Terrorist Toddlers?/Reclaiming America/Rita Poem

(P1) Philosophical

Potential Terrorist?

How could I look at this picture of one-and-a-half year old Rhett Ricardo being patted down at a Tampa Bay game without wondering if our nation has gone totally crazy? Please recall when I posted a discussion about a Charles Krauthammer column in which he dared to suggest eliminating at least some groups from pat downs and intensive searches. I received quite a few negative replies because the immediate inference is always one of "racial profiling." Actually, what we were recommending back then was NOT actually concentrating on any one racial or ethnic group, but rather eliminating groups which, in all probability would never be terrorists, eg. the now stereotypical 85-year-old women in pink jumpsuits. What of the absolute ludicrousness of the photo above that simply makes reason stare? For starters, how about eliminating the following groups from extra searches:

1. Women over age 55.
2. Men over age 60.
3. Children under age 12.

Ok, we won't even get into race at all this way. We won't need to worry about special preferences for Scandinavians.

The argument remains that a 70-year-old man might conceivably be carrying a bomb. But that would be like saying that a pregnant woman on a plane is conceivably carrying quintuplets. Let's get real here. Save time, save money, save embarrassment, and...above all...concentrate on more probable or at least possible terrorists. I fail to see how such a program would infringe upon minority rights. I'm all for minority rights.

(P2) Political

Reader Poll (Please Participate)

How About Some Ideas to Reclaim Our Nation, It's Ideals, It's Respect

Please Post Your Comments Here and/or Read the Comments of Others. You can sign in as "blogger" or "other" but add your name to your text. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net. We need your feedback.




(P3) Poetical

Andrei Codrescu was born in Romania in 1946. He is a poet, novelist, essayist and publisher. Codrescu became an American citizen in 1981 and has lived in New Orleans for the last 20 years. The following poem is moving.

Each day has its own pictures:
bumper to bumper traffic two states long
a frenzied mob in a domed prison
rising water
the hungry pushing carts out of looted stores
rooftops in a lake as vast as the eye can see
dead city silent city
the survivors the tribes
stadiums filled with refugees
helicopters over a dead unlit city
a ragged parade of decadents spitting defiance
television cameras as numerous as marchers
a can of tuna and a strand of beads
take that you former shithead king
dead pets rotting away behind locked doors
the smell of putrefaction visible
muck darkness heat an eviscerated pigeon
two dogs shot by a hired executioner
a sea of horrible stories rising like swamp fever
from the foul mouths of dear ones from exile
11th DAY OF HELL!
We are all working in this pit of sorrow to
unfreeze time.

New Chief Justice/Weather Gone Wild!/Poetry's Role

(P1)Political

Let's Pick Our Fights More Wisely

Why all the fuss over the nomination and confirmation process of Judge John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court?

Sure he'll be there in position for 20 or 30 years, but just think about almost anybody else Bush could have or would have chosen. John Roberts is NOT a Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia and is certainly not a Robert Bork. Sure he is a Republican and a Conservative. What other type choice might you hope for from a Republican Conservative President with a Republican congress? Under the circumstances, John Roberts is the very best we're going to get.

I'm a Democrat who believes in choosing my fights wisely. Also, by virtue of my age, I've been around long enough to witness countless other supreme court confirmation hearings. No matter what party is in charge, the opposition will always protest that the nominee has not answered sufficiently regarding his or her position. The plain fact is that, in the interest of judicial even handedness and future flexibility, they cannot.

I almost totally agree with Columnist David Broder of the Washington Post in his column "Roberts Sterling Showing. Please read it and let me know what you think. Bear in mind that a. I am a registered Democrat, b. I believe in a woman's right to choose, c. I am for civil rights and universal health care, d. I am against the stupid, bloody, wasteful adventure in Iraq. e. In most respects, if you want to label me, you can call me "liberal." However, in this case, let's be fair. Above all, let me know what you think by commenting for or against. I'll be fair here. While I hate to concur in a Bush decision, I think his choice of John Roberts for Chief Justice appears to have been the best one under all of the circumstances.

