Friday Slushpile
From the "Me & Bobby McGee" File: "We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." – Rudy Giuliani, 1994 (or was that 1984?)
Interesting article in The Atlantic, The Rove Presidency, in
which Joshua Green opines why The Great Shift didn't occur as Karl had expected
– a change in national policy and public behavior
like those during Lincoln's, McKinley's, and FDR's administrations. The
main reason was Rove's insufferable hubris, his mistaking tactics for strategy
and strategy for execution, complete contempt for Democratic lawmakers, and the
slow-but-effective results of treating Congressional Republicans as his lackeys.
Interesting
article by Jim Jubak (who guides my meager investment decisions). In
it he outlines the reasons for the current meltdown in the junk bond market, and
how pension fund managers are as much to blame for wishful thinking as Wall
Street for believing in newly created "low-risk" financial instruments.
Good articles in Harper's: One on The Coming Fight for the
Melting North where 20% of the world's undiscovered oil is expected to be
hiding, and Schoolhouse Crock: Fifty Years of Blaming America's Educational
System for Our Stupidity. More on those later. Here's some
nuggets from Harper's Index: China's CO2 production is
expected to exceed the U.S.'s this year, 17 years ahead of schedule; 57 of
121 U.S. biofuel refineries have been cited for polluting; 1 out of 4 commuters
shared a car in 1990, 1 in 5 today; only 10% of the foreign service officers in
the Baghdad office speak fluent Arabic; in 2006, FDA officials met with consumer
and patient groups 5 times, with drug industry representatives 113 times;
51% of registered Republicans favor national health care; there's a 90% chance
that an American fire fighter is either overweight or obese, and on-the-job
heart failure is the biggest killer of firemen; Chattanooga, TN has rented
12 goats to clear public lands of kudzu, and 2 llamas to protect them from dogs.
I bought leather cleaner, wonder wax, and new seat cushions for my old Lexus
(mileage 207,000) after getting an oil change with all the trimmings at Oil Can
Henry's. Junie and I are driving down to Walsenburg to visit with Ally and
John, our buddies. We'll be staying at the somewhat creepy, but
reasonable, Rio Cucharas Motel, where you can get a suite with a king-sized bed
for $75. Their web listing says that their amenities include: air
conditioning, golf (really?), shower (well, I hope so), outdoor tennis
(really?), multilingual (yeah, but do they speak Urdu?), bidet (really???),
Telex (goodness, right out of a 60's spy thriller), and "FEMA Approved" (yikes).
If it's as hot as we expect, we may all stay in the room and play Charades.
I once put Charades in a poem. Eventually, every party game gets into one
of my poems.
See you in a couple of days.