dark season of "bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang"--they actually do. The Bard evidently just didn't get up early enough. Despite the execrable early sunset, Winter Solstice is not far off ... and life abounds. I can feel it in my left shoulder at this very moment. Pain is an indisputable sign that you're not dead. And in a grand profusion of life-renewal, I've got TWO of my grandchildren celebrating birthdays this week. Same thing happened two-in-a-week last month. Fecundity in the midst of murkitudity.

Sol Invictus!
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#109 Bloggus Redivivus *** Man Is the Measure...

... of all things: of things which are, that they are [like Government], said the Sophist Protagoras, and of things which are not, that they are not [like this Blog for a while].

But first a couple of quotes from William Penn, British-Quaker-Founder of a US state crucial, appropriately, to President-Elect Obama's win on Nov 4. The first is a kind of restatement of the Confucian ideal of the Superior Man (or not) as the measure of good or bad government:

Governments, like clocks, go from the motions men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them are they ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. (1682)

Would that it were not so true. We've seen over the past eight years, though, how the Inferior Man can single-handedly ruin a nation ... well-nigh. Thankfully, there are term limits that we, as individual men (sorry--the only gender voting in those days), established as part of our Democracy based on realistic "negative capability"--checks and balances and all that, too. (In our system the only lifetime tenure of idiots--though Sen's. Thurmond, Helms, and Stevens et alia continue to give it a shot--is sanctioned in Supreme Court appointments. But luckily they are a "committee," and by the very nature of that beast can agree to royally screw the commonwealthian pooch only once or twice in a generation.) So we've got a new man, now (the Confucian Ideal? ... I'm betting on it, you betcha), again by the Consent of the Governed--a principle presaged by that wise old Quaker, William Penn, in almost Libertarian terms:

It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely ... when men hold their liberty by the obedience to rules of their own making. (1693)

"Binds freely"--don't you just love that oxy-you-know-what?! And all of this a century before the Founding Fathers! Well, we have bound ourselves freely to a good man at long last, I believe, and it's getting me misty as I keyboard painfully. William "the" Penn would have voted for Obama ... at least his eponymous state did.

***Yes, Myriad Readers who haven't abandoned it, the Daily Mosteller is back in business ... with a slight time-lag and somewhat diminished capacity. I'll get back to Grant Park (#105) and less derivative efforts as soon as I am more able. It's just a flesh wound.
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#108 Jefferson and Confucius and Obama

What higher cardinal virtue than Honesty?--

The whole of government consists in the art of being honest. (Letter to John Adams)

So far so good, for Obama. On the other, blood-stained hand, How many THOUSANDS and thousands of lives have been lost in Iraq because of the outright lies of the Bush/Cheney administration? The new President may want to look into war-crimes prosecution. But for sure keep to your timetable, Barack: you have a mandate from all corners of the earth now.
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All is still not at full-functioning capacity at Daily Mosteller headquarters (see #105) ... but soon.
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#105 Obama and Me--Grant Park Chicago [Bloggus Interruptus]

What a difference in the post-election speeches of the two candidates!?--well ... venue-wise, at least. Because, in fact, they were very much alike. Switch a few words relating to winning or losing, obviously, and each could have read the other one's speech without too much damage to essential content and tone. Both candidates were gracious and deferential...
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I'll get back to this before the election turns completely ice-cold, but I can't go on right now. OK, without the drama--I mentioned "crashes of one kind or other" (#99) a week or so ago. Well, I haven't got the computer quite right yet (a.k.a. The Rise of the Machines), but its COO will have to take a semi-break because of yet another crash: a recurring neuritis/neuralgia (remember when this used to be a catch-all pain-condition for aspirin ads?) of the neck-shoulder-right-arm region, initially caused by a wrenching neck injury on the tennis courts two years ago. The SERVE in the sport of tennis is an inherently unnatural act--especially at my age. The problem is not so much in the keyboarding, but in the pausing--the at-rest, compose-hunt-peck sequence. I've got to keep the offending member elevated for extended periods. (What a Whiner!) It's just a "flesh wound," as Monty Python's Black Knight would say, and it's getting better ... and you now know more than you wanted to know about that.

