Skalduggery

In Search of the Lost Chord

…the Big Bang, Schrödinger’s Cat, Bacchus (the god of wine), excellence, or – dare I say it – the Lost Chord! When I was a kid, the reason I liked The Moody Blues was simple; like most other kids they were in search of something (supposedly themselves). In the case of this album, In Search of the Lost Chord, several of the songs are about the search for spiritual fulfillment. Ostensibly the search is for the lost chord, and in the cut The Word, that chord has a name and it’s found at the end of the poem… which introduces the next song – Om. Um, ok, if we accept this Hindu thingy then we’ve found the source of all, um, well language and science and, um, well… everything! KEWL! But really, we know it can’t quite be true because The Moody Blues kept searching… for something, er, um, truth?

Doesn’t matter, I still love that album and am a fan of the band. Let’s face it though, like many modern people – especially in the west – the band was more concerned with the SEARCH for the truth rather than finding and holding her close. Why bother with The Moody Blues? Well… it’s all about citizenship! More to the point I suppose, it is about the certainties I spoke of in my post Bothering with Citizenship. I’ve addressed the notion of facts being real and independent of our persons, but the postmodernists of many different flavors would strongly disagree with me – because they are certain that there is no privileged point of view.

I’m trying to keep this short and manageable, but it will be most difficult. On several occasions I’ve addressed several of the problems with the idea that because I “feel it” it must be true. Something I have only addressed indirectly is the idea that the majority determines truth. Ann Marlowe, in a recent article for The Weekly Standard (TWS) entitled Cool Gone Cold, reviewed a book called The Birth (and Death) of Cool by Ted Gioia. At its most basic, according to Marlowe, the book chronicles the notion of “cool” in terms of jazz greats of the early 20^th Century. Gioia complains that coolness deteriorated and “eventually boiled down to how one was perceived by others. Coolness, even more than beauty, is inevitably in the eye of the beholder” (TWS 20091109). Rather than quote Marlowe at length for her explanation of Nietzsche’s concept of perspectival thinking (which is excellent), I’ll settle for a quick and effective definition from the Dictionary of Philosophy by Alan Lacey:

Perspectivism: The theory that there can be radically different and incommensurable conceptual schemes or perspectives, one of which we must, consciously or unconsciously, adopt, but none of which is more correct than its rivals.

Marlowe believes that “The idea that reality is whatever it is perceived to be, rather than something with independent existence, is likely to be with us as long as our culture survives. This is a good thing, too” (TWS 20091109). Now, before I reveal why she believes this to be a good thing, let me mention a small bit of commentary from another TWS article: All Crisis, All the Time: The American addiction to overreaction by Irwin Savodnik. He first identifies what a legitimate crisis is, and then shows how our “Illegal immigration, farm, credit card, and education crises,” while substantive concerns – are hardly comparable to plague, world wars, etc. Savodnik also reports that American responses to these “substantive concerns” are overreactions that point “to mythical thinking, a way of embodying our emotions and impulses in tales of our fears, vulnerabilities, and guilt in strange, often colorful, stories” (TWS 20091102). Seriously, is the Chrysler crisis going to be resolved with a government designed vehicle?

Why does Marlowe believe that reality is whatever it is perceived to be a good thing? It’s worth an extended quotation here:

The radical subjectivism which gave birth to contemporary art and to counterinsurgency theory has also given us cultural relativism and a loss of confidence in Western values. But the skepticism inherent in perspectival culture will not be the destruction, but the saving, of Western civilization. Poseurs and, especially, their commercialization may be annoying, but they don’t blow up airplanes or commit suicide bombings. It takes a belief in the objective reality of one’s beliefs to produce fanaticism. (TWS 20091109)

Really? Take a short tour through the late sixties and seventies to notice that Marxist and other groups that were incredibly influenced by Nietzsche’s perspectivist perspective maimed, killed, and bombed scores of innocents. In August of 1970 – the Sterling Hall bombing. In 1971, the Black Liberation Army, a socialist group kills three police officers. In October of 1971 the Post Office Tower of London was bombed by the IRA. The IRA, Red Brigade, ETA, FALN were/are all left groups with perspectivist systems of belief. Although many of these groups demonstrate that subjective beliefs produced fanaticism, ultimately, these groups with shared perspectives on reality (defined in terms of their perceptions) are mere “quibbles” in this debate.

