Bowie and Bing.

Par rum pum pum...

And the same song by Seger, with a decent light show.

Something old...

someone new...

It's not mandatory to talk to the cops when an accident report becomes an alleged domestic incident... Who knew?

Snow day.

About an inch of the wet stuff on the final day of the holiday weekend; the hunters will be filling their tags. And we walkers can soon get out, without wearing blaze orange.

The seasons turn...

Come on, it's lovely weather...

Is it too early to think about potential outdoors holiday fun?

Steve and Eydie can't help but bring a smile as we plow ahead through the coming weeks...

"These wonderful things are the things we remember all through our lives."

-----------------------

ADDED:

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells,
Ringing through the land...

Trucking trees for Christmas
... for Christmas Day.

("But I don't care cause I think,
the trucks like Christmas too.")

More trucking classics.

Teddy Bear, Red Sovine.

Roll On Highway, Alabama.

Pig Pen? This here's the Rubber Duck...

we just ain't gonna pay no toll.
So we crashed the gate doing 98...
I says, "Let them truckers roll!-- 10-4."

~C.W. McCall

"Listen to the Moon..."

"I've picked up a couple more years on you, babe
and that's all."

ADDED:
"Nothing ain't worth nothing...
but it's free."

"But she don't understand,
they keep showing my hands
and not my face on t.v."

Invest in the future, or subsidize the past?

Robert Samuelson, WaPo:

One of our long-running political stories is the economic assault on the young by the old. We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future. This makes no sense for the nation, but as politics it makes complete sense. The elderly and near elderly are better organized, focus obsessively on their government benefits and seem deserving. Grandmas and Grandpas command sympathy.

Everyone knows that the resulting "entitlements" dominate government spending and squeeze education, research, defense and almost everything else. In fiscal 2008 -- the last "normal" year before the economic crisis -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (programs wholly or primarily dedicated to the elderly) totaled $1.3 trillion, 43 percent of federal spending and more than twice military spending. Because workers, not retirees, are the primary taxpayers, this spending involves huge transfers to the old.

Now comes the House-passed health-care "reform" bill that, amazingly, would extract more subsidies from the young. It mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That's much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24. So, the young would overpay for insurance that -- under the House bill -- people must buy: Twenty- and thirtysomethings would subsidize premiums for fifty-and sixtysomethings. (Those 65 and over receive Medicare.)
...
AARP justifies the cost-shifting as preventing age discrimination. Premiums based on age should be no more acceptable than premiums based on medical expenses reflecting race, gender or preexisting health conditions, it says. The House legislation bans those, so it should also ban age-based rates. AARP dislikes even the 2-to-1 limit. It thinks premiums for someone 22 and someone 62 should be identical. (In insurance jargon, that would be full "community rating.")

This is unconvincing. All insurance aims to protect against risk -- but within groups facing similar risks. Put differently, most insurance is risk-adjusted. Auto insurance premiums vary by age; younger drivers pay higher rates because they have more accidents. Homeowners' policies for similar houses cost more in high-crime areas. This is not "discrimination"; it's a reflection of risk and cost differences. Insurers that ignored these differences would soon vanish because they'd suffer heavy losses and lose customers.

On health insurance, we may choose to override some risk adjustments (say, for preexisting medical conditions) for public policy reasons. But the case for making age one of these exceptions is weak. Working Americans -- the young and middle-aged -- already pay a huge part of the health costs of the elderly through Medicare and Medicaid. These will grow with an aging population and surging health spending. Either taxes will rise or other public services will fall. Already, all governments spend 2.4 times as much per capita on the elderly as on children, reports Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution. Why increase the imbalance?

It's true that premiums for older people would be higher. But this might have a silver lining: Facing their true health costs, older Americans might become more eager to control spending.

David Brooks, NYT

During the first many decades of this nation’s existence, the United States was a wide-open, dynamic country with a rapidly expanding economy. It was also a country that tolerated a large amount of cruelty and pain — poor people living in misery, workers suffering from exploitation.

Over the years, Americans decided they wanted a little more safety and security. This is what happens as nations grow wealthier; they use money to buy civilization.

Occasionally, our ancestors found themselves in a sweet spot. They could pass legislation that brought security but without a cost to vitality. But adults know that this situation is rare. In the real world, there’s usually a trade-off. The unregulated market wants to direct capital to the productive and the young. Welfare policies usually direct resources to the vulnerable and the elderly. Most social welfare legislation, even successful legislation, siphons money from the former to the latter.
...
But, alas, there would be trade-offs. Instead of reducing costs, the bills in Congress would probably raise them. They would mean that more of the nation’s wealth would be siphoned off from productive uses and shifted into a still wasteful health care system.

The authors of these bills have tried to foster efficiencies. The Senate bill would initiate several interesting experiments designed to make the system more effective — giving doctors incentives to collaborate, rewarding hospitals that provide quality care at lower cost. It’s possible that some of these experiments will bloom into potent systemic reforms.

