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THE PROBLEM WITH LIFE

Posted on June 8, 2012 by halviv

Scientists estimate that the the universe began about 14 billion years ago with the big bang theory. The theory goes that a relatively small clump of matter suddenly appeared on the scene, and then exploded and sent forth smaller pieces of matter that evolved into the infinite number of planets and other material that comprise the universe as we know it today. Which is kind of ridiculous. I mean, did this chunk of matter suddenly appear out of nowhere into what was then a total void. Where did it come from? In actuality, the universe has always existed, perhaps in a different arrangement of matter, but nevertheless, it has always been there. The universe is infinite, a very difficult concept for people to grasp, but there is no beginning or end to it. It’s not as if you were traveling in a space ship and suddenly came upon a sign that said : “Universe Ends in Two Miles.” Upon traveling those next 2 miles there would be a big chain link fence with another sign saying: “End of Universe.” Like space, time is also infinite, in that there always has and will be time. I believe time, past, present and future, occurs simultaneously, but we can only see the present in the dimension that we currently occupy. Perhaps when we enter a different dimension, more fondly known as the afterlife, time will have a whole different meaning and we will be able to see time as circular, rather than linear, as we mortals currently view it. In any event, time and space are inexorably linked, as Einstein and other scientists have pointed out, but we can only see both in limited contexts.

Which is a rather long way around of getting to the topic at hand, which is the problem with life as we know it on this planet. That problem is that we begin to age  from the moment we’re born, and then, eventually die. Of course, most people fight and strive to stay alive as long as possible. But even under the best of circumstances, even if you live to be 100 or older, (less than one percent of the population does), it’s still only the tiniest sliver of time compared to the age of the universe. After that you have to spend like forever, better known as eternity, in the next dimension. Or perhaps there is no next dimension, and what you get in this world is all she wrote. I suspect that most people harbor such thoughts no matter what their religious beliefs may be, and that’s why they strive so hard to stay alive as long as possible. When one is young and in good health, such ruminations are seldom are entertained. But when you get to be my age, they seem to crop up more often. As I’ve written before, the young person looks down the road of life, and unless they’ve inherited some serious genetic defect, that road looks sunny and clear as a bell. But when you get to my age and look down that same road, you can see Death flitting among the bushes, or peaking out from behind a tree. It’s like the lines I quoted in my last entry from the poem by John Donne: “Ask not for whom the bells toll. They toll for thee.”  Donne had worked in a church whose bells would slowly peal whenever a church member died, so the poem’s meaning is quite clear.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression that I fixate on this. I’m generally in good health, but I do have a few problems, the biggest one being my rotten teeth. I spend almost as much time at the dentist as I do at home. I was there a couple of days ago for work on a tooth implant. My gums are still sore. Because of all the work I’ve had done, implants, bridges, crowns, fillings, etc., my wife says I have the equivalent of a Mercedes in my mouth. Probably more like a Rolls Royce. I also have glaucoma, treatable with prescription eye drops, but requiring periodic visits to the eye doctor. And lets not forget deafness, requiring hearing aids that are virtually useless in a noisy environment. This requires periodic visits to the hearing aids people to fine tune the devices. Thus, you get a picture of what you have to look forward to if you make it to old age. Nevertheless, one of my daughters says, I should count my blessings that I don’t have worse problems, which is true.

As you know, I live in a large seniors community, and hardly a day goes by when an ambulance blaring its sirens doesn’t go tearing through the streets. Another senior is about to be rushed to the hospital, or perhaps, is already dead. Over the 12 years that we’ve lived here, we’ve known a fair amount of people that have died, usually of cancer, and often before their time. Others we know are battling seriously debilitating diseases. One individual we know has a condition where the fluid that continually bathes the brain is not draining away as it should. This required the insertion of a stunt to properly drain this fluid, but still leaves him weak with serious disability. Still he manages to keep positive and in good spirits. Another woman is battling serious breast cancer, but also maintains good spirits. A lot better spirit than I would have under similar circumstances. In any event, being a senior means learning about a whole slew of health issues, many of which you had never previously heard of. Many seniors make so many doctors visits that they often become better diagnosticians than most doctors. One’s health also often comes down to genetic makeup. We know seniors that will make it well into their nineties or older, because they inherited what I call caste-iron genes. I try to compensate for a poor genetic inheritance by going to the gym every day, although I often feel, “lots of luck with that.”

In any event, it helps when things get especially tough or dispiriting, to remember what a tiny amount of time we spend in this form on this planet. Perhaps in comparison, when we do cross over to the other side, it will make the pain and suffering we’ve had to endure in this life form, seem pretty trivial and insignificant. Which, in the end, would the best perspective we can have on life.

 

 

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THE SPREAD OF FASCISM

Posted on June 4, 2012 by halviv

A little while ago there was an excellent movie on HBO called “Hemingway and Gellhorn.” Hemingway was, of course, the famous writer, Earnest Hemingway, and Gellman was war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. They came together in 1937 when both were covering the Spanish civil war, and eventually married, but then eventually separated. Each one had a fascinating life story to tell. Hemingway was part of the famous American expatriate movement of writers and artists living in Paris during the 1920s, and receiving much acclamation for their works. Early on he assumed a highly macho persona, both in his writings and personal life experiences. But as the world soon learned, much of that machoism was to cover-up deeply held feelings of inadequacy and depression. His father had committed suicide as did two brothers, and Earnest, himself, put a bullet in his brain in 1961, at age 62. That streak of depression seemed to be genetic, because a son also eventually committed suicide as did a granddaughter in the 1990s. Martha Gellhorn, on the other hand, suffered from no bouts of depression, but was instead an intrepid war correspondent who in WWII went fearlessly into fields of battle and trenches with fighting soldiers, as bullets and bombs were exploding all around her. She covered both Europe and the Pacific during WWII and then many other war zones in the ensuing years. She lived to the ripe age of 90, and died of natural causes in 1998.

