To be or not to be a Republican

It must be hard to be a Republican these days and pretend to any semblance of intelligence. Mr. Romney chose Mr. Ryan to be his running mate and he said that Ryan’s budget largely mirrored his own. But, no, Romney would not endorse it. It was interesting because up to then Romney’s budget has been and continues to be a secret. We only know that he will decrease taxes and therefore revenues, not touch services meaningfully and somehow balance the budget. Mirabile dictum. However, now we do know it is like Ryan’s, but different. That is truly enlightening. In Massachusetts Mr. Brown is running for re-election as a Republican. I tell you this because you’ll find no mention of it in his advertizing. It’s like Romney’s budget. It’s there but where? Actually, if you suffer through Mr. Brown’s TV ads, you would think he is running in the Democratic primary. He runs on his independence even though he all but a minimum amount of the time he aligns himself with the Republican line. Again the same as Romney’s budget the same but different. Actually if you mute the sound on his early ads (always a good idea no matter whose ads.), it is fun to watch the facial expressions of his nearest and dearest. But it better to save your brains cells. I have not watched the latest. I’m waiting for him to find himself. Now we have the most idiotic to date Mr. Akin of the ‘legitimate rape’ fame. In spite of the outrage, he will not drop out of the race claiming a mere slip of the tongue. He may have a point. All the big shot Republicans, including Romney and Brown (who may have been prescient in pretending he was not really a Republican), were rightly quick to condemn him. Yet at the same time the Republican Party was inserting a plank in the party platform condemning abortions no matter what the circumstances, rape, incest or danger to the health of the woman. It is easy to be confused twixt what is said and what is done. Lastly, who are these doctors who Akin claimed told him a woman’s body will ‘shut down’ and prevent pregnancy in case of rape? Can you get a medical degree and license on line? I thought you at least had to wander down to the Caribbean for a few years first.

What was in the punch?

Now that Mitt Romney has all but wrapped up the nomination, he is talking about riding horses. All the while he is trying to project himself as a regular fellow. Did his head get hurt while the Etch-a-Sketch was being shaken? Those of us in Massachusetts though are used to this. When he ran before, he worked a half day or so at manual labor jobs to show us how much of a regular guy he was. Then at the end of the day the working jeans were dropped at the dry cleaners, just like all working folk.

There is also the hyped up (close to ginned up) business of the Democratic operative, Ms. Rose, noting that Mitt’s wife, Ann, didn’t work a day in her life. The woman obviously did not mean that it is not hard work raising children, but, without having to worry also about paying bills, it isn’t quite the same as the regular moms. But, despite never having worked a regular job, Mitt says she is the source of his economic advice. It explains much.

Mitt admits that President Obama didn’t cause the economic mess, but claims he has not done enough to fix the problem. Mitt’s notion is to go back to the previous Republican policies, you know, the ones that caused the problems in the first place. Certainly, he is not once bitten, twice shy.

Lost in all this is the Florida Republican Congressman Alan West, who is reviving the good old Republican days of McCarthyism. He claims that there are 78 to 81 House Democrats who are closet Communists. Why the uncertainty? Did he have trouble with elementary school mathematics, i.e., counting, or are there three who are on the fence? Did his threat of exposure save them? Does this give Mr. West the inside track on the VP nomination?

What is going on in the Republican Party? Did they all attend the same banquet and drink the same potion? Did any of them survive with a few brain cells intact? Or are those the ones that called quits?

Smart or dumb, phonewise

Today for the umpteenth time in the last few months I got accosted about not having a smart phone. I said I could not justify the added monthly cost. She was friendly enough and pointed out all the wonderful things that she could do with her smart phone. She instantly was able to find the temperature in Bangkok. It was hot and humid. I had already suspected as much … granted I did not know previously exactly how hot. But it was of no moment to me and I said so. As should have expected, as a cave dweller, I do not do much international traveling. Annoyed she immediately told me I could get my emails instantly. Now I love email. I think it is a magnificent invention. (Should I thank Al Gore?) It has decimated the interrupting phone calls during which I am asked a question with an immediate expectation of an answer. The answer is usually less thoughtful than I would like and is likely appreciated as that. My choo-choo of thought about what I was doing is also derailed. With email I can wait until I am finished with my immediate chore and respond to the question in what I hope is a thoughtful manner. Isn’t that win win? If I spend my time listening for a chime of a new email on my smart phone, isn’t the advantage of email subverted? You can send data instantly she countered. What data? I’m not a doctor, law officer, spy, etc. What data do I need to send immediately? You can always find your way with a GPS app. I usually look things up on Google before I go. How often will I use it to justify the increased monthly cost? You can download books. I can use a library card for nothing. It does not have to be charged nor is there a charge.

