afgahnistan and the right toy for a child

I needed a present for my nephew as he entered kindergarten, so I bought him a rifle. I tried to explain to him that he should practice extensively with it, as it could save his life fifteen years from now in Afghanistan.

As I thought more about this, it occurred to me that it's not just my nephew's problem, so I suggested to the school board that they substitute a children's version of basic training for the usual physical education. I argued, correctly, I believe, that this would give them excellent physical conditioning and would be more relevant than kickball, flag football or any of the other games that have no application in the real world.

The board is considering my idea, and while they agree that it is practical, they are concerned about the public reaction to admitting that the war will still be a hot item in 2025. One board member admitted that everyone realizes this on a subliminal level, but no one really wants to point to the metaphorical elephant in the room.

He said, "Let's find a way to sugar coat this, and then we'll see if it flies."

Finishing a really big job Obama style

I could relate to a quote from President Obama in an article about how he will send several thousand more military personnel to Afghanistan, to "Finish the job" begun eight years ago. I know how it feels to not want to give up on a big project undertaken over a long period of time.

You see, eight years ago I got the brilliant idea to remodel my 3/2 rancher into a copy of the Taj Mahal. At the time people warned me that it was too just big of a job, too unrealistic, but I was a man with a vision.

The first problem I ran into was the local building codes about building height in residential neighborhoods. But after getting special permits and modifying the height of the towers, I was ready to proceed. However replacing the windows was a bigger problem, leaving us without any windows at all during the coldest winter of the decade.

Also, I never realized how expensive that ancient siding would be in modern America, so I sill have much of that unfinished. Of course, opening up the interior required knocking out some walls, so much of the house has temporary bracing.

Big changes require moving lots of stuff, so currently the wiring and plumbing are pretty much torn out, and we're using candles and an out house.

Now, after eight years, my negative friends are still urging me to give it up before things get even worse and more expensive. No way. I've already put more into the remodel than I paid for the place. Besides, I'm no quitter.

I now figure that in another three to four years and another maybe third of a million I'll have, while not exactly a copy of the Taj Mahal, but at least something that sort of resembles it and hopefully has indoor plumbing.

Anyway, President Obama, I know what you're going through. Hang in there.

Founding a new old religion

After years of spiritual seeking, rejecting traditional religions and doing all the eastern mysticism stuff, I’ve finally discovered the true religion. It’s actually a variation on a very old idea, polytheism.

After much meditation and observation, I’ve concluded that the gods lurk among us. They wander around in the guise of those demented homeless bums who stumble about in the gutters of our cities.

Have you ever noticed that they talk loudly to themselves. Well, I’ve stopped to listen, and their cryptic statements can only be understood as cosmic revelation. The arguments they have with themselves are the great philosophical debates of our time. Seriously, this stuff is really heavy.

I remember a disheveled bum who staggered around the streets of downtown Long Beach some years back. I started to notice that whenever his monologs turned angry and he started to shout at himself, within 48 hours we would get rain. I’m convinced that each of these characters is the god of some natural force, and we won’t know which one until we insult one of them and perhaps fall victim to a flood.

I know that some would say that this is merely coincidence, but the three great western religions were founded on less empirical evidence. Oh sure, I could be wrong, but I’m not about to risk a lightning strike by rejecting these compelling facts.

Lately, I’ve taken to bundling up grains, fruits and veggies and stacking the bundles in my trunk. Now, whenever I see one of these gods, I stop, pull out a bundle and lay it at his or her feet as a sacrifice.

Well, I can tell you it is working. I haven’t experienced a plague, lightning, oozing sores, exploding animals, the reversal of gravity or an attack by one of my many enemies. I’m living under the protection of the gods, and I can now cross the street even without looking both ways.

Those of you who still believe in only one god, remember that a single god can’t be everywhere to watch everyone. If you want to be safe and secure, you need hundreds, maybe thousands of gods looking out for you.

Blasphemy ban a non starter

Some in the Muslim world want an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery, a ban on blasphemy. For openers, that would run counter to our cherished right to free speech. It would also open a huge grey area: what constitutes blasphemy?

All the rhetoric that culminated in the Fort Hood killings could be protected by such a ban, as would the web sites promoting al-Qaida.

I’m sure that those Muslim countries that are pushing this are not thinking about protecting Christianity and Judaism from blasphemy, but once this can of worms is opened, what’s sauce for the goose, as they say, is sauce for the gander. Like it or not, “Allah is great; kill the infidels” would be seen as also unacceptable.

What next, once the standard religious sects of the western big three are protected, will we also have to ban denigrating the various kooky cults that spring up? No one really wanted to mock Jim Jones and his Jonestown experiment before the poison cool-aide incident. What about David Koresch? Those are just the prominent names that pop out of a very long list.