Hemingway always had fought fiercely against the rising tides of fascism during the early part of the 20th century and his experiences during the Spanish civil war were chronicled in perhaps his most famous novel: “For Whom The Bells Toll.” (Ask not for whom the bells toll. They toll for thee.) But watching that HBO movie got me thinking about the rise of fascism and the enormous toll it has taken on all of mankind. Fascism, which has probably existed for thousands of years, is defined by its extreme form of nationalism, the scapegoating of usually defenseless minorities, and virulent military aggression. It can officially be traced to the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1922. Mussolini rose to power through democratic means, but once attaining power,  made himself dictator for life, and destroyed any semblance of democracy that may have existed in Italy at the time. He also got rid of anyone who might have posed a threat to his political power. He had grand delusions about Italy reclaiming the power and territory of the old Roman Empire. Of course Italy did not have the resources or wherewithal to achieve the grandeur of ancient Rome so Mussolini eventually had to settle for smaller ambitions. In the meantime, a little man with a funny mustache, but an ability to speak in a powerful demagogic style, was taking notes in Germany.

Adolph Hitler made no secret of his admiration or sympathies for for Mussolini’s brand of fascism. Hitler, like Mussolini came to power, largely through the democratic process. But like Mussolini, once in power he eliminated all opposition and became a tyrannical dictator for life. Fascism in Hitler’s Nazi Germany thrived, largely because of the Nazi scapegoating of the small minority of Jews that lived in Germany and throughout Europe at the time. Coupling that with vicious military aggression, and you have what’s fondly known as World War II. I’m assuming that everyone knows the horrors that took place then, so I won’t go into gruesome detail, except to say that 60 million people had to die in Europe alone, before the cancer of fascism was finally expunged. Except it wasn’t eradicated in Spain when Francisco Franco took power after winning the Spanish civil war that Hemingway wrote about. Franco was also a dedicated fascist, but was somehow smart enough to keep Spain out of WWII, despite the pleadings of Hitler and Mussolini to join the Axis powers. As a result, whereas Hitler and Mussolini met death during WWII, Franco died in bed in 1975. Thereafter, democracy finally returned to Spain. (As a side note, when I visited Barcelona during Christmas of 1961, there were still small squads of military troops stationed at busy thoroughfares to assure there would be no uprising against Franco. When I checked into the hotel, they sent my passport to the police for 4 hours to make sure I wasn’t someone sent there to assassinate Franco.This was a full 25 years after Franco became dictator.)

Fascism wasn’t just relegated to Europe during WWII. In the Pacific, Japan’s militaristic brand of  fascism took hold, and a brutal war ensued throughout that region that claimed millions of more lives. Japan’s brutality toward nations it had invaded was every bit as vicious as Nazi brutality in Europe. Japan might have still been ruling large chunks of the Pacific with an iron fist, had they not made the fatal mistake of bombing Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Until then Congress would not authorize the President to enter WWII. After, however, we entered the war on both fronts. Not that a strong dose of fascism didn’t exist in the U.S. For example, the Ku Klux Klan with its extreme hatred and violence toward blacks and Jews, gained enormous strength and had membership in the millions by the 1920s. Then there were large numbers of Nazi sympathizers and Hitler admirers that continually advocated for us not to join the war in Europe on the side of Britain and the Allies. President Roosevelt knew better, and would have brought us into the war sooner, but as I’ve said, his hands were tied by Congress, until the disaster at Pearl Harbor.

Today the tentacles of fascism still slither throughout the landscape, both here and abroad. Psychologically the roots of fascism are based on the strong urge to blame, or scapegoat others for one’s personal failures. Thus, “it’s not my fault that everything I’ve tried to achieve has been disaster. If it wasn’t for all those illegal aliens and foreigners getting all the good jobs, or all the preferences or affirmative actions shown to minorities I’d be a huge success.” Or so the thinking goes. I guess as long as human nature is what it is, the eradication of fascism, once and for all, will be beyond our grasp.

 

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ANIMAL INSTINCTS

Posted on May 28, 2012 by halviv

The way people treat animals on this planet, both large and small, is a strong indicator of the character and humanity of mankind, and thus far the record has been pretty poor, if not disastrous. Man’s relationship to animals should be one of protector and benefactor, but instead it is often one of predator and greedy attacker. As the population of this planet now exceeds 7 billion people, native habitats especially for large animals are significantly shrinking. At the the same time, man still sees profit in killing certain large animals such as elephants for their ivory, seals for their fur, or sharks for their supposed health benefits. And let us not forget the large number of people that still see hunting as a “sport” and will go out and slaughter defenseless animals, just for the the hell of it. The footage taken of Sarah Palin shooting defenseless moose or wolves in Alaska from a helicopter, I think perfectly symbolizes the mindset of these so-called hunters.

In any event, between the disappearing animal habitats due to expanding populations moving into lands that had been set aside for these animals, and due to continued predatory hunting, the populations of large wildlife has been decreasing at an alarming rate. Over the past 50 years, there has been huge decreases in populations of the great apes in both Africa and Asia, as well as elephants, especially in Africa, where much of the lands that elephants lived on is now becoming farming communities. Not only does the room for elephants to roam shrink, but when they wander onto these new farms in search of food they are often shot. Decreasing numbers are also noted among other large mammals such as rhinos and hippos, as well as the large cats. Lions, tigers leopards, cheetah and other cats have experienced such huge losses that they are now considered endangered species. There also has been big losses in marine wildlife, among sharks and whales. We may be among the last generations that can live alongside large animals still in the wild.

There are some groups that are trying mightily to stem the tide of animal extinction in the wild, but thus far they have, at best, achieved a slowing down of the rate of loss. It’s too bad that people don’t have the same concern for wild animals as they do for domestic pets. There is no decrease in the dog and cat populations in this country or elsewhere, as most people do love their pets. And why not? Treat dogs or cats with affection and they will give you back total, unreserved love. Even the most benevolent pet owner can never give back what these small animals give to us. Even if you have had the worst day, if your boss or your spouse yelled at you non-stop, if your investments went south and the stock market plummeted, no matter what the situation, you’re still a hero in your pet’s eyes. They will look at you you with unreserved love and innocence whatever event transpired.