I cannot decide whether I am just being contrary or I really am missing something, besides being charged up to $50/month, more or less.

Ill fares the land ...

As I was reading the newspaper the other day, I came across a quote from Oliver Goldsmith, “Ill fares the land … where wealth accumulates and men decay.” I immediately thought of the current weed crop of Republican candidates. Mr. Goldsmith was an 18th century writer whose combination of thoughtful work, hack writing and dissolute life style earned him the title of “inspired idiot’ from a fellow intellectual. Again I thought of the GOP group. One pretends that he led a job creation venture capital group when the company was in fact primarily a leveraged buyout company that likely laid off far more than its few venture capital investments created. But he worried about pink slips with only a few million to rely on. You, know just little the average worker. He just doesn’t pay taxes like the average worker. Another cries out against the Washington culture, even though he was earning a very high income catering to that culture. Another believes his faith should dictate government policy for all, a true chauvinist. The last in the standings seems to belong to another insular century. (That being said, like him, I also wonder in this age why do we station so many troops overseas? I thought WWII and the cold war were over. Is the USSR making a comeback?) Watching and listening to all of them, it is easy to see that the rot and idiocy have set in deeply without a hint of inspiration. Thank God for the mute button.

Oh Tannenbaum

Here in the Northeast there is a tempest in a teapot, or perhaps a eggnog cup, about the Rhode Island governor referring to a festive tree in the Capitol as a ‘Holiday’ tree rather that a ‘Christmas’ tree. The local Catholic Church, as well as the Republican Party, which generally seems to coalesce best around the negative and inane, are up in arms about the Governor trying to be inclusive. Shame on him, how dare he think of other people, particularly at such a time of good will towards all?

Can’t you just imagine the newly born Christ smelling the sweet fragrance of conifer trees so soon after his birth? Yea, it’s hard. We don’t usually associate fir trees with that area of the Middle East, probably because there weren’t any. But there were many early religions in Europe in particular that perceived the fir tree as home to pagan gods. Certainly the Church was being inclusive then by co-opting their traditions.

Perhaps the Governor should have referred to it as the Druid tree or possibly even more guileful as a Yule tree.

Shame on me, but, no matter your tree, Happy Holidays!

Nobel Prize for Economics?

I saw that Nobel prizes were awarded for economics. Why? Does anybody really think these guys are doing science — particularly after the last number of years? As any student who has taken a statistics course should be able to tell you, just because you can draw a graph relating two or more things, it does not mean that they are related, let alone a theory. Economists are all over the place on what caused the problems and how to solve them. If you are a conservative politician, there is an economist for you. If you are a liberal economist, there is an economist for you. We are spending much. We are not spending enough. There is too much regulation. There is not enough regulation. This is science? Please, this is politics.

There are many demonstrations around the nation, Occupy your favorite city. They chant about the 1% who control the vast majority of the nation’s wealth and the rest of us 99% - ers. The newscasts keep asking about what they are demonstrating about? Apparently they are not listening. I guess reading news that someone else wrote puts you in the 1%.

We need new aliens

I was recently among the last to see “Cowboys & Aliens.” I t was not the movie I had hoped for nor the bad one that maybe I hoped for as well. It was a good, not great, but entertaining movie. My only problem was the aliens. Isn’t time we rethink the movie image of the extraterrestrial? How do they cross the vastness of space when all they can voice is some sort of high pitched whine? Why must they be mutated insects? And the slobber; what must the deck of the spaceship be like with all these aliens drooling continuously? At what point will it be impossible for them to move about with the thickening mucous on the floor? Do they need to spend an enormous amount of resources on cleaning supplies? And that is just under the influence of gravity. What happens in the zero gravity of space? All that slime is floating around the spaceship. Does it gum up the instrument? How do they keep the space in the spaceship from filling up? Does it ruin visibility? Is the reason they’re invading earth sponges?