But the general view among independent health care economists is that these changes will not fundamentally bend the cost curve. The system after reform will look as it does today, only bigger and more expensive.
...
Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.

We all have to decide what we want at this moment in history, vitality or security. We can debate this or that provision, but where we come down will depend on that moral preference. Don’t get stupefied by technical details. This debate is about values.

Did y'all know in Communist China the state-run system allows only one child per family, to benefit society? I wonder what Mr. Brooks thinks of that -- values, baby!

You choose yours (and pay for 'em); I'll continue paying for mine, without pushing the costs on to others in the pool. Sadly, we don't have the luxury anymore of "choosing" as Broooks suggests. In reality, we're spending somebody else's money, and the heydays of high living that Mr. Brooks and so many of his Boomer cohorts knew, are gone. No extra money laying around means we don't get to make these choices (on somebody else's dime, of course.)

I have a strong feeling that the Boomers just don't get this though. That they can continue consuming -- medical services in this case -- and eating themselves fat while others (non citizens?) do their manual labor chores. And then, no distinguishing in insurance plans between the healthy with minimal care costs and needs, and those with "pre-existing conditions" perhaps self imposed by poor diet, exercise, and smoking/drinking. Where's the red light for all that, if'n it costs the same to drive in the fast lane as the slow, and the slower ones are responsible for cleaning up after any crashes?

If there's honestly going to be no opt-out for those who would prefer to pay directly for their own costs incurred -- those people who indeed do treat minimally, yes all the way up to their date of death (you don't think those elderly exist? that they all run up huge costs in their final years -- ha!)-- then this bill had better die soon.

Can you imagine trying to sell this plan with the economy in deep hurt, the deficit out to here already, and an increasingly unpopular president with a Congress that -- to put it bluntly -- nobody trusts because they are so bought and sold....

Listen to the people of today and tomorrow, and kill this bill. Those still living in the flush past are welcome to donate their extra money to charity, to cover the costs of the needy uninsured poor with no relatives to help pay for their care, as well as the fatcats who understand how to make a buck by selling unnecessary services and shifting costs.

8-pt.buck

At 3:15 p.m., a call from the field: an 8-pointer with a nice rack, suitable for mounting, I'm told. Hopefully that's just optimism from the excitement of the chase talking; though we could always find a spot in the living room...

Mal, his friend John, and a young man whose mother used to rent from Mal's brother, back before she headed home to Alabama for a few years, before relocating to northern Iowa at the start of the school year. He took hunters' safety class up here years ago, hunted small game in Alabama, and was eager to go out with Mal in Wisconsin this year once they got all the details worked out.

So glad they got the buck. And from what I hear, a nice one, at that.

Go you...

NU. (Wildcats take down the Badgers in Evanston.)

Posting will necessarily be light this holiday/hunting week.

Make it a great season ... an end to one calendar year, a looking ahead to the next. (Thanks be to God.)

A Friday Earned.

I've taught swim lessons for years; this is my first season coaching. After four weeks, you get an idea of each swimmer's style and work ethic.

"Life Swim practice is tough; be tougher."

You're teaching efficiency and endurance, upping the yardage and designing sprint drills, all the better to prepare them for competition. But you're also teaching attitudes, and competing against the clock and their own personal times ... it all comes packaged as "winning".

Irish journalist Paul Doyle summed up what Ireland's youth are learning this week, and truth be told, it's not such a bad lesson to learn early, so long as you keep your spirit about you:

If there’s one good thing that came out of it, and comes out of the continued refusal to use [video]technology, it’s the fact that… blatant injustices in something that’s relatively trivial like football teach you to question authority in other domains. So its a good lesson for the kids.* That’s what I was telling my son, as he was crying into his supper last night.

Plus, somebody channelled their negative thoughts about the match into creating a dance-like video. If you can't beat 'em, why not accept your loss graciously since everybody, Thierry Henry included, is admitting the refs missed the call?

But never forget.

----------------

* that, and "Don't stop playing until you hear a whistle."

Ask, but don't tell.

At least she gets to keep the money, and the gold. Hopefully she'll find a place to compete too.

South Africa’s sports ministry said in a statement Thursday that Caster Semenya,18, the world champion 800-meter runner, had reached an agreement with track and field’s world governing body to keep the gold medal and prize money she won at the world championships in August.

Most notably, however, the sports ministry did not say whether Semenya would be allowed to continue to compete as a woman. The statement also did not disclose the results of sex-verification tests she had undergone.

“As such, there will be no public announcement of what the panel of scientists has found,” the sports ministry said. “We urge all South Africans and other people to respect this professional, ethical and moral way of doing things.”

Perspective.

The "news media" should be called on this stuff, because not everybody operates at the lowest common denominator.

Love is like a rock.

We're gonna getcha all singing along with us now, folks...