If the only real thing Marlowe is certain of is that there are no certainties, then it makes this kind of discussion virtually meaningless. On the other hand, we could pretend to believe what she seems to be implying here – that, like psychology, normalcy is defined by the majority. If reality is whatever it is perceived to be, then the majority view would tend to define reality… which won’t be the perspectivist “view” because they’ve lost confidence in their own Western values.

I hope we haven’t lost confidence in our Western values. I hope we stop overreacting to things that are not crises. I would equate Marlowe’s “radical subjectivism” to what Savodnik calls “mythical thinking.” It is:

…a way of embodying our emotions and impulses in tales of our fears, vulnerabilities, and guilt in strange, often colorful, stories. We dread our powerlessness and concoct magical cures for our weakness. Such thinking is regressive. That myths are the outcome of the flight from reality, that we hop from one myth to the other and supplant reason with emotion, tells us that we have regressed. We’ve chosen ways of thinking found in children, tribal cultures, and dreams.

There is a moral dimension to all this. We are not children anymore. We are not mere mythmakers. We know fairy tales don’t solve the problems that plague us. We have a choice between thinking in Dr. Seuss terms, and in reflective adult ways. When we don’t acknowledge this internal dichotomy, we are acting in bad faith. (TWS 20091102)

I wonder why so many are “going Galt?” Let’s find our certainties.

Cheers to all!

This should have gone up yesterday, but I was terribly busy taking advantage of the Veterans’ Day sales… OK, that was to get a few of the self-righteous’ knickers in a twist 😈 Seriously, thank you so very much to all veterans for their service and sacrifice, and especially to my father, father-in-law, and my two oldest daughters and their husbands for their tours in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq (both daughters and husbands) respectively. Military service is sort of a family business for us… not a popular profession in many circles. To all you vets, to all you mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers of vets, please accept my family’s heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all of you!

I found this video over at Tom’s Responsibility – Freedom Demands It site – take a look at his fly the flag entry… and as for the video, well, I totally stole the idea 😀 and put it up here too! It’s a pleasant five minutes, so enjoy yourselves – and a great big hat tip to Tom!  Cheers all!

Granted that’s a bit over the top, but I love reading this guy! He manages to be deliberately disrespectful by engaging his readers with accusations that fall only a little short of gross exaggerations. In part because of his journalistic background, but largely because he believes his readers share his own disgust with hate accusations so common today, he’s not just credible – he’s fun. The print magazine has an excellent bit of art for O’Rourke’s article – I’ll risk providing that bit of art and the first two paragraphs… Click the picture to access the article – it’s a grand bit of fun!

Whew, I’m pooped. Jimmy Carter has got me run ragged with all the hating I’m supposed to do. Jimmy says I’m a racist because I oppose President Obama’s health care reform program. Even Jimmy Carter can’t be wrong all the time. And since Jimmy Carter has been wrong about every single thing for the past 44 years, maybe–just as a matter of statistical probability–he’s right this time.

I hadn’t noticed I was a racist, but that was no doubt because I was too busy being a homophobe. Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. Since I do not want America to suffer another Sean Penn movie, I will accept that I’m a homophobe, too. And I’m a male chauvinist due to the fact that I think Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke–excuse me, carbon neutral, biodegradable airborne particulate matter–out her pantsuit.

If that doesn’t whet your appetite for a little fun, then you need to read this just to get your smile on. And your indignation. Take a trip to a great political rag… TWS!

Cheers all, happy Tuesday!

I’ve had a bit of an exchange with a few readers and writers concerning the ethics and basic practicality of Obamacare – the Sunday Funnies seemed like something to make everyone smile just a little, and yet, say something worth thinking about. Sometimes political cartoons are just wonderfully fun! So, here are two I found while surfing my favorite wingnut haters at MSNBC… click the pictures for a listing of daily political cartoons:

Cheers all!