But I hate not keeping up, so for a short while expect a minimum of thought and labor in the quasi-daily posts. Not much original programming. Sundries, notions, nostrums, and some favorite subversive quotations most likely.

Three cheers for President-Elect Obama!--Hip ... Hip ... Hoo!!!
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#100 Sunday Sundries

In no particular order...

• Personal computer still down, but flu has improved--enough to say a few words commemorating the 100th episode of the Daily Mosteller. As is traditional with such a milestone--e.g. Seinfeld, Bonanza--the WebLog can now be offered for syndication to the major networks or cable companies or, in extremis, to local stations and even public access channels. Goodness knows, I could use the advertising revenue. I would of course have final say over casting. The late, great Paul Newman would have been great as Dr. J.D.--handsome, blue-eyed intelligence and all--but maybe his longtime partner in crime Robert Redford is available. The age is about right, anyway.

• Speaking of which, my 100 posts have beaten out the mere 70 produced by that venerable old lady from Woy Woy, Australia (my post #27), Olive Riley, who gave up blogging only because she was dead. At 108. I take inspiration from that, and hope to follow exactly in her pioneering footsteps. There is a strange sort of dedication that one develops, I must confess--a dedication that I can't fully understand, but which I will address in a later post about this whole business. Meanwhile, as I pass the hundred mark, blogwise, here's a Thank You to the Myriad Readers who have read and commented (both in and outside the blog). I hope to be back on my game soon.
  

• And a Happy Birthday to Granddaughter Ashley on her Eleventh!

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#99 Friday Funnies--"Crashes" of One Kind and Another

Yep, the Economy crashed all right, but as either Hamlet or Horatio said, "Misfortunes come not one at a time, but in battalions." Attendant upon, it seems, the attack on our national financial structure by the armies of misfortune are the following major and minor skirmishes of this dark October week of 2008...

• Computer crashed several days ago. I'm at this very moment keyboarding away in my inimical hunt and peck style (that's what she said) in my neighborhood public library. Wish mine were this state-of-the-art ... but, notwithstanding, this is why I haven't quite kept up with the "daily" part of the Daily Mosteller of late. It's not "due back from the shop" till next week. (I'll give the Myriad Readers a "consumer report" on the Geek Squad.) Meanwhile, expect only a post or two in the interim.

• My body crashed last week. Intestinal influenza. No doubt due to the FOUL AIR excrescing from the political campaigns and "influencing" my very physical health (original meaning of the word/malady).

• My watch stopped last Monday, kid you not. Needed a new battery.

• I've had a bad toothache for a year.

Life does go on, however, minute-by-minute, in the most positive ways...

• Grandson Marcus will celebrate his 7th birthday tomorrow.

• President-Elect Barack Obama will move into the White House in February. Biden nearby.
  

• Despite the vicissitudes of a random universe, here am I happily hunting and pecking on my 99th post. Who woulda thought...
  

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#89 Joe Biden, I Take It All Back

Let's just forget about my #58 and #59 where I probed your past plagiarism episodes as evidence "tantamount to sociopathy" or some such, and let's just wipe that off the face of a troubled earth ... which I do believe you have a chance of UN-troubling as Vice President. You proved it the other night with heart and mind, especially in stark comparison with what's-her-name.

You might say she played the "parent-card" on you, Joe--kitchen-table "hockey-mom" and regular Mrs. "Joe" Six-Pack--since she couldn't hide her vacuity on the real issues. Your forbearance was admirable, but if only you coulda, but you couldn't, point out that she's really not a very good Mom. I'll shift the sociopathic label over to her, or at least let's agree that her moral conscience is far short of unambiguous. Her first child was born 8 months after her marriage. Her teen-age daughter "has to get married"--as it was put in my day, but make no mistake: Mother Palin admits she's calling the shots. Yet she hypocritically opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools, adhering to the totally proven-to-be-ineffective abstinence-only approach. An abortion for Bristol? Not a chance. It would effectively neutralize the ambitious Palin's neo-con, christianist base, and dim her prospects for staying in, or competing for, higher office. But shouldn't she know that the choice between single teenage-parenthood OR forced teenage-marriage is no choice at all? Either one, in most cases, is statistically doomed to poverty and failure. No real compassionate circumspection on the mother's part here.