You can’t depend on your teacher.
You can’t depend on your preacher.
You can’t depend on politicians.
And you can’t depend on superstition.

Love can rock you.
Never stopped you...
Love is like a rock.

You can’t rely on Mother Nature.
You can’t rely on your paycheck.
You can’t depend on you doctor.
You can’t rely on your lawyer...

Love can rock you.
Never stopped you...
Love is like a rock.

Not bad.
Let's try it again...
A little bit louder this time.

For you will still be here tomorrow...

but your dreams may not.

5 years after a massacre.

Life goes on ...

"I just keep toolin' along doing the best I can with what I got," Pam said. She said a family friend always refers to 2004 as "the year from hell." But, Pam said, her daughter Aislinn corrects her. "Aislinn keeps telling her that she was married that year."

Heathcare rocks!

See me. Feel me.
Touch me. Heal me.

...

From you, I get opinions.

People don't worship their doctors so much anymore. But there's an awful lot who still follow what they're told. If they trust who's doing the telling.









Now go for a walk.

Turn it up.

Say what you will about the book, the marketing's fabulous -- natural-like.

Michigan - thx 4 Going Rogue ! Perfect tour kickoff w/ Kid Rock tune praising Northern MI humming in backgrnd @ Barnes/Noble. Above expectations.

[ed: link added]

----------------------

ADDED:

Going Rogue follows Palin from childhood to her departure last summer as Alaska's governor. The title refers to her independent streak as a candidate, stemming from complaints within the campaign of GOP presidential nominee John McCain that she had gone "rogue" by disagreeing with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan last October.

Turns out she's not a clothes horse afterall.

So says the stylist hired by the McCain campaign to outfit the Palin family in Minneapolis on short notice before the Republican convention -- who did all the picking out and purchasing --paying retail at Neiman Marcus over Labor Day weekend.

Funny how those "stereotype" stories begin to take a life of their own. Why are we so eager to buy in, though, in this day and age?

Feel free...

Andrew Sullivan comes up with the most dramatic excuse for taking the day off that I have seen in a very long time:

This is only the second time in its nearly 10-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then.
...
Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning -- specifically her fantastic story of her fifth prgnancy -- we feel it's vital that we grapple with the new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

There are only three of us.

And we have had the book for less than a day.

Oh my. "grapple", "new data", "complicated" ... For heaven's sake, it's a book, a current biography written in a folksy tone! No charts to study, no heavy foreign policy -- this isn't exactly Winston Churchill's memoirs.

By all means, give yourself permission to spend the day reading a book. Mental health break; come back with the batteries recharged and all that. But enough with the drama! and heavy investigative reporting tone.

Perhaps he just won't stop until he sees a picture of baby Trig emerging from Palin's vagina, and even then, how will we know it wasn't a staged shot??

Much of Andrew's objection to that fifth pregnancy seems to come from the fact that Palin didn't run to the nearest hospital at the first signs of labor. Truth be told, you should stay on your feet and keep active, and not check in to the hospital too soon, where you'll probably soon be waiting horizontally on a bed. (Think gravity... , and time.)

After previous deliveries, I suspect Palin knew her own body well enough, and had faith that she'd be where she needed to be in time for the delivery, to ensure her baby received proper care. What exactly does Sullivan know about the experiences of women in labor, and why is he so obsessed with this woman anyway? His attraction to Levi is understandable, but if he's basing this whole "investigation" on the soon-to-come revelations of a 19-year-old in the know...

I think the Dish might need to take the rest of the week off.

No explanations necessary, fellas. Really.

Learning on the job.

For all his shortfalls in experience, I do think President Obama is fast on the uptake -- a quick learner. So I'm wondering what exactly he took from his visit to China.

By Helene Cooper, NYTimes

BEIJING -- In six hours of meetings, at two dinners and during a stilted 30-minute news conference in which Presidenet Hu Jintao did not allow questions, President Obama was confronted, on his first visit, with a fast-rising China more willing to say no to the United States.

With China's micro-management of Mr. Obama's appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China's ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama's agenda, analysts said.
...
White House officials maintained they got what they came for -- the beginning of a needed give-and-take with a surging economic giant. With a civilization as ancient as China's, they argued, it would be counterproductive -- and reminiscent of President George W. Bush's style -- for Mr. Obama to confront Beijing with loud chest-beating that might alientate the Chinese. Mr. Obama, the officials insisted, had made his points during private meetings and one-on-one sessions.

“I do not expect, and I can speak authoritatively for the president on this, that we thought the waters would part and everything would change over the course of our almost two-and-a-half-day trip to China,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman. “We understand there’s a lot of work to do and that we’ll continue to work hard at making more progress.”

If he took anything from the Chinese example of how a leader with power stands firm in the interests of his country, bully for the president. He's going to need those skills very soon, it seems.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israel triggered a fresh rift with Washington over settlement building on Tuesday by approving the building of 900 homes for Jews on West Bank land it occupied in a 1967 war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality.
...
"At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. ...

