Say it ain't so

Small Colorado town celebrates 12th
anniversary for Miracle Mike, chicken
who lived headless for 18 months.

Please, say it ain’t so. There is an article today on Smirking Chimp so awful in its implications that I do not want it to be true. I do not want it to be true in spite of my utter contempt for Dick Cheney and my fervent desire to see him behind bars. This article, by William Rivers Pitt, entitled “Why the Caged Bird Sang,” suggests that the real reason Obama will not release all the torture photographs is because they are so horrible, so much worse than the ones we have seen, that their release might well spawn revulsion so great it might totally disrupt our country. Pitt, quoting Seymour Hersh, suggests that among other things, there are videotapes of boys being sodomized in front of women (some of them their mothers I assume). Their screams of terror and pain are said to be terrible beyond belief. There are also hints that women were abused so badly they attempted to get their husbands to visit them in prison and kill them, although there are no specific descriptions of what they must have endured. It is also suggested that this took place in response to orders from Cheney. I do not know if this is true. I do not want to believe it. But if it is true, it is understandable that no one would want it released. It would show American behavior so bestial and inhuman that no one would want to admit to it, that it could have been done by Americans, and no one would want the world to see it. If true, the evidence is so shameful it would have to be erased entirely from the record, or buried so deeply in national security issues as to never see the light of day. This means it is not merely the rest of the world we do not want to see these pictures, but American citizens themselves. And sadly, while I do not want to believe this, I have great respect for both William Rivers Pitt and Seymour Hersh. And furthermore, I know that Cheney and others lied to us virtually every time they have opened their mouths to speak. I am so horrified by this I am now of two minds about an investigation – for fear that it might turn out to be true, and my country will be shamed forever. Even without this, Cheney is surely one of the most evil people on earth, with it, he becomes an even more hateful creature, lower even than the worst scum of the earth.

Speaking of lying, I for one do not believe that Nancy Pelosi is lying about the CIA briefings she experienced. While the CIA may not have lied outright, I do not doubt that they gave in their briefings only what it was they wanted to reveal and nothing more. They have at least a 45 year history of torture and deception and I do not think they would balk at deceiving members of Congress. Fortunately, Bob Graham, who apparently suffers from some kind of Obsessive Compulsive note taking disorder, has shown that the CIA records cannot be trusted. I do not believe that Kit Bond seriously believes the CIA would not mislead the Congress. Boener, who two or three years ago, thought the CIA was lying about the Iranian nuclear situation, now wants us to believe that he, too, thinks the CIA is telling the truth. Of all the individuals and institutions in Washington D.C. that I believe would be the most likely to lie or deceive, the CIA would lead the list (after Bush/Cheney, of course, as they are in a lying class all their own). I don’t believe the Republicans necessarily believe Pelosi is lying either. They don’t care, as all they want is an issue to take the heat off the Bush/Cheney reign of torture and misery. I think the more frightened Cheney becomes the more he babbles on, a sign of guilt. Some insist that Cheney really believes in the efficacy of torture, all he says about being attacked by terrorists, saving the country, etc., etc. I might believe it only in the sense that he may have become mentally unbalanced under the weight of so many lies and horrible deeds. In any case he needs to be quieted down and put away someplace where he can do no further harm.

LKBIQ:
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein

TILT:
The Ostrich can run up to 46 miles per hour, the top land speed for birds.

It's not bean bags

Owner of Mighty the Monkey,
deceased pet, sues over
the neglect of his grave.

There are those who apparently believe it would be improper for the current administration to investigate the last administration. Their argument, as I understand it, has mostly to do with the fact that it might establish a precedent for incoming administrations to investigate outgoing ones and that would lead to all kinds of problems, if not chaos. I think this is nonsense. In fact, it might be a good thing if administrations knew they would be held accountable for their misdeeds, perhaps they wouldn’t so readily engage in improper activities. In this particular case the present administration is bound by law to investigate the last one because in this case it involves potential war crimes. For reasons I cannot fathom, Obama and Holder so far at least are ignoring rather than enforcing the law. This makes them equally guilty, at least in principle. Whether it becomes standard practice for one administration to investigate and prosecute the proceeding one, this particular case is entirely different precisely because it involves war crimes. This is a difference that truly makes a difference.

To use John McCain’s infelicitous phrase, we are not speaking here of “bean bags.” We are talking about war and other crimes of the utmost seriousness and importance. It is not as if one administration is spending time and money investigating whether a consensual sexual act between adults took place (oh, yeah, the Republicans already did that), it is, rather, whether the previous administration deliberately conspired to start an illegal, unconstitutional, and unnecessary “war” in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, millions were displaced from their homes, lands and properties destroyed, people were tortured and even murdered in illegal interrogations, war profiteering was rampant, multiple war crimes occurred, and Congress and the American people were lied to repeatedly. If the Republicans who are critical of investigating the Bush/Cheney administration cannot see this as a unique and troubling case that must be investigated, they must be devoid of any sense of morality and justice whatsoever (personally, I do not doubt this is true of our current crop of Republicans).

It is simply beyond belief that we are arguing about whether or not waterboarding is torture, whether or not it works, whether a few Democrats might have known about it, whether the ends justify the means, whether it was done from patriotic or other motives, whether it was technically legal or not, whether or not it should be investigated, whether or not the guilty should be held accountable, whether or not it was a crime, and whether or not it even happened. We know it happened. There are not only confessions, there is overwhelming evidence of what happened, how and why. And we know who the major participants were, and where the major responsibility lies. Just because they wear shirts and ties and sit in plush offices doesn’t excuse them from the blood on their hands, the blood not only of some of our finest young people, but of hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children as well. Those who want to argue that it might hurt someone’s feelings or embarrass them or cause distress in the body politic should come to their senses and realize this is something that absolutely must be investigated and prosecuted. It is not simply “bean bags,” and it is not something that can just be passed over, letting bygones be bygones.

Hopefully, as more and more information is becoming available, it appears this problem cannot be ignored much longer. It seems there is now some evidence, leading directly to Cheney’s office, that they wanted a POW waterboarded to get him to confess to a connection between Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein. The interrogators involved refused to do this as they believed it was suggested for political reasons and they were already satisfied with the information they were getting without employing more “intensive”means. Robert Wexler has also reported that Eric Holder is going to investigate more seriously the deaths of some prisoners at the hands of interrogators. Nancy Pelosi has struck back strongly at accusations against her and insists that the CIA misled (lied to) her, and she is not the only one who believes this has happened (Bob Graham agrees with her). It appears that things are moving in the right direction, but much too slowly to suit me. The more Cheney bleats about this the closer he comes to a day of reckoning (I hope).

Rush Limbaugh, that bloated sack of pure pig pucky, is now arguing with John McCain’s 97 year-old mother. Sarah Palin, former beauty contestant, not one to miss out on publicity, has aligned herself with Miss California, demonstrating that neither one of them knows what they are talking about. The Senate has refused to put a 15% cap on credit card interest rates! Obama is about to announce his candidate for the Supreme Court (you know, the nonpartisan court that made George W. Bush President). America moves on (I think).

Question: Do you think there is enough gold in the entire world to allow the U.S. to return to the gold standard?

LKBIQ:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion (sic). Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious (sic) people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
John Adams

TILT:
Clean coal is an insidious oxymoron.

We didn't do it?

Undertaker hot wires
his vintage hearse
when rival steals the keys.

Dick Cheney actually said in a new interview: “They say it is torture. We didn’t torture, and we didn’t break the law.” Having been boasting for some time now how they did it, and how well it worked, he now says he didn’t do it. I guess it all comes down to what “it,” is. If “it” includes waterboarding, which he has admitted to, then he did it, and if waterboarding is illegal, which it is, he also broke the law. Why does this remind me of a small boy standing by a broken cookie jar with cookies in his hand claiming he didn’t do it? This is just pathetic. How long are we going to allow this obvious dishonest war criminal to appear on television repeatedly lying about his accomplishments and making false accusations against our current President? Of course he did it, and of course he broke the law, of this there is no longer even the slightest doubt. The only conceivable justification for his statements has to do with the fact that his bought and paid for lawyers made up laws and rules that don’t exist in order to give him what he wanted. And it is clear by now that this is precisely what happened. These toady lawyers will most probably be disbarred, at least, and possibly end up in prison. This has become some kind of weird charade that is being allowed to continue for reasons I cannot comprehend.

And related to this is my deep disappointment with President Obama, who has now done a complete about face when it comes to releasing more torture photographs. He promised transparency but is certainly not providing it. What bothers me by far the worse about this is not his refusal to allow the photographs to be released, which I do not agree with but at least can understand. I am truly bothered by his statement that “the small number of people who participated in it have been held accountable.” This obviously indicates that he wants to maintain the “few bad apples,” claim, which is utterly ridiculous. I keep trying to excuse him on the grounds that he is just cleverly trying to force the public and Congress to do what needs to be done so he will not appear to have been seeking partisan revenge. I am beginning to have my doubts about this which makes me very unhappy.

Someone once said that if the Republicans want to brand the Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party,” it would only be fair to refer to them as the “National Socialist Party.” I believe that given the past eight years of Republican reign this would not be far from the truth. Those who seem to be in charge of the remaining Republican Party are obviously such extreme right-wing ideologues they are completely blind to what is actually going on in the United States. Even Richard Steele, their elected Party head, tried to warn them off this idea but failed. It may be all to the best to allow them to just bury themselves in history as a failed party and hope that some new, more sensible and responsible party will arise to replace them. They will never rejuvenate themselves as long as they continue what they have been doing.