And a stickier issue: should Palin have chosen (we'll assume this one was planned) to have her last child at such a risky age? Or then to go ahead and "have it" anyway even though forewarned that it would be a Down's child? Most people of minimal moral comprehension might have some thoughtful reservations about bringing such a child into the world, given that his life and those around him will be fraught with its brevity and pain. But no, "didnt blink," as she often mindlessly says, even as she winks. Much worse, she uses the child as an anti-abortion, political talking-point.

And let's see about how that dubious motherhood might be extended to the public domain, in which she seeks power. Not only would she impose her dark-age religious bigotry on sex-ed classes, but would ban "un-Christian" books from the library, re-institute (always-fractious) prayer-in-school protocol, pollute science-education with creationism and young-earth beliefs (she's got dinosaurs on the Ark, forgodsake), and generally sabotage the public school system for our children. Theocracy stalks, and one of thy names is Palin.

Finally, she's obviously no Cindy Sheehan. She looks forward to her son's deployment to Iraq with unwholesome glee (reminding me of the war-crazed Mater Volumnia in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, who wants to see her son's corpse, should he die in the Roman cause, and bathe her hands in its blood)--as it provides martyrish support for Bush/McCain's "100-year war," and another political talking-point. If she would so gladly send her first-born into the jaws of death, how many other young men would she sacrifice so as not to "throw up the white flag of surrender," as she so heedlessly puts it? Talk about throwing up ....

No, I'm with you Joe. Of course your positions on the issues were just right, almost by default, because she had none. But you nailed it with that catch in your throat near the end of the debate. Some might say it wasn't genuine. Impossible. Let me tell you why I choked up along with you, as I hope did everybody else. I knew the story before I tuned in. First, Palin pipes up with HER glad/sad routine about Track (cheap-shot alert: she also needs help in the child-naming department) being deployed to Iraq. Then it was your turn a few minutes later, as the "debate" was still focused on the war. No contest. For you had gone through this before. The son who is now to serve in Iraq was many years earlier a critically-injured survivor of the automobile crash that claimed your first wife and daughter. Would he pull through then? Will he pull through now? What an incredible and heart-wrenching convergence of time and event ... overwhelming for most mortal men. So please go ahead and be Vice President of the United States, thank you.
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#76 Friday Funnies--the "Plinth" [update]

Arrrrr.... But belay that. Nineteen September is "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and, tomorrow the 20th, my eldest son's birthday.

• The former is celebrated annually by sea-raiding corsairs along the Moroccan coast, I think, and by folks who have, through carefully-deferred dental maintenance over the last ten years, lost a front tooth...like me. "Shiver me timbers" sounds so much more authentic with the acoustic hint of a whistle. The tooth had become decadent no doubt, like its owner, but it was a stealth attack--piratical if you will--the evidence of marauding Tartar-beings becoming known only after the fact (i.e.= in the palm of my hand). Admittedly: after using said frontal dentation as nature intended in time of need...as pliers. The tooth actually split laterally in half, the front part leaving behind its stumpy counterpart--and forensic clues to the crime. So like a true buccaneer, this Blogman needs to SAVE UP for a "peg-tooth"--a prosthetic...no, make that cosmeticappliance of some sort, just to make him more presentable in the marketplace. Or lacking that: a pirate costume and a stuffed parrot.