Although there is a big difference in the way dogs and cats respond, such as the old joke that people are masters to their dogs, but servants to their cats, I believe that both undergo a special bonding with their owners. In our younger years we used to own dogs because there was no question that dogs far more openly display affection for their owners. But unless you’re fortunate enough to have a large, fenced-in yard, owning a dog can have its own problems. Like walking a dog on cold, rainy winter days at 6 in the morning or late at night. So as we we got older we switched our pet choices to cats largely because they use litter boxes and thus require no walking. Cats are affectionate too, but in their own unique way and at their own pace. One cat we owned lived for over 18 years and was always a constant joy. But as George Carlin, the comedian once said: “When you decide to acquire a pet, you know it’s going to end badly.”  When our cat died, it was was almost like losing a child. Both my wife and I bawled like babies.

We’ve had our current cat for over 5 years, and like the previous one, she also gives us continued pleasure. She’s grayish-white, with large blue eyes that reflect the epitome of innocence. I often think, however, that it’s extremely sad that people exist in this world that horribly abuse these small creatures. Hence, the existence of the Humane Society, the ASPCA, and countless other animal organizations that seek to to shelter and heal abused animals. Knowing there is no such thing as Hell, I still would like to see the ninth circle of Hell, as described in Dante’s Inferno, reserved for people that abuse defenseless animals. It takes a special kind of evil for that to happen. But as I’ve written before regarding serial killers, evil in some people is like a bottomless pit.

In any event, at least our small domestic pets are not on the endangered species list. However, the same cannot be said for especially the large animals that roam the wilderness areas. I think it’s incumbent on all of us to make what ever effort we can to protect these endangered animals. Even if that effort is merely contributing to the groups that attempt to reverse declining animal populations. Because being a benefactor to wild and domesticated animals makes us more humane as human beings.

 

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Posted on May 24, 2012 by halviv

I like eating at least as much, if not more, than the next guy. Food has been my one constant companion since the day I was born, and I would sort hate the idea of giving up the habit of eating. I also have the type of appetite that is never satisfied. I can no sooner end one meal when I’m anxious to start the next. Of course, health and practicality considerations preclude me from this type of overeating, although I do overindulge from time to time.

I am not proud to admit that we buy a lot of our food at a local Wal-Mart. We go there to meet the high-class clientele the store attracts and for the wonderful ambience. Just kidding, of course, as both those factors are sadly lacking at any Wal-Mart store. The simple fact is that we shop there to save money. I have this thing about paying significantly higher prices for identical items at other food stores. I could afford to shop at other super-markets, but I can’t mentally get over the hurdle of paying a lot more for the identical box of cereal. We also shop at Trader Joe’s where prices are also relatively cheap, especially when compared to say, the upscale Whole Foods markets.

Which brings us to the topic of the foods we eat. When one is young he or she can eat virtually anything with little consequence . A young person can eat tupperware without feeling ill effects. Of course there are always those, even in youth, that have a weight problem, and trying to keep their weight under control is a constant and ongoing battle to almost the day they die. So it was with me. With my prodigious appetite, I constantly fought a mostly losing battle of the bulge. My weight would go up and down continually, the good old yo-yo effect. Then about 3 years ago I made a few changes, and started working out more intensely in the gym, and my weight came down almost 25 pounds, and thus far has stayed off. I won’t go into the myriad of psychological and other reasons for obesity, but for some people it’s a war they can never win.

Which brings us to the health considerations of our food choices. When one ages, his or her food choices start becoming more and more limited. That is, if they desire to stay healthy and maintain a decent quality of life. For example, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, and other medical groups have put out numerous studies that show that cancers grow much more rapidly when fed by sugar intakes. Cancer loves sugar, and cancer cells metabolize sugar intake at 8 times the rate that normal cells do. Everyone, at any one time, has cancer cells in their body according to what these studies show. Usually, the body’s immune system fights off these cancer cells, but the immune system starts to weaken the older one gets. That’s why the leading cause of cancer is not smoking or obesity, it’s getting old. If you live long enough, you have a 50% chance of developing cancer. But as I’ve said, nothing abets the proliferation of cancer cells in the body like sugar, which also is a leading factor in other diseases such as diabetes and gout. Yet Americans love sugar, and the yearly intake of sugar for most people is often enormous. About a year ago, the Wal-Mart I mentioned that we shopped at, redecorated the store. As part of that effort, they expanded the size of the area that contains bakery products while reducing the area that contains fruits and vegetables. Of course, everyone knows we’re not getting enough white flour, sugar and trans-fats into our diets. It’s all those fruits and vegetables that keep screwing everything up.

Which brings us to the topic of the rising costs of health care. When the Democrats finally passed the frankenstein known as Obamacare, one of the predictions made was that new law would help reduce soaring medical costs. What nonsense. Of course medical costs will continue to increase rapidly as the population grows, as people live longer, and as new, highly expensive drugs and therapies are developed. But there is one way to dramatically lower the cost of health care, and that would be to force people to live healthier life-styles. Yes, I said force, similar to the way the Government forces you to pay income taxes. This would include a total ban on smoking, and requirements that people, for the most part, give up refined sugars, refined grains, and saturated and trans-fats. A requirement to eat more seafood and only lean, low-fat meats, and fruits and vegetables. And a requirement for everyone to have a daily and fairly rigorous exercise regimen. But you can already hear the screams and howls of protest if such requirements were foisted off on the populace.

I mean what would the crowd do that likes to chow down on bacon-cheeseburgers with fries, or pepperoni pizza, topped off with a hot-fudge sundae or two. To say nothing of the estimated 24 million Americans that still smoke. (You seem to see most of these smokers in Las Vegas casinos, where they’re puffing away as they keep shoveling more money into the slot machines.) As it is not likely that anyone, or any governing body, will be able to dissuade people away from their dysfunctional life-styles, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. In the meantime, we all pay the price in higher medical bills and higher insurance rates.