Arizona State University invited President Obama to give their commencement address but strangely refused to give him an honorary degree. This is indeed strange as they have awarded such degrees to a number of people who do not even approach the level of Obama’s accomplishments. For example, a few years back a man who made his fortune making golf balls donated money to the University and received an honorary degree. There was opposition to this on the part of one or more faculty members who believed such degrees should only be awarded either for academic or humanitarian accomplishments but they were eventually ignored. This perhaps also explains why ASU now offers a degree program in Golf Management or some such thing, very academic. ASU is little more than a joke as a University and apparently accepts some 92% of applicants. So, this is America ain’t it?

This is supposed to be the planting season. I have been trying to work in the garden but the weather has not been cooperative. It has been rainy and cold here at Sandhill, with a 100% chance of rain tonight and an 80% chance of thundershowers tomorrow. But then it is supposed to warm up. Weather here is very unpredictable. One year we were in Sweden and it was snowing in May. We thought that was hilarious. Then we returned home and it snowed late in June!

LKBIQ:
I know indeed what evil I intend to do,but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
Euripides

TILT:
Among the Nuer it is possible for a woman to marry a ghost.

A difference of opinion?

Indian man with six daughters does
not bathe, stands on one leg near fire,
smokes marijuana, prays to Shiva for son.

Dick Cheney, in one of his multitude TV appearances, recently said something to the effect of “they call it torture, but I don’t think it was torture.” This adds one more ridiculous non-excuse to his previous three. He has himself apparently demolished the idea that Pelosi was truly briefed on what was happening, his claim that the torture actually worked is in the process of being rejected, not that it was a valid excuse in the first place, his claim of good intentions falls on the revelation that the torture was really geared toward getting someone to make a false statement linking Saddam to Osama bin Laden, and now he wants to claim that the problem is really just a difference of opinion – “they” think it was torture but he does not. Unfortunately for Cheney this is not a mere difference of opinion, a case where one can argue that “reasonable people can disagree.” This is not an issue, like should I wear the blue tie or the red one, or should I buy the roses or the petunias, or some such. Virtually the entire world, including all reasonable people in the U.S., know that waterboarding is torture and has been for centuries. Cheney does not represent a reasonable person in the context of this argument, but, rather virtually a lone voice trying to keep himself out of jail or worse. While we might sympathize with his daughter, who is standing up for her father, and claiming it was not torture, and we may wonder about the very few “true believers” that might agree with them, this is an open and shut case. Waterboarding is torture, opinions to the contrary are desperation attempts at denial. The pressure on Obama and Holder to take action is increasing all the time.

Can you believe that people who are attempting to speak up for a single payer health care system are being shut out of the discussions and even arrested? Baucus in Montana seems to be one of the worst offenders. I find this unbelievable but it is apparently true. It is especially unbelievable (maybe not) because apparently a true majority of Americans are in favor of a single payer system. So…like, who cares what the American people want? Obama is on record from some time ago as being in favor of a single payer system. But now he is trying to get a Government program for health care that will compete with private sector plans. Of course the Insurance companies and others do not want this because they fear too many will opt for the Government plan and they will begin to lose out. I like to think this is exactly what Obama has in mind, and that eventually such a system would easily change into a single payer system. This may be just another one of my pipe dreams, like hoping he is just waiting for public opinion to force him into prosecuting Bush/Cheney.

Elliot Spitzer appeared on the Rachel Maddow show tonight. He was brilliant. What a shame that he had to resign over a stupid prostitution problem. As someone who pursued Wall Street greed and illegality very successfully it is too bad he is not available to continue doing so. He said as plainly as it can be said, Wall Street does not act with our country in mind. This is the one thing above all others that bothers me about Obama, he is far too cozy with Wall Street, and instead of trying to reign them in he seems to be content to let them just continue their short term profits and questionable ways to the detriment of the country. It will help, of course, if he can reform the credit card thievery, but he should be doing a lot more than that.

I admit to feeling strange about complaining about the prices of food, as I never had to do so previously. But really, the situation is becoming almost unbearable. I occasionally buy a bone at the market for my friend’s dog. Yesterday there was a single dog bone for sale, not a very large one at that, marked $3.08! I can remember when butchers gave dog bones away, and even liver, and certainly none of them would have even thought of charging people for fish heads and bones. I see people every day, mostly older people, staring longingly at the meat counter, knowing they cannot afford to eat steaks anymore. It is sad to see it, and I know that my own consumption of beef has fallen off as well. Even bread is becoming prohibitively expensive. When I was a boy and didn’t want to eat my food, my mother would often say, “think of the starving Chinese.” I wonder if the Chinese are now saying, “think of the starving Americans?” As unbelievable as it may seem, we do have many people going hungry right here in what is supposed to be the wealthiest and greatest country on earth. How ironic. How stupid. How unnecessary.

LKBIQ:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

TILT:
Southern Patagonia is now completely overrun with beavers.

The road to hell...

Rat snake lurking
in Taiwanese toilet
bites man on penis.

Remember that old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This seems to be another line that Dick the Slimy is promoting in his attempt to bamboozle everyone about his war crimes. Part of his argument is that whatever he and Bush did, they did to protect the country. There will no doubt be some who will believe this, but I don’t believe it at all. When we now know that torture was being used to force someone into making a connection between Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein, so Bush/Cheney could use it to justify their illegal “war” with Iraq, how can that be seen as doing it to protect our country? Unless, that is, one could somehow believe that going to “war” with Iraq, that was not a threat to us, was in the best interest of the U.S. (instead of Bush/Cheney’s big oil buddies and other corporations who stood to get away with billions). Promoting a pre-emptive and illegal “war” was in no one’s interest except those individuals and corporations that stood to make money from it. It would be nice, in a way, to believe that these blatant war criminals were acting in the best interest of our country, but they certainly were not. This argument from good intentions is no more convincing than the attempt to drag Nancy Pelosi or other Democrats into it, or the argument that “it worked.” There is no excuse for what they did other than greed and perhaps sadism.

Cheney goes on blithely bragging about his war crimes. Now he has implicated Bush as well. I cannot understand why no one is taking action against them. On the one hand we claim to be a nation of laws, but in this instance that would seem to be just a joke. If their admittance of guilt is not enough, there is a mountain of evidence that demonstrates conclusively what they did. For some reason this does not seem sufficient to motivate our so-called “leaders” to take any action. Remember, Pelosi refused to consider impeachment, saying if she had some evidence to go on she might consider it. There was all kinds of evidence. Now Harry Reid is saying the same thing with respect to Cheney – we need more evidence. This is absolute nonsense. I don’t know what more anyone could possibly want by way of evidence to at least begin to take action. When we have Cheney appearing repeatedly on TV boasting of his crimes, and we have Jonathan Turley, a respected law professor, saying openly on TV they should be held accountable, and Obama and Holder, knowing what should be done, and still nothing seems to be happening to hold these criminals responsible for their absolutely horrid deeds, what can one possibly conclude about a “nation of laws?” I know the wheels of justice work slowly, but this is ridiculous.

Beware of corporations and organizations bearing gifts. This meeting of everyone with an interest in health care, and their offer to save two trillion over the next ten years, is obviously designed to insure that they will all be able to continue enjoy their excessive profits. This is certainly true of the Insurance companies that are simply parasites on the health care system. There is no compelling reason why insurance companies should have anything whatsoever to do with health care. Why should doctors and patients need an insurance middleman to broker health care? But the insurance companies are the ones who would stand to lose out if we had a sensible, reasonable, efficient, and genuine one payer system, so you notice such a system is not even being discussed. Indeed, the fear that we might have a sensible one payer system is so great that proponents of such a system have been forcibly removed from meetings where health care is under discussion. This is almost as shameful as our failure to prosecute the war criminals in our midst.

Newt Gingrich, who at least some people believe is the intellectual of the Republican Party, would seem to me to be that only if it is possible to have an intellectual mental midget. He has now complained that the Democrats, having been in power since 2007, have failed to pass any laws about torture. Apparently he is unaware there already are laws against torture, and have been for a very long time. He often comes up with these intellectual pronouncements that make little or no sense. He is the ultimate example of a great pontificator who pontificates endlessly for the mere sake of pontificating. At least he wasn’t the Republican nitwit who announced today, in defense of the Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo, “Well, Galileo would have died anyway.” I wonder more and more often these days if Republicans are born that way or shaped that way by their environment. It seems to me there is no other way to explain the preponderance of so many mentally challenged individuals in one organization.

Yes, I think Wanda Sykes went a bit too far when she said she wished Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail, but I suspect she is not the only person who feels that way. I would never say I wished someone would die, not even Rush Limbaugh. I do, however, believe the world would be a better place if there were no Rush Limbaugh, or Beck, or Hannity, or Coulter. Could we find them a remote island somewhere with no means of communication with the rest of the world? I do agree with Wanda that Rush’s wish for American to fail is no different than bin Laden’s and does represent treason or something very close to it. It is a sad commentary on the U.S. when a bloated, racist windbag has so much influence. Cheney says if he had to choose between Limbaugh and Colin Powell he would choose Limbaugh. It is a sad commentary on the U.S. when an evil war criminal is allowed loose on the streets.

LKBIQ:
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
John Adams

TILT:
Since their introduction in 1934 raccoons have become a major problem in Germany.

Obama hates Polar Bears?