Taking this one step further, what about those of us who are atheists, a group of people who have only been able to come out of the closest in recent decades and who are still shunned by a large segment of society. Those of us who equate even conventional religion with kooky cults would likely be victims of witch hunts, jailed and persecuted just as we were for centuries.

Whether you are non-religious, conventionally religious, nominally religious or orthodox, to be kept from observing that the emperor has no clothes means the emperor, in all his guises, can run amok and naked through civilized society.

The politically correct among us may well fall for this blasphemy ban, thinking that we can’t criticize another culture’s beliefs, no matter what form they take. My view on that can be illustrated by what some friends have been sending me: strange lines that confused me until it was explained that they were from a game called Clue, something I’m not familiar with. However, whether you play that game or not, you should already know that the first step to understanding the complexity of anything is to start getting clues to people’s motives. Every clue warns me to reject this notion in any of its forms.

The Sad story of Joe

Let me tell you about Joe. I won’t give out his last name. A few years ago he decided to invest in a home for his young family. He scraped together all his savings and any other money he could scrounge up in order to make a down payment. He managed to purchase a nice home in a good neighborhood with good schools. He planed to live there many years, raise his kids, live the American dream.

His problems started with the issue of home maintenance. He was warned when he bought that he needed to have the place checked for termites every 3 to 5 years, but all that cost money, so he ignored it. When the house needed painting, he didn’t have time to do it himself, and the cost of a contractor was more than he wanted to pay. As a result, the paint peeled, and eventually dry rot got into the wood siding.

Then there were the cracks in the foundation, which he figured were no big deal, as most of the foundation looked pretty good. Then when the roof leaked\ and he was told it needed replacement, he tried to patch it himself, but unfortunately, water leaked into the attic.

To make a long story mercifully short, within a few years the deferred maintenance became such a huge issue that it would have cost a small fortune to fix the growing problems. It fact, the house was in such bad shape that it was unsafe and unhealthy, and Joe was forced to sell for half what he paid. I hear the new owners leveled the place and rebuilt.

Now Joe and his family live in a two bedroom apartment that rents for $300 more than his old mortgage payment.

Now, substitute “State of California” for “Joe.”

Taylor Swift: fantasy and a mute button

I was watching some middle school students playing on the internet, and several of them were watching Taylor Swift videos. Looking over their shoulders, I found it hard to take my eyes off of Swift. Because the students were wearing headphones, I couldn’t hear the music, which, in retrospect, was a good thing.

OK, I don’t like country music. More precisely, to me country music is like well bitten finger nails raked down an old fashioned blackboard, played through an amp. with bad feedback.

Anyway, curiosity got the better of me, and I listened to a preview of some of her music on the internet. She has a rather ordinary, somewhat metallic country voice. And, no, I wouldn’t buy her album.

However, with a face like that, even the finest voice would fall short. Being male, knowing a face like that is out there somewhere is enough to let me know that the world is a benign place and that somehow, somewhere, all will be sweetness and light. All I have to do is hit the mute button and sit back and enjoy.

The abortion bias.

Just watched “The Duchess,” set in the 1780s, about the duchess of Devonshire. The woman, trapped in an unhappy marriage is prevented by her rich and powerful husband from having a fulfilling relationship with a man she loves.

Apparently, the duke only married her to obtain a male heir. Beyond that, she had no real rights or purpose. She was forced by her husband to end her romantic relationship or lose her children forever.

Things have improved for women in the last 200 plus years, but there is still the underlying assumption that a woman is primarily a vehicle for producing a man’s children. Case in point is the health care debate and abortion as a sticking point that could derail the vote.

Many have cloaked this issue in religious terms, but I find that religion is often used to slip a sugar coating over a bitter social pill. This isn’t about anyone’s god; it’s about control and who has or hasn’t it.

We all have our views on abortion, from those who would deny any abortion to any woman at any time, to my view: mandatory abortion unless the parents could prove they have parental skill, emotionally maturity and sufficient financial resources to raise a child.

As much as I think I’m right, I wouldn’t want to impose my position on everyone else. I’m egocentric, but not that egocentric. If I would deny my right, based on massive wisdom, to make the rules, I certainly would balk at other, less enlightened, people making rules for everyone, everywhere.

It’s time to live and let live. A fetus is just a fetus, your religion is just one of many world views and, in case you don’t read the news, life isn’t all that precious these days.

Political correctness and the Fort Hood tragedy

For a number of years Americans have become more politically correct, more sensitive as it were. Some of this has had a positive effect. Many really insulting terms have all but vanished from conversation. We tend not to make fun of people who are socially or physically disadvantaged, at least not publicly. However, like any social trend, political correctness has moved beyond reasonable civility to something approaching the emperor’s new clothes.

