This is a messy, stormy, volcanic, violent planet.
Spinning at 1,000 miles per hour in an ancient mysterious universe.
This storm is the planet doing what it has always done.
It has raked and ravaged these continental shores for unknown millions of years.
Storms coming off the vacant ocean, slamming into empty coastlines.
Now that we're here, we can try to put a human grid on it.
And preachers with mayonnaise for brains can blame it on human sin.
But the planet has never needed any help from us.
It is a divine system, doing what divine systems do.
It knows nothing of global warming or greenhouse gases.
It only assimilates the gases into its system and adjusts.
It feels warmth.
Warmth, to it, is energy, that melts ice and feeds storms.
Now that we're here, we should be more respectful of the power that we're sitting on.
Instead, groups say that humans should get together to "save the planet."
What a laugh.
Humans can't save the planet. The planet doesn't need us. It will save itself.
On the day it can no longer adjust, if we've pushed too far, it will sneeze us off.
It could happen overnight. Better, however, it will take a long, long time.
Appropriately, for us, the end will have a beginning.
A middle.
And an end. And the planet, freed of us, will spin on, adjusting, with storms raking empty continental shores.
October 31, 2012
October 29, 2012
Putting together a Romney Victory Package
100-lb. sack of beans
100-lb. sack of flour
50-lb. box of lard
500 envelopes vegetable seeds
50-lb. can ointment
5,000-ft. package of gauze
5,000-ct. carton of aspirin (surgical use)
photo of twenty-dollar bill suitable for framing
DVD set of "All in the Family"
2 bicycles
1 bicycle-powered generator
100-ct. pkg. duct tape 100-yd. rolls
50 10-ft. rolls Visqueen
100-lb. sack of flour
50-lb. box of lard
500 envelopes vegetable seeds
50-lb. can ointment
5,000-ft. package of gauze
5,000-ct. carton of aspirin (surgical use)
photo of twenty-dollar bill suitable for framing
DVD set of "All in the Family"
2 bicycles
1 bicycle-powered generator
100-ct. pkg. duct tape 100-yd. rolls
50 10-ft. rolls Visqueen
October 28, 2012
Sharecropping in 21st-century America
Today, in The New York Times, I read a story about "A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Spin."
In the story was this paragraph, from a retail consultant:
“It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours.”
Sharecropping! In 2012 America, millions of people trying to make a living have essentially been shrunk to the status of sharecroppers.
The story initially caught my eye because of its dateline: Spring Valley, CA. Spring Valley is two miles from my house. The story began with information about Shannon Hardin, who works part-time at Fresh and Easy, a grocery store at the intersection of Campo Blvd. and Kenyon. I go past it almost every day.
Fresh and Easy pays Shannon Hardin, who is 50 and, at times, essentially the store manager, $10.90 an hour for an average of 28 hours of work per week. "I can't live on this," she says.
"While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers," the story says, "employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of Americans who want to work full-time, reducing their pay and benefits."
Reduced pay and benefits always improve the company's bottom line. In Shannon Hardin's case, the reductions in pay and benefits improve the bottom line of Fresh and Easy's owner, Tesco, the largest supermarket company in Britain.
Before you vote on Nov. 6, please read this story. Then read again another story from today's Times, "Some are More Unequal Than Others." The two stories dovetail in telling the story about economic inequality in the U.S., "an issue," writes the author, economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, "that not even the Republicans can ignore. It is no longer just a moral issue, a question of social justice."
The question is, what will the next administration do about sharecropping in 21st-century America?
In the story was this paragraph, from a retail consultant:
“It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours.”
Sharecropping! In 2012 America, millions of people trying to make a living have essentially been shrunk to the status of sharecroppers.
The story initially caught my eye because of its dateline: Spring Valley, CA. Spring Valley is two miles from my house. The story began with information about Shannon Hardin, who works part-time at Fresh and Easy, a grocery store at the intersection of Campo Blvd. and Kenyon. I go past it almost every day.
Fresh and Easy pays Shannon Hardin, who is 50 and, at times, essentially the store manager, $10.90 an hour for an average of 28 hours of work per week. "I can't live on this," she says.
"While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers," the story says, "employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of Americans who want to work full-time, reducing their pay and benefits."
Reduced pay and benefits always improve the company's bottom line. In Shannon Hardin's case, the reductions in pay and benefits improve the bottom line of Fresh and Easy's owner, Tesco, the largest supermarket company in Britain.
Before you vote on Nov. 6, please read this story. Then read again another story from today's Times, "Some are More Unequal Than Others." The two stories dovetail in telling the story about economic inequality in the U.S., "an issue," writes the author, economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, "that not even the Republicans can ignore. It is no longer just a moral issue, a question of social justice."
The question is, what will the next administration do about sharecropping in 21st-century America?
To my children: what Romney would do
To The 47 Percent: If you want a really bad scare, read this essay by Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.
To my children: it is no secret what a Romney Administration would do to The 47 Percent. Mitt has already told us.
His Administration would treat us as victims, who are dependent on government, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for us, who believe we are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That those are entitlements and government should give them to us. His Administration would treat us as people who pay no income tax, who can never be convinced that we should take personal responsibility and care for our lives.
And it is not his Administration's job to worry about "those people."
"Those people" are us, The 47 Percent. By 2016, we would be screaming for mercy, the 1 percent would be safe, secure, and sequestered, and the other 52 percent would be looking around, wondering what they got themselves into. If you want to know what it would look like, go back and read newspapers from the winter of 2008-09.
You think this isn't a big election? Couldn't be bigger.
To my children: it is no secret what a Romney Administration would do to The 47 Percent. Mitt has already told us.
His Administration would treat us as victims, who are dependent on government, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for us, who believe we are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That those are entitlements and government should give them to us. His Administration would treat us as people who pay no income tax, who can never be convinced that we should take personal responsibility and care for our lives.
And it is not his Administration's job to worry about "those people."
"Those people" are us, The 47 Percent. By 2016, we would be screaming for mercy, the 1 percent would be safe, secure, and sequestered, and the other 52 percent would be looking around, wondering what they got themselves into. If you want to know what it would look like, go back and read newspapers from the winter of 2008-09.
You think this isn't a big election? Couldn't be bigger.
October 26, 2012
An interview with God
(The God the Indiana politician Richard Mourdock knows is so different from mine. I am nearing completion of a novel in which physicists at the huge CERN collider near Geneva discover a particle, created by God at the Big Bang, whose sole purpose in God's design, is to, upon its discovery, reverse the universe. What follows is a chapter from that book, whose working title is "Bookends." Russell Hartnett, a newspaperman, is a principal character in the novel.)
By RUSSELL HARTNETT
Special to The Houston Chronicle
Attn: Op-Ed Editor
On Day Three of Earth's new existence, it is time that somebody interviewed God.
The interview will commence in a moment, but first, some background.
Yesterday, on global television, the learned Dr. Reyes Hernandez of Cal Tech by way of Fort Worth, Texas, said his latest wise thing. He remembered how Albert Einstein was famous for inventing thought experiments, which helped him visualize the dense physical systems he was trying to understand, and which enabled his 1905 breakthrough that resulted in the Special Theory of Relativity. To help see our present situation, even if only a teeny bit better, Dr. Hernandez said he was undertaking his own thought experiments.
Thus: my own thought experiment – an interview with a chief executive whose cat is out of the bag, who has nothing left to lose – takes me to the office of God, which is, of course, the universe. I could not see him, nor did he speak, but when I said, "Good morning, God," inside my head I sensed his reply: "Hello." It did not echo, and it did not have Biblical heft; it was an everyday baritone, on the businesslike side.
"God," I asked. "What is going on here?"
"It's very simple," God said.
"So daVinci was right," I said, "when in the 16th century he said, 'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication' . . . "
"Yes," said God. "Many bright individuals have remarked on the essence of simplicity in the universal design. Albert Einstein said, 'When the solution is simple, God is answering.' I appreciated that, but . . . "
God sighed. "Einstein was among the first to show that men were starting to know too much. After that, it has all gone very quickly."
"So you can tell me what has happened," I said.
"Yes and no," said God. "We must go back to the beginning."
God described the beginning, "what you call the Big Bang," he said. He described the incredible instant, in which the universe and all the elementary particles of physics were created. But I got the feeling that he was telling me only what we already knew, as if he were reading out of a high school science textbook.
"Can you go into greater depth?" I asked.
"You wouldn't understand it," he said casually, providing journalism with the greatest headline of all time:
" 'You Wouldn't Understand It' – God"
There was a brief silence, in which I sensed God was enjoying the headline he had made. Full disclosure: before the interview, I had developed evidence to believe that God was a playful deity. And now to find he had a journalism streak. But then, it made sense. If all of us were created in his image, then he must be a little bit like all of us.
"There is, however," he said, "one heretofore undisclosed detail you need to know. Actually, I should not say, 'undisclosed.' It has been disclosed to you in its own way. You will recognize it the instant I say it."
"How could I?" I said.
"It is in your nature," God said.
He said he had assembled all the elements necessary to create the Big Bang, with the exception of one element without which the project could not move forward. That element, he said, was the controversial Higgs boson, the vital element that physicists believe imbued all the other particles with mass.
"But at the time," he said, "I did not call it the Higgs boson. I called it the Beelzebub boson."
"Beelzebub," I repeated, slowly. "Like Satan. Or the Devil."
"That is correct," God replied.
"Well, wouldn't you just know it," I said. "You are saying that this element was in the hands of Beelzebub, It was his property."
"That is correct," God said.
"And he would not let you have it."
"Not without something in return," said God, his voice steady.
"So you had to bargain for it," I said. "My God! "You made a deal with the Devil."
"That is the case," said God, unapologetically.
"Of course! The Devil has always been with us!"
"Thus you have known all along, because – "
"Because it is – he is – in my nature. He is as old a story as you." I tried to see God, but I could only see green fields, people, mountain ridges, sky, clouds. And something else. I could see Earth as the entire heavenly body. Heavenly by God. Body by Beelzebub. And as I watched, I saw clouds of numbers, in bright metallic colors, swirling and streaming and streaking around and between all objects in view. I could not discern if they were real, or only in my thoughts.
