Obama's Secret

One of the President's many secrets is beginning to leak to the public. He kept us out of the civil war in Syria, a real job killer when you think of the slowdowns it has caused in the industrial-military heartland. So far Obama has managed to hide his failure to go to war from most of our major newspapers and big time TV news, who remain focused on a faulty web site. Even those who comment from the Far Left in weekly papers and the smaller media outlets haven't realized or don't care that we're missing out on a war. Also the President and Russia cooperated in seeing to it that Syria's poison gas got destroyed, which had its inevitable impact on the economy in the Middle East. This joint effort ruined our credibility among former allies. Let me put it this way. President Obama has had five years to launch a war and jump start our military jobs program, and the only people to even notice his failure are moderate Republicans like John McCain and his butt boy, that senator who looks like a raised finger with eyes. Not the minority leader, the other one. And no one else is paying attention.

I'm saying the same thing on Facebook.

The Stories We Tell

The other night some of us watched a recent Canadian semi-documentary called (I think) THE STORIES WE TELL. It's an attempt to reconstruct the life of a dead mother, her marriages, etc. It starts off slowly, but then it gets engaged in the fact that the various family members knew her in different ways--and then in vastly different ways--and who has the right perspective on her and so on.   An unusually complex film and the best I've seen in some time. 


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Andy Lopez has become a story we tell. Yesterday I went to a demonstration at the courthouse. A 13-year-old named Andy Lopez, carrying a toy gun that resembled an assault rifle, was walking through his neighborhood. A deputy sheriff approached him from behind and yelled at him to drop the gun. When the child turned around to see what was happening, the deputy shot him seven times in eight tries, killing him. The demonstration cried out for justice, but what would that be?

The FBI

The FBI has decided to look into what happened this week when a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy mistook young Andy Lopez's BB gun for an assault rifle and shot Andy seven times, more often than he really needed.

I have been wondering what the officer thought after shooting the 13-year-old the first three times. He went on to fire four more rounds into the perp's body. Maybe he figured: (1) In for a penny, in for a pound. (2) Department regulations say always shoot a child seven times--they make small targets.  (3) Hey, I'll have to clean my piece in any case.  (4) You can't have too much lead in the air. (5) Keep shooting, you need the practice. Or (6) Gee, I might be unsuited for police work.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

 Now when I read THE ROAD NOT TAKEN,  I laugh.

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I have always wondered what the heck "The Road Not Taken" was about. I understood, of course, that our American convention is that it is a poem about a person who walks a yellow road, comes to a fork, takes the less traveled fork (the unconventional fork), and in old age celebrates the difference this choice made. Unfortunately that is not what the poem says, according to Sarah Goss.
 
This is what the poem actually says. Some dude was walking along a yellow road, which forked. Both roads were "grassy and wanted wear." Other walkers "had worn them really about the same." Both roads "that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black."  In other words, according to the narrator, there was no discernible difference between the two roads. Neither road had been traveled recently. (There was no unconventional road.)

Then Frost concluded the poem by saying that when he is much older, older than the Higgs boson, he will sigh theatrically and claim that the road he took "made all the difference." That is a nice turn.  He doesn't say if it was a good or bad difference, because that doesn't matter. And who knows, anyway?  (When you get really old, you can invent the past you want and make it comic or tragic.)

Sarah scoured the 'net and soon learned that she was the not the first to read the poem closely.


1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,   
And sorry I could not travel both   
And be one traveler, long I stood   
And looked down one as far as I could   
To where it bent in the undergrowth;           

Then took the other, as just as fair,   
And having perhaps the better claim,   
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;   
Though as for that the passing there   
Had worn them really about the same,           

And both that morning equally lay   
In leaves no step had trodden black.   
Oh, I kept the first for another day!   
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,   
I doubted if I should ever come back.           

I shall be telling this with a sigh   
Somewhere ages and ages hence:   
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—   
I took the one less traveled by,   
And that has made all the difference.

Why the Web Site Stumbled

 The basic problem faced by the Affordable Care Act Web site has been that new federal software, produced by the lowest bidder, is usually third rate and in need of fixing. According a column by Clay Johnson and Harper Reed in the NY Times, 94% of "large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful." Then most of them got fixed.

Also from the Times: "In 2011, the British government formed a new unit of its Cabinet Office called the Government Digital Service. It’s a team of internal technologists whose job it is to either build the right technology, or find the right vendors for every need across the government. It gives the government a technical brain. It has saved the country millions, and improved the way the government delivers services online."

Real Men Don't Vote

Someone on TV recently observed that voting makes you gay. Instead of voting, go hunting or drink beer with bar flies. Wake up late and down a few shots to steady your hand. But don't vote--voting is for the ladies.

Xenophobes

 Below is part of an essay by Sean McElwee.

 "The Tea Party has all of the hallmarks of a nationalist xenophobic (dare I say Fascist) movement:  89% white, 58% keep a gun in their house, a faction believe that violence  against the government is justified, most believe America is a country in decline, they are anti-immigrant, authoritarian, opposed to social progress, anti-gay and anti-abortion. overwhelmingly support the death penalty, really dislike Muslims, very much dislike immigrants (to the point of militarizing the border) and they’re really, really racist. Obviously, the Tea Party is not a single cohesive group, but it’s clear that the anti-immigrant wing holds major influence in the coalition of crazy. Sinclair Lewis summed up the situation a century ago, 'When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.'"

Sean is wrong about the teabaggers being Fascists (Fascists worshiped the State). But the baggers are weirdly nationalist--as if the nation consists only of white males--and obviously xenophobic. They represent a political mental illness that has always been with us in one form or another. 

Idiotic

The Republican position on the Affordable Care Act is (1) it is the worst thing that has ever happened in the United States and (2) It's just terrible how long it takes people to sign up for it.

A Satisfied Mind via Ian and Sylvia

How many times have you heard someone say,
"If I had his money I'd do things my way,"
but little they know that it's so hard to find
one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Once I was winning in fortune and fame, 
had all that I needed to make a start in life's game.
Then suddenly it happened, I lost every dime,
but I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.

For money won't buy you youth when you're old
or a friend when you're lonely or a heart that's grown cold.
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
compared to man with a satisfied mind.

When my life is ended and my time's run out,
my friends and loved ones, I'll leave them, no doubt,
but one thing's for certain. When it comes my time
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.