Ronald Reagan claimed to have
seen three flying saucers, believed
earth was to be invaded by aliens.

Obama hates polar bears? The MSM, as well as many of the blogs I read sometimes, all report that the Obama administration has let stand an unpopular Bush ruling on Polar Bears. That’s it. With that bit of information we are supposed to conclude that Obama must hate Polar Bears and doesn’t care about the possibility of their going extinct, etc. No one bothers to mention why this ruling was allowed to stand. In fact, the ruling was allowed to stand because the Obama administration does not believe that ruling is the best or most efficient way to preserve the bears, and is therefore working on a better way to do so. Our MSM stinks, and as most blogs feed off the MSM they, too, often stink. At the rate things are going in the news business it won’t be long before there will be no real news at all, someone at AP or elsewhere will simply make things up and release them, and as there will be no alternative source of information, their fairly tales will be the news (this is not too far from the current situation).

Somewhere I saw on the web (must have been either on Buzzflash or Smirking Chimp) that some Republicans are lobbying Obama to proclaim the year 2010 the Year of the Bible. With two unfinished “wars,” an economy in the tank big time, to say nothing of the dozens and dozens of other problems confronting us, they want a Year or the Bible? Are these people crazy, or what? Actually, as they are beyond crazy, they must be “or what.” These numbskulls should not be allowed anywhere near government. We can thank Bush and his “born-again” crowd for allowing them to gain influence they never should have been allowed (anyone remember the separation of church and state?). As for me, I am a “born oncer,” and an atheist, one of a rapidly growing minority.

In general I believe Obama is doing a fine job in an exceedingly difficult situation. It appears that he may actually establish some form of universal health care, and perhaps the economy will pick up again. But I don’t understand how at the same time he can be so damn dumb when it comes to Afghanistan. He has allowed this Afghanistan business t o develop into another Vietnam for no good reason at all as near as I can tell. The Taliban, who now seem to be our main target, were not so when this all began. It was al Quaida that was the problem, and the Taliban were ready to turn Osama bin Laden over to us, provided we could give them evidence of his criminality (which Bush/Cheney refused to so). So because the Taliban exercised their thousand year tradition of hospitality to those who were guests in their clans, and refused to give in to our demands, they have now become our chief enemy, along with al Quaida (a much smaller enemy). Granted the Taliban are not the most pleasant of people when it comes to civil rights, the rights of women, and so on, is it really our business to tell other people how to behave? I realize we do so all the time, but if that is to be the case, why don’t we change the behavior of the Saudis and everyone else who do things of which we don’t approve? The Taliban are not sitting in Afghanistan and Pakistan plotting to invade the U.S., they just want us out of their country and out of their business. If they were not required by cultural tradition to protect al Quaida, they would probably get rid of them themselves once we butted out of their affairs. And, as Cheney’s dream of a pipeline across Afghanistan would seem now to be totally out of the question, what in the hell are we doing there? It is as someone recently said, “war simply for the sake of war” (to make sure our defense industry and military can continue to live the good life). Oh, yeah, I know, we have to protect those nuclear weapons in Pakistan (the Afghans don’t have any). Personally, I would bet that our continued presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan probably, in the long run, increases the possibility of nuclear stuff falling into the wrong hands. Bush/Cheney left the world in terrible shape, Obama is charged with cleaning up after them, no small task, but in Afghanistan and Pakistan he is doing a lousy job. We have to get out of there ASAP.

Does anyone intend to do anything about Dick the Slimy, or is he going to be allowed to go on boasting publicly of his war crimes forever? He has no defense whatsoever for his actions. It doesn’t even matter if somehow we gained evidence through torture, it wouldn’t matter. It would still be criminal. And there cannot possibly be any definitive evidence for this claim. Nor does it matter if Nancy Pelosi or any other Democrat was aware of what was going on, it would still be criminal (and I tend strongly to believe Pelosi on this matter. I do not doubt that the CIA was playing games with their briefings). My greatest fear is that Cheney will die of natural causes before he is found guilty and punished for his terrible crimes against humanity.

LKBIQ:
When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
C. P. Snow

TILT:
There are an estimated 14,000 species of ants.

EFCA

Two Hawaiian men plead
guilty to stealing and
eating man’s pet puppy.

Too many years of “free-market capitalism” seems to have spawned a managerial and upper class in the United States that truly believes greed is good and the proletariat exists solely for the purpose of exploitation. How else can one explain the passionate and unceasing objection on the part of some to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)? I mean, with the history of the worst of the sweat shops behind us, our knowledge of the problems associated with the Industrial Revolution, the absolutely gruesome images of poverty in the 19th century, the labor wars of the late 20th century, the insights of Marx and other political philosophers, the rise of Schools of Business and Management, and so on, you might think people would know better than to try to continue to keep the proletariat in chains. Given the fact that wages for ordinary working people have actually declined in recent years, at the same time the salaries and bonuses for management have skyrocketed as never before, it is impossible to see any justification for the opposition to EFCA other than just plain naked greed. And not only is this opposition greedy, it is also stupid. Even Henry Ford, that paragon of capitalism, realized that you had to pay your workers at least well enough so they could buy your product. While it is true that corporations can find cheaper labor overseas, resulting in unemployment at home, where are these unemployed workers going to find the money to buy anything, thus resulting in a recession or worse? This seems to be about where we are at the moment.

Not only is opposition to EFCA greedy and stupid, it is also, in my opinion, un-American, in that it works directly against the most basic values as stated in our founding documents: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “all men are created equal,” “liberty and justice for all,” and so on. This is so because under this (largely mythical) free-market capitalism, everything has to be treated as a commodity, including labor. Thus those men (and women) who must work for a living are reduced simply to commodities. But as Karl Polanyi so insightfully observed, labor is not truly a commodity, because labor is another word for human behavior. If you deny someone the fruits of their labor entirely, or force them to labor for excessively unjust rewards, you are clearly depriving them of many of their rights, and certainly standing in the way of their pursuit of happiness (unless they are masochistically inclined to a life of unending and unrewarding labor).

One does not have to be a socialist or communist to understand that in a fair and just society everyone should be entitled to be fairly paid for their labor and talent. This does not mean everyone should receive the same as everyone else, some people work harder than others, some are more talented than others, some more creative and active, and so on. Such people should be rewarded for their superior efforts. But no one should be denied opportunities to do their best, destined by birth or circumstance to live out their lives in “quiet desperation,” hungry and miserable, wage slaves in a system designed to keep them that way forever. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society where the disparity between rich and poor is as great as it is in our current country. This is wrong, and no philosophy of Social Darwinism or free-market capitalism can make it right. Greed and its attendant short-sightedness and exploitation are not building blocks for a successful, satisfying, and continuing culture. Just look around and listen, the sounds and sights of crumbling are everywhere. When the President of the U.S. is criticized for putting mustard on his cheeseburger, you know the end is probably in sight, or at least it ought to be.

LKBIQ:
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
Karl Marx

TILT: There is evidence that camelina was grown in Europe 3,000 years ago.

Absurdity

Oregon man shocks his four
children, 3,6,8,9, with electric dog
collar. He thought it was funny.

Speaking of funny, this is one of those moments when everything strikes me as completely absurd. For example, in Egypt, 300,000 pigs have been slaughtered because of the fear of swine flu. There is no swine flu in Egypt. Even more absurd, in Afghanistan there is only one pig in the entire country, in their zoo. This poor animal has been confined to a special place because of their fear of swine flu.

Hillary Clinton has apologized for the killing of dozens of innocent Afghan civilians in another one of our bombings. Does anyone keep track of how many times we have apologized to the Afghanistan people for killing their civilians? It seems to me that it happens every day, or virtually every day. So what is the point of constantly apologizing for something we do on an almost daily basis? Although I don’t know for certain, it may be the case that this was another drone, dropping bombs on what they erroneously thought was a target. Doesn’t it strike anyone but me as utterly absurd that we should be employing drones to drop bombs on random targets, apparently just hoping to hit someone of relevance? In fact, why are we allowed to use drones at all? Why should drones not be disallowed by the (granted, laughable) rules of war? Why should poison gas and cluster bombs be disallowed while drones operated from thousands of miles away, for which the people have no credible defense, be acceptable? This seems to me completely absurd (to say nothing of cowardly).

And doesn’t it strike anyone as absurd that the “New face of the Republican party,” consists of Cantor, Bush, Romney, and now Palin? I mean, how completely absurd can they get? And Cantor, who said he had been short-listed for Vice-President, but wasn’t, also said they were embarking on a “listening tour,” only to retract that when Rush Limbaugh said they didn’t need a listening tour? There seems to be little doubt that our fat, drug addicted, lying, piece of crap, Rush Limbaugh, is now in control of the Republican Party. Oh, they will go far on their road to recovery with good ol’ Rush directing them.

The Republicans also have Palin’s daughter, who got knocked up by not practicing abstinence, out preaching the gospel of abstinence. You know, don’t do as I do, do as I (the Republican Party) tells you to do. This is the same young lady who not long ago said that abstinence was not entirely practical.

Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, made a comment the other night that Truman might have been a war criminal. I thought it was pretty stupid, and the next day he corrected himself and said he should not have said that (which I think is true, he should not have). But now Justin Raimondo, who seems to know everything there is to know about everything, has accused Stewart of moral cowardice (because he thinks Stewart bowed to his bosses who told him he had to apologize). Now I don’t know if I think Jon Stewart is a moral coward or not, nor do I know if his bosses ordered him to apologize, nor do I really understand why Raimondo is in such a snit about it, but what I do know is, why in the hell is anyone worrying about whether Truman was a war criminal or not, when we have many current war criminals in our midst at the moment, and it appears they may all get off without being held accountable. I believe what Truman did when he dropped the atomic bombs was in fact unconscionable and reprehensible, but I doubt that it can be construed as a war crime (it was probably worse than that).