"The Devil, Beelzebub, he is the monster that Cuilly saw," I said. "He is in me. He is in us all. And if we are in your image, then he is in you."
God did not reply.
"But," I said, amazed, "if he were not, then we would not be here. He gave you the mass particle in return for a ticket to ride."
For a full minute, we did not speak. The morning was calm and quiet, with no more hint of an Apocalypse than a cool breeze on my neck. Then I said, "You are telling me this because the deal has something to do with what is going on now."
"I permitted Beelzebub into the universe because I had no choice," God said. "But I did not reveal to him the terms. He did not press me, since he knew that I would walk away. True, he is Beelzebub. But I am God."
God said he made a design in which the Beelzebub boson would be paired with another particle that would not block the mass effect, but otherwise neutralize the boson's physical properties.
"Making it invisible," I said. "Undetectable."
"Or 'theoretical,' in the language of your physicists," God said.
"So since that instant in the Big Bang, your masking particle has been able to do its job," I said.
"Yes," said God. "For the most part."
"But the Beelzebub boson has fought incessantly and violently to escape."
"It is his nature to present himself as a constant threat," God agreed.
"What would happen if it did escape?" I asked.
"Evil would no longer be newsworthy," he said. "Evil would be the commonplace."
"And then humans created the LHC to actually free the boson," I said.
God said he could never let that happen. He said that his system "had sent a message" with the 2008 Collider failure, causing events to move back in time, and then creating an explosion, before the Collider could free the boson. The skeptical scientists, I realized, had been right.
"Time was permitted to move forward once more, and the Collider resumed operations as before. I saw that the warning had not been seriously heeded. At that time, I feared the final event was near. Then the moment arrived, the instant that Cuilly Burdette glimpsed the monster breaking loose into his screen."
"And so you reversed the universe," I said.
"No. Please remember who I am," he said, with some Biblical heft creeping in. "Intervention is beneath me. The 2008 warning was programmed, and research could have been voluntarily halted."
"But they resumed," I said, picking up the history, "and in summer 2012 announced some results that appeared Higgs-like."
God snorted. I swear. Divine disdain.
"Operating at half-power," he said, a small rumble of thunder rolling in his throat. "Do they think the Big Bang was the result of half-power?"
"But now you are saying they should have left it alone, in 2012," I said.
"I am conflicted," God said. "Those who would know God would have the respect to approach me at full power. Yet when, finally, they did, three days ago, the Collider reversed the universe. The original design provided that, the instant the boson was freed, by any event, time would no longer go from past toward future, but stop, and then proceed from future toward past, rendering it impossible for eternity that the boson could be freed. The Collider brought forth that instant. The result was automatic. I was sipping tea at the time."
"I believe you are saying, God, that we on Earth and in the universe have entered a field in your design that has been there all along," I said. "You knew that our past might someday become our future, and you planned for it."
"Yes," God said. "On the first day, I drew the line at Beelzebub."
"A minute ago, you said that after Einstein, you thought that men were starting to know too much. Was that in the design, or did it surprise you?"
"I only created the universe, the heavens and the Earth," God said. "But I did not create the universe to be bored. Within the creation, its elements have always been governed by chance, and its inhabitants have always had free will. So, yes, the first time I was surprised that it happened so soon."
I was startled. "The first time?" I said. "Have there been other times?"
God was silent.
"God?" I said.
Finally he spoke: "Ask Einstein." Then he was gone. I looked at my notes. My next question would have been about the dead people coming to life. I tried to call out again. But my mind was blank.
I had heard enough. It was only a thought experiment, whose effect was to affirm my core belief, that anything is possible. After it was completed, I read the interview again. Twice. Here is the important thing: I believed it.
God is already on record, in this planet's archives, as the creator of the universe. That story is told in the Bible, which remains the No. 1 best-selling non-fiction book of all time. His story as told in this interview is no less plausible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Same-same.
The Biblical version then started forward, and God's vision was completed in six days. The Big Bang version took longer and now is in roughly its thirteen-point-seven-billionth year. In the Genesis version, a wily serpent living in the Tree of Good and Evil was the original source of evil. In the Big Bang view, God identifies that source as the so-called "Beelzebub boson," without which matter could not exist. Either way, evil has always been with us, as a literal condition of life.
But the stories differ in the end – maybe. The Beelzebub story describes the boson as part of the universe's design from the first instant, which, if ever freed, would trigger an Event such as we encountered on May 29. No such universal mechanism is mentioned in the Bible with regard to the serpent.
However, it may not be because God didn't try. I must admit that I am an evolutionist when it comes to comparing creation theories, favoring the Big Bang's long haul over what I came to think of as "the scenic route" found in Genesis.
Again, anything is possible, and probably always was. God has always had freedom with the universe, not intervening, which was beneath him, but tinkering, which appears to be in his character. The Genesis reporters obviously got the serpent story from somewhere. God, being as open with them as he has been with me, may have tried to describe the boson as the source of evil. But physics would not be introduced for another five thousand years, and the humans at that time had no chance of understanding such a theory.
So God devised the serpent story, an evil with which those writers would have been familiar. And of course he couldn't speak to them of particle colliders, so he just left that part off. In the present day, humans do have physics, a science that eventually led them to a theory about a "Higgs boson," that they became hell-bent to find.
Three days ago, they became successful, and they reversed the universe. Is that the evidence, that they finally found the boson? God says yes. But the physicists have no way to return to the scene to collect proof. They are left – all of us are left – only with a true eternity, a universe book-ended by theories: the Big Bang, that started the universe, and the Higgs boson, that reversed it. God is such an awful tease.
Copyright Michael Grant 2012
By RUSSELL HARTNETT
Special to The Houston Chronicle
Attn: Op-Ed Editor
On Day Three of Earth's new existence, it is time that somebody interviewed God.
The interview will commence in a moment, but first, some background.
Yesterday, on global television, the learned Dr. Reyes Hernandez of Cal Tech by way of Fort Worth, Texas, said his latest wise thing. He remembered how Albert Einstein was famous for inventing thought experiments, which helped him visualize the dense physical systems he was trying to understand, and which enabled his 1905 breakthrough that resulted in the Special Theory of Relativity. To help see our present situation, even if only a teeny bit better, Dr. Hernandez said he was undertaking his own thought experiments.
Thus: my own thought experiment – an interview with a chief executive whose cat is out of the bag, who has nothing left to lose – takes me to the office of God, which is, of course, the universe. I could not see him, nor did he speak, but when I said, "Good morning, God," inside my head I sensed his reply: "Hello." It did not echo, and it did not have Biblical heft; it was an everyday baritone, on the businesslike side.
"God," I asked. "What is going on here?"
"It's very simple," God said.
"So daVinci was right," I said, "when in the 16th century he said, 'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication' . . . "
"Yes," said God. "Many bright individuals have remarked on the essence of simplicity in the universal design. Albert Einstein said, 'When the solution is simple, God is answering.' I appreciated that, but . . . "
God sighed. "Einstein was among the first to show that men were starting to know too much. After that, it has all gone very quickly."
"So you can tell me what has happened," I said.
"Yes and no," said God. "We must go back to the beginning."
God described the beginning, "what you call the Big Bang," he said. He described the incredible instant, in which the universe and all the elementary particles of physics were created. But I got the feeling that he was telling me only what we already knew, as if he were reading out of a high school science textbook.
"Can you go into greater depth?" I asked.
"You wouldn't understand it," he said casually, providing journalism with the greatest headline of all time:
" 'You Wouldn't Understand It' – God"
There was a brief silence, in which I sensed God was enjoying the headline he had made. Full disclosure: before the interview, I had developed evidence to believe that God was a playful deity. And now to find he had a journalism streak. But then, it made sense. If all of us were created in his image, then he must be a little bit like all of us.
"There is, however," he said, "one heretofore undisclosed detail you need to know. Actually, I should not say, 'undisclosed.' It has been disclosed to you in its own way. You will recognize it the instant I say it."
"How could I?" I said.
"It is in your nature," God said.
He said he had assembled all the elements necessary to create the Big Bang, with the exception of one element without which the project could not move forward. That element, he said, was the controversial Higgs boson, the vital element that physicists believe imbued all the other particles with mass.
"But at the time," he said, "I did not call it the Higgs boson. I called it the Beelzebub boson."
"Beelzebub," I repeated, slowly. "Like Satan. Or the Devil."
"That is correct," God replied.
"Well, wouldn't you just know it," I said. "You are saying that this element was in the hands of Beelzebub, It was his property."
"That is correct," God said.
"And he would not let you have it."
"Not without something in return," said God, his voice steady.
"So you had to bargain for it," I said. "My God! "You made a deal with the Devil."
"That is the case," said God, unapologetically.
"Of course! The Devil has always been with us!"
"Thus you have known all along, because – "
"Because it is – he is – in my nature. He is as old a story as you." I tried to see God, but I could only see green fields, people, mountain ridges, sky, clouds. And something else. I could see Earth as the entire heavenly body. Heavenly by God. Body by Beelzebub. And as I watched, I saw clouds of numbers, in bright metallic colors, swirling and streaming and streaking around and between all objects in view. I could not discern if they were real, or only in my thoughts.
"The Devil, Beelzebub, he is the monster that Cuilly saw," I said. "He is in me. He is in us all. And if we are in your image, then he is in you."
God did not reply.
"But," I said, amazed, "if he were not, then we would not be here. He gave you the mass particle in return for a ticket to ride."
For a full minute, we did not speak. The morning was calm and quiet, with no more hint of an Apocalypse than a cool breeze on my neck. Then I said, "You are telling me this because the deal has something to do with what is going on now."
"I permitted Beelzebub into the universe because I had no choice," God said. "But I did not reveal to him the terms. He did not press me, since he knew that I would walk away. True, he is Beelzebub. But I am God."