Please let me know what you think. Were you George Bush, who would you have nominated?

Please Post Your Comments Here and/or Read the Comments of Others. You can sign in as "blogger" or "other" but add your name to your text. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net. We need your feedback.


(P2) Philosophical

What The Hell's Going On With Our Weather?

With an unheard of 2 back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes in a row, I believe it's time to revisit my remarks about global warming. Recall that, although the administration outwardly downplays and even denies the phenomenon, their own EPA publishes warnings and tips to Insurance Companies on how to save money from the effects of "global warming." I published that article before Katrina. See August Archives and August 26th, 2005 posting.

According to 5 scientists at www.realclimate.org, "The available scientific evidence indicates that it is likely that global warming will make - and possibly already is making - those hurricanes that form more destructive than they otherwise would have been."

Nicholas Kristoff writes, "So far, Bush has resisted serious action on global warming on the basis that strong measures 'would have wrecked our economy.' Tell that to Portland, Oregon. In early July, I wrote a column from Portland about its pioneering efforts to cut greenhouse gases. New calculations had indicated that it had cut total emissions below the level of 1990 - the benchmark for the Kyoto accord - even as nationally, emissions have increased 13 percent. And Portland has been booming economically. Since then, Portland has discovered a small error in its calculations: In fact, total emissions were reduced to a hair over 1990 levels, not to a hair under. In any case, while the numbers aren't perfect, the trend is clear."

Please call the need to the attention of all your friends, representatives, and even to Republicans. Believe it or not, they care about the future too. The best way to approach them is with some evidence of what continuing environmental neglect will do to their economy. Certainly the insurance companies are worried! Katrina and now Rita!

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(P2) Poetical

I like what Poetry editor Christian Wiman has to say about poetry's role

"Let us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both."

Our Choice For 2008/Voodoo Revisited/Trees Tarnish

(P1) Political

Oprah Winfrey For President 2008

I'm passionate about this choice! Let's start a grassroots movement now!

The Democrats really have nobody to go up against such Republican candidates as iconic Rudy Giuliani. The Democrats have abandoned their liberal base. They've allowed "liberal" to become a dirty word rather than a symbol for open-mindedness and caring. As unpopular as it might be for me to say so, I believe we were sold out by Bill Clinton due to his fervently ambitious embrace of the "middle." Examples include welfare "reform," the total botch of the healthcare issue and the resulting grotesquery called "managed care," and finally the total weakening of his presidency when he couldn't keep it in his pants. Hillary Clinton will never be elected. Her candidacy would prove to be divisive, and she really has also been rushing to the ineffectual middle. The closest the Democrats have come to uncovering a leader has been John McCain, a conservative Republican.


Unlike other potential "candidates,"


1. Oprah can win!
2. She actually does things for people.
3. Oprah is willing to speak out.
4. She also can be diplomatic.
5. She has the financial resources.
6. She has the media.
7 . She would get the vast majority of the women's' vote, the ethnic vote, and a surprising percentage of the total vote.
8. Oprah is not a Washington insider.
9. In my opinion, the only real thing that needs to be done is to CONVINCE OPRAH TO RUN.


If every one of the several hundred readers of this blog were to begin getting out the word to five or more people, the grassroots groundswell would begin to be felt and would soon get back to Oprah Winfrey and the press.

Google, which owns Blogger, disseminates and catalogues blog postings like this one and gets them out to the general reading public.

Guess what? As I was completing this post, I actually found an Oprah For President Website! Check it out. Ooops! It was up and running yesterday, but the website currently is down. Keep trying. I will too.

Please add your comments below.

Let's make a difference! Support the effort to make Oprah Winfrey President of the United States!


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(P2) Philosophical


What is the best way for Americans to contribute to the general well being, national defense, and preparedness in 2005 and the years to come?

Let's pay more taxes. Now, please don't tune me out. I'll keep this as short and to the point as possible.