“Politics should be the wise exercise, distribution, and maintenance of power.” ~Robert Redford in the movie Legal Eagles

“Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty — their power and privilege — to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by … politicians.” ~P.J. O’Rourke in the book All the Power in the World

I suppose I could multiply quotes concerning the nature of politics, but the first one will do with one caveat, and that is “Politics is the acquisition, exercise, distribution, and maintenance of power.” While it should be wise, that is more wish than fact. P.J. O’Rourke’s definition, on the other hand, serves fine as is 😉 I’ve already written about my take on the nature of Apollonian vs. Dionysian religions as a paradigm for politics and governments. In that discussion I addressed the nature of (Apollonian) cerebral and (Dionysian) visceral man, and why virtue and liberty are so closely interrelated. One of the implications of that discussion is that certainty about one’s place in the world tends to express itself in certainty of action. Witness the certainty of action in the Muslim community worldwide with the Danish cartoon conflagration. America claims to support freedom of expression, diversity, even a diversity of ideas. More to the point, the Danes didn’t simply claim to support these ideas; they were internationally recognized as one of the most tolerant societies while remaining one of the most firm supporters of these civil liberties.

That brings me to the notion of citizenship – seems to be the next step after politics, hey? For the purposes of this discussion I am going to ignore the notions of “corporate” and “global” citizenship for the simple reason that these ideas are conjured up for reasons (to instill a responsibility to “surrender part of their liberty”) similar to that of many politicians when they are “acting in our better interests.” Another obvious reason to ignore these ideas is that there are no rights, privileges and immunities enumerated by consent that are associated with these supposed “corporate” or “global” responsibilities. In other words, citizens tend to be associated with democracies – for other forms of government the term is typically subjects.

So then, a definition of citizens’ rights and responsibilities of citizenship must reside in the correlatives of citizenship’s component parts. One can turn to the Wikipedia, Britannica, or other reference and find at least three common elements of citizenship. First, it implies membership in an enfranchised (the right to vote) democratic political community. Second, the collective rights, privileges, duties, and immunities connected with membership are a celebrated component of citizenship. Finally, participation in civic life that affords a certain equal protection under the law seems to be a clear component of membership. At the very least these elements combine to protect the citizen’s body and property from harm by “enemies both foreign and domestic,” and to offer reasonably consistent conditions for the many ways citizens interact, e.g., travel, commerce, and marriage.

Granted that this is a simple and cursory look at citizenship, I do believe it provides a basis to challenge our thinking on subjects which we are or are not certain. I’ve read a ton of these little essays on politics, citizenship, government, etc., and I have trouble locating sources – but I know I’ve read something like “Revolutionaries are the graffiti artists of history.” Tell me you haven’t noticed some graffiti that hasn’t captured your attention… Europe and America’s revolutions ultimately provided for universal suffrage, and this makes it necessary for our democratic populations to avoid confusion about political ideas and the arrogant notion that somehow modern ideas are necessarily better or superior to those of our predecessors. We must be on guard against the biases of the moment and recognize that the notion of progress assumes our current ideas and certainties are somehow better than those of the past.

This is dangerous. Today we tend toward cultural relativism, an avoidance of responsibilities to our fellow citizens by accepting that one culture is equal to another. We pretend that this somehow makes us superior to the overconfidence of the past. That opinion is somehow on the same level everywhere. This is dangerous; it is a serious self-delusion that hides our own arrogance concerning our own tolerance – that it is somehow superior to the ideas of our past and the prejudices of other traditions.

I hope the primary point isn’t lost in the discussion – we must be cautious with our ideas or risk falling to our own hubris. All cultures are not equal. All opinions are not equal. Some ideas and practices should be recognized for the vile violations of civil liberties they are… Squelching freedom of expression to prevent offense is nonsense. Squelching dissent to prevent a free exchange of ideas, or to assure an untrammeled path to passage of a prized bill is worse. As citizens we should be seeking to protect each other and our civic life from these encroachments.

Citizenship requires us to think reasonably – let’s not fall for a phony populism or a fake egalitarianism. A culture that accepts the mutilation of its women for “cultural reasons” is not equal to a culture that protects its women from mutilation. Period. Making distinctions isn’t inherently racist, bigoted or intolerant.

Find your certainties. Think them through. Act… and I’ll wait for the hate mail.

Cheers all, have a great Thursday.

p.s.     This piece was originally aimed at a discussion of felony disenfranchisement. Guess that will have to wait! I’ll let the current frustration settle, then try again 😀

Take a trip over to Responsibility – there is a killer post up concerning taking things one step at a time, especially when things are overwhelming or complicated… or overwhelmingly complicated. He takes as a point of departure Peggy Noonan’s article over at the WSJ in which she says that Americans are disheartened, and worse that:

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

Look for a little optimism, a plan, or at least the next brick! We need to make sure our locals notice.

Cheers!