Finally, for the moment, I think it is absurd that I continue to watch TV. I don’t watch much TV. Over the past few years I have learned that probably 95% of what is offered on TV is not worth watching, and I am not at all certain about the other 5%. I have managed to cut my TV time down to only four shows: Olberman, Maddow, Stewart, and Colbert. I occasionally watch golf or a football game. That’s it. The only reason I even watch this much TV is because there isn’t much of anything else. I have canceled my subscription to our local racist, conservative, pretentious, newspaper that pretends to be non-partisan, and I cannot completely trust the blogs. Even so, I believe that I (and others) who watch TV are basically masochists who enjoy being insulted. TV is an insult to the intelligence of anyone. The standard programs are insulting, and the commercials are even more insulting. How we could have allowed TV to run roughshod over taste, morality, and common decency is a mystery to me. I am trying now to get to the point of not watching TV at all as I am tired of being insulted for two to four hours a day (I regard the programs that I do watch as among the least insulting one might find). TV, which had a marvelous potential when it began, has developed into a cesspool of the basest of human interests, a carnival of the utterly absurd, a tool for the corporate owners to keep us all “knocked up, barefoot, and pregnant,” so to speak.

LKBIQ:
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
Rod Serling

TILT:
The longevity of boa constrictors in captivity is 20 to 30 years, with 40 years possible.

Stumble, Fumble, and Fall

After consuming prescription drugs,
wine, and liquid soap, Russian woman
snaps like a dog at flight attendants.

What a wonderful, glorious morning here at Sand(pile)hill! It was sunny and bright. I woke up earlier than usual. When I looked out the window, there it was, my old Dodge pickup (Big Blue), overloaded with the most wonderful manure I’ve ever seen, an annual gift from our friends, Fred and Alice, who raise the most delicious Highlands beef in the world. It was golden in the early morning sunshine and shone like a dome on the Taj Mahal. I leapt out of bed, eager to spend the day shoveling this wonderful life-giving substance into the garden, which I then did. I can barely bend over, but our garden this year, barring terrible weather, should be unusually productive. The asparagus bed has already been producing like crazy, the peas are up and doing well, as are the rutabegas and beets. A good thing as the price of food now threatens us with starvation. Thanks to Bush/Cheney and the Brafia, I am now forced to worry about such things for the first time in my life.

Which brings me to the phrase, “stumble, fumble, and fall.” Is that not an apt description of the post-election Republican Party? It might be improved to “stumble, fumble, bumble, plunge and destruct,” but you get the picture. These clowns just cannot seem to do anything right, so they have just decided to say “no,” to everything. Now, however, realizing they are about to disappear entirely from the earth, they have begun a new program to reinvent themselves. They held their first meeting this morning in a Pizza Parlor. It’s not clear whether this was a pre-breakfast bash or was actually breakfast. This new organization sprung from the fertile brain of Cantor, who in his search for an entirely new focus, invited Jeb Bush and Romney to help him, fresh faces from the past. The purpose of this attempt is to generate new and fresh ideas that will appeal to the general public. One of their first ideas is to lower taxes on businesses. Somehow I think they do not really get the picture. I guess they would never admit that Obama actually has some very good ideas they should be supporting. They invited their last year’s heroine, Sara Palin, but she declined to attend, probably too busy with all her ethics violations and family troubles. I guess Condi Rice was not invited, but she has been very busy trying to deal with Stanford undergraduate students and a fourth grader. Every time she says something now she just digs herself in deeper and deeper into the muck of torture problem. As apparently the main purpose of the torture was to get someone to say something false about the relationship of Saddam Hussein to al Qaida, her latest excuse for the torture, that they were all terrorized and therefore did it, doesn’t seem very convincing.

Obama probably made a mistake when he mentioned empathy as a prerequisite for a new Supreme Court Justice. As the Republican party has never had even a semblance of empathy for anyone other than billionaires losing a few million dollars, they have no idea what it means. They have immediately pounced on it as a “code word” for socialism, communism, activism, or ism-ism. Orin Hatch, that paragon of imbecility, actually asked, “What does it mean?” They appear to be equally stupid when it comes to the concept of dictionary.

George W. Bush, our last President (remember him) raised 100 million dollars in 100 days for his Presidential Library (somehow the words Library and Bush do not seem to go together well). As much of this money was donated anonymously, one surmises that it is payback for the billions he allowed his corporate friends to steal in Iraq. I wonder if the Library will have a special torture wing featuring all the memos and discussions that brought it about. Everything that has come out so far always points to the same major culprit, Dick the Slimy, about the most hated and evil man on the planet. Will he ever be held accountable for his terrible war crimes, crimes that he actually boasts about? It look doubtful to me.

Obama has now begun a process to do away with off-shore corporate headquarters (as in the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg) that have allowed corporations and the obscenely rich to avoid paying taxes for years. It should be most amusing watching Republicans trying to defend these scams. The Republican party (base) is now down somewhere around or below 25% of the American Public. I suspect that is about the same percentage of Americans that are a couple of standard deviations below the mean of the Intelligence Quotient.

LKBIQ:
Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush - a Mount Rushmore of incompetence (with apologies to David Steinberg).
Morialekafa

TILT:
You would think that creatures with four stomachs would have better digestion.

The Journey to the West 19

Here is yet another brief installment of my sort-of memoirs. I am coming to grips with the difficulty of trying to write about one's life. There is simply no way anyone's life can be recorded in the detail necessary to truly understand it. I regard this at best as a kind of bare skeleton of my life which could be fleshed out considerably (almost endlessly), but could never be complete. Confronted with having to present the story of your life, how do you pick and choose those things that are the most salient, or the most interesting, or the most meaningful, or the most satisfactory, or even the most honest and straightforward? Are there some parts of one's life that are by far the most important and some that might simply be ignored? Does your perception of your life change as you stop looking eagerly to the East and Spring, to Autumn and Fall? The journey continues in any case.

Bartending was a welcome change from working as a laborer. One could argue that I wasn’t much of a bartender, as all we served was beer and soft drinks. I guess we could have served wine, but I doubt that any of our customers would have even considered drinking it. Wine was not something men drank in my home town. But it was a fairly long bar, and I did tend it. Because of the four stools in front where we served ice cream and popcorn I had that responsibility as well. I quickly learned that serving ice cream was a nasty, sticky, unpleasant business. Beer was easy once I learned to tap the kegs. I also had to learn to make hard-boiled eggs, serve polish sausages and other snacks that are commonly served in such bars.

As a beginner I started out working the day shift. I would come in an eight o’clock, make popcorn, check everything, mop the bar, and mostly just stand around waiting for business. I learned that even in the morning there were certain problems, partly of an ethical nature. For example, there was a woman who would sometimes come in as soon as I opened and start playing the slot machines. When she lost all her money should would ask me to please give her two quarts of milk for her children. Babe told me that of course I should give her the milk, but he never suggested I should ban her from the machines. It would not have done any good anyway, as she could have gone to other places and “donated” her money there. I should point out that slot machines were illegal, but most everyone had them. They were controlled by a man I will refer to here as the “Slot Machine King.” He furnished machines to most everyone for a generous share of the profits, and they were very profitable. One or two, possibly more places, defied him and owned their own machines. This was the case where my father worked. One night those machines were vandalized and damaged. The story I was told by my father was that his boss, Bill K., took his .45 automatic pistol with him and visited the Slot Machine King in the hotel where he had his headquarters. He informed him, with the gun to his head, that he should never again interfere with his machines. He never did. Eventually slot machines were banished. Interestingly, most people did not seem to want them back. But I digress. There was a well-known town drunk, a young Irishman who was a hopeless alcoholic. He would often come in first thing, begging for a beer. Babe insisted I give it to him, but only one. Of course on the rare occasions when he had money he spent it with us, one beer after another. Most people refused to buy him beer. It was a small town, everyone knew everyone.

We had an old-fashioned antique cash register that was almost unbelievably huge, with dozens of buttons to press for far more things than I could even imagine. It was formidable. But it didn’t bother us because we only used it sparingly. It had a wide marble till from which we made change. We never rang anything up until we had at least ten or more dollars. As all the dollars we saw were silver, as was all the change, we didn’t have to deal with any paper smaller than a five. Babe lived upstairs in a large apartment. Whenever I needed help with something I would pound on the heating pipes with a pool cue and Babe would stick his head out the window while I stood outside looking up at him. I didn’t often need help but it was reassuring to know he was there, especially when the popcorn machine would catch on fire.

