I Can See, No Matter How Near You'll Be. . . .

Patty Andrews died yesterday at 94. She was the lead singer in the Andrews Sisters, a brilliant swing group that made a very long string of hits in the 1940s, the war years. I keep several of their songs handy on my computer, "I Can Dream, Can't I?" being one of them. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" was an anthem for jitterbuggers, which led to the boogie we danced in 1969. "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" was their first huge hit--a bit of Yiddish. "Rum and Coca Cola" (also called a Cuba Libre, folks) was a hit song about what seemed to be a mother/daughter team of hookers. "The Lady from 29 Palms" might not be the musical monument the first four songs remain, but it ends with a shockingly innocent touch of 1940s pride in our nation's nuclear prowess. "She's a dynamite dreamboat, a load of atom bombs, the lady from Twenty-nine Palms."

A Senile American President

There is a gap in recent history. Something I never see mentioned in mainstream media is the fact that Ronald Reagan was senile during his second term in office. The Republicans don't mention it. The Democrats don't mention it. Investigative reporters don't mention it. PBS, of course, is too frightened to mention it. The reason I know about it is that on occasion I read the autobiographies of foreign leaders who had to work with Reagan, and they found him gaga. I am currently reading MY LIFE IN POLITICS by Jacques Chirac, former President of France. He writes about a meeting he had with Margaret Thatcher.  "Ronald Reagan did not seem capable to her, either intellectually or physically, of undertaking a long negotiation. For her, the last year of his presidency was going to be very dangerous for the security of the West." That is careful language. Others have just said flatly that Reagan had a young keeper who followed him from room to room in the White House to tell him the names of his cabinet members. It would be interesting to read that keeper's autobiography.

RationalizingTorture

The two main sides in a discussion of the rules of war take these positions. (1) Wars should be made as humane as possible, and civilians should not be targeted. Or (2) "The more awful you can make war the sooner it will be over."  The quote is from Sherman, and he did not kill civilians on purpose, as we did in World War II. 

In the history of the rules of war, one side actually does take the position that wars should be made a horrible as possible, because that will shorten wars and save lives in the long run. That is how torturers justify themselves and so on. Torturers also find justification in imaginative fictions: "What would you do if by torturing a Muslim you could save a billion children from a nuclear bomb?" 

 

Healdsburgites

I read the paper and then told my wife that 2.8 million years ago a meteor one mile wide hit the ground in the Healdsburg area. It threw droplets of molten meteor and earth high in the sky, where they froze and rained down, creating a carpeting of small ovoid objects in the Dry Creek Valley, for example. These objects are called Healdsburgites. This sort of event is quite rare, and now it is under study by some geologists. "Oh yes," my wife replied. "Go look at that little gray rock on my bedroom bookshelf."

Fear Obama!

When the Right (or the Left) needs money, they send out emails to scare us. I receive the scary ones from the Left, but it is interesting to look at what the Right is reading. See below:
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In what Newsweek hailed as “The Second Coming,” Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in on Sunday, January 20th in his second term as President. While it was not a joyful day for conservatives, at least we have the comfort of knowing it cannot happen again. Or can it? New York Rep. Jose Serrano introduced H.J. Res 15, which would eliminate presidential term limits.

If it passes and Barack Obama wants to, he could seek a third term … or a fourth. He could remain president for life, as long as he has the financial muscle of someone like George Soros behind him and the thuggery of the New Black Panthers to make sure no one else’s vote counts.

These Are The Good Old Days

These are the good old days for those on the Left, and I hope you are enjoying them. The New Deal ended with the election of Richard Nixon, and then Ronald Reagan (pronounced REEgan at the time) came along and shifted us into a long ugly era of greed, racism, voter fraud, corruption, hate politics, union-busting, pointless war, etc. Reagan turned us into a right-wing country. The Clintons swam with the tide and survived. President Obama has finally reversed the Reagan movement and built for us a powerful new coalition of women, Latinos, Black voters, union families, Asians, gays, intellectuals, and people like me. I love it. Yes, I understand that Obama did not turn out to be the Magic Christian who would solve all of our problems by pointing with one finger. He's just a dude who makes mistakes. But the political future is looking better. Reagan might as well be dead. We are living in history. These will become the good old days.  You will be glad you were present, just as I am glad I was there when Hitler bumped himself off and Truman beat Dewey and a Catholic was elected President and people of color became voting citizens.  I'm sorry that some on the Left remain bitterly unhappy, but what the hell--that's their natural condition.

The Usual Idiots

Paul Krugman pointed out why, as I age, I think,  "What fools we mortals be." The common wisdom in Washington these days is that if nothing is changed, we will have to cut back social security payments in 20 years. That is the problem. The Washington solution is to cut back social security payments now. That's some solution. ("Bring it on!")

I can't explain why Washington is a moron or why Washington looks smart compared to state governments. Maybe it has to do with ideologies, the belief systems of idiots.

Stan the Man

Stan the Man died yesterday. Back when the stars of baseball included Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson, only one player was called "the man." That was Stan Musial, who won the NL batting title seven times--without drugs--and seemed to most of us kids to be the dreaded clutch hitter we did not want at bat against our teams in clutch situations. We'd groan when he came up with men on base.  He played 22 years for one team. He was MVP three times and led three teams to world series wins. He could play the harmonica. He was never accused to molesting someone. He didn't build a career on lies or bullying.  No one disliked Musial. He was The Man.

Gorgeous Gussie Moran

My largely uniformed local newspaper today carried two obituaries. The first and more important one covered the death of George Drake, a retired deputy sheriff who had graduated from a local high school. The second and lesser obituary, reprinted from the NY Times, covered the career of Gussie Moran, the first major tennis player to wear a white short skirt with lace-trimmed panties onto the court at Wimbledon. It was all terribly shocking and made her, for a few years, the most famous tennis player in the world. That happened while I was in high school.  Moran was a decent player--at one point she ranked number four in America. After that, from what I've read, she had a rough time of it, lived "in near squalor," and now has died forgotten at 89.