The United States objected to the continued evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
...
Israel rejects the international description of Gilo as a settlement and says it is a neighborhood of Jerusalem, the city it claims as its capital. Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, also captured in 1967, among 2.7 million Palestinians.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war, a move that was not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
...
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Israel's decision was a further step "intended to prevent the Palestinian state from happening."
...
[A]n aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel's move "destroys the last chances for the peace process."

Too bad in the long run for all parties, such unilateral actions in the face of the human numbers.

Keep hope alive for a strong leader to emerge, one who understands that peace is conceived, and a new world created, only where there is a credible promise of "justice for all" ...

Powerful leadership by firm example? Only time will tell who's got the upper hand in these international games.

Looking forward.

L.A. Times, Politics and Commentary;

What's very interesting beyond Palin's show biz book-selling promotion is a possible developing change in the way U.S. presidential candidates emerge, as new media enables newcomers to become known to voters faster than previously.

However, at the moment, none in the current field of potential Republican candidates -- Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and soon Tim Pawlenty -- holds an office, giving them full-time to raise the multi-millions and political chits for a realistic 2012 campaign where the concept of change to believe in will switch to the GOP side.

That kind of selection process would be more akin to parliamentary democracies like Canada, where prominent figures can become political party leaders and then get elected to office and lead the government or opposition.

One thing is certain: The current crop of GOP leadership, both within and without Congress, makes Benadryl seem like a stimulant.

Love her or hate her, that chemistry changes this week with the addition of what's-her-name.

~ Andrew Malcolm

On a lighter note...

"Bill Belichick: the smartest man in the room?
No longer a sure thing."

For at least the time it took to make this senseless gamble, the three-time Super Bowl champion coach didn't even automatically qualify as the smartest living organism in his own office. Surely there's a housefly on the wall or a houseplant over in the corner with the primitive intelligence needed to understand that you punt on fourth-and-2 deep in your own territory unless you're out of time and the other team is ahead.

In this case, Indianapolis, hard up against the two-minute warning, was the team out of time. Indianapolis, down 34-28, was the team in trouble.

Would any of this have carried the familiar aroma of Belichick genius if the Patriots' gamble had paid off with a first down?

No. This is a circumstance where you don't even think about measuring the odds of New England's offense getting 2 yards against the odds that Manning might drive the length of the field and win the game in a classic two-minute drill. This is a circumstance where you don't think at all.

You punt. You just punt. Give Bill's housefly a buzz. He'll back me on this.

~Dave George

Cracks me up, he does.

How do you solve a problem like sharia?

I'm not sure what's all so funny about this -- who the joke is on, but it makes sense to my demographic. If you can't deny or charge premiums comparable to the risk, then you're "solving the problem" by forcing the young and healthy to subsidize the sick and elderly.

At the CLE I attended last month, the banker (late 50s, early 60s) was explaining how he structured his mother's finances, so that she could best qualify for elderly and low-income entitlements. Great!

So the young and healthy, and those risk-takers with different priorities just starting out, will continue to pay for this man's mother's coverage, so he is free to use his accumulated resources to travel and consume, instead of using some of his own money to pay for his mother's care.

Next thing you know, we won't be feeling the price of protecting corporate and private interests overseas, because only the fools volunteer to fight these wars.

How long do you think the underclass can continue to effectively fight the battles our upper classes are picking, in order to avoid responsibility and avoid fair play?

Wouldn't it be better if we turn the clock back about 65 years, and come together in identifying and confronting the problems that face us as a nation?

Or do you honestly think we can continue to outsource the work, and still reap the collective benefits? (or is the plan just to make nice with the new world powers, and forget the American dreams of those beneath us?)

David Brooks: all a-tingle at his Republican prospects, no joke.

I was going to let this one pass. The man has a family to feed afterall, and presumably has to churn out the copy, whether in possession of any actual insight or not. (Hence, the dismal track record ...)

But if the gloves are off, and he's scoffing at a "joke" , well why be nice and pretend we're not laughing at him out here?

[D]eep in the bowels of the G.O.P., there are serious people having quiet conversations. The people holding these conversations created and admired Bob McDonnell's perfectly executed Virginia gubernatorial campaign. And now as they look to the future of their party, and who might lead it in 2012, the name John Thune keeps popping up.
...
Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who beat Tom Daschle in an epic campaign five years ago. The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune's face he'd be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you'd pick Thune.

Umm... is that what you're looking for in a politician, Mr. Brooks? Sounds like a dream date; know much about his family?

The second thing people say about him is that he is unfailingly genial, and nice. He grew up in Murdo, S.D., population 612. His father was a Naval aviator [ed: sexxy stock!] in World War II and a genuine war hero. [ed: nothing excites the senses like a genuine war hero, eh David?]. He was called back home after the war to work in the family hardware store and went on to become an educator, as did his wife.