God said he made a design in which the Beelzebub boson would be paired with another particle that would not block the mass effect, but otherwise neutralize the boson's physical properties.
"Making it invisible," I said. "Undetectable."
"Or 'theoretical,' in the language of your physicists," God said.
"So since that instant in the Big Bang, your masking particle has been able to do its job," I said.
"Yes," said God. "For the most part."
"But the Beelzebub boson has fought incessantly and violently to escape."
"It is his nature to present himself as a constant threat," God agreed.
"What would happen if it did escape?" I asked.
"Evil would no longer be newsworthy," he said. "Evil would be the commonplace."
"And then humans created the LHC to actually free the boson," I said.
God said he could never let that happen. He said that his system "had sent a message" with the 2008 Collider failure, causing events to move back in time, and then creating an explosion, before the Collider could free the boson. The skeptical scientists, I realized, had been right.
"Time was permitted to move forward once more, and the Collider resumed operations as before. I saw that the warning had not been seriously heeded. At that time, I feared the final event was near. Then the moment arrived, the instant that Cuilly Burdette glimpsed the monster breaking loose into his screen."
"And so you reversed the universe," I said.
"No. Please remember who I am," he said, with some Biblical heft creeping in. "Intervention is beneath me. The 2008 warning was programmed, and research could have been voluntarily halted."
"But they resumed," I said, picking up the history, "and in summer 2012 announced some results that appeared Higgs-like."
God snorted. I swear. Divine disdain.
"Operating at half-power," he said, a small rumble of thunder rolling in his throat. "Do they think the Big Bang was the result of half-power?"
"But now you are saying they should have left it alone, in 2012," I said.
"I am conflicted," God said. "Those who would know God would have the respect to approach me at full power. Yet when, finally, they did, three days ago, the Collider reversed the universe. The original design provided that, the instant the boson was freed, by any event, time would no longer go from past toward future, but stop, and then proceed from future toward past, rendering it impossible for eternity that the boson could be freed. The Collider brought forth that instant. The result was automatic. I was sipping tea at the time."
"I believe you are saying, God, that we on Earth and in the universe have entered a field in your design that has been there all along," I said. "You knew that our past might someday become our future, and you planned for it."
"Yes," God said. "On the first day, I drew the line at Beelzebub."
"A minute ago, you said that after Einstein, you thought that men were starting to know too much. Was that in the design, or did it surprise you?"
"I only created the universe, the heavens and the Earth," God said. "But I did not create the universe to be bored. Within the creation, its elements have always been governed by chance, and its inhabitants have always had free will. So, yes, the first time I was surprised that it happened so soon."
I was startled. "The first time?" I said. "Have there been other times?"
God was silent.
"God?" I said.
Finally he spoke: "Ask Einstein." Then he was gone. I looked at my notes. My next question would have been about the dead people coming to life. I tried to call out again. But my mind was blank.
I had heard enough. It was only a thought experiment, whose effect was to affirm my core belief, that anything is possible. After it was completed, I read the interview again. Twice. Here is the important thing: I believed it.
God is already on record, in this planet's archives, as the creator of the universe. That story is told in the Bible, which remains the No. 1 best-selling non-fiction book of all time. His story as told in this interview is no less plausible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Same-same.
The Biblical version then started forward, and God's vision was completed in six days. The Big Bang version took longer and now is in roughly its thirteen-point-seven-billionth year. In the Genesis version, a wily serpent living in the Tree of Good and Evil was the original source of evil. In the Big Bang view, God identifies that source as the so-called "Beelzebub boson," without which matter could not exist. Either way, evil has always been with us, as a literal condition of life.
But the stories differ in the end – maybe. The Beelzebub story describes the boson as part of the universe's design from the first instant, which, if ever freed, would trigger an Event such as we encountered on May 29. No such universal mechanism is mentioned in the Bible with regard to the serpent.
However, it may not be because God didn't try. I must admit that I am an evolutionist when it comes to comparing creation theories, favoring the Big Bang's long haul over what I came to think of as "the scenic route" found in Genesis.
Again, anything is possible, and probably always was. God has always had freedom with the universe, not intervening, which was beneath him, but tinkering, which appears to be in his character. The Genesis reporters obviously got the serpent story from somewhere. God, being as open with them as he has been with me, may have tried to describe the boson as the source of evil. But physics would not be introduced for another five thousand years, and the humans at that time had no chance of understanding such a theory.
So God devised the serpent story, an evil with which those writers would have been familiar. And of course he couldn't speak to them of particle colliders, so he just left that part off. In the present day, humans do have physics, a science that eventually led them to a theory about a "Higgs boson," that they became hell-bent to find.
Three days ago, they became successful, and they reversed the universe. Is that the evidence, that they finally found the boson? God says yes. But the physicists have no way to return to the scene to collect proof. They are left – all of us are left – only with a true eternity, a universe book-ended by theories: the Big Bang, that started the universe, and the Higgs boson, that reversed it. God is such an awful tease.
Copyright Michael Grant 2012
October 24, 2012
God's defamation suit against Richard Mourdock
Dean Calbreath, my colleague in journalism and the teaching of journalism, commented on Facebook a few minutes ago, "If I were God, I'd sue for defamation."
In journalism, we are schooled in the nuts and bolts of defamation. "Defamation" means "to publish anything false about a person, which damages that person's reputation, or ability to make a living." In some states, damage includes "mental anguish."
So here are a woman, pregnant by rape, and God, sitting in a bar, side-by-side, reading Richard Mourdock's remark – "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen" – and being equally outraged.
God puts a hand on the woman's shoulder. "I am so sorry you had to see that," he says. "If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to."
God files a defamation suit against Richard Mourdock. In the courtroom, God takes his seat at the Plaintiff's table as a maturely attractive conservatively dressed woman in her forties. Her name is Meryl. "Your Honor," says Elmo, Richard Mourdock's attorney, "how can we be sure that this is God?"
"Try me," says Meryl, in a throaty tenor that sways the chandeliers a bit.
"Your Honor," says Meryl's attorney Robert, in his 50s, handsome in a nondescript way, "what Richard Mourdock said in published comments about my client is not only holier-than-thou in that it puts a human's words in God's mouth, it is also false, it damages her reputation, and it has caused God considerable mental anguish." As he speaks, the rafters shiver.
"My God," says Elmo, staring. "You can't be God, too."
"How lightly you regard me," Robert says with a tight smile, "for one who created the Universe."
"Your Honor, the defense rests," says Elmo.
Robert stands. "Your Honor," he says, "the defense can't rest, without presenting a case. Therefore I move for a mistrial, and an appeal directly to the Supreme Court. This suit, in this nation, deserves maximum publicity. And, I have always wanted to appear before the Supreme Court."
In journalism, we are schooled in the nuts and bolts of defamation. "Defamation" means "to publish anything false about a person, which damages that person's reputation, or ability to make a living." In some states, damage includes "mental anguish."
So here are a woman, pregnant by rape, and God, sitting in a bar, side-by-side, reading Richard Mourdock's remark – "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen" – and being equally outraged.
God puts a hand on the woman's shoulder. "I am so sorry you had to see that," he says. "If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to."
God files a defamation suit against Richard Mourdock. In the courtroom, God takes his seat at the Plaintiff's table as a maturely attractive conservatively dressed woman in her forties. Her name is Meryl. "Your Honor," says Elmo, Richard Mourdock's attorney, "how can we be sure that this is God?"
"Try me," says Meryl, in a throaty tenor that sways the chandeliers a bit.
"Your Honor," says Meryl's attorney Robert, in his 50s, handsome in a nondescript way, "what Richard Mourdock said in published comments about my client is not only holier-than-thou in that it puts a human's words in God's mouth, it is also false, it damages her reputation, and it has caused God considerable mental anguish." As he speaks, the rafters shiver.
"My God," says Elmo, staring. "You can't be God, too."
"How lightly you regard me," Robert says with a tight smile, "for one who created the Universe."
"Your Honor, the defense rests," says Elmo.
Robert stands. "Your Honor," he says, "the defense can't rest, without presenting a case. Therefore I move for a mistrial, and an appeal directly to the Supreme Court. This suit, in this nation, deserves maximum publicity. And, I have always wanted to appear before the Supreme Court."
October 22, 2012
In the debate, look for the Romnesia brand
The first known use of "Romnesia," according to the Politico website, was last March 23, in a tweet by an Obama supporter, "@breakingnuts." This individual defined Romnesia as "a severe form of amnesia that strikes dishonest politicians."
Why was it only last week that the Obama team picked it up? Most likely because the blog/twitter world is a mammoth haystack in which sharp points – needles – are almost impossible to find.
But it doesn't matter. As @breakingnuts defined it, Romnesia was too weak, too general, and not quite true: "a severe form of amnesia that strikes dishonest politicians." It was named for Romney, but it could have applied to anybody, lying about any subject. It was not quite true because the author used the wrong definition of "amnesia."
By the time Obama used it last week, the term had acquired specificity provided by Romney himself, as he started to move away from his severely conservative positions of last spring toward his moderate right positions of the general campaign.
The way Obama used it – "If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website" – it could only apply to one man: Romney. That is why it works. The Romney camp wanted to pass it off as a joke, but it's not. It's a brand: one memorable word that sums up the Mitt Romney product.
Obama carefully did not say, "have forgotten the policies," which was important, because Romney hasn't forgotten them. Obama said, "can't seem to remember the policies" to invoke the Webster's definition of amnesia that applies in this case: "selective overlooking of events or acts that are not favorable or useful to one's purpose or position." This is the link which connects "Romnesia" to a slang term from the 1920s that meant "rubbishy nonsense; baloney; bull; euphemism for bullshit." That word was "Bushwa." I am not making this up.
When Mitt started his shift toward the middle, during the August convention, many writers sought original words to describe the shift. I used the device of a dock – the severely conservative base – and the boat – the moderate right shift. Romney had to keep one foot on both as he – . Well. My effort was feeble, and all other efforts feeble, when it could be nailed down in one word. Romnesia. You'll be able to see Romnesia on display in tonight's debate, and know instantly what it is. That's branding.