Since the Reagan years, something called "Supply Side Economics" has prevailed. Here is a working definition:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought which emphasizes the importance of tax cuts and business incentives in encouraging economic growth, in the belief that businesses and individuals will use their tax savings to create new businesses and expand old businesses, which in turn will increase productivity, employment, and general well-being. While all macroeconomics involves both supply and demand, supply-side economics emphasizes the importance of encouraging increases in supply.

Ok, ok. I admit there is a bit of a seductive quality to this. We don't pay as much out of our pockets. On the other hand, our schools have deteriorated; we're paying hundreds of billions of dollars for a war in Iraq; the earliest true projection of the non-construction cost of Hurricane Katrina in $150 Billion; first responders in U.S. cities are not receiving adequate funding; the poor are getting poorer; health care coverage would be a joke were it not a nightmare, etc.

The nation increasingly will be in debt to such wonderful creditors as China. The deficit is going through the roof...of Saturn! Doesn't it therefore appear that, if it wasn't previously, America is now in a Demand Side situation. America needs to pay its debt. Americans need to pay for their services. Once we resume doing so, we may grow just a bit more critical of the way in which our money is being used to support Industry rather than People and Services.

I could offer a lot more here, but I promised to be brief, and I want to elicit your comments regarding the perceived need to at least take a critical look at what the major economists were referring to as "Voodoo Economics" during the early 1980's.


Please Post Your Comments and Suggestions here and/or Read the Comments of Others. You can sign in as "blogger" or "other" but add your name to your text. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net. We need your feedback.


(P2) Poetical

When Trees Tarnish

When trees tarnish
the green (let us call it silver)
tans white in the sun
beneath a cloudless sea
that is a sky

Nothing is what we’ve been told.
Why would we believe
trees are green
leaves turn brown
sky is blue
sky is sky?
What if the broccoli of scrub oaks were
a sauté-toasted garlic-rich
side dish for birds?

The blueness of sea sky
effulgent with mackerel
netted by fisherman
silent as hawks.
June is the month for
spooning and spawning
August the hunting
the harvest the catch.

With my dog named Lady,
her blackness is vital
her mouth and her eyes
blaze forth with a smile.
She knows not of August
but lies like a puddle,
they say there’s no color
for dogs or the sky.

(8-05)

Anne Rice On New Orleans/Funny Photo Op/Frost's Poem "The Flood"

(P1) Philosophical

Op-Ed Contributor

Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?

Chas. L. Franck

• 
  

By ANNE RICE

Published: September 4, 2005

La Jolla, Calif.

WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?

Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?

(Here are a few more excerpts before I give a link to the complete article)

- Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.

- Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.

- Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.

- I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.

Here's a link to the complete Anne Rice article

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(P2) Political

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn: "Say, y'all, this may be a great photo op, But could somebody tell me if the round part goes on the left or the right side"?





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(P3) Poetical

The Flood

Robert Frost

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.

We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.

It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave

That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

(1928)

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Katrina Kudos/Mencken Sense/God's Crow/Quiz Answer

Special Kudos to Chopper Crews
From the U.S. Coast Guard -

They, almost single-handedly led whatever early assistance was possible in getting survivors off buildings in New Orleans, Gulfport, and Biloxi. These valiant men and women, who had trained largely for ocean, lake and shoreline rescue, were now called upon to improvise and drop in rescue buckets through trees and powerlines in a flooded landbase operation. They performed courageously and efficiently under the most difficult conditions and saved countless lives.

Flash! (Sept. 4) Coast Gaurd helicopter, returning from rescue activity, crashes killing 2 aboard.

PS - I also urge my readers to take a look at my August 26th posting article titled "Insurance Industry Fears Global Warming." Subsequently I've also learned that Stanford scientists and much of the scientific community attribute the growing intensity of storms to the rising temperatures of our oceans.