John was a high school basketball star [ed: *dreamy sigh*] [off-topic: Didja know Sarah Palin was a star point guard?] and possesses idyllic small-town manners, like the perfect boy in a Thornton Wilder play. [ed. -- but can he see any foreign countries from that idyllic small town of his, David?]

He appears to be untouched by cynicism. [ed. -- "untouched" ... like a virgin perhaps?] In speeches and interviews, he is straightforward, intelligent and earnest. He sometimes seems to have emerged straight into the 21st century from a more wholesome time. [ed. -- hmm, wholesome/earnest/non-cynical -- why do I think if he were a woman, even one with a face tanned, in a pretty "prairie-chapped" sort of way, this wholesomeness would merely be greeted as a joke in Washington/New York high society?]

After high school, he attended Biola University, a small Christian college outside of Los Angeles. He then got an M.B.A. from the University of South Dakota, and has spent his adult life ascending... [ed. -- I'm not going to touch the hypocrisy in comparing this category...]

He is a gracious and ecumenical legislator, not a combative one. When you ask him to mention authors he likes, he mentions C.S. Lewis and Jeff Shaara, not political polemicists. [ed.-- Good work getting the Narnia thing out of him, David; but what types of magazines you suppose he prefers to peruse in the shitter? Cmon David -- earn that journalism salary, like Katie did!]

The first person who told me I had to write a column about Thune was a liberal Democratic senator who really likes the guy.

Sounds like it's a contagious tingle, David. Up the leg and all? (But thanks for answering my longstanding question about the Times column fodder: where do they come up with this stuff?)

Anyways boys and girls, remember you heard it today from that man with his finger on the national pulse David Brooks:
Bob McDonnell and John Thune are the new faces (tanned, in a prairie-sun sort of way) of the Republican party. And in compiling this extensive analysis, Mr. Brooks thinks voters will continue in future elections to choose their presidents like they do their boyfriends.

Damn shame it takes a woman has to set him straight on that... What a well-paid joke he's become.

--------------

ADDED: In the "give me a man just like Sarah!" category, Mr. Brooks forgets to mention that Thune too is a committed evangelical Christian. With two daughters.

Myself? I'm thinking of holding out for a president who has raised a son to manhood. Call it sexist all you like, but in some fathers' minds, there might just be this assumption that for a daughter, you teach her to be nice and she'll be taken care of. America needs to return to the do'ers, the ones who act on our own behalf, even if it means setting more modest goals to accomplish -- a short burst of energy. Like lifting, growing your muscles.

Get in, get the job done, get out.

None of these endurance contests that eventually make you forget what it was you were jumping in to quickly accomplish. More real respect for the role of the military. Leave the security and peacekeeping chores to the private interests, instead of contracting them out under the guise of the U.S. military -- the PR damage in foreign lands, with citizens confusing U.S. soldiers with paid contractors will hurt us in years to come, no doubt.

Got to keep control, not just give it away so folks'll like ya. (That never works in terms of respect.)

Maybe without sons to think of, our national priorities have been skewed under Clinton, Bush II, and now Obama. Be nice, and passively let others make the big decisions (corporations, foreign countries -- allies and enemies). You can always "marry" your way into the banquet, as the Clinton daughter did in becoming a successful hedge fund manager, even as the economy her father helped tout crumbles in her country.

I'm sure the Obama girls, like the Bush twins, will be successful too -- the cream of the crop rising to the top, even if America as a whole is a much lessened country thanks to foreign compromises and lobbied regulations. You can kinda avoid that, "independence first, make it on your own merits" scoring system that masculinity so often teaches, if you're just raising daughters content to play protected within a set system where merit and results don't matter because nobody's keeping score.

Of course, not everyone raises their daughters like this, but the higher echelons of American society seem to value protecting women from collective realities, much as they often insulate their softer sons by trading independence for safety. Why teach them how to play the game honestly, how to compete against well-matched others, if we can just sock away enough largess today to keep them safely above the rest of society -- able to hire out for their immediate needs? They can always be lawyers and hedgefund managers, manipulating the system for their own ends to keep meritorious victories minimalized and limit the results of honest hard work.

If you've never tasted independence or the pride in a job well done, I imagine you don't miss it much.

More an eagle than a hawk person, myself.

Frank Rich in the NYT analyzes the current defense strategy, and points out why the terrorism boogeyman isn't going to work so well this time around, in convincing the country to commit more soldiers security to the Middle East.

