The mainstream media would like you to believe that Sarah Palin’s daughter’s love-child is somehow important. They most certainly do not want you to realize that the Republican convention is beset by protesters and that the Minneapolis PD has been resorting to Gestapo like tactics to stifle the free expression of ideas. The mission of the media is to maintain the illusion that everything is fine out there in the heartland and that America isn’t beset by mounting internal tensions that threaten to overcome the social order. "Nothing Unusual Is Going On, protesters are demonstrating peacefully, no one is getting clubbed or gassed, there is no disturbance, continue shopping. That is all." Here is a video of an unarmed woman being tear-gassed by the police while trying to hand them a flower. Journalists are also being rounded up and arrested including Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and Democracy Now! TV and radio show host Amy Goodman. Rourke was since released. Police had been holding him on a (obviously false) gross misdemeanor riot charge.An AP spokesman said of the arrest: "covering news is constitutionally protected, and photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news." Well, we all know about how strong those Constitutional Protections are after eight years of proto-fascist rule. The media would be better off reporting on the real news than invoking the protections of a Constitution which they stood by and allowed to be eviscerated.
What was barely reported over the week-end was the fact that the federal government was the architect behind the heavy-handed policing at the convention as well as taking the lead in a number of illegal raids on protest groups in the days leading up to it. Minnesota Public Radio reported that "the searches (of the protester headquarters) were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The raids were executed after the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task force actively infiltrated dangerous groups of vegans who were supposedly plotting the overthrow of the government over their bowls of seitan stew. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the raids to me was not that they happened-after FISA and the Patriot Act there are no checks on the government’s ability to investigate and detain anyone they declare a “terrorist”-the real problem is that the rest of America doesn’t seem to give a shit. American’s talk a good game about freedom of speech, but when it comes to actually practicing tolerance and allowing dissenting viewpoints, we possess distinctly totalitarian inclinations. It defies explanation. Either we’re a nation of closet Nazis, or the government has us so cowed in fear that we have been paralyzed into a sort of dull witted complacency. As Glen Greenwald noted in Salon on Sunday, “After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest -- especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an unauthorized street march -- gets what they deserve.”
Well, maybe Obama will have an easier time of it in November after all. “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesperson. Appointing a soccer mom to the number 2 spot sort of undercuts McSame’s claim that the most significant challenge facing America is the risk of international terrorism. Alaska has what, 670,053 people living in it? That's less people than live in Brooklyn. McCain took his strongest argument against Barak Obama's candidacy and just neutralized it by appointing someone with less experience in government than a New York City councilman.
So who is this woman? All the Patriot can say for sure is that she's anti-choice, an oil company handmaiden, and a creationist whack-job. Plus, this so-called "maverick" is under investigation for trying to have a state official fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. (The brother-in-law was in the middle of a custody dispute with Palin's sister.) When the Public Safety Commissioner refused, Palin fired him too. Abuse of power and executive entitlement? Hmm, where else have I seen that in the last 8 years?
Governer Palin would probably be on my short list of people I’d want to go moose hunting with, but her lack of foreign policy credentials render her unqualified to take the position of Vice President. If Gramps McCain thinks this maverick choice will be a plus for the ticket I think he has made a serious miscalculation. Denali is not just a mountain in Alaska. (The picture is Governer Palin's head shot from when she was the winner of the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant winner in 1984. She was also a one time Miss Alaska beauty pageant runner-up, journalism major, brief sports beat writer, and former city council member turned mayor of a the megaopolis that is Wasilla Alaska. If that resume doesn't scream "Vice Presidential Material, " I don't know what does).
Ok, it’s over. The Democrats have had their historic convention, stage managed and scripted in a way that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. Another middle of the road Republican-lite candidate has been nominated by the party hacks and set loose in the ether. For anyone who is anticipating any sort of actual change in the way America comports itself, I submit the following for your review:
1. Influence peddling. There were more lobbyists in Denver throwing parties for Democratic lawmakers than are scheduled to be in Minnesota for the Republicans next week. I’d hazard a guess that these firms are not dispensing peeky-toed crab on toast points and Grey Goose martinis because of some new-found respect for the Democratic Party platform. The corporations sponsoring these lavish events have legislation pending before Congress and they know the Democrats stand to make substantial gains in November. Politics as usual.
2. An amazing failure to discuss of issues that are actually important. Glen Greenwald had a great column on this yesterday in Salon. He noted that while healthcare and the price of a gallon of gas are important issues, they are strange thing to focus on when compared against “the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.” The fact that Obama and the rest of the Party stalwarts hardly mentioned any of these insane perversions of the Constitution makes me question whether they have enough moral indignation to deserve the opportunity to govern.
3. Obama’s people edited Kucinich’s speech. Remember Dennis Kucinich? He actually spoke at the convention, although his speech was conspicuously absent from news reports. Obama's team edited out a line in the Kucinich speech which went "they want four more years, what they deserve is ten to twenty". Meaning that Obama has no plans to investigate or prosecute anyone in the Bush regime. As one letter-writer on Salon put it, “That would be divisive and we all know Obama is the MUPpet (Magical Unity Pony).”
I could go on and on, and I hate to rain on the parade of good feelings produced at the Mile-High Milquetoast Meeting, but take a look at what is being said between the lines. My guess is Obama won’t change a hell of a lot of anything too important. But aren't his kids cute? Isn't his wife glamorous? Aren't they tall and slim and sophisticated? It's Camelot all over again!
The Patriot is blogging live from the Democratic convention, i.e. watching the public broadcasting coverage. I doubt I will have the stomach to watch the Republicans for more an a few minutes next week, unless McCains ex wife shows up to start some trouble.
Bill Clinton just made the greatest speech that I have heard him make since he left the White House. I am not a Clinton fan, far from it, but even I admit that his capacity for stirring oratory is unsurpassed by anyone with the exception of Barak Obama. In contrast, John Kerry has taken the stage and is making me very sleepy. I’m still not sure how he ended up as the party nominee in ’04. Nonetheless, it appears that the Dems have taken the gloves off. Kerry is fighting harder against the Republicans now than he did in the 2004 election. He did make some strange reference to Swift-boating, although he made it sound as if it happened to someone else. If I were him I would have said something along the lines of, “and those Republican rat-bastards had the nerve to question my military service while Dick Cheney and Karl Rove did everything they could to dodge the draft”. He didn’t say it in 2004 so I guess he isn’t going to say it now.
The Democrat’s Dog and Pony Review pulled into Denver on Sunday with their weeping and overtly emotional vignettes polished just so for prime time television. As someone who hasn’t completely lost his faith in America, I was heartened by the tribute to Ted Kennedy and thought Michelle Obama did a credible job of Stepfordizing herself for middle America, but there was something missing…Oh yes, it was any mention of the fact that if you vote for John McCain you are a fucking moron. I am hoping that Joe Biden will take off the gloves and start swinging, but his voting record, yes to the war, yes to the bankruptcy bill, gives me little hope that he has the stones to take on anything more substantial than a dry martini.