Why was it only last week that the Obama team picked it up? Most likely because the blog/twitter world is a mammoth haystack in which sharp points – needles – are almost impossible to find.
But it doesn't matter. As @breakingnuts defined it, Romnesia was too weak, too general, and not quite true: "a severe form of amnesia that strikes dishonest politicians." It was named for Romney, but it could have applied to anybody, lying about any subject. It was not quite true because the author used the wrong definition of "amnesia."
By the time Obama used it last week, the term had acquired specificity provided by Romney himself, as he started to move away from his severely conservative positions of last spring toward his moderate right positions of the general campaign.
The way Obama used it – "If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website" – it could only apply to one man: Romney. That is why it works. The Romney camp wanted to pass it off as a joke, but it's not. It's a brand: one memorable word that sums up the Mitt Romney product.
Obama carefully did not say, "have forgotten the policies," which was important, because Romney hasn't forgotten them. Obama said, "can't seem to remember the policies" to invoke the Webster's definition of amnesia that applies in this case: "selective overlooking of events or acts that are not favorable or useful to one's purpose or position." This is the link which connects "Romnesia" to a slang term from the 1920s that meant "rubbishy nonsense; baloney; bull; euphemism for bullshit." That word was "Bushwa." I am not making this up.
When Mitt started his shift toward the middle, during the August convention, many writers sought original words to describe the shift. I used the device of a dock – the severely conservative base – and the boat – the moderate right shift. Romney had to keep one foot on both as he – . Well. My effort was feeble, and all other efforts feeble, when it could be nailed down in one word. Romnesia. You'll be able to see Romnesia on display in tonight's debate, and know instantly what it is. That's branding.
Setting traps for Mitt
The final presidential debate is tonight, and you know as well as I do that the Obama team is looking for ways to get Mitt to walk into a trap.
Last week, Mitt walked into a trap – the "act of terror" trap – that had Rush Limbaugh about to splatter himself on his studio's walls. Barack saw the trap coming – he may even have set it – and urged Mitt toward it ("Please proceed, governor"), which reminded me of a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon about the cat and the clothes dryer, that I described here last week.
Mitt, obviously, didn't see it coming. Thus, an opportunity for tonight, where the object is foreign policy, a realm full of traps for someone who knows the territory the way a sitting administration does.
Bill Keller, writing in this morning's New York Times, set an obvious, and very broad trap, nudging Mitt toward saying reasonable things about a reasonable presidential foreign policy, things that would infuriate the severely conservative core of the Mitt constituency. I almost wish that would happen, to view the photos from space of the southern and central regions of the nation being defined by the explosions.
So that's not a likely trap. Keller himself, at the end of his piece, acknowledged it was not something that he would expect. I will be looking, though, for some kind of trap to develop, and for the signs that everyone knows it's coming, but Mitt. It helps make the debate more interesting.
Last week, Mitt walked into a trap – the "act of terror" trap – that had Rush Limbaugh about to splatter himself on his studio's walls. Barack saw the trap coming – he may even have set it – and urged Mitt toward it ("Please proceed, governor"), which reminded me of a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon about the cat and the clothes dryer, that I described here last week.
Mitt, obviously, didn't see it coming. Thus, an opportunity for tonight, where the object is foreign policy, a realm full of traps for someone who knows the territory the way a sitting administration does.
Bill Keller, writing in this morning's New York Times, set an obvious, and very broad trap, nudging Mitt toward saying reasonable things about a reasonable presidential foreign policy, things that would infuriate the severely conservative core of the Mitt constituency. I almost wish that would happen, to view the photos from space of the southern and central regions of the nation being defined by the explosions.
So that's not a likely trap. Keller himself, at the end of his piece, acknowledged it was not something that he would expect. I will be looking, though, for some kind of trap to develop, and for the signs that everyone knows it's coming, but Mitt. It helps make the debate more interesting.
October 21, 2012
Can't wait for Nov. 6
It has been almost a month, and Mitt's comments seem not to have aged. Every time I read them, it is as if for the first time.
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
It would be interesting to know the number of fundraisers where he repeated these same remarks.
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
It would be interesting to know the number of fundraisers where he repeated these same remarks.
October 19, 2012
"Romnesia"
I have been working in creative media since 1969. So have thousands of other media professionals. We are all extremely aware of each other, and afraid someone else will get the idea first. When someone else beats me to it, it hurts.
Three days ago, on Oct. 16, I posted the following blog:
"The real debate, between now and the election, should be between Moderate Mitt and Severely Conservative Mitt.
"In the last three weeks before the election, I would like to see such a debate, created in a series of ads by the Obama Campaign, in split-screen, just like the candidate debates, with Moderate Mitt on the left, and Severely Conservative Mitt on the right, going back and forth with pronouncements about where they stand.
"The point is to show undecided voters if they vote for Mitt, they literally won't know who they're voting for.
"Whatever the Obama ad formats in these last weeks, they will aim at the Mitt duality. He has set himself up as a sitting duck."
I was very happy, as a creative media professional, with the idea of a split-screen debate between Moderate Mitt and Severely Conservative Mitt.
But then, today, in Virginia, Obama, thanks to his creative team, came up with one word that trumps my whole idea:
"Romnesia."
Brilliant. It hurts so bad.
Three days ago, on Oct. 16, I posted the following blog:
"The real debate, between now and the election, should be between Moderate Mitt and Severely Conservative Mitt.
"In the last three weeks before the election, I would like to see such a debate, created in a series of ads by the Obama Campaign, in split-screen, just like the candidate debates, with Moderate Mitt on the left, and Severely Conservative Mitt on the right, going back and forth with pronouncements about where they stand.
"The point is to show undecided voters if they vote for Mitt, they literally won't know who they're voting for.
"Whatever the Obama ad formats in these last weeks, they will aim at the Mitt duality. He has set himself up as a sitting duck."
I was very happy, as a creative media professional, with the idea of a split-screen debate between Moderate Mitt and Severely Conservative Mitt.
But then, today, in Virginia, Obama, thanks to his creative team, came up with one word that trumps my whole idea:
"Romnesia."
Brilliant. It hurts so bad.
McConnell to Obama, 2013: you and me, baby
The main result of Barack Obama's re-election will be continuing national progress (economy, jobs, women's rights, Supreme Court, etc.) for the next four years, accelerated by enthusiastic support (say what?) from Republicans in Congress.
This is because, with his re-election, Obama will become a one-term president, which fulfills the dream of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Republican obstructionist strategies of the last four years, no longer necessary, will be replaced by strategies of strong support.
Those strategies become the cornerstone of Republican Party planning for the 2016 election, for which the party (finally!) is nicely positioned with serious candidates, young blood which has received generous ink in the 2012 campaign and which could conceivably provide the GOP its most meaningful, Bachmann-free primary since Bush 41's nomination.
The Democrats most likely will put forth Hillary Clinton, who is eminently experienced and seasoned and would be a compelling and hard-to-beat presidential candidate.
A possible strategy to beat her: help Obama succeed, and then in the campaign of 2015-16, claim credit for it, which is something the GOP is really good at. In the process, the nation benefits. Everyone knew it was going to take Obama eight years anyway, to repair the damage left by he-whose-name-can't-be-mentioned-in-the-GOP, until a debate delegate asked Mitt how he was different from George W. Bush.
In hindsight, it was also true that Obama's most meaningful progress would have to wait until his second term, when GOP support became an option. Who knew the option would also become GOP election strategy? It's a strategy that will crush the Tea Party, of course, but hey: politics is politics. Such a completely weird business.
This is because, with his re-election, Obama will become a one-term president, which fulfills the dream of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Republican obstructionist strategies of the last four years, no longer necessary, will be replaced by strategies of strong support.
Those strategies become the cornerstone of Republican Party planning for the 2016 election, for which the party (finally!) is nicely positioned with serious candidates, young blood which has received generous ink in the 2012 campaign and which could conceivably provide the GOP its most meaningful, Bachmann-free primary since Bush 41's nomination.
The Democrats most likely will put forth Hillary Clinton, who is eminently experienced and seasoned and would be a compelling and hard-to-beat presidential candidate.
A possible strategy to beat her: help Obama succeed, and then in the campaign of 2015-16, claim credit for it, which is something the GOP is really good at. In the process, the nation benefits. Everyone knew it was going to take Obama eight years anyway, to repair the damage left by he-whose-name-can't-be-mentioned-in-the-GOP, until a debate delegate asked Mitt how he was different from George W. Bush.
In hindsight, it was also true that Obama's most meaningful progress would have to wait until his second term, when GOP support became an option. Who knew the option would also become GOP election strategy? It's a strategy that will crush the Tea Party, of course, but hey: politics is politics. Such a completely weird business.
October 17, 2012
Of terror, Bush and the 47 percent
For the record, Candy Crowley, who is taking some flak from the right wing, was correct to jump in last night and confirm President Obama's Rose Garden "act of terror" quote.
Mitt left her no choice. Here is what he said, as he approached her:
MR. ROMNEY: I — I think it’s interesting the president just said something which is that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror. (To Obama:) You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed.
MR. ROMNEY: Is that what you’re saying?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed, Governor.
MR. ROMNEY: I — I — I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
When Candy heard Mitt say he wanted to "get that for the record," she had no choice, if she wanted to continue to live with herself. She could remain silent, and walk away from a presidential debate record she knew would be incorrect. Or she could jump in, as she did, and walk away from a record she knew was correct.
I am happy that President Obama acknowledged the 47 percent in this public, nationally televised forum. He said:
"There’s a fundamentally different vision about how we move our country forward. I believe Governor Romney is a good man. He loves his family, cares about his faith.
But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considers themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility — think about who he was talking about: folks on Social Security who’ve worked all their lives, veterans who’ve sacrificed for this country, students who are out there trying to, hopefully, advance their own dreams, but also this country’s dreams, soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now, people who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income. And I want to fight for them. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last four years, because if they succeed, I believe the country succeeds."
