The Oval Office Speech

Stray observations from the President's Oval Office speech last night.

1. Standing at a podium was weird, but irrelevant.

2. For the first time in a very long time, I actually felt like the President of the United States was on our side for a change.

3. Took him a while but he finally conceded that the Fort Hood massacre was not workplace violence.

4. Why does he insist on using the term ISIL instead of ISIS? Does he not like admitting that they are in Syria?

5. I absolutely despise the way he always falls back on this "being on the right side of history" shtick. It's what he says when he wants to end all debate and it happens to be bulls**t. History didn't defeat Hitler. History didn't end slavery. The blood sweat and tears of bold and determined men and women laboring under impossible burdens did. When he glibly asserts that we are on the right side of history, he's essentially saying that eventually, in the distant future HE will be vindicated by historians for his brilliance, so anybody who criticizes him for his present incompetence is on the wrong side of history. It's very annoying and sounds weak. Does anybody think that Vladimir Putin cares one whit about what side of history he's on? Please.

6. Even though it was encouraging that the President does finally seem to understand what kind of battle we are engaged in, once again he spent roughly half of his speech lecturing us about the dangers of the often talked about but seldom actually seen, Anti-Muslim backlash. His attorney general said a couple of days ago that her number one fear was an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence by Americans. Seriously? That's her number one fear? Let me get this straight, radical Islamic jihadists take out 3000 Americans on 9/11, murder their fellow servicemen at Fort Hood, and now kill 14 of their co-workers in San Bernardino and the thing that keeps Loretta Lynch up at night is the fear of American anti-Muslim bigotry?? While any incidents of violence against any minority group is too many, the number of such incidents against Muslims in this country since 9/11 are less annually than the number of such attacks against Jews. And yet, there was my President last night lecturing me to guard against my naturally American predisposition towards hateful revenge. I grow weary of a President who holds such a low opinion of his own countrymen.

7. Never once in his address did he lay the blame for terrorism on global climate change...a VERY positive development.

8. The President looked very tired and oddly bored. It's as if he just can't get in to being a wartime President. He is clearly much more comfortable pursuing his social justice agenda, and up to a point, I understand that and sympathize. But, fate has dealt him this hand and he needs to drum up a bit more enthusiasm for the job, in my opinion. He is still our President for the next 13 months. He can't start writing his memoirs just yet. We need him to be fully engaged...NOW. Can you imagine FDR spending half of one of his fireside chats during the dark days of WWII lecturing us about succumbing to anti-German bigotry? Can Presidents come off as too gung-ho for war? Absolutely...see George W. Bush. But, when the President of the United States goes to the trouble of an Oval Office address in prime time and mails it in, then rushes off to the Kennedy Center afterwards, it doesn't actually communicate resolve.

Ok, there you have it, my take. Feel free to disagree. Feel free to fling overheated invective my way. Just don't include any overly anti-Muslim language that might be interpreted as "edging towards violence." Loretta Lynch might arrest you!

My Shower Encounter

There are signs all over my gym declaring that the use of cell phones is restricted to the lobby area only. I suppose this rule is for the safety of members since working out with large steel rods and ponderous round weights requires a certain level of concentration. Nevertheless, with the advent of hands-free technology, this particular "rule" has become everybody's favorite rule to ignore. Most of the time I ignore it since I'm kinda busy trying to burn a thousand calories without killing myself. But every  so often...I snap.

At American Family, the shower stalls have two little compartments, the first is a dressing room where you can hang your towel, then there's a shower curtain with the actual shower stall on the other side. So, yesterday, there I was standing under the hottest water I could stand after a particularly difficult workout, when I heard a cell phone ring tone blaring out of the stall beside me. It startled me, not the ring tone itself, but, you know...the shower! Then, I hear the shower curtain being slid open and the guy answering his freaking cell phone in the shower!

Idiot: Yeah? Hey, what's up? Yeah, I'll be there. Can I call you back?

Now, at this point one of my mostly dormant but occasionally dangerous personality traits reared it's ugly head, i.e., my inability to keep my mouth shut. Without considering any of the consequences of criticizing a total stranger while naked, I hear myself saying...

Me: Dude, seriously? You bring your cell phone into the shower?

Now, I should point out that at this point, I have no idea what this guy looks like. The shower stalls at AmFam are quite tall. For all I know, this guy could be a 300 pound dead-lifter with a Swaztika tattooed on his forehead. Then he replied...

Idiot: Ha. Yeah.

This was one "ha", not "hahaha". His voice was very deep, sounding like someone not to be trifled with. But for some inexplicable reason, I couldn't leave well enough alone. Ubiquitous cellphone use at my gym has become, for me, one of life's more irritating features. I had suffered in silence long enough.

Me: Wow. You so important that you can't risk a ten minute shower without staying connected?

As soon as I said it, I thought, "what the heck is the matter with you? Just let it go!" Too late. Then a reply...

Idiot: Ha. Yeah.

I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that I had just insulted a total stranger in a shower stall, or the fact that the moron didnt even know that he had been insulted!!