Salon led today with a story on the PUMAS (Party Unity My Ass), who have been making a racket which is wholly disproportionate to their size. Despite the fact that this group of ostensibly maligned Hilary supporters is largely comprised of Republican operatives and slightly deranged illiterates, CNN and MSNBC have been devoting large blocks of air time to covering their protests. Never mind the fact that there were anti-war demonstrations with 100 times the numbers marching two blocks away, the main stream media has decided that the story of the convention is to be of a splintered Democratic party unable to unite behind its candidate. From my informal survey of the cable outlets the Clintons have gotten more press than the nominee in the last few days and the talking heads are playing up the posturing between the Hilary and Obama teams as if discussing the negotiation of the treaty of Versailles. Lost in all of this superficiality is any discussion of the poor, the disappearing middle-class, the economic meltdown, the housing crisis, the energy crisis, the failure of financial institutions and the war in Iraq. But really, do the Democrats really want to talk about that stuff? After all it was the Democrats who continued to fund the war after seizing Congress in 2006, the Democrats who caved in on FISA (with Obama’s support), the Democrats who failed to repeal the Patriot Act, the Democrats who put the bankruptcy bill over the top a few years back and the Democrats who have failed to take an aggressive stance against the predatory lenders and banks. In my opinion their credibility on these issues is somewhat lacking.
Nevertheless, Obama talks a good game, and that may be enough to get him in a position to thwart the electoral fraud that is sure to return for an encore in the swing states. He has to widen the gap in the polls by at least 7 points or the Republicans will simply rig the ballot boxes like they did in 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio. In order for him to do that he has to start swinging the axe and chop the McCain campaign down to size. I'm not holding my breath.
Tonight we get to hear from the spurned prom queen with the big ego. I can’t wait to see who she is going to support in this election.
So, while Russian tanks are rumbling through Georgia, Obambi (thanks Cormac!) takes a page from the John Kerry playbook and allows himself to be photographed engaging in water sports. In Hawaii. Who exactly is running that campaign, the ghost of Lee Atwater?
Meanwhile, back in the United States, McCain has been running around polishing his foreign policy credentials to a high gloss while issuing grave pronouncements about Russian aggression that are sure to resonate with the hillbillies in the flyover states.
I think Obama is starting to believe his own press and is starting to fancy himself the second coming of Christ. (Or Neo from the Matrix, or something like that). What Obama fails to remember, is that despite the adoring crowds and hotties singing for him on youtube, he is coming into this election with three strikes against him: 1. he’s a Democrat; 2. he’s black; and 3. he’s intelligent. McCain is taking full advantage of his supporters innate racism and ignorance by portraying Obama as an effete, vainglorious elitist. Obama's response to these attacks? ? Takes a vacation in Hawaii in the middle of a European military conflict and spend his days bodysurfing at Waikiki. The Democratic Party’s circular firing squad tactics are in full effect this season, aren’t they?
Obama is being assisted down the path of self-destruction by the mass media. I uncovered this little gem on CNN.com today: “the images that are shaping Americans' lasting perceptions (of the Russia/Georgia dispute) are of a president playing in the sand with the women's beach volleyball team and the presumptive Democratic nominee alternately walking along Kailua Beach and playing golf in Hawaii.” Nice job, CNN, managing to link Obama with Bush, even placing them both on a beach engaging in frivolous activity! If only they could come up with a few photos of Obama patting the fanny of some tall girl from Santa Monica they could run it in a split screen in The Situation Room.
It appears that the main stream media has already decided the winner of the election. Witness the follow-up commentary from a paragraph or two later: “In contrast to both Bush and Obama, McCain conveyed strength and determination. While Obama timidly urged Georgia and Russia to "show restraint and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war," McCain took to the airwaves to deliver a blunt warning to Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.” See, McCain is the real man. Obama is just a pussy. The problem is that Obama isn’t doing anything to make the case that this isn’t an accurate analysis. Ultimately, I have to agree with the CNN piece to the extent that perception matters: “If he fails to cut this holiday short, he might soon wind up being remembered as the guy who blew his chance to be president because he played on the beach while the Russian tanks rolled through Georgia.” Yup.
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." - Sir Winston Churchill
Maureen Dowd in her op-ed in today's Times made an interesting observation. Dowd's column was mostly about the potential for Hilary to make a stink at the convention, but she also had this to say about the state of the Democratic Party:
"The Clintons know that a lot of Democrats are muttering that their solipsistic behavior is “disgusting.” But they’re too filled with delicious schadenfreude at the wave of buyer’s remorse that has swept the Democratic Party; many Democrats are questioning whether Obama is fighting back hard enough against McCain, and many are wondering, given his inability to open up a lead in a country fed up with Republicans, if race will be an insurmountable factor.”
This appears to be the real story, if you ask me. Obama is languishing in the polls and his tepid response to McCain’s nasty ad campaign is giving the Patriot that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he remembers from election season 2004. In fact, if I squint hard enough when watching Obama on TV, I notice a heretofore unrecognized resemblance to John Kerry.
Obama may be a great orator and a charismatic man, but he is a center-right Democrat who has come out recently in favor of the death penalty and the so-called “compromise” on warrantless surveillance. He is running a fairly traditional campaign from the ideological center and in this respect he is no different from Kerry and Pelosi, and Reid and the rest of the feckless Democrats who sold out the Constitution for a few more years of personal power. Those remnants of the Democratic Party who were still able to conjure up some sense of hope that all is not lost (and for a while I counted myself among them) are starting to realize that they were duped into supporting a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Obama doesn’t represent change so much as the illusion of change. This has secured for him the backing of a percentage of the corporate elite that he needs to make a good run; they know he’ll play ball once he’s elected. The problem is he ahs to get elected. By allowing his followers to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain so early in the election cycle, i.e. before the convention, he runs the very real risk of reenergizing the nutty Clinton supporters, making a huge mess at the convention, and ensuring another 4 years of right wing hegemony. This is a mistake that only a neophyte politician would make. It took Bill Clinton well over his first 100 days in office to exhibit the Republican-lite attributes that alienated the left wing of the party for a generation. It has taken Obama about three months.
Despite my revulsion at Obama’s stance on the death penalty and most constitutional issues, I may be forced to vote for him anyway. The Supreme Court must not be allowed to suffer any more Republican appointments in the next four years lest we run the risk of descending into complete, overt, totalitarian rule. Can we stand to allow McCain’s finger on the button with a conservative Court rubber-stamping every unilateral expansion of executive power? Not with a resurgent militaristic Russia in Europe. Not with the middle-east still in a state of near chaos, and certainly not with a weak Democratic Congress who has clearly indicated that they will not confront the President on issues of “national security”, or anything else.