Mitt, with his "completely wrong" statement, tried to shrug off his 47 percent comment. Being two of the 47 percent, my wife and I believe he should be held accountable. President Obama's statement was a step in that direction.
Finally, thanks for the question asked from the audience by Susan Katz:
"Governor Romney, I am an undecided voter because I’m disappointed with the lack of progress I’ve seen in the last four years. However, I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush administration. Since both you and President Bush are Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?"
She was speaking of a man whose name Republicans have avoided like the plague in this campaign, a former president not even asked to appear at this year's national nominating convention. Susan Katz let the Republicans know that Americans are thinking about George W., though, and his role in the way things are now. It was a priceless addition to the dialogue.
Mitt left her no choice. Here is what he said, as he approached her:
MR. ROMNEY: I — I think it’s interesting the president just said something which is that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror. (To Obama:) You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed.
MR. ROMNEY: Is that what you’re saying?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed, Governor.
MR. ROMNEY: I — I — I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
When Candy heard Mitt say he wanted to "get that for the record," she had no choice, if she wanted to continue to live with herself. She could remain silent, and walk away from a presidential debate record she knew would be incorrect. Or she could jump in, as she did, and walk away from a record she knew was correct.
I am happy that President Obama acknowledged the 47 percent in this public, nationally televised forum. He said:
"There’s a fundamentally different vision about how we move our country forward. I believe Governor Romney is a good man. He loves his family, cares about his faith.
But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considers themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility — think about who he was talking about: folks on Social Security who’ve worked all their lives, veterans who’ve sacrificed for this country, students who are out there trying to, hopefully, advance their own dreams, but also this country’s dreams, soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now, people who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income. And I want to fight for them. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last four years, because if they succeed, I believe the country succeeds."
Mitt, with his "completely wrong" statement, tried to shrug off his 47 percent comment. Being two of the 47 percent, my wife and I believe he should be held accountable. President Obama's statement was a step in that direction.
Finally, thanks for the question asked from the audience by Susan Katz:
"Governor Romney, I am an undecided voter because I’m disappointed with the lack of progress I’ve seen in the last four years. However, I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush administration. Since both you and President Bush are Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?"
She was speaking of a man whose name Republicans have avoided like the plague in this campaign, a former president not even asked to appear at this year's national nominating convention. Susan Katz let the Republicans know that Americans are thinking about George W., though, and his role in the way things are now. It was a priceless addition to the dialogue.
Dying by the truth
Remember Gary Larson and "The Far Side"? Barack and Mitt last night re-enacted one of my favorite "Far Side" cartoons of all. A dog has drawn arrows and "Cat Fud" signs into the laundry room, all the way to the open door of the clothes dryer. At the open door stands a cat, peering in. Hidden behind the washing machine is the dog, thinking: "Oh please, oh please . . . "
It was hard to tell if Barack actually set the trap, or if Mitt just walked into it. Either way, as Mitt, challenging Barack's "act of terror" quote, walked closer and closer to Candy Crowley, with Barack edging him on ("Please proceed, Governor"), I could almost hear Barack holding his breath and thinking, "Oh please, oh please . . . " Then Mitt hopped into the dryer, and Candy ("He did call it an act of terror sir") slammed the door.
It was hard to tell if Barack actually set the trap, or if Mitt just walked into it. Either way, as Mitt, challenging Barack's "act of terror" quote, walked closer and closer to Candy Crowley, with Barack edging him on ("Please proceed, Governor"), I could almost hear Barack holding his breath and thinking, "Oh please, oh please . . . " Then Mitt hopped into the dryer, and Candy ("He did call it an act of terror sir") slammed the door.
October 16, 2012
47 Percent Defamation
In his famous remarks about "the 47 percent," Mitt said that we, the 47 percent (I am a member of the 47 percent), are dependent upon government.
He said we believe that we are victims.
He said that we believe that government has a responsibility to care for us.
He said we believe that we are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it, that they are entitlements and government should give them to us.
He said we will vote for Barack Obama no matter what (which clearly identified me as among the 47 percent).
He said we are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax, he said.
He said he’ll never convince us we should take personal responsibility and care for our lives.
Last week, Mitt told a national television network commentator that when he said those things, he was "just completely wrong."
Excuse me, but when he said that, wasn't it an admission that he defamed 47 percent of the American people?
I certainly feel defamed. Defamation is publishing something false about a person, which damages that person's reputation, or ability to make a living. Everything he said was false, or "wrong," he said, as it applies to me, except the one about voting for Obama no matter what.
Other statements were defamatory, but they would be difficult to prove in court, where the battle is gray vs. gray. Being called a victim defames me. But a Mitt attorney would say, "Define, 'victim.'" That might take six months and still be inconclusive, legally.
But it only takes one count for the plaintiff to prevail. I will vote for Obama, which identifies me as one of the 47 percent, whom Mitt said pay no income tax. In my Sept. 18 blog, I told Mitt I would show him my last 10 years of tax returns, if he would show me his. I pay taxes and have the documents to prove it.
Under defamation law, I also have to prove "injury," that my reputation was actually damaged. Every day until Nov. 6, I am posting on Facebook a tribute, as a member, to The 47 Percent. A high school classmate, who is a Romney supporter, read this and commented, "What I cannot figure out is how you managed to be one of the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes."
That statement damages my reputation.
He said we believe that we are victims.
He said that we believe that government has a responsibility to care for us.
He said we believe that we are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it, that they are entitlements and government should give them to us.
He said we will vote for Barack Obama no matter what (which clearly identified me as among the 47 percent).
He said we are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax, he said.
He said he’ll never convince us we should take personal responsibility and care for our lives.
Last week, Mitt told a national television network commentator that when he said those things, he was "just completely wrong."
Excuse me, but when he said that, wasn't it an admission that he defamed 47 percent of the American people?
I certainly feel defamed. Defamation is publishing something false about a person, which damages that person's reputation, or ability to make a living. Everything he said was false, or "wrong," he said, as it applies to me, except the one about voting for Obama no matter what.
Other statements were defamatory, but they would be difficult to prove in court, where the battle is gray vs. gray. Being called a victim defames me. But a Mitt attorney would say, "Define, 'victim.'" That might take six months and still be inconclusive, legally.
But it only takes one count for the plaintiff to prevail. I will vote for Obama, which identifies me as one of the 47 percent, whom Mitt said pay no income tax. In my Sept. 18 blog, I told Mitt I would show him my last 10 years of tax returns, if he would show me his. I pay taxes and have the documents to prove it.
Under defamation law, I also have to prove "injury," that my reputation was actually damaged. Every day until Nov. 6, I am posting on Facebook a tribute, as a member, to The 47 Percent. A high school classmate, who is a Romney supporter, read this and commented, "What I cannot figure out is how you managed to be one of the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes."
That statement damages my reputation.
The real debate
There is another debate tonight, and another one next week, but the real debate, between now and the election, should be between Moderate Mitt and Severely Conservative Mitt.
In the last three weeks before the election, I would like to see such a debate, created in a series of ads by the Obama Campaign, in split-screen, just like the candidate debates, with Moderate Mitt on the left, and Severely Conservative Mitt on the right, going back and forth with pronouncements about where they stand.
The point is to show undecided voters if they vote for Mitt, they literally won't know who they're voting for.
Whatever the Obama ad formats in these last weeks, they will aim at the Mitt duality. He has set himself up as a sitting duck.
In the last three weeks before the election, I would like to see such a debate, created in a series of ads by the Obama Campaign, in split-screen, just like the candidate debates, with Moderate Mitt on the left, and Severely Conservative Mitt on the right, going back and forth with pronouncements about where they stand.
The point is to show undecided voters if they vote for Mitt, they literally won't know who they're voting for.
Whatever the Obama ad formats in these last weeks, they will aim at the Mitt duality. He has set himself up as a sitting duck.
October 15, 2012
Daily insult for Mitt, Oct. 15
When I promised an insult a day for Completely Wrong Mitt (for his insults to The 47 Percent) between now and the election, I knew instantly where to start: Monty Python (adapted to the occasion).
King Mitt: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Mitt: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Mitt: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Serf: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
(Courtesy of The 47 Percent. Thanks to the imdb.)
King Mitt: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Mitt: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Mitt: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Serf: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
(Courtesy of The 47 Percent. Thanks to the imdb.)
October 14, 2012
Taking personal responsibility this morning
Just as a reminder, here is what Completely Wrong Mitt said about The 47 Percent:
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
I post this as an act of taking personal responsibility for my life, which has never been more important than it is right now.
Courtesy of The 47 Percent. See you Nov. 6.
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
I post this as an act of taking personal responsibility for my life, which has never been more important than it is right now.
Courtesy of The 47 Percent. See you Nov. 6.
October 13, 2012
"Smug" fits
I realized just now that I left incomplete yesterday's research into the word "smirk."
Webster's online defined "smirk" as, "to smile in an affected or smug manner." That discovery inspired me to create the word, "Mittsmug," as a direct insult to Completely Wrong Mitt, the Republican candidate for President of the United States.
But what does "smug" mean? I went back to Webster's just now and found that "smug" means: "trim or smart in dress; scrupulously neat, clean, or correct; highly self-satisfied."
My God, according to Webster's, "Mitt" could be a synonym for "smug." I feel so much better now.
Courtesy of The 47 Percent. See you Nov. 6.
Webster's online defined "smirk" as, "to smile in an affected or smug manner." That discovery inspired me to create the word, "Mittsmug," as a direct insult to Completely Wrong Mitt, the Republican candidate for President of the United States.
But what does "smug" mean? I went back to Webster's just now and found that "smug" means: "trim or smart in dress; scrupulously neat, clean, or correct; highly self-satisfied."
My God, according to Webster's, "Mitt" could be a synonym for "smug." I feel so much better now.
Courtesy of The 47 Percent. See you Nov. 6.
October 12, 2012
Mittsmug!
For my insult to the Republican Presidential candidate today, I am introducing the insulting word "Mittsmug." The words, once you see them together, are actually impossible to separate.