• Birthdays are celebrated annually too, I understand. But tomorrow I inaugurate a new tradition in the gift-giving department, which I'll share with my MRs. For their birthday presents, all my sons and whoever else from now on will receive a "thought-gift"--after all, isn't it "not the gift, but the thought that counts"? So let's just take that to its reductio ad absurdum and make the damn thing TOTALLY IMAGINARY. Hey, it'll never wear out. And size and cost...no object. So I'll be giving my son a PLINTH--defined as a pedestal-like slab of stone, usually squared, beneath a column or pier; OR, in wood-joinery a flat member at the bottom of an architrave, dado, baseboard, or the like. That should explain it. Love the word. Borrowed from L. plinthus > Gr. plinthos = "stone"--but cognate in the language already (as often happens) from the Indo-European up through Germanic as our more familiar "flint." Rocky, not woody origins. My gift therefore will be a blue-speckledy granite slab 6' x 6' square and 3" high, to be viewed in the mind horizontally with a slight parallax, to get the full effect. Now this can exist purely in space, or it can be imagined in the back yard surrounded by rose bushes and a gaggle of mannequin pis statues--whatever. Such is the infinite UTILITY of the Thought-Gift.

• Which...I hereby dub generically a plinth, for all time. In honor of its maiden voyage. Thought-gift = Plinth. And you are free to use the term as such, royalty-free, whenever you feel the pinch of hard economic times, or of your own native parsimony. "Sorry, Mildred, I can only afford a Camel-Caravan to Shangri-La this year. Next year a Date with George Clooney or that Breast Augmentation you've always wanted...I promise."

But you know what?--you can give a Plinth to anybody, any time of the year, and all the year around. Make somebody happy with a Plinth today. Failing that, try to come up with a word that rhymes with it. I couldn't. Or just try to pronounce its plural: "plinthes." Takes a pirate, maybe.
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Update 9/21: Just thought of a rhyme that a pirate might enjoy: "absinthe"--the Green Fairy...to be quaffed while contemplating a Plinth.
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#73 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• Not so much Hurricane Ike himself/itself, but those incredible blockheads who refused to evacuate--why?: some said "pets" forcryingoutloud--thereby needlessly delaying and overtaxing legitimate rescue and recovery efforts.

• Not so much the scurrility of the political discourse of late--the former can be kinda fun, and, anyway, be ultimately self-defeating--but the inanity of the scurrility. Positively jejune. "The lipstick is analogous to what?" "The pig to which?" "How does the pit-bull fit in?" "Or was it a Basset-hound?"

• Not so much the high gas prices--we're gonna have those forever--but the mind-boggling, virtually instantaneous GOUGE...and pump-panic. Caused us to cancel a planned, relatively short trip, in hopes that things would at least stabilize soon.

Best of the Week

• I'm groping for one here, but, alas, it's just been a bad week all around. Too much of Arnold's "darkling plain, where ignorant armies clash by night"...and by morning, noon, and all over the place, it seems. More light in the world next week perhaps. Lux Esto.

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#55 Mosteller Plantation--pt. 3: The Trek North...and South Again

About a half-mile up from Mosteller Millstream (the only official, map-worthy landmark bearing the ancient name these days) is the wooded, but not overgrown, family plot. Off-property now and maintained by a local church, the cemetery's last graves date from the turn of the century. One prominent headstone stands out...or actually down, now. Though toppled, the six-footer vaingloriously marks the grave of the long-lived, post-civil-war patriarch, Berryman Mosteller, true country squire and sirer of seven sons, whose progeny in turn descends to me and mine.

His great-great-etc. grandson, Andrew, decided that he would rather tinker with a newfangled invention--the motorcar--than to be chief Miller on the old homestead. So, after a few months at Henry Ford's "university" in Detroit (the family's first foray into Yankee territory), he returned to Adairsville to pick up his young wife and son (the future Dr. J.D. Sr.) and move even farther south to Florida to grow a few oranges and open the Mosteller Garage. My grandfather was eccentrically loyal to his nominal mentor, driving a Model "A" Ford he called "Horace" (always well-tuned of course) until its "death," and shortly before his. (His second-only-and-last car?--a Studebaker! of all things)

Alas, though the Garage still stands in Mt.Dora (near Orlando), it became a victim of the Crash of '29...thus failing--family-business-wise--to become a successor to the century-old successfullness of the Mosteller Plantation and its subsequent incarnations. Andrew's three sons (we are specialists in the male-offspring department) had to look elsewhere for honest employment. The scion, James Donovan Mosteller, (after an M.A. in ENGLISH [!] and Chair of the Dept. at Oglethorpe College in Atlanta) found his way north (repeating long-term his father's brief trek) with young-wife-Iris and toddler-Junior to the University of Chicago. This is how we wound up in OBAMALAND, and he as Dean of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard IL for many years, and I as Kalamazoo College alumnus.