Since of the 17 words I had heard him utter, four of them were, "Yeah", I decided to let it go. No fun debating a monosyllabic nazi-sympathizer, after all. But, as I was driving home it occurred to me what a stupid thing it was to do. We live in a violent hair-trigger world of quick tempers and short fuses. Criticizing the cell phone etiquette of total strangers is the sort of thing that could start the kind of argument that could turn quite ugly in a hurry, before you know it, you might have civic unrest on your hands complete with nonsensical slogans like Check your Apple Privilege, and Droid Lives Matter.

San Bernardino

At 6 am on Thursday morning, the 3rd of December, this is what I have discovered about the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Two of the gunmen, a man and a woman, have very Arab-sounding names. The man made a trip to Saudi Arabia a while back where he purchased and brought back to the United States his mail-order wife who on this day was his accomplice. The couple had a young child who they dropped off with family on the morning of the attack, explaining that they had a doctors appointment. The man then went to a holiday party with his colleagues at the Inland Regional Center, where he left in a huff after some sort of argument with a co-worker. He returned with his wife/girlfriend some time later dressed in masks and dark tactical gear, brandishing AK-47 style rifles ( apparently purchased legally) and the two of them began indiscriminately murdering people in cold blood. By the time they were through, fourteen people had perished and another seventeen were wounded. Four hours later they were killed in a shootout with police.

That must have been one hell of an argument!

At this point, nobody knows whether these two were prompted to murderous fury by international terroristic inclinations, radical Islamist sensibilities, simple workplace rage, or just some garden variety pathological mental disorder. To the fourteen dead, it matters not. To the rest of us it matters a great deal. Of those possibilities, we all would most prefer a terrorist narrative, since it would offer some sort of rationale for such brutal killing. "Oh, they were jihadists. That explains it!" Nobody wants to hear that they were just whack jobs who decided to premeditate the slaughter of fourteen co-workers because they got passed over for a promotion. As human beings, we insist on at least vaguely plausible explanations for murderous rages like this one, because without one, it becomes hard to resist hopeless despair.

In a nation as polarized as ours, every horrific mass shooting is transformed into a cudgel with which one side can beat the other side over the head with. If the killer ends up being a fundamentalist, conservative Christian, liberals have a field day. If the killer ends up being somebody named Abdul Muhammad, conservatives have a field day. I, for one, am relieved that these killers didn't turn out to be a couple of Christian Syrian refugees, since that would have sent both sides into cosmic fits of unhinged rage from which the Republic might never have recovered.

For the record, I would like to point out a few things that seem to me to be completely reasonable positions for a reasonably informed and intelligent person to take on some of the most devicive issues of the day. I list them here because too often the noise of partisanship drowns them out:

1. It is possible to fully support the second amendment and support reasonable gun control measures.

2. It is possible to fully support our policemen and want dirty cops thrown in jail.

3. It is possible to be fully pro-life and detest anyone who would shoot up a Planned Parenthood.

4. It is possible to fully support legal immigration and be against open borders.

5. It is possible to love the environment and be opposed to an out of control, power-grabbing EPA.

6. It is possible to fully support a government provided safety net for the most vulnerable people in our society and be opposed to what the modern welfare state has become.

7. It is possible to support a strong, robust, national defense and be against sending American troops to every war-torn hell hole on the planet out of some savior/world policeman complex.

Ok, so there you have it...the mushy middle ground where nobody in this country wants to be, but where everything of value ultimately gets done.

Highjinks Training

Thanksgiving is over and it was wonderful, twenty-three of us jammed into my sister Linda's house in Ashland. The food was fabulous, and right before it was served Linda started saying a few poignant words about how much we all meant to her...when Ezra, the second youngest in attendance blurted out, "so, are we gonna say a blessing soon??" Awesome.

Then it was time for my plan to kick into action. I am now 57 years old with an ailing shoulder. I can't be expected to carry 100% of the practical joke/pranking load every year. So, recently I have been training up my successor and eventual replacement in highjinkery, my great nephew Bennett. He is a natural and extremely quick study with great tomfoolery instincts. I had told him that this year for Thanksgiving I was going to bring my remote controlled rat to the festivities. Unfortunately I couldn't find it and when I told him he couldn't hide his bitter disappointment. However, I assured him that I had something even better. He wasn't convinced...

Me: Don't worry Bennett, I've got something better than a rat!

Bennett: BETTER THAN A RAT???

Me: Yeah!

Bennett: No way.

Then I introduced him to the AIR HORN, a small aerosol can with a plastic horn on top that when pressed emits an ear-splitting noise more appropriate for football stadiums than for the solemn and quiet few seconds after a Thansgiving blessing. Bennett was thrilled with my plan and immediately declared, "It IS better than a rat!"

So there we were, side by side in the reverent circle of family around the table of plenty...waiting for Ezra to finish the most amazingly heartfelt prayer in history. For a brief moment I thought that perhaps now was not the time, after such a tender prayer offered by one so young to unleash a prank that had the very real potential to scare the bejesus out of some of our older members. But luckily, Bennett had no such qualms, and at the long-awaited "amen" he pressed down hard and fast on the plastic horn..."WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKKKKZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!" It was a thing of beauty. Some were ready to yell at me for my juvenile behavior, but when they saw Bennett doubled over laughing hysterically, they were forced to hold their fire...brilliant!