I’m back. I really would rather not be, but every time I read the paper or watch the vapid “reporters” on CNN hold forth on important topics like the “staycation” and the second Phil Specter trial, I start frothing at the mouth and my left eye starts twitching. I think holding in all of my anger at the fascist oligarchs running this country is going to start causing me health issues. So, it’s back to ranting and raving on the internet for me.
A random survey of the morning papers produced one item of immediate interest. In a spectacular victory for the 911 terrorists, the City of New York is now completing its transition to a police state with its plan to scan and archive the license plates of every car that crosses into Manhattan through the tunnels and over the bridges. The invasive program is desperately needed in order to “strengthen the city’s guard against a potential terror attack,” according to the NYPD’s chief spokesman. (I suppose it should pass without mention-but I’m going to mention it anyway- that such a plan, had it been in effect on 9/11, would have done nothing to deter the hijackers who flew the planes into the Towers. After all, they didn’t fly the freaking planes through the Holland Tunnel, did they?)
The plan to take snapshots of the subversive bumper stickers on your minivan is part of a much larger operation with the Orwellian name “Operation Sentinel”. The backbone of this plan is the integration of various frighteningly intrusive new technologies with the goal of encasing Manhattan in a web of surveillance. In addition to photographing and scanning the license plates of cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels, and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity, data on each vehicle “including its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature — would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored.” (NY Times). Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, flush with Homeland Security dollars that would arguably be better spent on classrooms and improved transportation infrastructure, “has been urging the creation of a London-style surveillance system for the financial district that relies on license plate readers, movable roadblocks and 3,000 (!) public and private security cameras below Canal Street, all linked to a coordination center called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. The goal, according to Kelly, is to save the financial center from a possible disruptive terrorist attack. From what I’ve seen of the economy lately, I’m more inclined to think that the people need to be protected from the financial center rather than the other way around.
Operation Sentinel is also part of the NYPD’s 39 page vision for security at the 9/11 site. Call me crazy, but I kind of remember that right after 9/11, before the country went completely mad, the thinking of designers and politicians alike was that the public space that would rise on the ashes of the WorldTradeCenter site should reflect the angels of our better nature; wide pedestrian spaces, a vibrant streetscape, etc. I am forced to admit that the current plan, with a dozen guard-booths to control pedestrian traffic and placing the entire area of the former WTC within a security zone in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through barriers staffed by police officers, to be much more reflective of the small-minded, paranoid, mean-spirited, war-mongering fascists we have become in the last seven years.
Well my friends, the Patriot has had a good run over the course of the past two years but I think it’s time to pull the plug. From the day I started hacking away at this blog in 2006 to the present day my life has changed in ways that would have seemed inconceivable to me then. The country has also gone through a lot of changes, very few of them positive ones, and whether we survive with our principles intact is a very open question in my mind.
I have decided to continue to blog, although postings on politics and political ideology will take a back seat to comments on the far more frustrating (yet rewarding) job of parenting little Jack Becket. I invite you all to stop by the new blog, “Who’s Your Daddy” www.whosyourdaddie.blogspot.com and have a look around. The blog will primarily be concerned with, “Meditations and musings on being a single dad in New York. “ What this means exactly isn’t quite clear to me yet. Stay tuned. And thank you, dear readers, for your support over the last two years. It has been a real treat foaming at the mouth with all of you.
Now I don't care that Spitzerwas sleeping with hookers, although to do so on Valentine's Day seems the height of bad taste when you are married and have three daughters waiting at home with heart-shaped cards and all that. What I do care about is how cavalierly he was shuffling money around and how his outsized ego seemed to warp his capacity for critical thinking. Did he really think that noone was watching? The man made a lot of enemies and all of them were lined up waiting for him to fuck up in some way. The hubris! I never really liked him personally; he was a bully and abused his office as attorney general, even though the net result of his prosecutions was generally positive for the people of New York. But he is also a lawyer, and the State Bar takes a dim view of lawyers who commit felonies. In fact, upon conviction they are instantly disbarred. Spitzer is familiar with what charges one can bring down on the heads of high priced call girl agencies through his moralistic crusade against them while he was attorney general, so he must have been aware that he was in violation of the Mann Act when he was arranging for Kristin to hop on the 5:39 Amtrak to DC. (The same train, incidentally, that I used to take home when I was commuting from to Philadelphia a few years ago). He also must have known that "stacking" your financial transactions to avoid raising the attention of the IRS is also a felony. This incredible lapse of judgment makes me question whether he is suffering from some sort of mental illness. The Republicans will have some fun with this one, but they probably shouldn't get out the knives until they find out who clients 1 through 8 were. What a flameout. See ya Spitzer.
I haven’t posted in a while. Mostly this is because I have not had any time, but it’s also partly because I have come to realize that living life is more interesting than writing about it. So what’s new? Things have been slow at work and I’ve taken a step back from distance running. I’m back to 5 miles per day for 6 days per week. I found that when I was running 10 on Sunday and continuing my weekly mileage I was pretty sore and I was also shoving a fair amount of high calorie food into my face because I was constantly hungry. As a result, despite getting my mileage up around 40 a week, I was incrementally gaining weight. This was not the result I hoped for so I’m circling in a running holding pattern until I can figure out when to up the mileage to better prepare for the Long Island ½ Marathon in May. The runner’s term for what I’m doing is accumulating “junk miles,” but I never liked the term. Holding pattern is more descriptive.
So, what has the government been up to lately? Let’s see, the Democratic controlled Congress is circulating a draft of its FISA bill which essentially gives Bush everything he asked for. The current draft does not contain telecom immunity (solely for temporary strategic reasons), but incorporates every substantive warrantless surveillance provision of the Rockefeller/Cheney bill passed by the Senate. The bill was drafted by Pelosi and Reyes, may they rot in hell, and is expected to be signed by the President without any complaints. Your opposition party at work in the Brave New World folks.
What else? Well, the Washington Post is reporting that the DOJ has created a domestic intelligence system set up through computer networks which will gather together broad new categories of behavior of Americans, from the suspicious to the innocuous. Federal authorities hope that The National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. DEx will become a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. But wait, doesn’t this violate our constitutional privacy rights? The answer is it depends on what your definition of “privacy” is:
"As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy. Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information. . . . "
You can trust us, we’re from the government! Remind me again why I should care who wins this election.
Probably the funniest blog in the history of the internet. A sample from #60, "The Toyota Prius".
"Over the years, white people have gone through a number of official cars. In the 1980s it was the Saab and the Volvo. By the 1990s it was the Volkswagen Jetta or a Subaru 4WD stastion wagon. But these days, there is only one car for white people. One car that defines all that they love: the Toyota Prius.
The Prius might be the most perfect white product ever. It’s expensive, gives the idea that you are helping the environment, and requires no commitment/changes other than money.