(P1) Philosophical


Mencken Sense (a continuation)

In my post-before-last, I discussed some of the ideas of the great French philosopher Denis Diderot. Bringing thinking a bit more up to date, H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), with his immortal definition of "Puritanism" takes up right where Diderot left off,

"Puritanism" - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

I never thought that America would take such a backward step as it has in its insane examination of nonsense or nonscience. Mencken, in 1920, spoke directly to the lunacy:

To sum up: (1) The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. (2) Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. (3) Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride. (December 1920)


Because I have no real belief in a glorious afterlife, I have adopted the idea that, at birth, a light switch is flipped on. During life, I live in the light. At death, the light switch is flipped off. That's it. A nice pleasant end after a full life and an easy death. What more can one ask - except for the hubris of eternal glory. It just doesn't even make sense to type that. As Mencken wrote,

When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness...No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever...I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

I couldn't have said it better! Who needs Dante's infernal "vision"!


(P2) Poetical


God's Crow


God's crow

swooped low

over my shoulder

screaming:

"I am

God's crow;

why do I scare you,

boy, why

did you shrink

from my kiss"?

(1970)


(P3) Political

Answer to American Hero Photo Quiz

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil is the answer to the "Forgotten American Heroes" Quiz.

In addition to being George W. Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury, he had been CEO of Alcoa Corporation and an ardent supporter of George Herbert Walker Bush and Ronald Reagan. So the fact that his Republican and conservative credentials were impeccable lend great weight and credibility to his report of disillusionment overcoming him at the very first Bush cabinet meeting.

O'Neil describes the President being so detached that he was "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people". O'Neil went on 60 Minutes and indicated that Bush was planning the Iraq War as soon as he was sworn in a full 9 months before September 11th, 2001!

For this contribution, our hero suffered the same fate as John McCain, Max Cleland, Richard Clarke and countless other nonconformists. He was totally trashed by the Bush/Rove smear machine. Fortunately, though, O'Neil is a very wealthy independent man who has no political aspirations.

Bravo, Paul O'Neil!


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Upcoming Musical Benefit of Note

My friend Sani, who does charitable work on behalf of the Roma people worldwide requested that I post this announcement of what looks to be an extraordinary entertainment benefit in Sebastopol, California. This world-renowned award -winning group not only plays Bulgarian Wedding Music but is a top Be Bop Progressive Jazz Band as well. Check it out.




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Katrina and Her People

(P1) Philosophical

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

-Proverbs 29:18-

This is not a political statement. In fact, in (P2) Political, I will call for bipartisanship of the first order. My former philosophy professor, Jacob Needleman, has written one of the more profound and important books of the decade. I wondered when I'd mention it here. The horrific aftermath of Katrina calls all Americans to the task of self-reflection. What does it mean to be American? What is the truth of America? These are the questions Needleman tackles in his book The American Soul (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, NY 2002).

His premise is that the soul of America, its greatness, issues from its great ideas as in those of Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Douglass, Roosevelt, Kennedy, etc. The paucity of great ideas today gives us a starting point in our desperate search for America's lost soul.

It is ever so sad that it might have taken America's worst natural catastrophe with its horrendous displacements, deprivations, and loss of life to get Americans truly thinking once again about who we are and what we're about.


(P2) Political

But for starters, it's going to take more of the material than the abstract to help the millions displaced and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. This effort must be totally bipartisan. Recriminations are out of place at this point. The time to review will come soon enough. For now, here are a few places for us common folk to begin our efforts

www.redcross.org

www.charitynavigator.org

www.salvationarmyusa.org

www.nvoad.org

www.la-spca.org


(P1) Poetical

Sneaking Out The Horseman

We live here right next to dying people,
next to awful tribulation and misery,
and it’s not just that we all act
as if it were no concern of ours,
but we’re even protected, spared
any possibility of coming into contact with it,
or seeing it.
And now they’ll sneak the horseman out
while we’re eating supper or breakfast.

- Thomas Mann –The Magic Mountain-

And with the Austrian horseman gone,
the knowing reader asks both “why” and “where”
The “why” is mostly philosophical,
how the horseman came to ride,
how the horseman came to die.
But to ask him “Wither goest?”
presumes that he too is a poet searching.
Only art attempts to plumb this depth;
Where he’s going, to a horseman spreads before him
jointly chosen by both man and mare,
but is not all of this in every way rhetorical
- ever since they snuck its rider out
while we picked at either supper or our breakfast –
like seeking knowledge from the horse’s mouth?

-2004


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