Thirty-something?

Was driving somewhere with my daughter, now nineteen. We were talking about the changes wrought by aging, with more of a focus on her time of life than mine. At some point, I commented that although I knew I'm sixty-two, I really feel like I'm still thirty. "Really," she dubiously asked?

Yes. Okay, I know I'm not, and there are certainly plenty of signs that I'm not - my eyesight grows steadily worse, my joints aren't as resilient as they used to be, I take longer to heal, there are creases where there used to be smooth skin, my bright red hair has faded to dull brown where it hasn't blanched to pure white ... and the list goes on.

But deep down inside, in my conception of who I am, I'm still in my thirties. I still do pretty much anything I want to, whether it's going for a 100 mile hike deep inside the Grand Canyon (see photos and commentary) or biking to work or swinging an axe. And my mind still feels the same way it always has (though perhaps I delude myself). An attractive woman still catches my eye. Most important, perhaps, I look at the future in terms of opportunities and plans, far more than in terms of restraints or memories or regrets.

I realize that in eight years I'll be seventy, that in the time it takes a newborn to be able to vote, I'll be eighty. And I look at my father - a remarkably vital and active ninety - and wonder how he sees himself? Is he still the handsome, dashing Army Air Corps pilot I never knew. Or is he the bowed, increasingly frail, easily fatigued old man with a deteriorating memory that I reluctantly see?

This aging process isn't what I thought it would be. Mostly, I happily add, it's better. Enough so, that I sometimes wonder if it's even occurring.

Until my daughter says "Really?"

Rick Perry, demagogue

In reference to Chairman Ben Bernanke and his policy of "quantitative easing:
“Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion .... If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” -- Texas governor Rick Perry, August 15, 2011


There's no other way to call it. When a candidate for the nation's highest office uses terms such as "treasonous" to describe the actions of a public official whose clear purpose is to pursue a valid public policy, that candidate is guilty of demagoguery, pure and simple. It doesn't matter whether or not the candidate favors or doesn't doesn't favor the policy in question; treason is one of the most heinous of capital crimes, and invoking such a charge is execrable.

In case one is inclined to dismiss such rhetoric as a "boys will be boys" sort of offense, it is useful to use the "shoe on the other foot" test. Can one imagine President Obama (or Presidents Clinton, Cater, Eisenhower or Coolidge ever using such a phrase to describe a public official with whom the he had a policy difference?

I for one do not want a demagogue as President. I hope the rest of America feels the same way.

Does Perry really mean it?

Texas governor Rick Perry wants to Washington “as inconsequential in your lives as [he] can.”

I'm sure that will sell well with the right-wing of the Republican party, but let's think about what he's saying, and take him at his word.

Taken literally, he's saying that our military should be "inconsequential," that we shouldn't be bothered with a strong national defense.

Is he saying that America's seniors should be denied the "inconsequential" benefits of Social Security and Medicare, and sink into poverty instead?

Should Americans with asthma and any of the rest of us who like to breathe see air pollution standards as "inconsequential?" Is clean water an "inconsequential" factor in our health?

Forget about the USDA protecting the wholesomeness of foods we buy in the market; like all other federal regulatory efforts, that activity is "inconsequential" in Perry's vision of our nation.

How many workers who have lost their jobs view unemployment benefits as "inconsequential?"

How many Americans consider that FDIC insurance is "inconsequential" when it protects their savings when banks collapse?

Try driving somewhere. It would be hard to do it in a Perry-esque world where our Interstate highway system is "inconsequential."

Are efforts to wean us away from our dangerous dependence on foreign oil "inconsequential?" I guess that governor Perry thinks so.

What happens to organized crime if the FBI is made "inconsequential?"

The list goes on and on. It's easy and maybe even gratifying to complain about the Washington, but we should stop and wonder how "inconsequential" we really want our government to be, how "inconsequential" we want the United States of America to be. The federal government is a vital and beneficial part of American life, and our nation would fall into chaos and misery if Rick Perry really succeeded with this idiotic pledge.

For us all, and for our nation, making our government "inconsequential" would have terrible consequences .


P.S. And what happens to national security when Rick Perry encourages a Chinese firm which both the Bush and Obama administrations view as posing a threat to U.S. cybersecurity? Will its potential for harming the U.S. be "inconsequential" too?

Media malfeasance in Ames

The "Iowa Straw Poll" held in Ames yesterday was hardly the model of democracy. Not only did Iowans have to get to the Ames fairground, but they had to pay $30 to participate in the process. Hardly a good way to get a representative sampling of Iowa's electorate, or even of that state's Republicans. Which makes sense, because it's really a fund-raising dinner for Iowa's Republican party.

But the even comes loaded with hype, and the media are eager to cast it as an important test of candidates' appeal in the presidential "horse race." So what should be seen as an unimportant partisan fund-raiser takes on a significance far beyond anything that can be justified.

Anyway, a grand total of 16,584 made the drive to Ames (did anyone take public transit or bike there?) to ante up their $30. And the media anointed the results with suggestions of those magical terms "mandate" and "momentum." The front-runners had a lot to gain, and any candidate who didn't do as well as the pundits thought they should was condemned to marginality.

So Michele Bachmann got the support of the grand total of 4,823 ticket-buyers (fewer than three in ten of the attendees) and is declared the winner. By contrast, Tim Pawlenty finished third with nearly half as many, but the media called that a "major setback" him and it must have been, because he immediately dropped out of the race.

I'm not great fan of Pawlenty's, but shouldn't we as Americans be alarmed that such an inconsequential event as this minor small state partisan fund-raising event should be deemed so important that it can knock a candidate who has governed a fairly large state out of the race because he trailed another candidate by the support of a mere 2,530 people who decided to spend their Saturday traveling to Ames to pay $30 so they could hobnob with the candidates?

This is not how a democratic republic should work. Those in the media should be ashamed of what they have done, and we in the electorate should be appalled at how we allow them to twist, undermine and emaculate our electoral process.

Romney's epiphany

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said.

-- Mitt Romney, at the Iowa State Fair, August 11, 2011

White bread GOP debt panelists

Okay, I realize that the Republican Party isn't very inclusive, and especially not at its top levels, but the best that Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell could come up with for the joint debt committee were a bunch of white guys in ties?

Nobody expects that members of Congress will be poor or homeless or unemployed, but let's face it: the people who will be most adversely affected by the cuts to be imposed by the panel will be poor or homeless or unemployed, just as they're the ones who have suffered the most from the long-running financial crisis left to America as a key component of George W. Bush's legacy.

But Boehner appointed Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp and Fred Upton, while McConnell appointed Patrick Toomey, Jon Kyl and Rob Portman. Hensarling is a middle-aged wealthy white business executive from Texas; Camp is a middle-aged white lawyer from Michigan; Upton is a middle-aged white political drone from Michigan; Kyl is a middle-aged white lobbyist from Arizona; Toomey is a white financial wheeler-dealer and business executive from Pennsylvania; and Portman is a white political staffer from Ohio. Not exactly representative of the people suffering from our economic problems.

The Democrats on the panel are obviously not poor, homeless or unemployed either, but two are women, one is Hispanic, one is African American, one was a community organizer, one is a decorated combat veteran, one is the son of working class immigrants, and one is a former high-school teacher. Something tells me that they will bring to the debt discussions a greater intuitive understanding of the plight of ordinary Americans, and a greater awareness of how this unending recession is hurting them far more than it is hurting the moneyed classes so ably represented by the Republican members of the committee.

The Washington Post seems to have noticed the same imbalance: "Debt Supercommittee’s Membership Dominated by White Men."