I’ve been reading bits, blogs, and books on writing again. Thanks in part to a vacation I picked up my journal again – for more than cursory entries – and gave it a serious working out. Another part I owe some thanks to is Jeff, an online buddy over at My Nasty Romance (MNR). I took a book on vacation with me called The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo. While reading The Triggering Town, I also ran across one of Jeff’s posts concerning the “Journey” known as writing… To turn this into a nice trifecta (though I won’t necessarily give places), The American Spectator (TAS) had an article entitled Look at Me by James Bowman. Though the Am Spec article wasn’t specifically about writers, it included them in the pantheon of creative riffraff who seem not to be concerned with freedom of expression:

Our concerns lie instead with that more recently discovered but, if anything, even more highly valued freedom, the freedom to be attended to by the world at large. You will of course tell me that there is no such freedom in reality, and you will be right. I have said so myself in this space (“The Shock Is Over,” TAS, May 2008) in the course of noticing how Saskia Olde Wolbers, one of the army of mostly unattended-to artists in our heavily overpopulated “creative” world, has referred mournfully to “the meaninglessness of being unobserved.” Since then, our national crisis of inattention has only grown more acute. Now it’s not just those ever-growing numbers of obscure artists, poets, actors, and other such riffraff that the wider world is neglecting, but the once enormously popular news media, with their delightful fables and fantasies of American public life (TAS October 2009).

Bowman’s entire article is definitely worth the read, especially as it relates to the fantasies and self-indulgence of our current crop of “creative types” who seem to conflate the notion of art with publicity. He notes “It’s hard to tell whether this assimilation of art to publicity has percolated down from the high to the popular culture or risen up, like sap, from the popular to the high. But there’s hardly any difference between the two now anyway” (TAS October 2009). That’s a sad finding.

I like to write, especially poetry – guess I’m part of the riffraff. On the other hand, Jeff over at MNR wrote a post that tells a short story of conversion. In his and Joseph Campbell’s words:

I’ve heard it before. Writing is a journey. Work on your craft. Feel the story. Stock your toolbox. Create characters so real they tell the story themselves. Melt your heart down in a small lead bowl and pour it onto the paper like molten soul and then the world will ache at your truthy tellings…

Blah.

It all sounded like hippie crap to me. Writing was an intellectual pursuit. It had plot, characters, and theme. Cross those three streams and, like in Ghostbusters, you could achieve anything. Well, like most things I encounter in my life, I was wrong. Writing is, indeed, a journey in more ways than one.

First, it is a hero’s journey in the classic sense. Joseph Campbell summarized the hero’s journey, or monomyth, thusly: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (MNR 20091024).

Jeff goes on to include the journey of self-realization in his conversion story, but worries that writing might be a tad (maybe even irresponsibly) self-indulgent. Makes me mindful of Robert Heinlein’s only half jesting notion that “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” What immediately captures me in Jeff’s commentary is Campbell’s notion of the hero’s journey. The reason is that it is a repeated theme in both art history and art criticism… if one steps back several decades. There was a difference between personal notoriety and art worthy of notice. Bowman put it like this:

All art needs heroes. In modernist art, the artist was the hero on account of his art. Now he’s a hero if he can just figure out how to get his art noticed. That’s the whole point of conceptual art, which has little or no content qua art (in the old sense of something beautifully wrought) apart from the concept that promises to get it talked about (TAS October 2009).

Finally, the third part of this trifecta is Richard Hugo, though not my favorite poet, he is one of my favorite teachers. Ever. In The Triggering Town, his chapter called “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching” has a few things to say that tie in here:

Roethke used to mumble: “Jesus, you don’t want to say that.” And you didn’t but you hadn’t yet become ruthless enough to create. You still felt some deep moral obligation to “reality” and “truth,” and of course it wasn’t moral obligation at all but fear of yourself and your inner life.

Despite Roethke’s love of verbal play, he could generate little enthusiasm for what passes as experimentation and should more properly be called fucking around. Real experimentation is involved in every good poem because the poet searches for ways to unlock his imagination through trial and error. Quest for a self is fundamental to poetry. What passes for experimentation is often an elaborate method of avoiding one’s feelings at all costs (Hugo, 1979).