 

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Posted on May 21, 2012 by halviv

The common bond between serial killers and terrorists is an overwhelming and compulsive desire to kill innocent and defenseless people. The FBI estimates that at any given time, there’s between one or two dozen serial killers roaming the highways and byways of the United States. A comfy thought, especially if you’re the parent of a child driving cross-country, say, to go off to college or a job or for any other reason. A few years ago a serial killer that had murdered at least  9 victims was caught and asked why he felt compelled to kill so wantonly. He replied with words to the effect that when he walked down a street and encountered other people, his natural thoughts and instincts were to bash in their skulls. He said that he couldn’t imagine not feeling that way. (I have to admit I entertain similar thoughts when I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic that goes on for miles.) Extensive research has been done, especially by the FBI,  on what creates a serial killer, and 3 primary theories have been identified.

The first theory, which is backed up by some supporting evidence, is that when the fetus is in the womb, due to some biological malfunction, its brain is constantly being bathed in abnormally high dosages of serotonin. Hence, when that fetus becomes a person, he cannot derive pleasure or sexual release in ways most people do. Instead he has to turn to the most extreme form of behavior, which usually involves the capture, then the torture and then slaying of helpless victims who are usually women. (I said “he” because almost all serial killers are men preying on women, but every now and then, a female slips into their ranks.) These men usually lead solitary, low-profile lives, and seldom bother taking the cash or other valuables their victims may have on them when abducted. Their payoff is in sexual sadism and murder.

A second known cause is when the serial killer has been terribly abused as a child, both physically and mentally. If, a child has been deeply abused by beatings or rape, or even years of mental degradation, there’s a good chance that you’ll have a serial killer in the making. Years of torment will lead to uncontrollable anger being built up, and often manifests itself early on when the soon to be serial killer starts taking out his wrath on pets and other small animals in the neighborhood. As an adult, not being able to control his pent-up anger, he can only achieve release of his fury by murdering some unsuspecting victim.

The third known cause is when a deep hatred of other peoples religious beliefs or ethnic origins, usually also taught to them from childhood, leads to blindly killing their perceived enemies. This is the mass-murdering type known as the terrorist. Notice how how terrorism fits hand in glove with serial killing. For terrorists, their fanatical religious and ethnic beliefs become a convenient excuse to go on a murderous rampage against all those they consider “unbelievers.” But like the serial killer, the real objective of the terrorist is the joy in killing itself, while religious fanaticism becomes the smokescreen to make it appear that their murdering ways have some sense of legitimacy. Thus the terrorist is just another serial killer, but on a grander scale.

I was thinking about this when I read the news that the “Lockerbie bomber” had finally succumbed to cancer, 33 months after being released from a Scotland prison for the murder of 259 innocent victims. In December 1988, the head of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi  authorized a Libyan terrorist to place a bomb aboard Pan Am flight 103, supposedly because of his hatred of America and Israel. The bomb detonated on December 21, 1988 as the flight entered Scottish airspace, killing all 248 people on the plane and another 11 on the ground in the town of Lockerbie. Gadhafi denied any knowledge of the bombing for years, but eventually admitted to it, and offered monetary compensation to the victim’s families. (Gadhafi was finally caught and killed by his fellow Libyans last  year after 42 years of tyrannical and despotic rule.)

The person who put the bomb on the plane was hunted down and caught by British police, and sent to jail in Scotland for life. But along the way he developed prostate cancer, and Scottish authorities arranged to have him released and sent back to Libya on compassionate grounds. They claimed that because of the cancer, he had only 3 months to live. Seems, however, he wasn’t quite that sick, and he hung on for 33 months instead of 3, before dying yesterday. Scottish authorities were roundly condemned, especially by the victim’s families, for the early release. Many are also convinced that other individuals were involved in this act of terrorism, who obviously will never be identified. In any event another serial-killer just went to his grave.

In the summer of 1972, 40 years ago, 11 Israeli athletes competing in the summer Olympics being held in Germany, were first held hostage, and then murdered by Palestinian “terrorists.” The German police were highly inept in their bungled effort to rescue these innocent athletes. Practically, Israel’s entire history since becoming a state in 1948, has been to deal with a constant barrage of terrorism directed against its people. Thousands have been murdered in so-called acts of terror, and today, there is still continued rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Of course, the mother of all terrorist attacks was 9/11 where almost 3000 innocent victims were murdered. It supposedly occurred because Al-qaeda’s fanatical brand of Islam led them into this killing spree.

Of course, it’s not really terrorism. If you have even fanatical differences with other political or religious beliefs, or ethnic cultures,  there are plenty of nonviolent ways to express your displeasure. Everything from getting up on a soap box to writing about your disagreements or hatreds as the case may be. When one resorts to violence, its not because of seeing the world differently. It’s not because of some desire to advance some misguided political or religious belief. It’s because of the thrill of killing unsuspecting, innocent people. In the end, the “terrorist”  is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill serial killer.

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THE ART OF BEING IRRATIONAL

Posted on May 18, 2012 by halviv

Progressive thinkers often have great difficulty in coming to terms with reasons that people often act against their own self-interests. After-all, if common sense clearly dictates that it’s in a person’s best interests to choose option A, why on earth would they then go ahead and select optionB. Such thinkers often live their lives with such a logical and methodical orderliness, that they fail to understand the role that fear and paranoia plays in a person’s decision-making process. Fear is often a great motivator in how people act and the greater the fear, the greater the likely hood of paranoia, which in turn results in the greater the opportunity for badly made decisions.

I was thinking about this after reading an article the other day about log-cabin Republicans. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, log-cabin Republicans are an organization that consists solely of gay and lesbian men and women devoted to attempting to elect as many Republicans to public office as possible. They claim to have membership consisting of tens of thousands. Now it seems to me that if I were homosexual, the last place I would want to be associated with is the GOP. With the rising tide of evangelicals (a $10 word for religious fanatics) as a force within the Republican Party, and their constant bashing of gay rights and gay marriage, why would any homosexual person want to be part of that. The Party’s platform and nominee has consistently advocated bashing any attempt at gay equality and gay marriage, while the opposing Party’s nominee has always been for gay rights and has recently come out in favor gay marriage.