The Toyota Prius gets 45 miles per gallon. That’s right, you can drive 45 miles and burn only one gallon of gasoline. So somehow, through marketing or perception, the Prius lets people think that driving their car is GOOD for the environment.
It’s a pretty sweet deal for white people. You can buy a car, continue to drive to work and Barak Obama rallies and feel like you are helping the environment!"
So William Buckley kicked the bucket today. Was he a smart man? Indubitably. Was he a charismatic man? Verily. I even agree with many of his libertarian views. A good leftist need look no further than the National Review for a principled stance on the drug war and on the dangers of giving the government too much power to search and seize. From a speech Buckley gave to the New York State Bar association against the “war on drugs” in late 1995:
“I came to the conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable part of our patrimony… I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.”
I might also mention that he was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq war. However, I do not agree with Buckley on a great deal. The idea, for example, that people with HIV should be tattooed on their forearms as a warning to those who would share needles with them is the sort of thing that makes one’s stomach turn. (He recommended a similar tattoo on the rear ends of people with AIDS to, as he put it, “prevent the victimization of homosexuals.”) Nevertheless, compared to the current crop of Neo-Cons who lay claim to his legacy without possessing his intellectual acumen, he was a giant and a worthy adversary.
Perhaps the best tribute I have read thus far is from leftist author and blogger Rick Perlstein who used Buckley as a source for his book on Barry Goldwater. One excerpt:
“He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire…”
See ya Bill. Your type of conservative is hard to come by these days.
Nader is in the race. This causes me a host of philosophical and practical problems. I’m not quite ready to jump ship yet, but I have been carefully considering Obama’s stance on a variety of issues and find them wanting. Granted, he is probably the most progressive candidate one can expect, but this isn’t such a great allocade when one considers the sorry state of progressive politics in America. On the issues, Ralph and I have no disagreement. Ralph Nader takes these stands: Adopt single payer national health insurance. Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget. No to nuclear power, solar energy first. Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare. Open up the Presidential debates to legitimate third party candidates. Adopt a carbon pollution tax. Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East. Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law. Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax. Put an end to ballot access obstructionism. Work to end corporate personhood. Obama supports, well, none of those things.
What does it mean to be a progressive? What does it mean to be a leftist? These are not simply meaningless philosophical questions. Obama is probably the best we can expect from the Democrats. He’s no JFK, but even Nader himself called Obama "a person of substance" and "the first liberal evangelist in a long time". Unfortunately, when you look at his positions, he stands for, at best, incremental change. I feel like that isn’t enough. It only took the Republicans seven years to destroy the economy, eviscerate the constitution and trash America’s reputation in the world. They certainly weren’t holding back on their agenda for the sake of political expediency. I don’t know. Maybe I am so disenchanted with the inherent corruption of the political system that I cannot get beyond the fact that these great media driven personality contests that are trotted out for public consumption every four years have very little to do with things that concern average Americans. Presidential elections aren’t about issues; they are about money and personality. Issues tend to bore the media. Plus, well, we know who controls the media. Corporations are perfectly happy to allow us to wallow in ignorance as long as we are spending money to buy their products. Some days I feel like a human ATM. But I have questions. I want to know why are we the only western democracy without government sponsored universal healthcare? Why is no one running for president talking about that? How come the war in Iraq isn’t being debated? Why isn’t Obama demanding the repeal of the Patriot Act and coming out strongly against warrantless wiretapping?
Saturday in the park. We finally got a decent snowstorm, although it still doesn't seem as substantial as the ones I remember when I was a lad. Nevertheless there was a good sledding hill...
A week-end in the mountains is a wonderful prescription for a long list of society induced stress related ailments. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the Patriot was even able to get in a day of skiing at Plattekill, a small family ski resort in the Catskills. The trails certainly didn’t rival anything in Colorado, or even Vermont, but the Mountain had one virtue which made the skiing the equivalent of what you would find at a much better situated resort-daycare. What an enlightened concept. I have always had an affinity for the Catskills. I have camped and hiked all over the park at one point or another since I was in high school and I like the fact that the place (with a few exceptions like Woodstock) hasn’t been overrun by yuppies. Unfortunately there is a large development project slated for Bellayre which will probably forever change the air of gentle sleepiness that hangs over the smaller towns.
I was watching CNN the other day and they were playing video taken by an undercover animal rights activist of workers in a slaughterhouse kicking and tasering cows that were too sick to walk on their own into the killing chute. It was a pretty gruesome sight. Workers also sprayed water with high intensity hoses up the cattle’s up noses, and rolled them with forklifts in attempt to get them to stand . The abuse was probably motivated more by economics than any sadistic impulse on the part of the workers. Federal rule prohibits the slaughter of non-ambulatory disabled ("down") cattle for human consumption. If the cow can be tortured into walking into the slaughterhouse under its own power then it isn’t a down animal and can be made into McDonald’s ¼ pounders. If it has to be dragged to the killing floor then it’s basically worthless and has to be sold as dog food.
I am not an animal rights activist and although I was a vegetarian for 10 years, over the last several years incorporated small amounts of meat, including beef, into my diet. My personal belief, supported by science, is that man is an omnivore. However, I also believe that eating low on the food chain is a wise choice for a variety of ecological and health reasons. When I do eat meat I try to obtain it from reputable sources like local farmers and try to ensure that the animals were raised humanely. Unfortunately this is not always possible, so I suppose I have to accept responsibility for helping create the demand for factory farmed meat. It should not be surprising to anyone that scenes such as those played out in the video result from treating animals as commodities.
I confess that watching the mistreatment of sentient beings like those cows has gotten me to reconsider how much suffering I want served up with my potato and side salad. The first precept mandates that Buddhists refrain from taking life. The fact that American’s are several steps removed from the actual killing seems a flimsy rationale for ignoring the reality that a demand for meat causes the death of sentient beings. Not to mention the fact that the process that eventually results in meat under cellophane at the grocery contributes greatly to the immense suffering of human beings due to the unsustainable demand on the earth’s resources and the contribution of factory farming to the pollution of the world’s drinking water. Perhaps a first step to turning around America’s unsustainable lifestyle should be a decrease in meat consumption. How to sell it to the public is quite another question.
Why are Americans so stupid? Perhaps more importantly, why are they so proud of their ignorance? Author Susan Jacoby probes the issue in her new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” Jacoby is hardly the first social commentator to address the subject; a number of books have been written lately which lament American’s growing hostility to rational thought, but Jacoby has cast her gaze over the land and sees a perfect storm of ignorance that has been brewing for quiet some time.
According to her observations, at this point in our history anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. The blame can be laid at the feet of our failing public educational system as well as religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science. She cites a disturbing statistic that nearly two thirds of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution. Two thirds!