Babe had a variety of tricks he used when working behind the bar. He would throw a coin in the air and catch it behind his back, or even kick it back up off his heel and catch it. Or he would perform other coin tricks of various kinds, as well as do flourishes with milk shakes and other things. I tried to emulate him and soon learned some of them although I never attained his expertise. We had dice cups and would play 4-5-6 with customers, double or nothing. As far as I could tell we always broke about even at this but many of the customers insisted on it.
You learned a great deal about human behavior from behind the bar. Not only did customers sometimes tell you their troubles, you could not help but hear them telling each other as well. Many of the tales had to do with marriages, divorces, and domestic issues. And some of our customers were scrupulously honest while others would cheat at every opportunity. For example, we had punch boards, where you paid for each punch and you might win money. It was fairly common for customers to punch when you were not looking and just throw away their losing punches without paying. Sometimes they would lie about how long they had used one of the pool tables. It also happened that someone would be accused of cheating at pool and I would have to intervene. One of the things that always amazed me was the pettiness of some of this behavior (as well as the surprising discovery of who it was that engaged in it). Of course we had a few customers who simply could not hold their liquor (beer) very well and would become belligerent and unpleasant. But we also had the happy drunks that would amuse everyone. For a time we had a pinball machine. You were supposed to win free games, but we paid money under the counter for them. It eventually became so abused it was more trouble than it was worth. The juke box would sometimes blare on endlessly, mostly with country-western music which I quickly came to absolutely despise. All in all I found the job interesting and encountered very little in the way of trouble. Later, when I began working nights, things could become more problematical, but even then I found it much better than digging ditches. It was, however, stressful, and when I went home late at night I would have to sit and relax for an hour or two before I could go to bed and sleep.

At the end of the summer, when I was preparing to return to school, my father was outraged that I had not saved any money. So was I, when I thought about it. I have no idea where my money went, I didn’t drink or take drugs at that time, nor had I gambled much. The only thing I had to claim for my summer of bartending was a .380 automatic handgun and some new clothes. But I believe I had learned quite a lot.

Sports

“Respectable” couple ”mortified”
when arrested for having sex
on the grass outside Windsor Castle.

Today I watched the 135th Kentucky Derby. I have no interest in horse racing, never watch it at all, know nothing about it, but I still watch the Derby every year. Today it was won by a horse named “Mine the Bird.” I have no idea where such a name originated. What I do know is that Mine the Bird was a 50 to 1 longshot, one of the greatest upset victories in history. This horse cost a mere $9500 and was delivered to the Race Track by its owner, who drove his pickup with a horse trailer some 1500 miles to get there (he also, for what it’s worth, had a broken leg), a genuine Cinderella story. Does this mean there is hope for all of us?

I also watch at least one game of the Baseball World’s Series every year, even though I have even less interest in baseball than in horse racing. I sort of like the idea of baseball, the game and the rules, but it is far too boring to watch. But how can you not watch such monumental events that occur every year and are as much American as apple pie and hypocrisy. I used to watch professional basketball years ago, but now that it has evolved into a game even more boring than cricket I have given it up. I still watch College basketball, but only during March Madness. Why I do this I do not know. I used to play golf. I was terrible at it, but I spent lots of money and effort before I finally had to admit it was, for me, a hopeless pursuit. I watch golf tournaments, but only if Tiger Woods is playing. During the months he was nursing his bad knee and recuperating I didn’t watch a single tournament. He will probably win again tomorrow. I have a friend in Arizona who has never played golf and doesn’t particularly like it. He watches golf tournaments because, he says, it’s the only time he ever sees anything green.

I confess to watching football, but mainly because my son is an aficionado and insists I watch so he can explain it to me. I watch, but I still don’t really understand it very well. Being a sexist pig (I guess) I never watch women’s sports, ever. When I was still trying to play golf the Pro’s 15 year-old daughter beat me so regularly (and so badly) I have never recovered. Tennis, too, is a game I never watch. I tried tennis a few times and it soon became obvious to me that unless you are a really fine player, it is a hopeless game. I mean, if you can’t play, it’s just hit the ball, run and pick it up, hit it again, run and pick it up, and so on endlessly. Soccer bores me to death. I don’t understand it, but it seems to me you have to be passionately devoted to watching people run to bother about it. It’s just running and running and maybe, if you’re really lucky, someone will actually score. Bowling is another dead end as far as I can see. If you don’t smoke cigars and drink beer you have no business in a bowling alley. When I was in Australia I was exposed to Rugby League football. I thought the ball was completely extraneous to the main endeavor which seemed to be punching and kicking each other. Lacrosse is said to be an interesting game. I wasn’t alive when it was in its heyday. I guess it’s making a comeback but I rather doubt the modern version is as interesting as the original Indian game. Polo is completely outside of my life space. I don’t know any millionaires. Curling is so esoteric I find it hard to believe it really is a game. The same thing holds true of lawn bowling, shuffleboard, horseshoe pitching, badminton, croquet, and other such innocuous ways of passing the time.

Sailboat and sled racing, along with surfing and track and field, may be legitimate sports, but auto, speedboat, snowmobile and personal watercraft racing I do not consider sports at all. These latter are, as near as I can tell, mostly engineering contests. That is, whoever can keep the noisy, polluting things running the longest usually wins. Hunting and fishing are important means of obtaining food, and they may involve ingenious methods, but I cannot really consider them sports as they are presently pursued. What is “sporting” about shooting basically helpless animals with high powered rifles and shotguns. The sport seems to consist merely of finding something to kill, after which it is merely a means of slaughter. I grant the fact that there may be an element of skill involved, but, then, there is an element of skill involved in butchering. I think people who hunt and fish for food are entirely justified, hunting for sport I find very difficult to justify. I don’t think doing it with modern bows and arrows or muzzleloaders makes it much better. Bullfighting might be more exciting and dangerous than hunting, and of course is a very old ritual event, but I don’t think it is any more “sporting.”

I think it is absolutely wonderful that the “most exciting two minutes in sports,” in “The sport of Kings,” was won today by an inexpensive horse owned by a guy in New Mexico who just broke his leg on a motorcycle, and delivered him to the Derby in a trailer pulled by a pickup truck. What a world!

LKBIQ:
Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.
Tennessee Williams

TILT:
A male badger is a boar, a female is a sow, a young one is a cub.

Bad taste?

Four hundred pound mother
of triplets begins feeding them
from McDonald’s at six months.

I never thought I would admit to it, but I am a prude. I am not particularly prudish about sex, but, rather, about medical ads in general that I increasingly encounter on TV. I think it is bad enough that pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise their products at all, but they seem over the years to have abandoned all sense of decency or decorum. Just thinking about how much their enormous advertising budgets add to the price of drugs is enough to make me furious. I think if someone thinks they have heart trouble or are hard of hearing or something they should see a doctor. I don’t see why it has to be suggested to them that they might have such problems. If they don’t have them why bring them to their attention.

What truly is bothering me, however, are the ads featuring certain ailments that I just do not want to hear about. I absolutely do not care about people’s armpits, for example. Nor do I care to hear about how absorbent menstrual pads are. Ads for rectal itch or hemorrhoids hold absolutely no interest for me, nor do ads that address leaking bladders, diarrhea, menstrual cramps, breast pumps, or nasal allergies. If I had any of those things bad enough to be bothered by them I am quite certain I would have enough sense to see a doctor. I don’t have to be reminded of every conceivable ailment that exists on a daily basis. Spastic colons and prostate glands and colonoscopies are not things I need to be reminded about. Watching people gargle and brush their teeth I find particularly offensive. Are these really things people have to be instructed to do? One of the most offensive ads of all times going the rounds at the moment has to do with some old people singing about “by, by ooziness.” I don’t even want to hear about false teeth, let alone the substances required to hold them in place. This stuff is just plain disgusting. I think looking up someone’s nostrils or at simulations of their gastric processes are completely unnecessary. Someone having a colonoscopy on television, however noble its motivation, is downright horrid. Along these same lines, I don’t care to watch dental care or even operations, and I especially don’t think people having birth should be sharing it on TV with the rest of us. What I am truly fed up with are the ad nauseam ads having to do with male enhancement and erections. I am sure that if I had such a problem, and could only perform with chemical help, I would certainly not want to share it with the television public. I notice that when these ads first began they were relatively modest, but now you see him leading her right up to the bedroom door. What comes next, the act itself? Am I really that prudish or do I just have good taste? Or have ideas of good and bad taste gone the way of the Dodo bird?

Interestingly enough, I do not feel prudish about seeing wounded or dead bodies on war footage. I don’t like it, and I certainly don’t enjoy it, but I think it is necessary for people to see just how senseless and horrible war really is. When it comes to showing the caskets coming home with our dead military heroes, I think it ought to be required viewing for anyone who thinks war is just something that is happening “over there.” I hate seeing pictures of starving children, refugee camps, and all the attendant misery, but, again, I think everyone should be forced to see them. Perhaps it would help people to come to their senses about the unnecessary misery accompanying so much of humanity (it doesn’t seem to, as near as I can tell).

Probably the worst pictures of all for me are the torture ones. Nothing can compare with seeing people who are bound and completely helpless being abused in ways deliberately conceived for that purpose, and for which there is no excuse, none. Torture nowadays is not only illegal, it is absolutely medieval, a throwback to a time when all the worst features of the imagination were given free reign. If you are ever in the British Museum you should visit their exhibitions having to do with torture. It is virtually unbelievable the lengths humans went to, to inflict the utmost pain possible on their fellows. It went far beyond Abu Ghraib and even waterboarding. But what makes our current torturing worse, I think, is that psychologists and others were actually recruited and paid to determine which forms of abuse would work the best on particular ethnic groups. The enlisted personnel who tortured at Abu Ghraib did not stumble upon those techniques by themselves, they were told what to do by “scientists” who had been employed for the purpose. It was torture, deliberately conceived, by those who should have known better, especially after hundreds of years of the history of such misguided activity. I don’t know if there was any justification for torture in the past, that was probably done as much out of ignorance as anything else, but there is no justification for torture in the 21st century. And those who brought it about should be held accountable for what they have done. If not, it will just happen again.