It would be as if Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s came out in favor of Adolph Hitler because they liked his economic policies, or if blacks in Mississippi tried to join the KKK at a time in history when lynchings of black people where commonplace. But there you have it: the height of irrationality. Acting against one’s self-interests. Although, it’s maybe not the height of irrational behavior. I know a few people that are strongly pro-choice, but will nevertheless vote Republican this fall, even though a Republican president will put an anti-abortion judge on the Supreme Court, thereby enabling the Court to overturn Roe V. Wade, thereby making legal, safe abortions unlawful, and thereby consigning women that want an abortion, once again, to the back alley butchers. Perhaps that’s the height of irrationality. Although, there is also delusional thinking on the part of the bible-thumpers, that out-lawing legal abortion would end it’s practice. Women will still have abortions. They will just have to go underground to get them.

Politicians always seeking more power understand the role that fear and paranoia have in people’s choices, and are often quite adept at manipulating public opinion through such tactics. For example, politicians in both parties often make strong appeals to the senior community, because they know that seniors vote in heavy numbers. I mean with all that time on their hands, what else do seniors have to do but vote. Although seniors tend to be more conservative and profess to desire big reductions in Government spending, their attitude is one of: don’t you dare harm a hair on the head of my Social Security or Medicare benefits. Yes by all means cut spending. Just make sure you cut the other guy’s benefits. If you look at pictures of the crowds at tea party rallies, you’ll notice heavy representation by seniors demanding big reductions in Government expenditures, except those that affect money being spent on them.  Now its true that as one ages, he or she tends to feel more physically and mentally vulnerable. I mean, if you’re heading into your mid-or late seventies or older, and walking bent over with a cane, you’re probably  not going to be eligible for a job on the docks, hauling cargo off incoming ships. With feelings of vulnerability in the seniors community you can bet it’s accompanied by a heavy dosage of fear in their decision-making process.

Politicians understand this fear and act accordingly. They know that the third rail of their political careers would be to advocate reductions in senior benefits, even though those benefits account for a fairly large chunk of the Federal  budget. Not enough people realize that almost 85% of the Federal budget consists of 4 items: Social Security, Medicare, Defense, and interest on the debt. You can’t cut interest on the debt because that would result in defaulting on Government borrowing at a time when 4o cent of every dollar spent is borrowed money. Seniors won’t allow cuts to their Social Security or Medicare. That leaves Defense where spending cuts are possible. But that’s where people’s fear and paranoia kick in. Conservatives are especially fearful that if any meaningful spending cuts are allowed in Defense, we would become highly vulnerable to Chinese expansion, Iran’s aggression, terrorism, etc., etc. In fact, the Republican nominee has promised to increase rather then decrease Defense funding. (Will be interesting to see where he will come up with the money for that little flight of fantasy.)

Hence, a major fear of the populace this year is that we’re running up such huge levels of debt, that we will become like Greece, the economic basket case of Europe. The number one platform of the Republicans nominee is that deep cuts must be made in the body politic. But who will be willing to allow the rationality and sacrifices needed to realize these cuts, versus those that are too afraid of losing their benefits. If the Republicans win the White House and Congress, as is likely, will they be able to make the deep spending cuts necessary, or will the fear and paranoia they have created through their political pandering, then work against them. An interesting conundrum. I know. They will just cut out the few million dollars given to Planned Parenthood, make some cuts in food stamps, (the poor are use to getting the short end of the stick anyway), and everything will be hunky-dory. See how wonderfully easy it is to be irrational.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE POLITICS OF THE ABSURD

Posted on May 10, 2012 by halviv

Have those deliciously obnoxious political TV commercials come to your state yet. You know, the ones that are comprised of maybe 5% or 10% fact, followed by as much as 90-95% fiction. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky ones living in an uncontested state where there is no need for either side to waste resources on commercials bashing the other guy. Political pundits are saying there is at most, 15 states in play for this fall’s election. So if you live in say Utah or Wyoming or the deep South, everyone knows they are going to vote Republican so why bother campaigning there. Conversely, everyone knows that states like New York or California or Maryland will likely go Democratic, so again, no need to spend money campaigning there either. I, however, live in Nevada which is presumed to be up for grabs, so the obnoxious commercials have already begun with each side running TV ads saying their opponent has shipped tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas. These ads are so blatantly dishonest as well as being obnoxious, that it’s hard to believe the voting public falls for them. But since each side is prepared to spend in the neighborhood of a billion dollars each on such ads, I guess people do make their voting decisions based on what they see on TV. I find it ironic that people in the 19th century, when hi-tech was a telegraph and a local newspaper were better informed about political candidates, than people today in the electronic age when all the information they could ever want is at their fingertips. But after all, who has time to spend researching candidates political positions when there are so many other more pressing issues, like the latest Kardashian antics, or who will be the next American Idol.

I have to admit I miss those Republican debates that took place before Romney became the inevitable choice. All those whacky kids up there on the platform, each one trying to prove they were more of a right-wing, looney-tunes, space cadet than the other guy, was highly entertaining. As an aside, one of those looney-tuners, Michele Bachman, just announced that she has become a Swiss citizen. Seems she will hold a dual citizenship with the United States and Switzerland. (Immediately after the announcement, there was a sharp upswing in the Swiss suicide rate as people were found to be throwing themselves off the highest peak in the Swiss Alps. Ms. Bachman was finally prevailed upon to announce that she had no intention of running for office in Switzerland. A huge, collective sigh of relief could be heard throughout Zurich.) In any event, the Republican debates gave the candidates an opportunity to showcase the bottomless pit of their right-wing extremism, and Romney had to describe himself as a “severe extremist” to prove to a doubting GOP constituency that he could sink further into that pit than the others.