I sometimes think it’s a matter of figuring out that reality isn’t necessarily what is real. Jeff put it like this: “…you let the words come out from under your fake self – the self the world knows – and you put it all out on paper as ugly as it was born. It’s slippery with nasty juices, vulgar, and raw as a rug burn. And most of all, it’s real” (MNR 20091024). In Jeff’s worries about irresponsible self-indulgence and Bowman’s charges of art as publicity (getting noticed) there is, I believe, a commonality of interest and intent. Bowman, after sarcastically ripping up Julie & Julia and to a lesser extent the author, he concludes his article:

Hooray for Julie! Who could wish her less successful, less rich, less famous, or played in the movie by anyone less adorable than Amy Adams? But I’d prefer to rent the video of With a Friend Like Harry…, a French film of 2000 by the German-born Dominik Moll, about a poet whose comatose genius is shocked back into life by the discovery that his long-disregarded juvenile oeuvre has found an audience solely on its dubious merits and not on account of his mastery of publicity or compelling personal story. True, it is an audience of one, and that one a criminal madman, but for any real artist that ought to be enough (TAS October 2009).

That isn’t a far jump to Jeff’s closing paragraph concerning self-indulgence: “I would suppose the answer is that it’s self-indulgent, yes. But not irresponsibly so since if even one person feels a kinship by reading the story, I’ve bestowed a boon” (MNR 20091024). Whether the boon is poetry or prose or both, it will have been a shame to fail to shout in the shower those most primitive sounds we make when alone in those reckless moments that trigger our hearts to sing sentences – which maybe only the person in the shower will ever hear. Like Hugo, I hope your “truth conforms to the music” and we meet to hear it.

Cheers.

Fogarty Creek

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to post this here, but I wound up getting a bit of a challenge from an online buddy about my poetry – having to do with claiming to be “The Skald,” an Icelandic warrior poet. This photo essay and poem don’t really use any kennings or skaldic poetic techniques, but it is at least a poem 😉

Aiden the "Cool"

In terms of “creative writing” I’ve not written anything at this new Skalduggery yet, and a combination photo essay/poem seemed just the ticket to get started! I’d like to write something easy, but not so straightforward, something simple, but not uncomplicated – just something that has at least a little meaning. Try not to take this in the traditional “confessional” vein, but rather a blend of fact and fiction that describes a time with my grandson.

It would be easy for a person to say that I am afflicted with a serious anti-authority  complex…. Well, screw them; it’s great to be right. The real problem is how difficult, painful, and downright mystifying I find human relationships. Mostly, I pretty much suck at relationships and have fought with, argued with, or disappointed virtually everyone I know and most everyone who tried to be my friend… and yet, I still have a few friends.

It is not difficult for me to think that I am a failed son, brother, husband and father, a mediocre sailor, poet, writer, and artist, etc. ad nauseam…. Well, screw me; get over it. I take the advice I’ve given my children; “keep on breathing and keep on trying, just keep breathing in and out.” The real difference here is that my children are succeeding – they are the blooms in this desert around me.

Aiden the Agile

I can also imagine myself at the Benedictine Nursing Center, warehoused, waiting to die and desperately trying to wring some meaning from what has passed for my life. I worked at the nursing center for a short time on the Alzheimer’s/Dementia Unit while my grandmother was a resident of the facility. It became unbearably easy to weep for myself, for those I cared about, and those I was caring for – to weep for that THING we all have somehow lost forever and cannot hope to find.

Before one thinks this is some pessimistic exercise in futility, or a wallowing in self-pity, remember what I’ve told my children – “you are still alive, breathe in and out, be that courageous person that continues to breathe.” Even though depression, anguish, or despair may influence everything around you, EVERYTHING else is still out there – all of those small and good things. To me, this sentiment reflects my geography because this is so much like the Pacific Northwest! “OF COURSE it’s cloudy, but OOOHHH, look how the sun filters through the clouds and trees!” So then, I’ll breathe in and out and do my best because I’ll be in the ground soon enough.

Why the long schpeel? Because I don’t make real friends easily, and that history is important for my little poem about my grandson!

Things a Little Boy Can’t Say

Aiden Completes the Log Walk

The ocean splashed and crashed
His little voice away, and I,
Just feet away,
Boomed my voice’s harsh sound that bound
His little body to the spot almost daring him not
To move toward the edge of Fogarty Creek.

His eyes, yearned to yearn –
His thoughts sought to seek an explanation
For wanting to want so desperately
To get his feet wet in that cascade of wild water…

And in he stepped,
Through my warning, and
Straight into my anger –
Soaking his shoes wet with it.