My friend Joe Bageant has been living in exile down in Belize for a little while. His most recent essay is a thoughtful (and very, very funny) indictment of American consumer culture and its lack of sustainability. Unfortunately, Americans are not known for their selfless nor are they prone to naval gazing, which explains why the Dalai Lama quipped a few years ago that Americans had “perfected Samsara”. All of our electronic diversions and digital entertainment have left us bloated and lethargic, in a state of complete delusion and almost willful ignorance about the dangers posed by a rapidly increasing world population and dwindling resources. Here’s Joe:
“Mainly though, aware Americans are watching and waiting for someone else to make an important move. Guts are nonexistent in Americans these days, programmed out of us during the posh captivity of the "cheap oil fiesta" that drove our grotesque and brief civilization. Still, if ever there were a time to show some guts, it's now. Not by protesting -- which has become a security state supervised liberal pussy sport -- but by giving up the material life, the consumer life. Damned near all of it. Including all those leftie and alternative books from Amazon -- sitting on our asses reading and drinking green tea just because we can afford to is just another type of inaction and consumerism. It's the only real act of protest possible by the prisoners of our consumption driven monolith. True, you'll be just one iPodless and carless little guy throwing a single stone at the United States of Jabba the Hutt. But assuming you're still capable of any kind of life after the stellazine mind conditioning we've all been administered for past 40 years, I've got folding cash that says you will own your life in a way that seemed previously impossible. Hanging onto or chasing the bling is over with anyway, as dead as the economy. The Olive Garden and Circuit City are still open, true, but only because the hair and nails still grow on Jabba's corpse. Would somebody please quit pretending he's alive and yank the feeding tube?”
Yanking the feeding tube. A great visual that conjures up images of Neo in the Matrix after he swallowed the red pill.. We are all like little Neos, safely wrapped in our cocoons being pumped full of food while our warmth and humanity is being harvested to feed our machine overlords. Except in our reality our overlords aren’t machines (unless you consider the system of international capitalism to be a machine), our overlords are our own greed and complacency. Unless enough of us wake up and swallow the red pill, our planet is fucked and all of us along with it.
“A monk asked Master Dongshan, “Cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?” Dongshan answered, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?” The monk continued, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?” Dongshan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”
It is freaking freezing in New York today; 10 degrees this morning when I went out to the car. Today is one of those few days of the year when wearing a large puffy down jacket is acceptable, fashion be damned. The wind came roaring up the coast like an angry dragon last night, bringing the sub-zero temperatures from somewhere west of the Jersey state line. Jack and I were awakened a few times during the night by gusts that shook the house down to the foundation. I am generally ambivalent about the weather. Winter is cold, summer is hot. To accept this idea and then to complain about this state of affairs seems kind of crazy. But, come on, 10 degrees?
I ran 9 miles yesterday in much better weather. I was supposed to head up to the Bronx to run the Bronx ½ marathon, but this would have required getting up at an ungodly hour and making all manner of complicated arrangements so I decided to just continue my tour of industrial Staten Island that I started on last week’s run. I was running with an i-pod and listening to a dharma talk given by John Daido Loori Roshi, the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper New York. Zen Mountain Monastery back in the early 1990s and always felt attracted to Loori’s teaching style. The inscription at the door of Zen Mountain Monastery reads: Only those concerned with the questions of life and death need enter here. A reminder, no doubt, that life is short and opportunities to penetrate the great matter quickly slip by, like the rest of earthly phenomena. To paraphrase Nyogen Senzaki, like a lightning flash or a dewdrop. Ephemeral, fleeting.
One thing that did not feel ephemeral or fleeting yesterday was my 9 mile run through the Staten Island hills. At about mile 6 I was so intent on listening to Loori expound on the Dharma that I tripped on a cracked sidewalk on Bay Street and fell on my ass. Well, hip more than ass. Such are the risks of running in an urban environment without paying attention to where your feet are going to land. Zen practice and running are all about paying attention.
Staten Island is a place of many micro-environments. On yesterday’s run I passed by the mansions of Todt Hill, the Staten Island Ferry drydocks and the Alice Austin House, all within 5 miles of one another. There was a long stretch by the Staten Island Homeport that was extremely industrial and grimy. Staten Island never quite got accustomed to the concept of zoning so it is not unusual to find beautiful Victorian homes snugly nestled next to busy auto body shops. I try not to discriminate between the ugly and the beautiful; its all about non-duality and acceptance, right? Still, I much more enjoy running along the curve of the shoreline by the ferry terminal where I can watch Manhattan shimmering in the distance across the harbor than through the industrial wasteland over by the Homeport where I’m dodging stray dogs and the occasional crack addict. I guess I have a little way to go with my understanding of the universe.
So I went out for a long run on Sunday. This is a typical thing that I do every week-end, but this particular Sunday it was a bit more challenging since I was recovering from Jack’s party, which started early and ended late. Still, I managed to get in 8 miles by patching together a route that included both Snug Harbor and the Staten Island Ferry terminal pathway. Buying a Garmin Forerunner has completely changed the quality of my week-end runs. The Forerunner is a GPS device that you wear on your wrist and it accurately logs your distance and pace, thereby untethering you from your established running routes and eliminating the need to run circle after circle around the perimeter of your local park. Thanks to this little device, I have rediscovered the fun part of running; just heading down the road and exploring without worrying whether I’m covering a set distance in a certain period of time.
The treadmill has been wearing me down lately, as has the grey, non-winter we’ve been having here in the Northeast. I feel like Jack and I have been spending too much time inside in front of the television when there is so much else I could/should be doing. But it is a challenge to leave the house once I get home from work, and where does one go on Staten Island in the dark anyway? I miss the summer-time walks Jack and I used to take around Silver Lake Park every night. I guess cabin fever is setting in. Our local rodent weather prognosticator Staten Island Chuck says winter will be over soon, but how much faith can you put in a ground hog? At least the sun is staying up a little longer these days. As of today I have 23 miles in for the week, and Mitt Rmoney has been sent packing back to whatever hole he crawled out of . I suppose spring is really just around the corner.
Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. I suppose as a registered Democrat and erstwhile political blogger I should weigh in on who I’m thinking of jerking the lever for tomorrow. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that I have devoted a considerable amount of space excoriating the Democrats for their feckless, chicken-little like behavior in the face of the Bush administration’s assault on the constitution. I still think that the Democratic leadership is about as useless as tits on a bull, but the thought of four more years of trickle-down economics, electronic snooping and military expenditures of $12 billion per month in Iraq make sitting this election out an unreasonable option. Since Obama and Hillary are essentially the same politically, the only way to distinguish them is by their character. This is a contest that Obama wins hands down. Hilary Clinton has spent this entire election cycle lying about almost everything. Her “35 years of experience” really translate into one year of volunteer work at a non-profit, followed by 15 years at a corporate law firm and 8 years of hiding Easter eggs on the South Lawn of the White House. How this qualifies the woman to be the standard-bearer of the party of Franklin Roosevelt is beyond me. Yes, she’s smart. Yes she would probably be a neutral enough President, but her triangulation on every issue and her tendency to vote with the herd in the Senate make me think that she has no core values that she believes in enough to fight for. Her vote for the Iraq war was pure political pandering and her vote for the Patriot Act inexcusable. She is also probably the only figure alive who can get the Republican base off their hillbilly asses and into a voting booth. She is, quite frankly, a liability to the party as a presidential candidate.