Anyway back to the obnoxious, devious and mudslinging commercials. They’re just beginning now, but by September and October they will be flooding the airways (unless you are one of the lucky ones living in one of the 35 states that are not competitive.) Your choices then will be to shut off the TV for good, or at least until after the election, or tape every program ahead of time so you can fast-forward through all those commercials. In any event, I thought that I would give the pros and cons of each of the candidates strengths and weaknesses, and the key issues to consider,  so readers can make up their own minds. Here goes.

An important issue that thus far has gotten very little attention, is the fact that the next President will get to make at least one, and possibly 2 or 3 nominations to the Supreme Court. This means that legal abortion hangs in the balance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is 80 years old and has survived pancreatic cancer, will undoubtably be the first to go. She is strongly pro-choice. We know that Romney’s mouth has written checks that his large, anti-abortion, evangelical base of supporters expect to cash once he becomes President. That means appointing anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court. Bottom line, if Romney is President, Roe V. Wade is overturned, and legalized abortion is history. Obama, of course, would nominate a pro-choice judge.

The economy, of course, or the lousy state it’s in, is ostensibly the dominant issue in the campaign. There is no question that Obama has made some serious mistakes in that regard, and it may cost him re-election. Unemployment which was 10% when he took office, is now down to about 8% which is an improvement but a pretty tepid one. Obama’s initial efforts to aid the economy didn’t work out too well, and his attempt to achieve universal health turned out to be a 2700 page behemoth that everyone seems to hate. It will also likely be overturned by the Supreme Court, sending us back to square one in trying to devise a system where everyone gets decent health care. Then there is the ballooning deficit which is heading toward the 16 trillion dollar neighborhood, although that’s mainly due to the lack of revenues because of the poor economy, rather than increased spending. The problem was that Obama was a rookie, with only 2 years of Senate experience, and he made a lot of rookie mistakes. With 4 years experience under his belt he would probably be a better president in his second term. On the plus side, he got Osama bin Laden and a host of other low-life terrorists,  he saved General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business, he got us out of Iraq and is getting us out, finally, from Afghanistan.

Advocates for Romney would point out that he is a smart businessman, looks presidential and would sharply reduce Government expenditures as well as regulations if elected. The problem is that almost all of those sharp reductions would be in benefits that go to the poor, the elderly and the sick. The rich would not be asked to make any sacrifices, and in fact, would reap huge windfalls under Romney’s proposed tax plans. After cutting programs for the disadvantaged, he would significantly increase military expenditures, although he hasn’t said where he would get the money to do that. Must be from that good old money tree that continues to grow in the Pentagon courtyard. Then there’s the problem that Romney will say just about anything, and flip-flop on every issue he once stood for, in order to get elected. I’ve written about that before, so I won’t go into the gruesome details again. But from abortion, to health care, to gun control, to gay rights, Romney has had a complete reversal of previous positions, now that he’s decided to become a ” severe conservative.”

I could go much deeper into these issues, but if you’re interested, as I’ve said, there’s a ton of information just a few clicks away. If you do intend to vote I would urge everyone to be as informed about the issues as is reasonably possible.

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FOREIGN POLICY FOLLIES

Posted on April 30, 2012 by halviv

The U.S. has been in several wars and other foreign entanglements since its founding in the late 18th century. Some have turned out well and beneficial to our interests while others have had disastrous results. (Think the bombing of Pearl Harbor.) Today, however, we stand on the brink of what could be the most colossal blunder of all time, and that would be letting the terrorist state of Iran develop nuclear weapons, if we fail to act militarily in taking out Iran’s nuclear development plants. That doesn’t appear to be in the cards, however, no matter who is elected president in November. So lets recap a history of our foreign affairs exploits and failures.

Throughout the 19th century the U.S. adopted mostly an isolationist stance when it came to dealing with foreign countries. We were protected on 2 sides by huge bodies of water, which were considered too big for any foreign aggressor to overcome if they considered attacking us. Canada, to the north, was believed to be just like us (and would have been part of us if not for the betrayal of Benedict Arnold) so there was no worry on that front. We did have conflict with Mexico to our south, during which Mexico lost a chunk of their territory to us, and there was a dust up with Spain during which we acquired (and subsequently relinquished) the Philippines, but by and large we managed to stay out of all the messy entanglements Europe was continually involved in. Our only real serious engagement in the 19th century was when we decided to kill each other during the Civil War. Over 600,000 Americans lost their lives in that debacle, which would be equivalent to the loss of over 6 million American lives today.

So we entered the 20th century with pretty much a strong belief in isolationism. All that would have worked out well, except all those messy European entanglements I mentioned above finally burst out into shooting affairs and came to be known as World War I. Our policy was that this was Europe’s problem, and we were determined to remain isolationist and stay out of the war. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in1916 on the slogan: “he kept us out of war.” However, the war soon stalemated as France with England’s support dug huge trenches in Eastern France, and Germany did the same on their side. Both sides kept firing at each other from these trenches killing soldiers by the thousands, while tens of thousands more died in these trenches from cold, hunger or disease. Woodrow Wilson was no sooner re-elected in 1916, then he decided to break the stalemate by sending U.S. troops “over there” to fight for the first time in a European war. It worked and the Allies were successful in defeating Germany. And no sooner had the the troops returned after the war, than much to our subsequent regret, we retreated back into a policy of isolationism.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise to power of of brutal and aggressive dictatorships with a thirst for conquering their parts of the world, such as Hitler”s Nazi regime in Germany, and Tojo’s warrior regime in Japan. There was little doubt early on, that both of these savage dictatorships had a lust for power and military aggression, but, we nevertheless, were determined to remain to remain strictly neutral and isolationist, as if we could some how avoid been dragged into the coming conflicts. President Roosevelt was an internationalist, and did manage to ship large quantities of armaments to England which enabled its survival, but he could not convince an isolationist Congress to declare war on Germany and Japan, even after the outbreak of hostilities started in 1939. It finally took the bombing of Pearl Harbor late in 1941, for us to enter World War II, and even at that we were woefully unprepared. We labored for 2 years, or until 1944, to amass the military strength in manpower and armaments needed to finally start turning back the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific. Millions of additional lives were lost due to our unpreparedness, which was in turn due to our policy of isolationism.