I discovered the word while researching the definition of the word (verb or noun) "smirk." After the VP debate, Republicans talked a lot about Joe Biden smirking. I didn't think he was smirking at all. I thought I had better look it up.
Webster's Online defines "smirk" as, "To smile in an affected or smug manner." I thought Joe was showing way too many teeth to be smirking. It looked more like a condescending barroom grin, which said to the foe, "You are quite the malarkey bag, aren't you, you moron?"
I contend the master smirker in the debates has been Completely Wrong Mitt. He puts it on when anyone else within hearing distance is speaking, and it says, "Pretty soon this pitiful individual will be finished, and then we grown-ups can talk some more." For a delightfully comprehensive exhibition, go here. Millions of Americans have been looked at in this way by superior relatives across the Thanksgiving Dinner table.
The Mittsmirk is powered, as Webster's pointed out, by his ability – it must be God-given – "to smile in an affected or smug manner." Thus: Mittsmug!
Courtesy of The 47 Percent.
I discovered the word while researching the definition of the word (verb or noun) "smirk." After the VP debate, Republicans talked a lot about Joe Biden smirking. I didn't think he was smirking at all. I thought I had better look it up.
Webster's Online defines "smirk" as, "To smile in an affected or smug manner." I thought Joe was showing way too many teeth to be smirking. It looked more like a condescending barroom grin, which said to the foe, "You are quite the malarkey bag, aren't you, you moron?"
I contend the master smirker in the debates has been Completely Wrong Mitt. He puts it on when anyone else within hearing distance is speaking, and it says, "Pretty soon this pitiful individual will be finished, and then we grown-ups can talk some more." For a delightfully comprehensive exhibition, go here. Millions of Americans have been looked at in this way by superior relatives across the Thanksgiving Dinner table.
The Mittsmirk is powered, as Webster's pointed out, by his ability – it must be God-given – "to smile in an affected or smug manner." Thus: Mittsmug!
Courtesy of The 47 Percent.
Sunrise before the rain
We in Southern California had our first rain of the season last night and today, after two months of unrelenting heat. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Health care: from people to profit
My wife and I are in a discussion about how health care has shifted from people-based to profit-based since the middle of the last century. Is it true? If it is, how did it happen?
I wish I knew the details of an event in the mid-1950s which began when I developed a stomach ache one afternoon. By dawn the next day, it had become severe. I was about 12 years old.
My mother called our doctor, Dr. Carroll Murtha. In half an hour, he was at our house. He listened to my belly, and then he took out a knife. Damn, I thought. He dragged the point of the knife across my belly a couple of times, asking me what I felt.
When he was finished, he told my mother to take me to the hospital, where later that morning my appendix was removed. They put it in a jar of formaldehyde, and I took it home. In the last 10 years, I have asked three times (two hip implants, a prostatectomy) to take my old parts home in a jar and was refused.
That's not all that has changed. In 1955, we had our own doctor, and he made house calls. My mother worked at a bank, and yet I have no memory of my appendectomy creating any serious ripples in her ability to pay the bills. She might have a different memory, but it left the firmament with her in the spring of 1989.
I should have asked her. You younger readers, if you have questions about the way things were in your childhood, don't wait to ask your elders.
How much did an appendectomy cost in 1955, and how did lower middle-class families pay for it? What principle of health care inspired doctors to get out of bed and make a house call on their way to work?
Karen claims she has a document showing that her family was charged $150 for the birth of her sister, in about that same time frame.
What happened? Feedback, please.
I wish I knew the details of an event in the mid-1950s which began when I developed a stomach ache one afternoon. By dawn the next day, it had become severe. I was about 12 years old.
My mother called our doctor, Dr. Carroll Murtha. In half an hour, he was at our house. He listened to my belly, and then he took out a knife. Damn, I thought. He dragged the point of the knife across my belly a couple of times, asking me what I felt.
When he was finished, he told my mother to take me to the hospital, where later that morning my appendix was removed. They put it in a jar of formaldehyde, and I took it home. In the last 10 years, I have asked three times (two hip implants, a prostatectomy) to take my old parts home in a jar and was refused.
That's not all that has changed. In 1955, we had our own doctor, and he made house calls. My mother worked at a bank, and yet I have no memory of my appendectomy creating any serious ripples in her ability to pay the bills. She might have a different memory, but it left the firmament with her in the spring of 1989.
I should have asked her. You younger readers, if you have questions about the way things were in your childhood, don't wait to ask your elders.
How much did an appendectomy cost in 1955, and how did lower middle-class families pay for it? What principle of health care inspired doctors to get out of bed and make a house call on their way to work?
Karen claims she has a document showing that her family was charged $150 for the birth of her sister, in about that same time frame.
What happened? Feedback, please.
The emerging 47 percent
The 47 percent aren't going away just because Completely Wrong Mitt wants us to.
In fact, our position has been identified and consolidated. We have received free, steady publicity since the discovery of the video of Completely Wrong saying all those things about us to a group of Florida Republicans. Then C.W. himself last week tried to shoo us away with his "completely wrong" comment on Fox, as if it were old news that we could forget now.
But algorithms don't work that way, in brains or computers. Some genius got the inspiration from somewhere to search "completely wrong" on Google Images and was rewarded with 332,000,000 results, most of them images of Completely Wrong himself. In marketing, you would call that "branding." The Completely Wrong Mitt brand. Let's call him CWM for short, like silk monograms on the cuffs of a fat cat's dress shirts.
Am I sounding surly? I guess so. It's part of the consolidation effect, the bonding together of the 47 percent against CWM's surreptitious insults. It doesn't help that the insults aren't true, or that they cross a line into defamation. It can start a fire in the belly, when one is defamed by a candidate for President of the United States.
I began this series of campaign blogs as pro-Obama, which I have always been, but my intention was to remain detached, above cheap, cute, name-calling. No longer. Not after what I and the 47 percent have been called. From this day on, the Republican candidate is Completely Wrong Mitt. Shakespeare could not say it better.
In fact, our position has been identified and consolidated. We have received free, steady publicity since the discovery of the video of Completely Wrong saying all those things about us to a group of Florida Republicans. Then C.W. himself last week tried to shoo us away with his "completely wrong" comment on Fox, as if it were old news that we could forget now.
But algorithms don't work that way, in brains or computers. Some genius got the inspiration from somewhere to search "completely wrong" on Google Images and was rewarded with 332,000,000 results, most of them images of Completely Wrong himself. In marketing, you would call that "branding." The Completely Wrong Mitt brand. Let's call him CWM for short, like silk monograms on the cuffs of a fat cat's dress shirts.
Am I sounding surly? I guess so. It's part of the consolidation effect, the bonding together of the 47 percent against CWM's surreptitious insults. It doesn't help that the insults aren't true, or that they cross a line into defamation. It can start a fire in the belly, when one is defamed by a candidate for President of the United States.
I began this series of campaign blogs as pro-Obama, which I have always been, but my intention was to remain detached, above cheap, cute, name-calling. No longer. Not after what I and the 47 percent have been called. From this day on, the Republican candidate is Completely Wrong Mitt. Shakespeare could not say it better.
October 11, 2012
For once, Mitt said the exactly right thing
What a hoot. If you go to Google Images and search "completely wrong," you get 10 million images of Mitt. Do I see a new ad in the Obama campaign's future? Like by sundown?
October 07, 2012
Did Mitt defame the 47 percent? Feels like it
My God, I think I may have been defamed by a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I don't know whether to celebrate, or smash up the television set.
In his famous remarks about "the 47 percent," Mitt said that we, the 47 percent (I can prove on Election Day that I am a member of the 47 percent), pay no income tax. He said some other stuff, too, about responsibility, victimhood, entitlement attitudes and such. But those could be argued in court until Mitt or I die, whichever comes first.
Not the taxes, though. I have the documents to prove that I pay income taxes.
I don't even need the transcript of his statement to Sean Hannity that he was "just completely wrong" when he said that false thing about me and the rest of the 47 percent. I already had the proof, my tax documents. To watch him admit it, though, was astounding. This guy is running for President of the United States!
In his famous remarks about "the 47 percent," Mitt said that we, the 47 percent (I can prove on Election Day that I am a member of the 47 percent), pay no income tax. He said some other stuff, too, about responsibility, victimhood, entitlement attitudes and such. But those could be argued in court until Mitt or I die, whichever comes first.
Not the taxes, though. I have the documents to prove that I pay income taxes.
I don't even need the transcript of his statement to Sean Hannity that he was "just completely wrong" when he said that false thing about me and the rest of the 47 percent. I already had the proof, my tax documents. To watch him admit it, though, was astounding. This guy is running for President of the United States!
A close encounter of the clouds kind
Yesterday evening, I had a close encounter of the clouds kind. It was 6:10 p.m. I was watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when I glanced out the window at the sky, and the sky drew me outside.
I was immediately overwhelmed, and I believe that was the intention. Everywhere, there was light and texture and color, in different levels of each, in all directions, north, east, south, west, and overhead, all angles, everywhere. It was a volume and dimension that could not be captured with a camera, and even if it could, there was no screen on which it could be meaningfully projected.
There are times like this when I wish my brain came with a jpeg feature, so I could capture an image I could project in my brain later in its full scope, without trusting memory. A short video would be nice. Instead, I have to convert memory to words, which seems futile when I'm standing beneath the indescribable.
The sky was a horizon-to-horizon inverted, sky-blue bowl, and filling the bowl was clear air, a see-through medium, but still a medium, like colorless coffee, and in this medium the cloud artisans created their work, according to their schools. The low-cloud school had created elongated sky creatures, white with gray bellies. The middle-level school had created gentle, opaque, sheaths of an impossibly high thread count. The high-cloud school had created barely existing, rhythmic strands, so fine they might have been the middle-level clouds with their edges turned to me.
Across the colorless coffee, north to south, a Mexico-bound airliner had slashed a high-level white, diffusing line, the way a food artisan would slash a dot of heavy cream in a white line across a mug of cappuccino, then let the surface tension both diffuse the line and hold it together.