Obama, on the other hand, has a short track-record in the Senate. This will make him less susceptible to the Rovian slime machine, drug use not withstanding. He also possesses a certain physical and psychic appeal that transcends the issues. He spouts exactly the kind of empty feel-good platitudes that Americans find so endearing in a politician. He also looks really good on TV and he sure sounds confident. He is, in a word, electable. For whatever reason he is able to excite masses of people in a way that John McCain just can’t seem to pull off. (McCain’s closest traveling companion these days is the phlegmatic Joe Lieberman. Need I say more?)
So it is with a small glimmer of hope for the future that the Patriot endorses Barack Obama in the New York primary. The politics of hope should trump the politics of fear any day.
I have been really enjoying reading a blog I discovered recently whose author discusses issues relating to running and Zen practice. Check it out. Jack and I have been recovering from some sort of a nasty virus that was causing us to manifest illness this past week. It kept me from the starting line of the NYC ½ marathon and made life challenging for a few days. It is interesting, and somewhat frustrating sitting up with a sick child in the middle of the night when you also have a fever. Fortunately we’re both on the mend and I have decided to run the Bronx ½ marathon on February 10th.
I was reading Gothamist yesterday and stumbled across an apparently contentions debate about whether children should be allowed to accompany their parents into upscale bars in New York City. The particular bar in question was the Union Hall bar located in Park Slope Brooklyn, whose owners recently raised the ire of besotted parents everywhere when they instituted a stroller ban at the bar. This is an issue that could only arise in a place like Park Slope, where over privileged children and their yuppie parents often run head on into over privileged single yuppies with no children. The parents are put out because not everyone thinks their beautiful intelligent children are beautiful or intelligent; and the singles are put out because being surrounded by children reminds them that they are getting older and should probably be doing something other than sitting on a bar stool in Park Slope in the middle of the day drinking over-priced beer.
Presumably the parents of these children are meeting other parents to knock back a few pints while their kids frolic around amidst the mid-day drinkers and soggy beer napkins. I was pretty surprised by the venom expressed by the childless tipplers who seemed to see the presence of children in a bar as somehow representative of the decline of western civilization. I wonder if this seeming hatred for children, out of all proportion to the wee ones impact on their immediate surroundings, is a narcissistic trait particular to New Yorkers. I lived in Philadelphia for a while and most bar/restaurants in the better neighborhoods always had a stroller or two parked in front and no one seemed unduly upset by a parent reading the paper and having a pint on a Saturday afternoon. I suppose the air of entitlement that pervades neighborhoods like Park Slope is to blame. I mean, paying $1,000,000 for a one bedroom apartment would sure put me in a bad mood. Really, it’s not the kids at fault here, it’s the self-centered childless adults who apparently never learned to play well with others.
Happy birthday little dude! Over the course of this past year you have brought me many beautiful moments. The sound of your laughter reminds me that it is still possible to see the world with the wondering eyes of a child. Your daddy loves you very much.
Becky would have turned 40 today. The very idea would have appalled her to no end, but I still wish she was here so I could listen to her complain about it. It is hard to believe that an entire year has gone by since we celebrated her 39th birthday by having dinner at Devi near Union Square where we mostly talked about what to name our little friend whose arrival was (correctly) thought to be imminent. I wrote about the actual dinner in some detail for a blog posting. You can read it by clicking here. It has been a difficult year for those of us left to struggle on without her, but life, as they say, goes on. I take some solace in the fact that even in her absence, Becky has taught me a good deal about many things, including what it means to be a good father. She was many things in her life, but a teacher first among them. She taught both by example and by getting you to look at yourself in a way that somehow brought your hazy confusion about your life into tight focus. She was clearly one of the most unselfish people to ever walk this earth and gave of herself constantly. A true bodhisattva. So, I would rather celebrate the day of her birth than spend undue time thinking about the day she was taken from us. I think she would agree. Happy birthday my dear. You are missed.
I confess that I have been running with an I-Pod lately, which I never did years ago, mostly because they hadn’t been invented yet. When I was training for the Buffalo Marathon I remember trying a few runs with a Walkman, but giving it up because a 90 minute cassette tape only lasted for around 10 miles. The I-Pod is a great tool for the distance runner, and may offer a competitive advantage to those who wear it while racing. According to a recent article in the Times, studies have shown that listening to music during exercise can improve results, both in terms of being a motivator and as a distraction from negatives like fatigue. The most effective music seems to be that which clocks in at around 120-140 beats per minute, which coincidentally happens to be the roughly the heart-rate aerobic zone of a 40 year old male.
I started running to music much more frequently around a year ago. That's when I started running on my lunch hour-on a treadmill-and without some sort of distraction I would have gone stark raving mad. I am a little worried that I’ve been relying too much on the music lately and that it gives me an artificial sense of my running ability, not to mention that any pretension of running as moving Zen is lost when you’re bopping down the road boogying to the Grateful Dead. I try to mix it up and play some ragas and some eclectic eastern influenced music to restore my sense that I am doing something more meditative than dancing. Bhagavan Das’s “Now” is particularly effective as a focusing tool. When I'm in a more natural setting or somewhere unfamiliar, I eschew the music and just tune into my surroundings. I remember a great 7.4 mile run in Berkeley up Strawberry Canyon, surrounded in white fog that had come streaming in through the Golden Gate, where I felt like my ego disappeared and I had become one with the State of California. An interesting feeling I must say.
It’s a pretty cold day here in the Northeast. I doubt we’ll reach anywhere near 30 degrees today and this morning was downright brutal. It was so cold when I went out to warm up the car that I wore a big puffy down jacket and still felt the chill. Yesterday it was somewhat warmer, which was a good thing since I decided to run 10 miles in preparation for the Manhattan ½ marathon, scheduled for next Sunday. It was the first time I ran 10 miles in quite a while and I’m relieved to report that I accomplished the run with minimal discomfort, despite the fact that there was a stiff cold wind blowing and I was underdressed for the temperature. Staten Island is also a pretty hilly place which also presents its own set of challenges. I had forgotten the feeling of bliss associated with runs lasting longer than one hour. The first five miles is the hardest, after that the run begins to flow and is remarkably effortless except for minor aches and pains. Increased alpha waves and endorphins together really make for a winning combination. I think if I can knock off the ½ next Sunday I’ll keep up the long runs and try to run a full marathon in the spring. After all 40 is the new 30 and I ran my last full marathon when I was 30 so what the hell.