After WWII, isolationism as a foreign policy was thoroughly discredited, as we instituted the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe, an also took the necessary steps to institute democracy in Japan. But soon the pendulum swung completely in the opposite direction, as a huge fear of the Soviet Union and Communist China (our allies inWWII) gripped the nation. As the USSR took over most of Eastern Europe, and the Red Army was triumphant in China, it looked like communism was on the march throughout the world. Then when Russia successfully tested a nuclear bomb, the fear in this country of the spread of communism became hysterical and neurotic. It gave rise to shameful events such as McCarthyism, as people were hauled before Congressional committees and designated as traitors, if they ever showed sympathy for our WWII allies, or ever had communist tendencies. I won’t get into all the horrors of the McCarthy era, but it certainly was one of the more disgraceful episodes in American history. It was a time when anti-communist extremists established the slogan of “lets kill a Commie for Jesus.” All this resulted in the “Cold War” between us and Russia, which was particularly exploited by President Reagan in the 1980s. The Cold War lasted over 40 years or until about 1990 when the USSR collapsed under the burden of its own weight. Experts have estimated that we spent an estimated one trillion dollars in arms that we didn’t have to (more like 2 or 3 trillion in today’s dollars), fighting the Cold War instead of letting the communist regimes collapse on their own.

After the Cold War our foreign policy seemed to be getting back on an even keel, except that we were ignoring the rise of militant Islamic terrorist groups. Again, our unpreparedness in the face of this new form of evil led to the loss of 3,000 lives on 9/11. As I mentioned at the outset, today our main foreign policy threat is the growing power of the terrorist state of Iran, which is feverishly working to develop a nuclear arsenal. Will President Obama, or President Romney (as is more likely), take action to foil Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Or will no military action be taken against Iran, as the French and British failed to take action against Hitler when they could have, before 60 million lives were lost in Europe. If no action is taken what are the odds that Iran will one day hand off a small nuclear device to some terrorist group, who could then plant it in a hotel rome in Tel-Aviv, or Houston, or Atlanta, or New York, or Washington before detonating it. It would kind of turn the world upside down, wouldn’t it.

 

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ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND

Posted on April 23, 2012 by halviv

On Sunday mornings, as is my practice, I like to take about a one-hour stroll through the seniors neighborhood that I live in here in Las Vegas. Yesterday morning it was an especially pleasant walk because the sky was a brilliant azure blue without a single cloud, the bright sun cast a golden hue on the landscape, and the weather was extremely warm for this time of year. In fact, it set a record for April 22, as the temperature climbed to near 100 degrees. My wife had been Easterners all our lives before we moved West in the 1990s, to where”the deer and the antelope play.” Actually I’ve never seen a deer or antelope in Las Vegas, but we do have coyotes and bobcats, and lots of bunnies running around. I guess the rabbits along with fresh water from the golf course, make it an ideal habitat for the coyotes and bobcats to thrive on. Anyway it’s a very pastoral setting, with all homeowners required by the condo commandoes (some refer to them as Nazis) to maintain full and well manicured landscapes, thick with shrubs and trees. It’s also a very quiet setting, as I seldom run into anyone else along these streets. The only break in the quietude is the occasional blaring of sirens from ambulances coming to take another senior to his or her final resting place, where there is always 100% quietude.

Anyway it got me to thinking about how different this pastoral community was from the impoverished neighborhood I grew up in Brooklyn. There, the streets always seemed so grimy and soiled, and the people, ground down by poverty and the stress of having to eke out a living as best they could, rarely had a pleasant word. We lived on the top floor of an apartment building that had a flat roof covered in black tar. In the summers, our apartment absorbed all the heat from that black roof, making it impossible to think about going to sleep before 12-1 in the morning when temperatures would cool down a little. We would sit out on the stoop with our neighbors waiting for a few cool nightly breezes. Air-conditioning was something only the rich were privileged to have. We didn’t have a car, and I commuted into Manhattan to go to college and then later to work, by subway, which was a good 12 block hike from where we lived. Subway trains were always packed and hot, even in the winter, and the walk to the station, through those grimy streets was always a sheer delight, especially in the pouring rain or bitter cold. Heat in the winter was provided by a coal-fired furnace in the basement, but went off from 10 at night until 6 in the morning, while the landlord, who shoveled the coal into the furnace, got his full night’s sleep.

In those days I used to think that people weren’t supposed to live like that. I would retreat into books written by Shakespeare, or Charles Dickens, or Nathaniel Hawthorne, where people were always portrayed with so much more nobility and purpose of life, than existed on those hard-scrabble streets in Brooklyn, and I became envious of not being able to live in those fictitious settings. I came to believe that it was real-life man, as compared to the fictitious nobility I had read about, that polluted the neighborhood I lived in, with dirty air, grimy, embedded filthy streets, foul language, and mean tempers and spirits. Today I live in a cleaner neighborhood, without air and water pollution, and with people usually in a better frame of mind, but I still think about how real-life man continues to pollute our planet and degrade our environment. While there is no air or water pollution in Las vegas, generally because there is no industry here (other than throwing your money away in the casinos), there has been a general ecological degradation throughout the planet.

Global warming has gotten most of the headlines in the last two decades as an environmental spoiler. But global warming is just a small component. It’s caused by change in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere whereby carbon dioxide is becoming more dominant, which in turn, lessens the amount of oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements that have been part of this planet for billions of years. Do global warming deniers think that you can arbitrarily change the Earth’s atmosphere without any adverse consequences. More serious than global warming, however, is the steady degradation of the planet’s oceans and rain forests, which are absolutely essential to sustaining life on this planet. Rain forests are shrinking at a fairly rapid rate as local tribes keep encroaching on rain forest lands, as they clear trees to make room for farming. Native wildlife is more and more in retreat as the lands they’re used to roaming in, slowly disappear. Rain forests absorb a huge amount of CO2, while at the same time putting out a huge amount of oxygen, so, as I’ve said, life just isn’t sustainable without them. Ocean life is also steadily being degraded, with a steady shrinkage of marine life. Today, in the Pacific alone, there are thousands of miles of plastic refuse which is unsinkable and floating on the ocean’s surface. Marine and bird life are often casualties when they mistake this refuse for food, nibble on it, and die. Oceans also absorb huge amounts of CO2, while providing food for much of the world’s population. You can picture what happens to the planet’s welfare when the health of our oceans go down the tubes.