“WHY?!”

His eyes yearned, then teemed with tears,
His thoughts sought and failed to find an explanation
For his body’s unthinkable betrayal of desiring

To desire to sneak
Those sneakers wet.

My anger dissipated on the drive home –
The shoes were none the worse for wear –
And after dinner, while playing with his Legos, he said,

“Grandpa?”

A Gift From Aiden to His Mother

“Yes?”

“Will you play with me?”

This was not forgiveness.
This had nothing to do with a young boy’s utter inability
To say what he most needed
To say
That day.

This was not adult explanation time.
Explaining something to a boy that needed no explanations
About my unjustified anger.

Where?

You see, there ARE things a little boy can’t say –
But not for want of trying.
There are things an old man CAN say, but
Ought to try not to…
So he will hear a simple offer of friendship.

“Grandpa?”

“Yes?”

“Will you play with me?”

“Aiden, there is nothing I’d rather do.”

Though he didn’t understand my watery eyes,
I’m pretty certain he understood my answer to his question,

“Why?”

“Because it is great to be breathing!
What a wonderful thing it is to be
breathing and alive today with you!”

Cheers all!

I can’t wait, I’m leaving soon to visit one of my daughters – I’m going to be a grandfather… again 😉 Had to throw that out there – and now that it is out there, I’ve another short tidbit before work instead of a nice focused post. The American Spectator had an article in their September issue that takes aim at our notions of freedom. The title of the article, What’s Your Metric, works on a variety of levels. First it really does get a person to thinking about his method of gauging his current liberty. Second, I’d bet it reveals that many of our personal measures of freedom are woefully inadequate. Like Tom over at Responsibility, the article likes to ask questions. Tom asks a series of questions to provoke thought, and Daniel Oliver opens his article with questions:

HOW DO YOU WATCH FREEDOM? How do you watch it grow? How do you watch it shrink? What’s the metric? What’s your metric? What do you think the metrics of your fellow citizens are? If you have no idea what their metric is, how do you talk to them about freedom with any sense of urgency?

Just those questions make serious thought a necessity if we are to intelligibly discuss our notions of freedom. Some of the metrics mentioned are interesting and raise questions of their own. Milton Friedman’s metric for example, “was the percentage of GDP spent by government.” Naturally it was inversely proportional 😀 Another measure offered was by either counting or weighing “the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations.” Oliver then offers that “A better measure is the COST of regulations” (emphasis mine). He then gives us a standard definition to work with:

Freedom House defines freedom as “the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination.” Quick: name a field that is outside the control of government?

There’s the rub. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’d encourage you to run over to The American Spectator and read the article – it’s a short and sweet little missive, and well worth the read to get finally to:

Are those imperfect measures? Perhaps. But then, what’s your metric?

Cheers all,

I’m off to work.

Setting up for a personal trip and have very little time to myself – so I figure I’ll link in some interesting bits and pieces! Here’s the first from “Responsibility…”

3.  If Healthcare is the most important issue to the U.S. Economy, (“To say it as plainly as I can, health care reform is the single most important thing we can do for America’s long-term fiscal health. That is a fact.”), why did it only get $18 Billion of the Stimulus Funds?  That is less than 2.5% of the total.  Temporary increases in Food Stamp programs got over $19 Billion.  So, I guess Food Stamps are more important than Healthcare.

Tom’s post raises several questions worth having answers to… Next, from Atlantic Ave., a blog worth visiting often enough to keep up with both great “news” commentary and just how nifty it is to live in New Hampshire. Here’s something a little newsy:

No message is too banal for our talking head of state.

CBS Political Hotsheet: Obama: Sneeze Into Your Sleeve, Not Your Hands

I didn’t read the comments section, but I imagine it quickly devolved into a firefight between the Sleevists and the anti-Sleevists.

libertee23: “How dare the President tell me where to sneeze. I have the right to sneeze wherever I want!”

moveonnow: “You are a domestic terrorist. You obviously want to kill poor people. I bet when Bush told you to sneeze into your sleeve, you couldn’t sneeze fast enough!”

Our president sure is keeping us busy. He likes to talk, even when he’s not saying anything.

and of course, this gem from the same post:

In America, we don’t teach our children to follow the leader. It’s not a top down system.

Those are Thursday’s Tidbits before work… It’s my Monday, so I hope everybody is having a great week!

Cheers all!