LKBIQ:
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
H. L. Mencken

TILT:
All rattlesnake species give live birth rather than laying eggs.

Pablo Neruda - book

I have just finished another biography: Pablo Neruda A Passion for Life, by Adam Feinstein (Bloomsbury, 2004). I know virtually nothing about poetry, so why did I read a book about a poet? Experience has taught me that the lives of poets are most often of great interest, even apart from the poetry. This book is no exception. Indeed, the stuff of Neruda’s life would lend itself just as readily, perhaps even more readily, to novels and adventure stories.

Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, born in 1904 in Parral, Chile, lost his mother two months after being born, and against the wishes of his strict and pragmatic father, grew up to become Pablo Neruda, one of the most internationally acclaimed poets of all time. As a child he was sickly and often bedridden, but blessed with a stepmother who doted over and encouraged him. His first published book of poems, Crepusculario, when he was only nineteen, was well received, but his second book, Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desperado (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, i924) made him famous. This book in particular was republished so often and translated into so many languages it sold over a million copies during his lifetime (and probably that many more by now).

Reading this book about his life leads me to believe that he was actually born to be a poet. He wrote poetry all his life, no matter what his circumstances or situation. It must have come easily to him and he established a reputation of being the finest poet of love in any language. The idea, or the concept of love, seems to have been the most driving force in his life. You might wonder what love meant to him, given his three marriages and untold affairs. He seems to have fallen in love easily, but he did apparently distinguish true, more permanent emotion, from the promiscuous sexual affairs he often engaged in. I believe he was genuinely in love with his three wives, and although he left each one for another, often in unpleasant and devious ways, it was apparently because he could not keep them all at once. Although he treated his second wife very shabbily (she was twenty years his senior) when he met his third wife, I believe he wanted desperately to cling to both of them.

The emphasis in this book seems to be primarily on Neruda’s love life, along with his love of life in general. Once he overcame his initial poverty and began to earn money from his fame he spent much of his time time partying, greatly enjoying food and wine, and being with his many friends and admirers. He was generous and helped many young authors as they struggled to become known. He is often described as being childish and even helpless in the everyday process of life. It is tempting to quote H. L. Mencken’s claim that “A poet over forty years old is simply an overgrown child,” but this would do a terrible disservice to Neruda, as he was far more than merely a poet. He served his country successfully as a diplomat, was an active politician, had an in-depth knowledge of wine, and his hobby of collecting seashells, and was an astute observer of nature. He knew and was friends with most of the major poets of his time, as well as with Picasso and many writers. He also arranged a ship for 2000 Republican fighters to flee Spain in safety after their defeat at the hands of Franco, not a task for a petulant child. Nor can his legendary and difficult flight over the Andes to escape political persecution be considered juvenile, or the months he spent escaping the authorities on another occasion.

He was always a man of peace, but until the Spanish Civil War, he was basically apolitical. He was in Spain when the war broke out and witnessed the horrors of Fascism first hand. When his good friend, the fine Spanish poet, Frederico Garcia Lorka was murdered by them he became dedicated to Communism, a dedication he clung to for the rest of his life, even after the horrors of Stalin, although he did, towards the end, recognize those horrors. This political stance changed his poetry dramatically and he began to write more for the people than for other poets. As for the terrors of Stalinism, he wrote in towards the end in one of his poems:

Forgetting is better
In order to sustain hope…
We found the light
And we recovered our reason

His attitude towards his writing can be seen in what he said in an interview with a Mexican newspaper:

“You cannot be happy if you do not fight for other people’s happiness. You can never abandon the sense of guilt of having something if others do not. Man cannot be a happy island.”

Of course it was his dedicated Communism that both sustained him and threatened always to destroy him. He traveled widely to many countries, especially often to the Soviet Union where he was treated royally. He was important to the Communist party and was feted at their meetings everywhere. It was only because of the help of Arthur Miller that he was allowed to attend meetings in the United States. And, as an avowed Communist, he had many enemies that tried to destroy his reputation. But he triumphed in the end, winning the Nobel Prize, the first (and only?) Chilean to do so. He was a staunch supporter of Salvadore Allende, and enraged at the meddling of the U.S. in Chilean affairs. Interestingly, he did not like Castro. His death from prostate cancer could not have been more miserable. Not only did he slowly wither away in pain, it coincided with the Pinochet coup that brought death and destruction to his native land.

I must say that I enjoyed this book, but I did come away somewhat unsatisfied as I think there was so much more to Neruda that his biographer gave us. I think there was too much emphasis on Neruda’s sexual and marital exploits, and on his supposed childishness (he certainly was childish in many ways), as well as on his poetry, and not enough detail on his many other accomplishments. Also, I find it most interesting that a poet could have gone so far and accomplished so much in Chile. Such a thing could not have happened in the United States, where poetry is something only impoverished poets or beatniks do.

Dawdle - story

Do you really want to hear anymore about the first 100 days? I didn't think so. Here is a short, short story I wrote for my little boy (when he was a little boy, long ago).

This is a story about a little boy called Dawdle. His real name was Benjamin B. Benjamin, but everyone called him Dawdle, because that is what he did best. Even his mother called him Dawdle. When they went to the grocery store she would say, “Come on Dawdle, don’t dawdle.” But Dawdle couldn’t help dawdling any more than he could help his unruly red hair or his bright blue eyes. By the time his mother was buying bread, Dawdle was still staring into the meat counter. When she arrived at the canned goods, Dawdle was still looking at the bread, and when she got as far as the vegetable counter Dawdle had only arrived at the canned soups.

“Hurry up Dawdle, I’m ready to go,” his mother would say. Then she would have to wait by the door while Dawdle examined the cleaning supplies, the fresh flowers, the candy display, the ice cream freezer, the breakfast food, and finally the exit itself.

“He’s as slow as molasses in January,” his grandmother observed. “When I come to stay with him I wonder how you put up with it. He won’t even come in for lunch. He just sits out there watching this and that and only comes when he’s ready. I’ve never seen a child dawdle like that in all my life.”

“You can’t even take him for a walk,” Dawdle’s father complained. “He stops every few feet and examines everything: every leaf, every stick, every rock, every blade of grass. I just don’t know what to do with him”

Dawdle, of course, was always late for school. When his friends walked quickly so as not to be late, Dawdle fell behind. “Come on Dawdle, we’ll be late.” They urged. But Dawdle did not seem to hear them, so intent was he to watch the wind in the trees or the leaves falling silently to the ground.

“Dawdle,” said his teacher, “Why are you always late? Everyone else gets here on time. Why can’t you be like everyone else?” Dawdle did not answer. He just stood there looking out the window at the falling snowflakes.

“You can stay after school again today,” said the angry teacher. “Perhaps you’ll be on time tomorrow.”

All the other children liked Dawdle. But no one could understand him. When they chose up teams to play games Dawdle was always the last one chosen. “He’s too slow,” they said. “He doesn’t pay attention. The ball goes right past him. He’s not there when you need him. He daydreams.”

Older boys made fun of him. They called him slowpoke. When they passed him on the street they sang, “Yankee Doodle Dawdle,” or Doodle Oodle Dawdle All Day.” No one could make him change.

“Go sit in the corner,” ordered the teacher. Perhaps you will pay attention next time.” The other children laughed as they always did. Dawdle didn’t care. He sat there calmly studying the corner itself. Then, after a time, he smiled his secret smile. He didn’t mind what they said about him. He had seen the end of a rainbow. He knew how the spider spun its web, where the field mice made their homes, where the squirrels stored their food, where the birds made their nests, and how the baby birds learned to fly. He knew how the little tadpoles grew into frogs and where the deer hid their babies. He knew how flowers grew in the Spring, and where he could find the first pussy willows for his mother. He liked it when she picked him up and kissed him.

Voting

To protest unpaid wages and
lack of food, Serbian union official
cuts off his finger and eats it.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert

One might well argue that in our current democracy the goal has been to keep the proletarian from gaining the level of stupidity of the bourgeois. But the larger and more important question is, it seems to me, do we want everyone to have the same level of stupidity when it comes to voting? This is a question that seems not to be raised or discussed, I suspect because it raises painful questions of elitism and discrimination that are better left alone.

There were, at one time, qualifications for voting rights. These have been given up over time so that now virtually everyone has the right to vote, provided only they are legitimate residents, not felons (in some cases), and so on. For a long time one had to be a landowner to vote. You also at one time had to be white, and male. These qualifications have been struck down, rightly so, as unfair and discriminatory.

Universal voting rights are not, it seems to me, without potential and rather important problems. Let me mention the first of these problems as exemplified by my Mother-in-law (bless her). She always and invariably votes Republican. She does this because she and her (now deceased) husband always voted Republican. This is the sole reason for her vote. She does not follow politics in any way, does not watch the news or make any attempt whatsoever to be informed as to who is running or why or what it might mean to anyone or the country. If you try to engage her in conversation about coming elections she refuses to talk about it. If a political discussion starts to become heated she immediately leaves the room. She does not want to talk about it (or know about it), period. I’m quite certain that she is not alone in her ignorance of politics. I know there are many other people out there just like her. She is not a bad person. Indeed, she is quite a nice person. But in my opinion she should not be allowed to vote. I do not say this because she votes the Republican ticket, those in similar circumstances who vote Democratic are equally as guilty of mindless voting. Whether there are more Republican votes of this kind than Democratic ones I cannot say. There is, under our current system, nothing that can be done about this. It would probably be possible to institute some kind of short, one-time course in voting that everyone would be required to take (if they insist on voting), but you can well imagine how impossible that would be.