But I guess the lure of gentle climes and mint-julep dreams (oh my) was too much for us. My father ended his career as Full Professor at New Orleans Baptist Seminary, after also serving as Dean and Acting President over his years there. I came back south to get a Vanderbilt Ph.D. and ended MY career as Full Professor of English (and quondam Chair) at Coker College in Hartsville SC. And here am I in Raleigh with some of my grandkids nearby. My oh my. "One never know...do one"--as Fats Waller used to say. However, Myriad Readers, you can be sure that I'll keep you updated on the Mosteller clan, ad nauseum. But this is all the memoirage you can take, for now.
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#53 Monday Mourning--Eduardo McKimmon III

Obit: Eduardo McKimmon III died a couple of weeks ago at the too-young-age of 43 in a boating accident. Total shock. And I learned a lesson. For some reason, still unknown, "he fell off the boat and never came up," until, of course, they recovered the body. Before that he was very much alive, "Mr. Hustle" around our apartment complex where he was chief maintenance man. Very much a man indeed: wife, kids, and a mistress or two, one right here on staff and in broad daylight. (His Italian genes no doubt.) Yet he had a curious, mincing, quick-step way of walking, almost effeminate and always in a hurry. Everybody else naturally called him "Ed" for short (and he was) except me, because he took pains to delineate his dual Romano-Celtic heritage, and because his full first-name comes so trippingly off the tongue. This pride of ancestry obviously extended back over three generations, at least. And he took great pride in his work. He was one of those "no-problem" kind of service people that you like to see when you have...a problem. Prompt attention, quick fix. He probably did about a half-dozen routine fix-ups on our apartment over the two years we knew him, including an "off-the-books" job assembling a weight-bench for me. The last one he did was next to inconsequential. Garbage disposer freeze-up. Now there's a low-priority situation for you, but within minutes of notifying the office, there was Ed-u-ar-do at the door with his special jump-start tool. Two-minute job, but we chatted on about nothing for another twenty. Last words from me to Mr. McKimmon on this earth?--"Good job, as usual." He was dead in a matter of weeks.

Here's the anomaly: immediately after the momentary shock-waves of disbelief ...astonishment ...grief ...anger ...disbelief had finished roiling around the brain pan--I felt strangely ...good. Oh, the grief is still there all right--did I mention that he was also a helluva nice guy?--but Oh, I'm sooooo damn lucky that my last valedictory was just that: "farewell-words," life/work-affirming words. Simple ones, I know, but ones HE would appreciate as capturing the identity he chose for himself in life. And what a load of guilt would be upon me had things gone differently! Or parting words been negative. It easily could have happened that way for either one of us. It's not good to say bad things about the Dead, so the saying goes, but we also have to be chronically careful not to say bad things to the About-To-Be-Dead. And that just so happens to be each and every one of us, one moment to the next.
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#49 Obama and Me--pt. 3: Census-Schmensus

Re: the US Census Bureau report/prognosis today that "minorities" will have slipped into the "majority" by 2042 A.D. Ha, I say, to that. I'll still be in the majority: Dead People. But here are the round numbers predicted circa 2050: non-Hispanic whites 46%; Hispanics 30%; blacks 15%; Asians 9%=100% total. No multi-racial category? Evidently the USCB is operating on the old Jim Crow "one drop theory," that was ever so popular in the South, as explained in an earlier post. In fact, I do not recall if we were even given a choice like "multi-racial" or "other" or "mixed parentage" or some such in the last census.

But no matter, respondents would have chosen their cultural/ethnic identity anyway, just as they do on those various Application Forms (college, employment, etc.) that involve Affirmative Action (Harvard Law?) in some way. However, I've always thought that the 10-year census business was based on somewhat shaky premises. The forty-year projection is even shakier, for by that time how many, many more respondents will have a mixed genetic heritage like Obama (who doubtless checked "black" on his census form) and my 4th son; and by that time, too, how many more (I hope) will be able to DISAVOW ethnic and sub-cultural differences, especially including religion, THE most divisive element in American society today.