Yet the mass murder at Fort Hood didn't happen in isolation. It unfolded against the backdrop of Obama's final lap of decision-making about Afghanistan.
...
Most of those who decried the Army's blindnesss to Hasan's threat are strong proponents of sending more troops into our longest war.
...
Their screeds about the Hasan case are completely at odds with both the Afghanistan policy they endorse and the leadership that must execute that policy, including Gen. Stanley McChrystal. These hawks, all demanding that Obama act on McChrystal's proposals immediately, do not seem to have read his stratgy for Afghanistan.
...
The thrust of his counterinsurgency pitch is to befriend and win the support of the Afghan population -- i.e., the Muslims. The "key to success" the general wrote in his brief to the president, will be "strong personal relationships forged between security forces and populations."
...
Whether we could win those hearts and minds is, arguably, an open question -- though it's an objective that would require a partner other than Hamid Karzai and many more troops than even McChrystal is asking for (or America presently has.).

But to say that McChrystal's optimistic -- dare one say politically correct? -- view of Muslim pliability doesn't square with that of America's hawks is the understatement of the decade.

As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal's most vehement partisans don't trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops' friendliness (or bribes).

If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the "good" Muslims will be as we try to build a stable state (whatever "stable" means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government?

Better a ditherer than a diddler.

Besides, like Reagan with teflon, this one will just never stick to President Obama...

Friday night lights.

They had a playoff game in the rain here at the new field, with the winner going to state. One small town team, Gilman, against McDonell, the Catholic school in Chippewa Falls. It was well played, with slick pass plays, and McDonell advances.

Walked home.

Handicapping the races.

Sportswriter Dave George thinks up some ways of finishing out the stock-car season on a more competitive note:

What's the glory of playing host to the final laps of the NASCAR season if all the real racing's already been done? That's the continuing problem with the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

For all the technical wizardry that goes into preparing and racing and inspecting these machines, the guys in the air-conditioned offices still haven't come up with a foolproof "playoff" system that guarantees enough drama to last through November.
...
Maybe there are a few more traditional sports models worth studying to bring the suspense back to the speedway.

Try a mutation of the all-inclusive March Madness concept. Every driver in the 43-field starts the 10-race Chase with a chance to win it all. Each week you eliminate the worst finishers until finally, at Homestead, there are two drivers still eligible to be the champion. Whichever crosses the finish line ahead of the other that day is the man.

Or you could strive for parity, like the NFL Draft. The points leader starts at the back of the pack every week of the Chase, with the second-place driver just ahead of him and so forth. The last lap might wind up about the same, but the first 50 would be a hurricane.

Baseball's quirky system of determining a champion has some entertainment potential. Start the last few Chase races at 8:30 p.m. and schedule them for cold-weather tracks, say New Hampshire and Chicagoland. Make closing out each race more difficult by mandating that every crew member who takes part in a pit stop is ineligible to be used again. Finally, around 1 a.m., take the five or six drivers who are still awake and unleash them on a one-lap, winner-take-all sprint to the finish.

Love that last one.

Jimmie Johnson needs to take one for the team Sunday at Phoenix by running out of gas or something in order to cough up another chunk of his points lead. It's the last available opportunity to make a sensation of this thing.

Print the Legend.

Who shot Liberty Valance Nidal Hassan?

The "little lady" story had legs, but it turns out a 42-year-old black officer, with 25 years in the MP, effectively stopped the Ft. Hood killings:

Major Hasan was headed toward the main building, the witness said, when Sergeant Munley came around the corner of a smaller building. It was unclear whether she squeezed off a shot or not, but she fell over backward, disabled with wounds in her legs and one of her wrists, the witness said.

Major Hasan then turned his back on her and began to shove another magazine into his pistol. He did not appear wounded, the witness said. A few seconds later, Sergeant Todd came around the corner of the same building. He raised his weapon and fired several times at Major Hasan, who pitched over backward and stopped moving.

"He shot her, turned away from her and was reloading, when he was shot," said the witness, who was nearby.
...
Sergeant Todd acknowledged that he had played a major role in bringing the violence to an end. He said that he had fired at the suspect, kicked his weapon away and placed him in handcuffs.

"I just relied on my training," Sergeant Todd said. "We're trained to shoot until there is no longer a threat. And once he was laying down on his back, his weapon just fell into his hand, and I'm like, 'O.K., now's the time to rush him and secure him.'"

Purple Fingers Pale...

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

~Carl Sandburg (1878-1967). Cornhuskers. 1918.

------------------------------


ADDED: Randy Barnett links to a decent clip today from Reason.tv.

*Upper Apple.

6 eagles.
1 river.*
2 colors -- gold and brown.

New record for latest date paddling: 11/10.

(Not six sightings, but six at once taking off from the trees on a stretch.)



G'd night.

To Joy.

Tom Blackburn reminds us to take a minute today to celebrate Schiller's 250th birthday ("If you do the math, you notice that Schiller was a contemporary of Jefferson and Madison. Something was in the air in those days.")

Or don't, and suffer the consequence of a life not knowing ... your choice.

By Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Monday, November 09, 2009

The choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is being performed somewhere in Europe today, on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall. It is a rule in Europe that no major ceremonious occasion can be held without it.