A case in point is Nidal Milik Hasan, the army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded 29. All the warning signs were there. His anti American comments and his odd behavior were noted by many, yet nothing was done. It would have been politically incorrect to profile him because he was a Muslim, that he might be a terrorist or just noting that he might be dangerously disturbed. As a result the military experienced a tragedy that could have easily been averted.

What will be the next step? Given human nature, it will be both rationalization and denial or over reaction, either of which would be a mistake. Those to whom political correctness is almost a religion will caution that this was such an aberration, that it should be dismissed as something unpredictable and never to happen again. The knee-jerk, quick to anger folks will be ready for an anti Muslim witch hunt. Somewhere between the extremes lies reason.

Social problems tend to have faces and don’t occur in a vacuum. Obviously, post menopausal women, old men in suspenders and toddlers don’t engage in gang activity. Therefore, politically correct or not, we tend to watch certain groups of young men. By the same token, when worried about radical Muslim, anti American activity, we don’t waste our time looking at girl scouts, Southern Baptist choir members or soccer moms. Yes, looking at certain people as more likely to be involved in these things is profiling, and profiling used to harass, intimidate and persecute an entire demographic group is wrong. However, when a society is subjected to particular types of crime, a certain cautious watchfulness, a less hysterical profiling, is reasonable and at times necessary.

In the real world, you don’t want to arrest everyone who looks like an Arab, but if several men in masks, holding a crate of dynamite, are standing in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, you might just want to ask them what they’re up to.

Are we the real us?

Recently I watched a special on the late Mae West, and apart from her full and interesting life, something notable struck me.

Several times interviewees who recalled her made similar comments. In essence they said that she had so become the persona of public person Mae West that the real person Mae West had somehow disappeared. I hope I wasn’t the only person who thought that rather odd, particularly so given the fact that the interviewees were theater people.

Let’s look at this idea. Do any of us know anyone who isn’t some public persona? Really, now. If we do, that person must be really uninteresting. Imagine being just yourself, just that little neighborhood girl or boy who, even after several decades, has never moved beyond that person. And even if you can think of one, hasn’t that person worked at maintaining that image long beyond its shelf life?

Somewhere during the growing up period we all attach our name to some personality, some image we think is interesting or cool. Then, that image comes into play in all our actions and reactions. With each day, each interaction, we place another layer of varnish over that image, and by the time we are into full maturity, we have polished and perfected that image. We have fully become that person.

That’s how personality grows, like a bit of grit that over the years becomes a pearl.

In simplistic terms, we are the respectable banker, the intellectual, the town drunk, the bleeding heart, the class clown, the jock, the ditzy blond, the steady worker, the good mom or the pillar of the community. We could all have tee shirts made with our labels printed on them.

At the heart of this is the question of whether we are something fully realized at birth or some work in progress with ourselves as both the artist and architect. I believe that few moments of serious reflection will answer that question for any honest person.

I know that long ago I started to think about who this person with the strange name, “Meade” was all about. It couldn’t, as I believed, be the insecure, shy and boring child I was at the time. I was more than that, a troubled, creative child, a complex and convoluted soul, a character, perhaps even more. With each layer, I grew, and I liked the direction I was growing in, so I added more layers until I became whoever I am today, and like Mae West, I can’t even relate to any question as to whether this is the real me or a persona. It is all I have, all I am, and it took many years to evolve.

Yes, each day I rise, get into costume and prepare for the role of me. I’ve perfected this role; I’m better at being me than anyone else, and I know many people who enjoy the performance. Beside, I haven’t a clue how to be anyone else.

But no, I don’t deserve an academy award

CIT and our lost money

The other day an interesting news item caught my attention. CIT Group declared bankruptcy, and along with other investors, the US Government will likely lose $2.3 billion of taxpayers (our) money. At least our elected officials refused a second infusion of cash.

While they were getting all those billions that didn’t help, in other parts of the country businesses were shutting down, putting many out of work. In the same issue of the paper there was a story about some town in the heartland, where the major employer, a furniture manufacturing company, shut down, almost destroying the town. I couldn’t help wondering if 100 grand of that wasted $2.3 billion might have saved this small town. Yet, this was only one small town out of many caught in this recession/depression, the term you use determined by how it has affected you and yours.

Of course, this bankruptcy only affects the holding company, not operating subsidiaries such as CIT Bank. Now, I’m no financier nor economist, so all that hair splitting makes no sense at all to me. Investors lose money, but some or most of the company goes on making money.

The part of the story that amazed and amused me the most was that CIT has retained Evercore Partners and FTI Consulting as its financial advisers. Now, let’s slow this down for those of us who are financially challenged. CIT is a financial institution, a really big one. Financing and moving money is what they do, and they hire people who are trained professionals to do all that financing. I doubt seriously if they hire auto mechanics or house painters to make loans and investments. So, why on earth do they need to hire other people to advise them? I’m beginning to underst