Then there are those who vote a straight ticket (either Republican or Democratic) because they make no attempt whatsoever to hear both sides. The classic example (here in North Idaho, at least) are those who listen exclusively to Rush Limbaugh (or perhaps Beck, Hannity, or others of that ilk). These people are not referred to as “dittoheads” for nothing. They vote as they are told by their right-wing mentors and take great pride in doing so. And they believe passionately their votes are “just as good as anyone else’s.” And given our current system, perhaps they are. The evidence, such as it is, suggests that the wives of these voters vote exactly how their husband’s tell them to vote. An anecdote from the last Presidential election gave me a clue as to why I thought Obama might actually win. A woman was going door-to-door discussing the coming election and asked a woman who she was going to vote for. The woman yelled loudly to her husband, “Who we votin’ for this year?” The answer came back, “The Black guy.” She dutifully reported, “We’re votin’ for the Black guy.” This is basically similar to my Mother-in-law situation but is quite likely more widespread.

All of this raises another question that I think is much more difficult, and certainly more awkward to deal with: should all votes be considered equal? Of course they are all considered equal, but how realistic is this? This brings up the question of Colleges and Universities. We often hear the complaint (mostly from the right) that our Colleges and Universities are packed with Liberals (aka Democrats, Socialists, Communists, and whatever). I believe this is true. The Majority of University Professors are almost certainly Liberals (or certainly more Liberal than most). If this is so, why is it so? Could it not be that individuals who make their life’s work the pursuit of knowledge, and attempt to understand how society and culture work, inevitably come to the conclusion that a Democratic, Liberal view is superior to others? For example, is the view of an Economist, who has studied economics for years, not a more informed and better view than that of someone who spends most of his time listening to Rush Limbaugh? I should certainly think it is, but there is a strong anti-intellectual tendency in American culture to deny such things. You know, “pointy-headed intellectuals,” “those who can’t do, teach,” “ivory-towerists,” and etc. I do not think that University people necessarily know more than others, provided those others are as well informed and/or experienced, but for the most part they are not.

This sort of thing would not be a problem if we were true to the ideals of Democracy. That is, a Democracy can only function properly if there is a well-informed populace. We are unfortunately far from that ideal. We have “dumbed-down” and starved our public schools shamelessly, and in recent years have placed higher education out of the reach of most. We should have a much better funded public educational system, with better paid and trained teachers and, more importantly, we should have a free University system where anyone is free to attend classes as they wish, where the pursuit of knowledge is a goal in its own right, and does not necessarily have to lead to a degree. And everyone should be encouraged to attend classes according to their interests and time. Finland, I believe, has such a system, and I believe a few other places do as well. Classes in government and society should be readily available and perhaps even mandatory. Given the current attitudes towards education in the U.S. this would be very difficult to institute, but I do not think it impossible in time. It would make a monumental difference in the way our Democracy works and would level the playing field for all.

LKBIQ:
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
John F. Kennedy

TILT:
One cure suggested for enuresis in the past, among many others, was eating a fried mouse.

It doesn't matter

Suspended two weeks for birth control
pill in school, girl discovers penalty
for heroin possession is only one week.

Waterboarding is torture. It has been so defined and accepted as torture since the Spanish Inquisition. It was a problem when we fought in the Philippines. We punished very severly Japanese soldiers for inflicting it on our soldiers. A Sheriff in Texas was even more recently punished for it. There simply is no cogent argument that can make it into something else. Republican attempts to deny this just do not matter.

For example, one of the claims they have tried to make is that, according to the legal advice provided to Bush/Cheney waterboarding is not torture. The fact is that Bush/Cheney hired lawyers to specifically change the legal definitions of torture so they could (presumably) go ahead and do whatever they wished. Because these lawyers were hired to do what they were told to do, their interpretations simply do not matter.

Then there is Republican, especially Cheney’s attempt, to argue that torture (enhanced interrogation methods) worked. It will, I am sure, be impossible for them to prove in any meaningful sense that it worked. But even if they did somehow prove that it worked, it simply does not matter. Torture is torture whether it works or not. This is an argument so juvenile and absurd as to not be taken seriously.

These Republicans who want to try to justify torture also say that Democrats were informed about it and so they are just as responsible for the torture as Republicans. I don’t know what Democrats were informed of, or whether they bear any responsibility or not. What I do know is that even if they do, it just plain and simply doesn’t matter. You cannot justify torture by saying others were aware of or engaging in it.

These are all just pathetic attempts on the part of the guilty to obfuscate and confuse everyone in order to try to make these accusations go away. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice and others deliberately conspired to bring about legal excuses to justify something that has been blatantly illegal for centuries. Now they have been caught in the act and have no reasonable justification for what they did. I cannot believe that in the United States, in the year 2009, people are actually arguing about whether torture is torture and whether anyone should be punished for it. Even the argument that they were merely doing what they felt was their patriotic duty is false and does not matter. In fact, they did not do it out of patriotism, but, rather, out of their need to justify attacking Iraq, a known war crime. There is no way any thinking person could possibly believe these people have been acting patriotically for the last eight years, rather than in their own and their party’s self-interest.

Even the argument that we should just let bygones be bygones and not prosecute anyone because it will cause divisions in the body politic and look like revenge, does not matter. It doesn’t matter because our own laws require that it be investigated and, if necessary, prosecuted. We can refuse to do this but only by breaking the law ourselves and becoming a party to these criminal acts. As we boast of being a nation of laws, I do not see how investigation and prosecutions can be avoided without destroying whatever little credibility we have left in the world. Are we really willing to do this?

I understand why President Obama has to pretend to not want to pursue this because he is otherwise too busy or does not wish to appear revengeful or create more division in the nation. Although I understand it, I personally think it is wrong. I believe he should just stick to the truth. These people did horrible and illegal things and should be held accountable. He should just say so, and let Holder and Congress get on with the details. Pretending and procrastinating will quite likely just make things worse.

LKBIQ:
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
Bertrand Russell

TILT:
The largest American alligator ever recorded was 19 feet, 2 inches.

The Journey to the West 18

This afternoon while I was inspecting a cherry tree that is about to burst into blossom, with my neighbor and good friend, word arrived that the wife of my oldest friend died last night. I have known her for 65 years. Her journey to the West is now complete. My own journey, for reasons I cannot fathom, continues its erratic and inevitable path.

My first couple of years at the University were so chaotic and mostly unpleasant that I do not recall very well everything that happened, or the precise sequence of events. I know that the first year was taken up with courses that were required: English 101, American History, Zoology, and some Physical Science course that was basically designed for Dummies who didn’t really want to take science courses, and, of course, the ROTC requirement that I could always depend on for an “F.” I think I took an Introduction to Sociology course that spent most of the time on the question of race, and I dimly remember maybe taking some kind of Art Appreciation course and something having to do with Literature. The grades I received in the courses I liked made up for my failures so I knew I would be able to return the following year.

That summer (1948) I returned home and worked as a laborer. I first worked for a contractor called “Hurry-up-Johnson.” He was nicknamed that for obvious reasons as time was, of course, money. My first day on the job required me to carry heavy bags of cement and load them on a truck. As I was thin (135 pounds), and not exceptionally strong, I thought I might perish before the morning ended. As it turned out that was the easiest part of the job. We were to build a cement foundation under an apartment house that had been raised up to make it possible. There were forms to take the cement all around the building and a 12” plank walk on which to wheel loads of mixed cement in wheelbarrows. To access this narrow walkway there was a narrow, fairly steep ramp. A wheelbarrow full of liquid cement is quite heavy, and very difficult to manage on a narrow plank. I managed for about two hours when I suddenly found I could no longer even lift the wheelbarrow. I was then put to the task of simply mixing cement which was much easier. When that job finished we moved on to an ordinary ditch-digging gig. As I was unused to such work, and not very big, I managed, but hardly distinguished myself as a ditch-digger when compared to my older, stronger, and more experienced co-workers. It became apparent to me that (1) I did not like this line of work, and (2) Hurry-up-Johnson didn’t think much of my performance. I quit after just a few days. My only positive remembrance of this job was when one of my co-workers threw a muddy rock at another, who ducked, thus causing the rock to accidentally hit Hurry-up in his white shirt right in the stomach.

My closest friend, Bill, was working for the Montana Power Company and managed to get me a job working with him. This was also basically a laboring job but there were many different things to do that were not quite so difficult. I guess we were technically known as “Grunts,” assistants to Linemen who climbed the poles and such. We stayed on the ground and sent things up to the Lineman as requested. For a time I worked with a Lineman who had a harelip and whose diction was less than perfect. If I made a mistake and sent up the wrong thing he would throw it back down at me, cursing in some strange language of his own. He was a nice enough guy otherwise and taught me to climb the poles with the “spurs” they used, although I never got to be very good at it. Then I got to work with Bill under the supervision of a kindly old Swede Foreman. Whenever something went wrong or broke he would say, “vat do ve care, ve don’t own it.” This did not make work much easier, however. Once we had to clean out some huge transmission containers. This involved getting down inside them in a narrow space and cleaning them with gasoline. I am absolutely positive this would not be allowed today and we both almost passed out before finishing. Our next job was to move some “stubs” up a power line to reinforce the existing poles. This was really a job for horses but the terrain was so steep and rocky that would have been impossible. These stubs were heavy and could not be carried, so we had a gadget that would hook onto them, sort of like a giant pair of ice tongs, and then, with one of us on each side, we would drag them up the mountain, just like a team of horses (I don’t remember what this tool was called). This was not easy, but compared to the next job, it was breeze. The power line went up a very steep mountainside in Burke Canyon. Some of the crossbars on the poles had to be replaced. This was long before the ready availability of helicopters, which meant that we had to carry them up, one on each shoulder. They were heavy and awkward to carry. I recall throwing them down every little way and threatening to quit on the spot. But with Bill’s encouragement (he was a bit bigger and stronger) we finally managed. I was beginning to understand the benefits of a University education.