After dessert, it was time for the bi-annual appearance of UNKADUGA CLAUS, who reached into his black bag-o-fun and handed out an assortment of nerfguns to all the good boys and girls. Everyone then went outside for a semi-violent game of "SHOOT YOUR EYES OUT" Somewhere inside Christina was in deep prayer-mode, which was a shame since she missed Ezra's turn with the 18 shot Gatling-gun, which two years ago he couldn't even lift, but this year he was firing off shots like a boss! How fast they grow up... 

25 Things I'm Thankful For.

What am I thankful for on this the greatest of days in 2015?

1. Indoor plumbing, since 40% of my fellow human beings don't have it.

2. Good health, right shoulder not withstanding.

3. A prosperous business.

4. A daughter with the gift of teaching, a brilliant mind, and a terrific husband.

5. A ridiculously talented son with a sharp inquisitive mind and a tender heart.

6. A wife who is beautiful and supremely skilled at life.

7. My amazingly lovable dog.

8. Technology that allows me to stay closely connected to everyone I love.

9. This blog and the opportunities it avails me to express myself.

10. Every single one of the declared candidates for President since even the horrible ones can serve as a bad example.

11. To have been born an American, inheriting effortlessly by birth what millions of others have sacrificed everything to become.

12. Baseball, in all of its unhurried beauty.

13. Music, with its power to transform.

14. Lifelong friends, only a handful of them, but each has been a blessing.

15. Humor.

16. Central air and heat.

17. Being a part of a large and loving family of brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles and aunts, all of them dear to me.

18. Living in a country where I am free to write horrible things about our leaders.

19. Living in a country where my level of happiness is not dependent on which party controls the levers of power.

20. Vander Warner and others like him...accomplished and wise men of faith who have walked the walk, and shown the rest of us the way.

21. My parents, neither of whom are with us anymore, but still shine down on me from the power of their lives well-lived.

22. Advil, and Pepto-Bismol, two over the counter medications that provide the cure for what was the number one cause of death throughout the world a hundred years ago.

23. Cheese, bread and sausage, without which life would have no meaning.

24. The State of Maine from the first of June through the end of September.

25. The Ressurection. 

This Dog. That Face.

                     

                                         

This dog. That face. It almost makes me forget what a whack-job she is. It almost makes me overlook her latest neurosis, as follows:

Back in the Spring I spent a small fortune redoing the landscaping around my house. This included the removal of two huge trees in my backyard and their replacement with a big yard full of turf, the kind that is rolled into place like carpeting. The result has been a beautiful, manicured look out back. Lucy loves the place, it is her domain. It had been our hope that by removing the trees, Lucy would grow out of her fondness for digging around their roots. The key word of that last sentence of course being "hope". There is one spot back there which is still a source of endless fascination for her, and oddly its in the exact spot where she used to dig before, near one of the old trees. There is something there that drives her to dig down just a few inches and then lick the dirt as if her life depended on it! Upon closer inspection I found a strand of dark gray, even black dirt streaked through the spot. After thirty minutes out there Lucy's tongue looks like she has eaten an entire bag of licorice.

So, being possessed of allegedly higher intellect, I decided that I would place a large decorative stone over the dreaded spot, one too heavy for her to move, whereupon, after seeing it covering her licking-hole, she merely dug around the edges of the stone and found new veins of the delicious and mysterious black gold. Now I have a dorky looking stone and an expanding hole in the ground smack dab in the middle of my beautiful manicured $10,000 dollar backyard.                                                    

    

Meanwhile, Lucy sleeps the deep, carefree sleep of the just. Grrrrrrrrr.......

    

A Weapon or a Warm Wish?

 So it begins.  There I was minding my own business today browsing around on Facebook when I saw this picture. Apparently the owner of Schuler's bakery wants everyone to know that if they don't want to be wished a Merry Christmas, then they sure better not come in! If you don't celebrate Christmas enthusiastically, well, you are more than welcomed to get the hell out of Schuler's Bakery.

Yes, this is the time of year when some Christians get all up in the pictures about Christmas-dissing...real and imagined. The horrors are everywhere...holiday trees, seasons greetings, happy holidays, X-mas, all examples of the satanic lengths which people are willing to go to in order to put a dagger into the Christ Child. Many Christians have simply had enough...

Yes, nothing spreads Christmas cheer faster than pissing off your neighbors. "What? You don't like Merry Christmas? Well I got your Merry Christmas right here!!"

Just about the time I was about to give in to despair, I noticed that someone had written a comment on the Schuler's Bakery sign. I clicked on it and was surprised to see these words written by my wife,

       "Is this really the way to show love to your neighbor? Is a sign really necessary?      Private businesses are free to do whatever they want to do, but a sign like this just makes saying 'Merry Christmas' seem like a weapon instead of a warm wish."

I could have sat at my computer for two days and not come up with more beautiful words than these. It's one of the many reasons why I am in love with this woman... 

Belligerent, militant Christmas cheer. Is that really how we wish to be known?