Anyway, various pundits now are finally admitting to what I said earlier about about Obama's mysterious 20% gap between The Dems 60% approval rate and his-- a gap that still has him about even with McCain. It's race. Those 20% have "shot him in the barnyard" for no other reason. That last was a private allusion to a science-fiction story that has has popped into my head at relevant times for over half a century. (Unfortunately, the author and title hasn't.) As with many sci-fi works of that period (those of Heinlein and Bradbury quickly come to mind) it had a strong social/moral message. Briefly: naked handsome brilliant young man with a tan falls from sky; from future; be-clothed and soon beloved by farmer's daughter and everyone else; except Dad who discovers that in the future all have become racially homogenized (and all the better for it); and shoots him dead because he didn't want his daughter "married to no nigger." I do remember the last line verbatim; it had such an impact on me at that young age. But there's your "one drop theory" for you, brought reductio-wise to it's mortally logical conclusion. And you know that there have already been publicized cases of threats on Obama's life for just that one reason. I wring my hands.
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#37 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• The Great John Edwards Disillusionment. He should have stayed in The Law. After a little research, I learned that he was a really bang-up lawyer, one of the best "plaintiff attorneys" in the region. He won some celebrated and it seems highly-principled civil suits for the "little guy" before leaving for politics. I guess THAT was his first mistake.

• Former astronaut (Apollo XIV) and moon-walker gives credibility to UFO-nuts and adds fodder to the somehow influential sub-culture of irrationality in demon-haunted America. He says that "little people with large eyes and big heads" (phone home ET?) have been been walking among us for decades, though he admits not seeing any. The "gubment" is of course covering up, he says, ever since Roswell. This kind of "evidence," along with fuzzy photo/cinematography and eyewit(less)ness accounts, just won't wash, and can be easily explained. He should know that no hard physical evidence has ever been discovered. He should know even better that our high-tech surveillance can pick up a space-borne object the size of a pencil. Walk on the moon, become an old luna-tic.

• Waste-of-taxpayers-money dept: FOUR law-enforcement agencies(state and fed) and about 50 people and vehicles and flying machines coordinate a field-eradication of $12 million worth (they say) of MARIJUANA in nearby Harnett Co. NC. No arrests made. As usual. However, they can be proud that they have put a dent in the ONE BILLION dollars' worth produced in NC each year. The Weed beats out tobacco and cotton for the #1 cash crop in the state (as in 12 others) year after year. There's so much wonderful foolishness here that I want to get back to it a little later, where I will also present some other Libertarian bona fides.

Whatever of the Week

• Today is Parents Day. Across the nation. No kidding. In 1994, Congressional Resolution #36, para. 135 proclaimed the 4th Sunday of July as a day for "recognizing , uplifting, and supporting the role of parents in the rearing of children"...and to "celebrate our dedicated parents." It further exhorts us "not to let life's problems and concerns [like kids?] take precedence over our responsibility as parents." Woops. Oh well, despite the questionable logic, I'll celebrate anyway. It's the law.
  

Best of the Week

• The Obama trip. While evidently providing no big "bounce" at home, all agree that he accomplished a great deal well-needed image-building abroad.

• Tennis is back on the Tube (sorry). The US Open series for is on every week now right up to the main event. And here's a little heresy to be appreciated only by the idle aficionado--I like the 2-out-of-3 men's matches over the best-of-5 played in the Grand Slam events (except for the women). They do tend to go on at times, as if the players WERE in need of a more concentratedexperience. Besides, the men have complained that the women shouldn't get equal money in the Slams because they're never called upon to play 5 sets. Problem solved: 2-out-of-3 for everybody, all the time.

• Habitat for Humanity. Had no idea (shoulda) that they are GLOBAL, until I saw a report last week on a local senior-high-school girl who went to Africa for a couple of weeks to help build HUTS! of all things. That's what they wanted and that's what they got. Just great. Here are those better angels of the American character that I was talking about.
  

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