Every day after work Bill and I would stop at Babe and Jim’s for drink and a snack. We couldn’t drink beer but we were allowed to sit in the bar and have cokes or whatever. And everyday Babe would hear me complaining about the rigors of my employment. One afternoon he suggested I work for him as a bartender. He needed a bartender and for some reason thought I would suffice. Of course I wasn’t old enough to tend bar, but everyone knew me and no one seemed to care. This was a lifesaver as far as I was concerned. I eagerly accepted. This simple decision came to play an important role in my life.

The General Welfare

British Columbia officer finds
naked couple having sex
in noisy, rocking dumpster.

Waterboarding is torture. Torture is illegal, a war crime, and a crime against humanity. Those who instruct people to do it, and those who do it, should be investigated, held accountable for it, and prosecuted if necessary. This all seems very simple and straightforward to me.

With that aside, with all the right-wing blather about Obama being a socialist/communist/fascist/Muslim/etc. (contradictory claims that indicate to me these people have no idea what they are talking about), I have been contemplating the responsibilities of government. If you abstract from our founding documents you come out with responsibilities something as follows:

1. Form a more perfect union.
2. Establish justice.
3. Ensure domestic tranquility.
4. Provide for the common defense.
5. Promote the general welfare.
6. Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Obviously these are highly abstract goals. There seems to be differences of opinion about all of them, but in general I suspect most Americans would agree with these basic aspirations. Of course those states who are now mindlessly threatening to secede are not helping in forming a more perfect union. Similarly, those who would engage in illegal wiretapping and politicizing the Justice Department are not helping to establish justice. Domestic tranquility can hardly be achieved when the top 1 or 2 percent of the population holds more wealth than all the rest combined. While everyone would agree we should provide for the common defense, some of us think we have overdone this to the point of insanity, although it is sort of understandable when you take into consideration the military/industrial/political complex that controls the country. But even with these caveats it probably does secure the blessing of liberty, at least in some sense.

It is in the area of promoting the general welfare that we appear to have the most, and most important, disagreements. President Obama wants to have a system of universal health care, aid to the public schools and universities, an energy system less dependent upon foreign oil, attention paid to the problem of global warming, help to ailing banks and auto companies, and create job opportunities (among other things). In order to achieve these goals it will be necessary to impose various restrictions. To me, these seem to all be programs to promote the general welfare. The Republicans say “no” to all this and accuse Obama of trying to change our society into socialism rather than capitalism. Keep in mind these are supposed to promote the GENERAL welfare, not simply the welfare of generals or corporations. To me it is inconceivable that anyone in a so-called “civilized” society would not want workers to have decent wages and benefits, including universal health care and the means to a desirable and worthwhile education. Republicans apparently do not think so. I guess they prefer the earlier practices of child labor, minimum wages, no benefits, and little or no education (you know, something like Victorian England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution). They recoil in absolute horror when they hear the word socialism (which they have trouble separating from communism, and, I guess even fascism). As near as I can tell they seem to prefer a society in which we maintain an overly strong military (so their corporate masters can turn out more and more museum quality armaments at great cost) that will defend a territory within which we are allowed, even encouraged, to cannibalize each other. You know, social Darwinism, only the strong will survive, nature raw in tooth and claw, rugged individualism, no welfare, let ‘em fail, and so on (while at the same time they happily collect their various subsidies and benefits).

Much of the current Republican position stems from one of the most idiotic statements ever made, which they are fond of mindlessly quoting: “Government is not a solution to our problem, Government is the problem.” It is difficult to comprehend what Ronald Reagan actually meant by this. He clearly did not believe that we should not have roads and policemen and firemen, or no laws at all. What he apparently had in mind was any kind of Government regulations that would make corporations act for the general welfare. Apparently any attempt at all for the Government to regulate industries or profits in any way was socialism, as was any institution run by the Government rather than the private sector. I do not recall if he said anything about our socialistic Postal Service, but he clearly was opposed to any form of welfare (remember the “welfare queens” driving up in their cadillacs to pick up their welfare checks). Social Security was just another form of welfare to Reagan. He was also not very generous when it came to our socialistic public schools. Environmentalism was anathema to him. Far from the “Saint Ronnie” his Republican followers believe him to be, he was mostly a kind of evil twit who occasionally read his speeches from the wrong cue cards and sometimes confused reality with motion pictures. His fervent anti-communism (that I think he learned later in life from Nancy) led him to name names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and thus deprive some of his colleagues of jobs and reputations. He ran up the national debt shamelessly so his followers can claim he single-handedly defeated Russian communism. His participation in the terrible Iran-Contra scandal has never been made entirely clear. He ignored the problem of Aids until it became much worse. We are now reaping much of what was sown during the Reagan years. Whatever he left as a legacy certainly does not include promoting the general welfare.

LKBIQ:
Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.
Ralph Nader

TILT:
The term borborygmi, for stomach gurgling, is an onomatopoea that started with the Greeks.

Crazy Good - book

I have just finished the book, Crazy Good The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America, by Charles Leerhsen (Simon and Schuster, 2008). This book is to Seabiscuit about what harness racing is to Thorougbred racing. This is not meant in a disparaging sense, merely that there is considerably more interest in the latter form of sport. But it was not always so. What makes this book of more than just passing interest is that it takes one back to a time most of us have never thought much about, the time before the automobile, the time when horses were as important to life as the automobile is now, the time during which the Standardbred Dan Patch was the most famous athlete of his day.

When most people think of horses today they probably think first of Thoroughbred race horses, then perhaps the famous Budweiser Clydesdales, and, especially if they live in the West, perhaps Quarter horses. I doubt that most people today have ever heard of Standardbreds, light harness horses that were the important source of power that drove the wagons and carriages that were the major mode of transportation prior to the automobile. For the fifteen years at the end of the 19th century, and the first fifteen of the 20th century, harness horses and harness racing were as important as NASCAR is today.

Dan Patch, from a most unlikely beginning, rose to become the superstar among harness racers, and during his career earned millions at a time when major league baseball players made only a few thousand a year. For a time, virtually anything that could be sold might well carry the Dan Patch name: washing machine, cigars, sleds, breakfast cereals, dinner plates, rocking horses, watches, knives, and so on and on. Crowds of as many as 100,000 people turned out just to get a sight of him. He had his own railroad car fitted out in such luxury it was once compared to a fancy bordello. He never lost a race, kept breaking records, and his eventual record time for a mile of 1:55 (breaking an arbitrary standard of 2:00 that was believed to be virtually inviolate) created far more excitement and fame than Roger Bannister’s famous breaking of the 4:00 minute mile. This record for two-wheeled sulky racing has been equaled but never broken.

The Standardbred horse was a uniquely American creation, a horse created out of a mix of Thoroughbred stock, common farm horses, and it was also said, “dumb luck.” Some of these horses were natural born trotters and some were pacers, but both were eminently suitable for the purpose of drawing the many varieties of vehicles that existed for transportation at that time (there were more than 30 varieties of “buggies, some much fancier than others). Dan Patch was a natural born pacer who quickly outshone the somewhat more desirable trotters.

Dan Patch was a miracle horse in many ways. His dam, Zelica, had been purchased by mistake by a merchant owner who was considered a laughingstock for having paid an outrageous price for her. When he was born, Dan had a somewhat deformed hind leg that prevented him from standing to nurse. He was almost euthanized before he was helped to nurse and then to stand. His sire, a famous harness racer named Joe Patchen, was so dangerous a stallion he had to be kept in chains toward the end of his life. Dan’s owner was also ridiculed for having bred Zelica to him, as it was felt nothing good could come from such a match. While Dan Patch eventually proved faster than his illustrious sire, he shared none of his other features. Unlike Joe Patchen, Dan Patch, although a stallion, was gentle and exceedingly well-behaved. He seemed to thrive on the attention he received and even small children were safe on his back or petting his nose. And unlike most other horses he traveled well. Almost unheard of for a racing horse he would actually lie down and sleep on the train. Wherever he went records fell and huge crowds would turn out to worship him. He clearly was, as the subtitle of the book claims, the most famous horse in America.

Of course with the rise of the automobile, harness racing virtually disappeared. Standardbred horses were no longer required and the fame of Dan Patch eventually faded. This marvelous animal, after being shamelessly exploited by a greedy businessman owner, and ruined before he should have been, was finally retired and eventually carelessly buried in an unmarked grave. As a stud he sired many offspring, none of which even remotely approached his speed and fame.

There is a Dan Patch Historical Society that attracted some 10,000 people at a meeting in 2008, and there is still a market for Dan Patch memorabilia. This is an interesting book about an interesting time and well worth reading. Most horses now, except for race horses and a few draft animals, are kept merely as (relatively expensive) pets, ridden or used perhaps a few days a year at most. It was not always so.