I watched this for 10 minutes, turning and craning, turning and craning. Imagine being in a dream where you are standing in a hall, looking at the Mona Lisa, 15 feet in front of you, then turning to see the David, 15 feet behind you, and both are fading and will have disappeared forever inside of an hour. Which one do you watch?
That may be why the indescribable can't be possessed. If it could, it wouldn't be indescribable. There seems to be a time limit that I am allowed. For me, it is about 10 minutes. I went back inside to "Close Encounters," keeping the sky in one eye through the windows, going out again twice for short reconnoiters before it got too dark.
Then in the darkening west came brilliant crimson on coastal clouds. I went out to watch for awhile, watching this metaphorical end-of-life thing bleeding its crimson steadily out of the clouds into the darkness of night with every tick of time's heart. Inside, looking in through the window, the mother ship of "Close Encounters" was hovering on the screen. Inventive boys with Tinker Toys. Outside, the masters were finishing their commission, laying to rest another unique 24 hours.
I was immediately overwhelmed, and I believe that was the intention. Everywhere, there was light and texture and color, in different levels of each, in all directions, north, east, south, west, and overhead, all angles, everywhere. It was a volume and dimension that could not be captured with a camera, and even if it could, there was no screen on which it could be meaningfully projected.
There are times like this when I wish my brain came with a jpeg feature, so I could capture an image I could project in my brain later in its full scope, without trusting memory. A short video would be nice. Instead, I have to convert memory to words, which seems futile when I'm standing beneath the indescribable.
The sky was a horizon-to-horizon inverted, sky-blue bowl, and filling the bowl was clear air, a see-through medium, but still a medium, like colorless coffee, and in this medium the cloud artisans created their work, according to their schools. The low-cloud school had created elongated sky creatures, white with gray bellies. The middle-level school had created gentle, opaque, sheaths of an impossibly high thread count. The high-cloud school had created barely existing, rhythmic strands, so fine they might have been the middle-level clouds with their edges turned to me.
Across the colorless coffee, north to south, a Mexico-bound airliner had slashed a high-level white, diffusing line, the way a food artisan would slash a dot of heavy cream in a white line across a mug of cappuccino, then let the surface tension both diffuse the line and hold it together.
I watched this for 10 minutes, turning and craning, turning and craning. Imagine being in a dream where you are standing in a hall, looking at the Mona Lisa, 15 feet in front of you, then turning to see the David, 15 feet behind you, and both are fading and will have disappeared forever inside of an hour. Which one do you watch?
That may be why the indescribable can't be possessed. If it could, it wouldn't be indescribable. There seems to be a time limit that I am allowed. For me, it is about 10 minutes. I went back inside to "Close Encounters," keeping the sky in one eye through the windows, going out again twice for short reconnoiters before it got too dark.
Then in the darkening west came brilliant crimson on coastal clouds. I went out to watch for awhile, watching this metaphorical end-of-life thing bleeding its crimson steadily out of the clouds into the darkness of night with every tick of time's heart. Inside, looking in through the window, the mother ship of "Close Encounters" was hovering on the screen. Inventive boys with Tinker Toys. Outside, the masters were finishing their commission, laying to rest another unique 24 hours.
October 06, 2012
It's the Party, stupid
Bejabbers! I have been reading news reports and analyses that scare the bejabbers out of me.
All of the media, and millions of people, were made curious by Mitt's shift of position in the debate Wednesday night. He moved away from the far right, his position during the primaries when he said he was a "severe conservative," toward the center.
Yesterday and today, people and pundits were wondering which Mitt was the real Romney. President Obama himself said he had debated the night before with a man who looked exactly like Mitt, but must have been someone else.
Today, much more experienced political minds than mine suggested it didn't make any difference who Mitt was. It's the Republican Party, which "truly is severely conservative," wrote Andrew Rosenthal, editor of The New York Times editorial page, "that matters."
"While we may be confused about the Real Romney," he wrote, "there is no confusion about the Republican Party. There's no reason to think they would tolerate Moderate Mitt in the Oval Office, or that Mr. Romney would even ask them to."
This is not Rosenthal's opinion. He cites a source, former Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who was an early Herman Cain supporter, then backed Rick Santorum in the primaries. "Who cares" what Mitt believes at this point, Tancredo said. For the rest of the campaign, the Limbaugh Right will lie low. If Mitt's centrism gets him to the White House, Tancredo said, the party can then deal with "the nettlesome aspects of Romney's positions on some things."
It brings new content to my personal Obama campaign yard sign: "Regress, or Progress?" Back toward the Bush Administration, or farther away from it? It will be one or the other, on Nov. 6.
All of the media, and millions of people, were made curious by Mitt's shift of position in the debate Wednesday night. He moved away from the far right, his position during the primaries when he said he was a "severe conservative," toward the center.
Yesterday and today, people and pundits were wondering which Mitt was the real Romney. President Obama himself said he had debated the night before with a man who looked exactly like Mitt, but must have been someone else.
Today, much more experienced political minds than mine suggested it didn't make any difference who Mitt was. It's the Republican Party, which "truly is severely conservative," wrote Andrew Rosenthal, editor of The New York Times editorial page, "that matters."
"While we may be confused about the Real Romney," he wrote, "there is no confusion about the Republican Party. There's no reason to think they would tolerate Moderate Mitt in the Oval Office, or that Mr. Romney would even ask them to."
This is not Rosenthal's opinion. He cites a source, former Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who was an early Herman Cain supporter, then backed Rick Santorum in the primaries. "Who cares" what Mitt believes at this point, Tancredo said. For the rest of the campaign, the Limbaugh Right will lie low. If Mitt's centrism gets him to the White House, Tancredo said, the party can then deal with "the nettlesome aspects of Romney's positions on some things."
It brings new content to my personal Obama campaign yard sign: "Regress, or Progress?" Back toward the Bush Administration, or farther away from it? It will be one or the other, on Nov. 6.
October 05, 2012
Mitt "Oops" Romney
Mitt told Fox News last night that his comments about "the 47 percent" were "just completely wrong."
Here's the transcript of what he said about "the 47 percent" at the private Florida fundraiser:
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center, that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in some cases, emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what he looks like."
That's a lot to be wrong about, particularly when he could speak at a length, and with depth of details, that suggest it was an argument he had gone to some trouble to prepare. It suggests that no matter how deep or well-prepared any if his arguments, he could be just completely wrong.
Mitt is reminding me of Rick "Oops" Perry. Most of his arguments during the primaries were wrong, and now he has now deserted them for some centrist arguments, which he will desert when the Limbaugh Right starts to yell "What's wrong with him?"
Mercurial Mitt. Remember in school, playing with a bit of mercury, balled-up on a lab table? You couldn't pin it down. It would split into smaller balls.
So many metaphors are required, to write properly about Mitt. Metaphorical Mitt. You're in a house with him. He says, "I'll be in the living room." You find him in the garage. He says, "I'll be in the kitchen." You find him in the bedroom. He says, "I'll be in the den." You find him way out in the bushes at the back of the yard.
Where is he today? Stretched way, way out now, one foot on the centrist boat and the other foot on the dock of the base. (Sorry, Otis.) The Limbaugh Choir will begin to howl soon.
Here's the transcript of what he said about "the 47 percent" at the private Florida fundraiser:
"Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center, that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in some cases, emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what he looks like."
That's a lot to be wrong about, particularly when he could speak at a length, and with depth of details, that suggest it was an argument he had gone to some trouble to prepare. It suggests that no matter how deep or well-prepared any if his arguments, he could be just completely wrong.
Mitt is reminding me of Rick "Oops" Perry. Most of his arguments during the primaries were wrong, and now he has now deserted them for some centrist arguments, which he will desert when the Limbaugh Right starts to yell "What's wrong with him?"
Mercurial Mitt. Remember in school, playing with a bit of mercury, balled-up on a lab table? You couldn't pin it down. It would split into smaller balls.
So many metaphors are required, to write properly about Mitt. Metaphorical Mitt. You're in a house with him. He says, "I'll be in the living room." You find him in the garage. He says, "I'll be in the kitchen." You find him in the bedroom. He says, "I'll be in the den." You find him way out in the bushes at the back of the yard.
Where is he today? Stretched way, way out now, one foot on the centrist boat and the other foot on the dock of the base. (Sorry, Otis.) The Limbaugh Choir will begin to howl soon.
October 04, 2012
Things remembered about the debate
Everyone hopes that a presidential debate will be memorable in some way.
The first thing I remember about last night's debate was, if you are assigned to moderate a debate, moderate the debate.
The second thing I remember is the Mitt grin, which said, "Poor Barack doesn't know what he is talking about, but he'll be finished soon and the grown-ups can talk some more." Most Americans can immediately identify an in-law who looks at them in this way.
The third thing I remember is that Mitt and his managers finally found a format in which he can feel comfortable. "Go out there and be the CEO," they said. "Talk about the bottom line." Obama was rattled. He knows a CEO talking about a bottom line when he hears one. He looked at Jim Lehrer like, "This was supposed to be about domestic policy, which is about governance. The bottom line is about money."
The fourth thing I remember is thinking that Mitt was pouring out CEO-speak, which was safe for him, but not easy for the average voter to understand and so decide not to listen, which is not the optimal way to sway an undecided voter.
The fifth thing I remember is being surprised, as everyone seemed to be, to learn that Obama actually talked four minutes longer than Mitt. Many Americans can instantly identify such an experience, when they have dinner guests who can turn an hour into a week.
The sixth thing I remember is that the debate did follow to form, which was that it would be about an America, based on the Nov. 6 election, going in one direction – "you're on your own" – or the other – "we're all in this together." Last night, the distinction was between the bottom line – in CEO world, if you get in the way of the bottom line, you disappear – and domestic policy, which is inclusive.
The last thing I remember was falling asleep wondering why the Oval Office is oval, and board rooms are rectangles.
The first thing I remember about last night's debate was, if you are assigned to moderate a debate, moderate the debate.