The Ode to Joy, or, as Friedrich Schiller called it, To Joy, is not only a poem that inspired the great romantic composer but also a Rorschach test for the young and idealistic. Schiller was thinking of joy when he wrote the poem at 26, but he also was thinking of freedom. The play William Tell, another work appropriate on civic occasions lasting a week or longer, came later. Schiller is known as the poet of freedom.

Schiller was thinking, too, of brotherhood. "Alle Menschen werden Brüder (All men become brothers)" is a bit of editing by Beethoven, but the original line was "Beggars become princes' brothers."

The poem preaches that joy, or freedom, brings all of humankind into one huge embrace with Nature's Creator. When Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth in a celebratory concert televised live all over Europe on Christmas of the Wall-ending year, he had the singers substitute "freedom" for "joy," which is easy in German, where the words, Freiheit and Freude, sound similar and scan alike.

The Wall fell in 1989 on the eve of Schiller's 230th birthday. Tuesday would be his 250th. Germany isn't going all-out this year because of the Wall commemorations and because it had a Schiller tribute just four years ago on the 200th anniversary of his death. If you do the math, you notice that Schiller was a contemporary of Jefferson and Madison. Something was in the air in those days.

Marbach, a picturesque town on the Neckar River downstream from Stuttgart, reopens its renovated Schiller museum Tuesday in the house in which the poet was born. He didn't spend much time there. His family moved when he was 4, and he got out of the duchy Württemberg as quickly as he could after his first play, The Robbers, about a Bavarian Robin Hood, was produced and promptly banned. It's now a classic. German schoolchildren have to read it.

It must have been exciting to live at a time when poets and playwrights were known - and banned - for their ideas rather than for whom they were sleeping with. Back in those days, politicians wrote long articles - and people read them - instead of mouthing other people's sound bites.

Not long ago, a young person, on first encountering Schiller, would glow with exciting dreams and inspiring thoughts. Now, we don't pester students with dead Europeans. We test them. A student might get close to the Ode to Joy through John Lennon's Imagine, but his best chance of encountering that now would be on a Florida license plate.

Songs, as Alec Wilder wrote, are made to sing while we're young. As Winston Churchill did not say (but some clever person did), "If you are not liberal when you are 25 you have no heart; if you are still liberal when you are 40 you have no brain." Even Schiller eventually felt embarrassed by some of the exuberance in his famous poem.

But everybody needs to be young and open to thrilling hopes at some point in life. If you miss that, how will you know what's going on in Beethoven's Ninth when you finally can afford a concert ticket?

We seem to be trying to achieve a generation of young fogies who will confuse accomplishment with celebrity, whose definition of freedom is low taxes and waving the sign they were given, whose highest aspiration would be a better car and whose goal is a shot on American Idol.

Judging by some grown-ups, that project is succeeding. Oh, well. "Seid umschlungen, Millionen..." In honor of the birthday, "I embrace you millions. This kiss is for the whole world."

It's even for the growing number who can't feel the joy of the Ninth.

It'll soon be here...

Suffice it to say, it was a beautiful weekend outdoors. Sunny Saturday, cloud cover yesterday, still in the 60s, with just enough sun peeking through...

I'm not much to photograph my weekend pursuits, preferring to enjoy that which cannot be captured and frozen in time: the sound of oak leaves gurgling at the edge of the water; the scents of decaying leaves mingling on the air with burning wood from a bonfire; the laughs in the distance of children and others taking advantage of getting out, when our high this time of year is typically 45.

The Minnesota gun-deer opener was this weekend too. While a bit of snow might have helped the trackers, and lower temps with the meat preservation, not too many complaints registered.

It's not the sun -- the extra bit of warmth she provides late in the year. It's the opportunity to get out and see what she's shedding light on here today, the changing scenes and the necessary measuring of where you're at, going into the darkness of winter.

I'm starting to eat the blueberries and cherries I put away for the winter; the defenses seem strong, God willing. Not being in the vulnerable group, I'm skipping that flu vaccine to free it up for somebody else, plus I had a fevery bug that laid me low a few days last spring, right before they announced this H1N1 was going around. Hopefully I've built enough immunity to see me through this season, with that and visiting the children in the family and being exposed to the little things, playing close to them.

Wednesday, of course, is the 11th and surely this year, we'll hold Veterans' Day a bit more somber. Wars should be wearying, don't you think? To see through the glorifying hype of the machos on the sidelines. Wars of necessity, foreign excursions, hunting, knowing your backyard turf ...

I've no pictures to offer up today, but I trust you too have your eyes open and live in the present creating your own. For the record, my Saturday morning was spent at our swim opener -- a scrimmage meet, with family members joining in on the relays, and offering us a good mechanical run through for our December and January invitationals.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon outside, at -- true to her name -- Clear Lake. (There's a reason this area inspired Gaylord Nelson, father of Earth Day.) Should have left the park a bit earlier, so as not to drive at dusk with November being the highest deer-vehicle collision month. But I made it home safely and was asleep in the chair by 7:30pm, with a warm meal inside and the weekend chores all completed earlier in the week.