Japanese Zen Buddhist monks practice a style of walking mediation known as kinhin. Practitioners walk clockwise around a room while holding their hands in shashu (left fist closed, while the right hand grasps the left fist). During this particular type of walking meditation a step is taken after each full breath. It is a rather slow way of getting around the room, but it works out the kinks in the legs common to long periods of sitting meditation. I have always thought of running as a faster, more fluid type of walking mediation; a running meditation, if you will. Running in the streets of Staten Island certainly requires total concentration. As a byproduct of this intense concentration I find that on the longer runs, solutions to problems that seem intractable when pondered during the working day often have a way of bubbling up from my subconscious. One can see the parallels to the instantaneous enlightenment experience of Zen. In any event, running keeps me sane and the longer I run, the saner I tend to get. Which is a good thing.
There is an excellent article in Salon today which pretty much deconstructs the right wing-nuts approach to the rule of law in this country. I find it amusing how so many of them declare themselves "strict-constructionists" without having the slightest idea of what that means. They wouldn't know a tort from a contract case, but that doesn't stop them from holding forth on the legal system. Unfortunately for the conservatives, desiring an outcome in a case doen't mean that outcome is legally correct. Here's an excerpt, the link follows:
"The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn't happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.
What else could possibly explain how someone can be convinced that they are in a position to condemn a judicial ruling without bothering to learn anything about the laws and legal issues in play? Hence: Bush should be able to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants and any judge who rules that -- under the law -- he can't, is guilty of "judicial activism." They've been trained to believe they're entitled to have judges give them the outcomes they want, and when that doesn't happen, that alone is grounds for proclaiming that the courts and judges are not just corrupt, but illegitimate."
A true giant among men, Edmund Hilary, the first man to successfully climb Mount Everest died at his home in New Zealand yesterday. At 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level, the highest spot on earth. After his ascent in May of 1953, Hilary devoted the rest of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan trust, which he founded and to which he had given much of his time and energy. Through his efforts he had succeeded in building many schools and hospitals in a fairly remote region of the Himalayas. He was the Honorary President of the American Himalayan Foundation, a United States non-profit body that helps improve the ecology and living conditions in the Himalayas.
The Patriot has been a lazy blogger lately. This is especially inexcusable in light of the elections, but my interest in politics has taken a back seat to the day to day drama of raising a toddler. Jack will be a year old in three weeks. I can’t believe an entire year has gone by since he was born. I have an entirely new relationship with the passage of time since Becky left us. Whole months go by effortlessly. Some days I struggle to remember what year it is. I don’t know if this is merely the downside of turning 40 or whether my relationship with the physical structure of the universe has actually changed. I suspect the former.
I was reading an essay by Sharon Salzberg , a Vipassana meditation teacher who said that raising three children taught her more about Buddhism than meditation ever could. I have found this to be true. Any time I sit down with the intention of reading a sutra or meditating, the little being whose care I am charged with reminds me that there is so much more to the world than my own ego. He is constantly teaching me lessons in humility and selflessness. I have looked for a teacher of the Dharma for a long time. Imagine my surprise to find him literally sitting in my lap. My little bald monk with wisdom of the ages.
I have decided that 2008 will be the year of conscious living. Whatever I do I will do it with awareness and compassion. I am trying to cultivate these qualities and the only way to do so is to live them. This is the goal of the Vipassana school of Buddhism. One brings about awareness by the simple and direct practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. This awareness leads us to accept more fully the pleasure and pain, fear and joy, sadness and happiness that life inevitably brings. When caring for an 11 month old child you have to be mindful constantly. Failure to maintain full awareness could potentially result in your little Buddha sticking a paper clip in an electrical outlet and experiencing enlightenment of an entirely different variety.
In the future this blog will be less about politics and more about Buddhism, although the Patriot is mindful that too much writing about spiritual development has the potential to lead to Spiritual Materialism; the failure to let go of ego clinging in the development of an understanding of spiritual and related areas. Frankly, I am sick to death of politics. Namaste.
I'm thinking of writing a little self-help book on exercise and fitness for lazy people. Here's what I have come up with thus far:
In 2007 I lost 40 pounds and went from a size 40 waist to a size 34. My resting heart rate is in the upper 50s, my blood pressure is well within normal limits and my cholesterol is also normal. I will be turning 40 years old next week. Contrast this with my physical condition a year ago-constant pain in the knees and feet, borderline high blood pressure and out of control eating habits. How did I manage to achieve this miracle of self transformation? In a word, running. I have always been a runner, but as of a year ago my routine had dwindled to a paltry 12 miles per week and I shuffled through my 3 milers at a pace in excess of 12 minutes per mile. Back in the 1990s I was much more serious about getting my miles in and consequently I was in far better shape. Then came three years of law school followed by another six years in the stressful yet sedentary position of a trial lawyer. This perfect storm of stress and lack of movement wrecked havoc on my health and caused me to regain the 50 pounds that I had lost way back in 1993.
When my wife Becky died last January I knew I was going to have to embrace something other than a bottle of cabernet to get me through the tough times. What I decided to do was get back into my life and back out on the road. I also adopted a largely vegetarian diet and started counting calories. Not obsessively, but I engaged in what can best be described as “conscious eating”. I considered everything that I was going to put into my mouth very carefully and I simply wouldn’t eat something unless I knew what it’s effect on my weight loss goals was likely to be. By mid February I was up to 20 miles per week. By mid-march 25-30. My speed began to increase as the weight came off. For rapid results there is nothing like running on a treadmill because you know exactly how far you are going at what pace and in what amount of time. This helps you maximize the benefit you receive from the time spent training, an important factor if you train on your lunch hour like I did. The additional benefit from running on your lunch hour is that you have less time to eat lunch. Rather than wander around lower Manhattan stuffing my face with whatever ethnic cuisine struck my fancy, I was grinding out 5 miles on the treadmill at Gold’s gym, listening to music and sweating out the morning’s aggression. Far from tiring me out, the daily runs energized me and kick-started my afternoons they way no cup of coffee ever could.
Are treadmills boring? They sure are. I was lucky enough to find a gym whose machines looked down from their perch on the second floor over a lively scene on John Street in downtown NYC. Watching people scurry about their business on their lunch hours provided hours of amusement. I also for the first time started running to music. My I-pod was a constant companion and turned potentially boring slogs into something akin to dancing at a Dead show.
People who know me are generally surprised that I have anything approaching the discipline needed to actualize a weight-loss routine. The big secret is that it hardly takes any discipline at all and you don’t have to turn into a teetotaling monk to see great results. I still drink too much red wine and smoke an occasional cigarette, but I have reordered my priorities to put my weight loss goals first. If I run 30 miles in a week, I have absolutely no problem going out on Saturday night and painting the town red. After all, I earned it.