The second thing I remember is the Mitt grin, which said, "Poor Barack doesn't know what he is talking about, but he'll be finished soon and the grown-ups can talk some more." Most Americans can immediately identify an in-law who looks at them in this way.
The third thing I remember is that Mitt and his managers finally found a format in which he can feel comfortable. "Go out there and be the CEO," they said. "Talk about the bottom line." Obama was rattled. He knows a CEO talking about a bottom line when he hears one. He looked at Jim Lehrer like, "This was supposed to be about domestic policy, which is about governance. The bottom line is about money."
The fourth thing I remember is thinking that Mitt was pouring out CEO-speak, which was safe for him, but not easy for the average voter to understand and so decide not to listen, which is not the optimal way to sway an undecided voter.
The fifth thing I remember is being surprised, as everyone seemed to be, to learn that Obama actually talked four minutes longer than Mitt. Many Americans can instantly identify such an experience, when they have dinner guests who can turn an hour into a week.
The sixth thing I remember is that the debate did follow to form, which was that it would be about an America, based on the Nov. 6 election, going in one direction – "you're on your own" – or the other – "we're all in this together." Last night, the distinction was between the bottom line – in CEO world, if you get in the way of the bottom line, you disappear – and domestic policy, which is inclusive.
The last thing I remember was falling asleep wondering why the Oval Office is oval, and board rooms are rectangles.
October 02, 2012
The ten grand man
My first negative feeling about Mitt Romney came in the Republican Primary debates, when he grinned the Mitt grin at Rick Perry and said, "I'll bet you $10,000."
Rick Perry looked stunned. Not that it would be all that hard to stun Rick Perry. But I was stunned, too. Politics may be crass, but it's at a higher, more sophisticated level of crass than the Beavis and Butthead my-dad-is-richer-than-your-dad theory of governance. I just could not imagine Benjamin Franklin telling John Adams, “I’ll bet you 10 grand that Georgia will ratify the First Amendment.”
Apparently I’m not the only one. James Fallows of The Atlantic, on CBS this morning, was asked to predict strengths and weaknesses of Obama and Romney in tomorrow night’s debate. Among Mitt’s weaknesses, he said, was “the $10,000 bet instinct serves him wrong.”
But this is not about the debates. It’s about Mitt’s power to rub me the wrong way. I have to excuse myself also from being a committed Obama vote. Mitt could do this to me if his opponent were someone I would never vote for, like Justin Timberlake.
I mentioned the Mitt grin. There is also the Mitt walk. Both are annoying. But I have actually been affecting the Mitt walk for years, which I copied from a newspaper executive (I call it the “executive shuffle”) I once worked for, so it’s not like I lack affection for it. They are just annoying, the way watching George W. Bush’s impersonation of Alfred E. Newman for eight years was annoying.
But they don’t rub me the wrong way. Mitt’s tax returns rub me the wrong way. There’s something about his refusals that doesn’t look right. Dozens of reporters and other diggers are hard at work looking for those tax returns because of that same conviction: doesn’t look right. I wish he had gotten this out of the way last spring. What if they surface tomorrow? Maybe they’ll be fine, but maybe not. It rubs me the wrong way that we have to worry about this 37 days before the election.
Mitt’s going off half-cocked with his comment about the Libya consulate attacks rubbed me the wrong way, but not near as much as his “47 percent” comment, which didn’t just rub me the wrong way. As a lifelong middle-class Trouser, an Army vet, a hard worker for five decades and now proud of a nation which would provide me retirement benefits, I was offended. Maybe Justin Timberlake wouldn’t be so bad after all, if he’s old enough.
Rick Perry looked stunned. Not that it would be all that hard to stun Rick Perry. But I was stunned, too. Politics may be crass, but it's at a higher, more sophisticated level of crass than the Beavis and Butthead my-dad-is-richer-than-your-dad theory of governance. I just could not imagine Benjamin Franklin telling John Adams, “I’ll bet you 10 grand that Georgia will ratify the First Amendment.”
Apparently I’m not the only one. James Fallows of The Atlantic, on CBS this morning, was asked to predict strengths and weaknesses of Obama and Romney in tomorrow night’s debate. Among Mitt’s weaknesses, he said, was “the $10,000 bet instinct serves him wrong.”
But this is not about the debates. It’s about Mitt’s power to rub me the wrong way. I have to excuse myself also from being a committed Obama vote. Mitt could do this to me if his opponent were someone I would never vote for, like Justin Timberlake.
I mentioned the Mitt grin. There is also the Mitt walk. Both are annoying. But I have actually been affecting the Mitt walk for years, which I copied from a newspaper executive (I call it the “executive shuffle”) I once worked for, so it’s not like I lack affection for it. They are just annoying, the way watching George W. Bush’s impersonation of Alfred E. Newman for eight years was annoying.
But they don’t rub me the wrong way. Mitt’s tax returns rub me the wrong way. There’s something about his refusals that doesn’t look right. Dozens of reporters and other diggers are hard at work looking for those tax returns because of that same conviction: doesn’t look right. I wish he had gotten this out of the way last spring. What if they surface tomorrow? Maybe they’ll be fine, but maybe not. It rubs me the wrong way that we have to worry about this 37 days before the election.
Mitt’s going off half-cocked with his comment about the Libya consulate attacks rubbed me the wrong way, but not near as much as his “47 percent” comment, which didn’t just rub me the wrong way. As a lifelong middle-class Trouser, an Army vet, a hard worker for five decades and now proud of a nation which would provide me retirement benefits, I was offended. Maybe Justin Timberlake wouldn’t be so bad after all, if he’s old enough.
October 01, 2012
So THAT'S what a data package is
Until this very morning, I believed that a "data package" was a package of technical tools used to access the Internet through a cellphone.
In fact, I realized this morning, the "data package" is the data itself. For so many dollars a month – a package price – cellphone users buy the right to send so many texts, or tweets, or whatever.
In fairness to myself, I did not have a "need to know." I neither text nor tweet, nor willingly call anyone on a cellphone. My wife and son, however, text, but infrequently, because she says each text costs a dollar and something.
"My God," I say, "I just read a report that the average smartphone user texts 3,500 times a month! How can they afford that?"
My wife looks at me like I was a 19th-century painting. "Because they buy data packages," she says. This morning, drinking coffee, watching the sun come up, I made the connection: you can pay a dollar something per text, or you can buy a data package for $40 a month and send 3,500 texts.
I suppose I'll tell my students about this; it's always good to start the class with a laugh. In one class of 30 students, 28 of them have smartphones, either an iPhone or a Droid. That means in my class I have 28 individuals equipped to become global media publishers, once they acquire a few principles of journalism, photography, video, audio, and editing, or even if they don't.
I saw a report on one of the Sunday morning news magazine shows wondering if humanity should be worried when people become obsessive of their smartphones. After all, 3,500 texts divided by 31 days is 113 texts a day, or a fraction over seven texts an hour in 16 waking hours.
In class, up until last year, I used to vent my worry about this obsession by walking to the desk of a student in mid-text, smiling into the student's blue face (you can see the smartphone reflected in their eyes, when they come up to meet yours), and saying, "You're going to make an A in texting and an F in journalism."
No more. Because in the past year, I have witnessed evidence that students are learning to text and pay attention at the same time. Is that a worry? I don't know. It does align with an argument I starting making at least five years ago, that 20 years from now, two images, one entertainment, the other advertising, will be interlaced somehow and shown on a screen simultaneously, and not just students, but all of us, will be able to separate and comprehend both images at the same time.
That may turn out to be a worry, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Vast reaches of the human brain remain unused, because so little of that capacity has been needed in the last half a million years. Now it is learning to text and pass journalism at the same time, which, I must say, is phenomenal to observe. My brain, having only today made the data package connection, is far behind, but I am confident that it could text, blog and comprehend simultaneous entertainment/advertising content, all at the same time, if it ever wanted to.
In fact, I realized this morning, the "data package" is the data itself. For so many dollars a month – a package price – cellphone users buy the right to send so many texts, or tweets, or whatever.
In fairness to myself, I did not have a "need to know." I neither text nor tweet, nor willingly call anyone on a cellphone. My wife and son, however, text, but infrequently, because she says each text costs a dollar and something.
"My God," I say, "I just read a report that the average smartphone user texts 3,500 times a month! How can they afford that?"
My wife looks at me like I was a 19th-century painting. "Because they buy data packages," she says. This morning, drinking coffee, watching the sun come up, I made the connection: you can pay a dollar something per text, or you can buy a data package for $40 a month and send 3,500 texts.
I suppose I'll tell my students about this; it's always good to start the class with a laugh. In one class of 30 students, 28 of them have smartphones, either an iPhone or a Droid. That means in my class I have 28 individuals equipped to become global media publishers, once they acquire a few principles of journalism, photography, video, audio, and editing, or even if they don't.
I saw a report on one of the Sunday morning news magazine shows wondering if humanity should be worried when people become obsessive of their smartphones. After all, 3,500 texts divided by 31 days is 113 texts a day, or a fraction over seven texts an hour in 16 waking hours.
In class, up until last year, I used to vent my worry about this obsession by walking to the desk of a student in mid-text, smiling into the student's blue face (you can see the smartphone reflected in their eyes, when they come up to meet yours), and saying, "You're going to make an A in texting and an F in journalism."
No more. Because in the past year, I have witnessed evidence that students are learning to text and pay attention at the same time. Is that a worry? I don't know. It does align with an argument I starting making at least five years ago, that 20 years from now, two images, one entertainment, the other advertising, will be interlaced somehow and shown on a screen simultaneously, and not just students, but all of us, will be able to separate and comprehend both images at the same time.
That may turn out to be a worry, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Vast reaches of the human brain remain unused, because so little of that capacity has been needed in the last half a million years. Now it is learning to text and pass journalism at the same time, which, I must say, is phenomenal to observe. My brain, having only today made the data package connection, is far behind, but I am confident that it could text, blog and comprehend simultaneous entertainment/advertising content, all at the same time, if it ever wanted to.
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