Can we start the Thanksgiving blessing-counting* a bit early this year?

--------------------------------

*Sure beats the blame game, and the neverending aspiring to ever bigger things, so much that you forget the simple blessings you already possess. "When you're counting up all the things you want and don't have, make sure you also factor in all the things that you don't want and luckily don't have."

Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free and all that.

Make it a great week -- yes you can! -- worthy of the freedom sacrifices we'll honor this Wednesday. And don't stop thinking about Thanksgiving...

Saturday morning...

and the day awaits!

Is there anything more promising after a long week mired in old grievances than a Saturday outside with beautiful temperatures and no constrictions?

Ah, to be young and alive ... and free on a fall Saturday. Make it a great one, whatever dust you kick up or waters you churn.

----------

UPDATE: How 'bout those NU Wildcats? Only the Big 10, and one game at that, but at that school, you learn early to savor every football victory. And against a ranked Iowa? Hawkeyes, Buckeyes hold the future in their own hands now ...

Now that, my friends...

is a Moon.

Mac Davis: keepin' it humble...

Everybody!


(and the album standard, recorded live.
"C'mon, where's all the kickers in here?")


And rounding out tonight's threesome, here's a Tom Jones classic. Why? because it's good ... to touch ...

Stretch of away games...

I'd say our Secretary of State rather disappointed in that recent swing. Pakistan, Palestine, Israel ... nobody's happy, nobody's buying in to what we're selling. (or giving away even.)

Can't blame any of them; hope we have a back up foreign policy plan, because it looks like Hamas is still fighting, Israel building, Pakistan harboring, and Karzai fully entrenched in Afghanistan. Not a winning record.

And like a Yankees team that underperforms*, we're not exactly playing on the cheap either. Disappointing.








*no such luck this year...

Monday morning sobriety.

Tom Blackburn talks turkey:

At the start of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt saved the public from big business. A century later President Barack Obama has to wade back into the swamp T.R. drained a century ago. It refilled while no one was watching.

Mr. Obama's first step was to ask for a consumer financial protection agency. That bill is meandering through the House. It promises more small print for conscientious borrowers and investors.

Step Two was to cut or ban some over-the-top compensation for geniuses who run financial institutions. They are trading with money the government borrowed from China for them. Their bonuses were coming from the same stash. Inconveniencing whiny multimillionaires plays well in the tabloids. But nothing changed for the long haul. Their bad attitudes and empty threats of quitting only got worse. So there is no salvation in sight on the salary front.

Last week, the administration announced the third step, which consists of dealing with the problem of institutions "too big to fail." This is the big one. It was time to bring out T.R.'s big stick. The plan they announced, however, had the heft of a No. 2 pencil.

"Too big to fail" is shorthand for banks - and, as it turned out, other things - that were so big or so interconnected that everything would crash down around them if they failed. An example is American International Group, which brilliantly maneuvered into a position in which banks worldwide depended on AIG money for their survival. Then AIG didn't have the money when it was needed.

One could write the story of the 2008 collapse in terms of the falling of dominoes that were too big to fail. Still, even as the government stood them back up, JPMorganChase acquired Bear Stearns, Bank of America got Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, and Wells Fargo absorbed Wachovia. Those banks were too big to fail last fall and are bigger this fall. That's going in the wrong direction.

Mr. Obama appears ready to live with bigness, though, and try to manage it. His plan would make it easier for the government to step in and wind down the affairs of a monster the way it does with any little county bank that fails. The monster could indeed fail, the thinking goes, but it would do so neatly and slowly, and with less fuss than a bailout.

Money for the unwinding, in this plan, will come from payments into a fund for failure. The payments will be made by the institutions that are designated too big to fail. First problem of many: If they all go at the same time, as they did last fall, the fund itself will need a bailout.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is whispering in President Obama's ear that banks that aren't too big can't put together the private-sector financing to fulfill Mr. Obama's green energy hopes.

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has been stripped of his infallibility merit badge, but that doesn't mean that he is always wrong. Sounding more like one of T.R.'s trust-busters than his mentor Ayn Rand, he said last month, "If they are too big to fail, they are too big." He even mentioned that getting broken up by the government in 1911 was the best thing that ever happened to the original Standard Oil. The pieces were more efficient and profitable than the monster they came from.

Cutting monsters down to human size is not as easy as it sounds. But the alternative is to live under institutions that may get in the habit of doing what a bunch of them just did. Too-big-to-fail failures brought the world's economies to the rim of another Great Depression and left them behind the eight-ball for probably years to come. The failures are not only in denial; they take offense at any interruption in the resumption of the follies that almost laid us low.

The swamp must be drained. Mr. Obama's plan, however, looks more like marking a path through the swamp for Treasury Department airboats.

November.