Revolution is about consciousness, about rebelling against one's own state conditioned consciousness in favor of the unique one bequeathed us by the very evolutionary process that gave us the killer ape gene, which has proven so handy a tool in the hands of the state. -Joe Bageant
These are the dog days of the holiday season. The no-mans land between Christmas and New Years that nobody really knows what to do with. I’m at work, but not working. I imagine this is the case for almost everyone except teachers, college students and those unfortunate workers who can’t carry over their vacation time into next year. I suppose now is as good a time as any to start contemplating New Years resolutions. For the last several years I’ve tried to pick some sort of challenge to make sure I end the year better than I began it. For obvious reasons I took last year off, although Jack certainly challenged me in ways I couldn’t have expected last January 1. Many thanks little buddy; I learned a lot about life from you this past year.
The two years prior were consumed with getting scuba certified and continuing my scuba diving and training and even this past year with all the insanity I managed to lose 40 pounds and pick up my running to a point where I have started to really enjoy it again. So what to do in 2008? I have been thinking of a number of activities from getting a pilot’s license to going for a walk up Mt. Fuji in Japan, but nothing has really struck me as THE thing to do. I suppose the decision is weightier since I will be turning 40 next week, although I don’t ascribe much meaning to the passage of time. I really have no control over it so why bother. Maybe Great White shark diving? That would be interesting. Perhaps I’ll clean up my diet and run another marathon-it’s been 10 years since the last one-but I hate to chain Jack into a baby-jogger for 15 mile runs on Sunday mornings. The possibilities are really endless.
I think I will settle on a few rather pedestrian goals-eat a good vegetarian diet, run a ½ marathon in the spring, and plan on taking one killer trip this year to do something spectacular. I’ll let you all know what I’m thinking later in the week. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas.
The Patriot wishes all of his regular and not so regular readers a happy holiday season. I regret that posts have been few and far between lately, but I have been getting acclimated to a new job which leaves little time for bitching and moaning about the state of the union. Yet there is always something to bitch about, isn’t there? Some statistics: Every year, Americans travel some 3 trillion vehicle miles. We consume about 140 billion gallons of gasoline along with 40 billion gallons of diesel. Even the most die hard willfully ignorant among us can’t imagine that the earth has the ability to withstand a rate of oil consumption like that for very long, not to mention the effects on the environment of burning all of that crap. The government’s response to the impending disasters posed by a dwindling fuel supply and global warming was to pass an energy bill that raises the fuel-efficiency standard for new auto fleets to 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase from today's 25 mpg. To this I have no objection, but the bill also relies much too strongly on ethanol as the fuel of the future. As Salon reports in an article on the energy bill, “Biofuels from most food crops or from newly deforested lands do not provide a significant net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions -- and some may cause a net increase. Most life-cycle analyses show that corn ethanol has little or no net greenhouse gas benefit compared with gasoline because so much energy is consumed to grow and process the corn.” Moreover, even when the United States attempts to solve it’s own energy problem it ends up screwing over someone else. The Economist points out the amazing statistic that "the demands of America's ethanol program alone account for over half the world's unmet need for cereals."
So with all the reasons not to use ethanol, why does the bill mandate that the U.S. increase the use of renewable fuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022, of which 15 billion can be corn-based ethanol? The easy answer is that we got sidetracked on our way to discovering how to efficiently extract from cellulosic sources, such as crop waste and switchgrass. Unfortunately for all the havoc our current biofuel use is having on national and global food prices, ethanol use must, by law, increase to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, a jump of some 50 percent from current levels.
I am sure there is a hidden nefarious reason why the administration is pushing this. I’ll do a little more digging and report back what I find.
Consuming season is in full effect here in the New York area. The Patriot and his money took advantage of the overhyped ice storm and made a trip to the Satan Island Mall yesterday. Despite living on Staten Island for three years, I never did any Christmas shopping here before this year. It was easier to drift out of my office building down by the Seaport and get whatever I needed without leaving Manhattan, often without leaving a ten block radius of where I worked. Working in the Meadowlands offers few shopping options other than the Walmart at exit 15W and the outlet mall at 13A. I was in no mood yesterday to do battle with half the suburban rabble in the Garden State so I headed back to the Island thinking, correctly as it turned out, that most folks were sitting home glued to their televisions thinking that they were in the middle of bad storm when in reality the weather was pretty benign. I think it borders on the criminal the way weathermen scream disaster any time there is the potential for a little of the white stuff, but yesterday the masses collective ignorance worked to my advantage. I was in and out of the mall in an hour, fists full of gift cards and tinsel.
I must confess, getting into the holiday spirit is difficult for me even in a normal year, and this year has been anything but normal. Becky was typically a whirlwind of activity around Christmas and while I have tried to recreate the frenetic holiday atmosphere, my heart just ain’t in it. Her absence is keenly felt. But, as they say, the show must go on. Jack is certainly aware that there is something different about this time of year, if only because he has had the opportunity to enjoy spending several hours of quality time yanking strings of lights off the Christmas tree, opening presents and wearing funny hats. He seems to understand that this season is about taking the time to relax and celebrate the things we have, remember the things we’ve lost, and not take ourselves too seriously. I know exactly how he feels.
When I arrived at work this morning there was a sign on the door informing the employees that the computer network was down for the indefinite future due to a malfunctioning air conditioning system in the server room. Without access to the various insurance related programs and, of course, the internet, some 200 people sitting in an office park in the middle of the Meadowlands have nothing to do. I work in a paperless office, so there aren’t even any files to review. The only thing that does work is Microsoft Word which is how I am able to type up this blog entry. I will have to wait until the computers are back up to post it.
I got my first office job in 1984, filing medical reports into claim files in a dank basement office in Long Island. There were no computers, and the hottest technology at the time was an early prototype fax machine that used the shiny rolls of ultra thin paper. The copier jammed every third use (well some things never change) and the phone system was state of the art with two lines and a hold button. It’s a wonder anything ever got done.
The most interesting thing to me about the ascension of the PC as the indispensable tool of the office is that there was very little associated rise in productivity. In 1987, Nobel laureate Robert Solow famously observed: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Despite massive investment in IT infrastructure, productivity growth was nonexistent. At the time, this was known as the “Productivity Paradox.” Economists have also made a more controversial charge against the utility of computers: that they pale as a source of productivity advantage when compared to the true industrial revolution, or the invention of the automobile.
While the slow growth in productivity accelerated somewhat at the dawn of the 21st century, it hasn’t reached levels one would expect. Some experts partly attribute this to the integration of the internet into work desktops; thereby giving employees easy access to entertainment they wouldn’t have had a few years ago.
My interest in workplace productivity issues is now completely spent. Look for further entries on such exciting topics as the living organic qualities of the NewJersey Turnpike.