Many other environmental disasters are also on the horizon. I could go on and on. But before man made his appearance on this planet some hundreds of thousands of years ago, (yes there was evolution despite the majority of people in this country that don’t believe in it) the planet’s ecology was in pristine shape. Animals roamed the planet in harmony with their environment. True, if you were an animal, you wouldn’t want to get too close to, say, a dinosaur’s habitat without becoming their lunch, but ecologically the planet was in great shape. Now its been despoiled by real-life man. Fictional man that I used to read about, would never have done such misdeeds.

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POISONING THE WELL

Posted on April 20, 2012 by halviv

Franklin Roosevelt was, and will always be, the only president elected to that office more than twice. He won an unprecedented four terms of office, although he died early in his fourth term, thus turning the presidency over to Harry Truman. To prevent anyone else from having Roosevelt’s seemingly iron grip on the oval office, an amendment was passed in 1947 limiting all future presidents to two terms. But the most interesting race of the four was in 1940 when Roosevelt would make history if elected a third time. His opponent that year was a mostly unknown candidate named Wendell Willkie who represented a small but internationalist and liberal wing of the Republican party (now as extinct as the Dodo bird.) My father, a life-long Democrat,  once told me the only time he was tempted to vote Republican, was for Wendell Willkie in 1940. As highly as he rated Roosevelt, he thought Wilkie was even better. In the end, though, he did vote Democratic.

To set the picture of what life was like in the world 72 years ago, one has to recognize how different, but also similar the times were in comparison to 2012. Storm clouds of war were descending in both Europe and the Pacific, but a strong streak of isolationism still existed in the U.S. Most Republicans, and indeed most Americans felt if we could somehow avoid  becoming entangled in the looming wars with the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan, we could avoid the costs and loss of life that such wars would undoubtably result in. But Willkie, being an internationalist as was Roosevelt, knew that America’s participation in the coming wars was unavoidable. In 1940 we were also just beginning to pull ourselves out of the worst and most destructive Depression in U.S. history. When FDR took office in 1933, the unemployment rate was about 25%. But his New Deal policies helped cut that in half, and he won a landslide re-election in 1936. By 1937, his administration started to cut back on the money the Government was pumping into the economy, causing unemployment to start creeping up again. Thus Willkie ran on a platform of declaring that the New Deal had not solved America’s economic crises, and new leadership was required. Sound familiar to this year’s campaign rhetoric? As with Obama today, there were the Roosevelt haters and bashers, such as famous journalist Westbrook Pegler. Only radio and TV weren’t available to do their bashing and hating, so they had to rely almost solely on newspapers and magazines. In the end, however, they were no match for Roosevelt’s rhetorical and speech-making skills.

Although the economy was still in poor shape in 1940, Willkie”s problem in trying to unseat Roosevelt was a lack of support within his own party. As I stated, most Republicans were isolationist and conservative and couldn’t warm to Willkie’s international and liberal leanings. Despite the poor economy, Roosevelt won the election easily. Even had he been elected, Willkie would not have served out his term, as he died at the young age of 52 in 1944. World War II came crashing down on the U.S. like a ton of bricks when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Of course the war took care of any lingering unemployment problems, as eventually 10 million people were recruited into the military, and the rest were sopped up in in armaments factories. Women who normally stayed home as housewives and mothers, had to go to work in tank and ship factories just to keep up with the war’s demands. With the unemployment problems gone, and with successful prosecution of the war effort, Roosevelt coasted to another victory in 1944, despite cries that he was becoming a dictator.

This year’s election, as in Roosevelt’s time, is marked by a poor economy and runaway Government costs and deficits. But it it also denoted by the venomous behavior of the Obama haters and bashers. However, unlike in FDR’s time, the vilest hate mongering  can use radio and TV as its platform. Thus Rush Limbaugh, 3 weeks before Obama was sworn into office, screamed out the famous line: “I want him to fail.” (So do Al-Qiada and all other terrorist groups around the world.) From then on, Limbaugh’s program of 3 hours per day, 5 days a-week, consists almost purely of venom and vitriol directed against Obama and the Democrats. He claims to have a listenership of 20 million, so his hate-mongering has made him a billionaire or close to it. I don’t blame him as much as the millions of pathetic souls out there, who can’t get through their day without listening to 3 hours of hate radio directed against their president. Of course, there’s about a thousand Rush wannabes in cities across the country spewing out the same type of vitriol. And leave us not forget Fox News on TV that does basically the same. Since the American electorate has been dumbed down by all this propaganda, the well of politics has been thoroughly poisoned, to the extent that nothing can be achieved in Congress or the Office of the President that would in anyway be beneficial to the American public. For example, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, stated very early on, that the Republican’s primary and overriding objective was to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. Not do what’s right for the American people, perish the thought.

Obama’s rival in this year’s election, Mitt Romney, seems like a decent enough guy even if he has all the core values of wallpaper. He has done a total reversal on every major issue since he ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in the 1990s, or became Governor in 2002. But even if he wins the presidency as is likely, and the the GOP wins both houses of Congress, this country will still be be in for a very rough slog. Because if the Republicans don’t elect 60 Senators, and it’s unlikely they will, the Democrats will use the filibuster in the Senate to attempt to thwart a President Romney at every turn, as the GOP did to President Obama.

Yes, we have some very serious problems such as a poor economy, high unemployment, huge deficit spending, etc. But the most serious problem of all, is that the well of the body politic has been so poisoned by hate radio and television, that cooperation within the government to attempt to resolve these problems seems a near impossibility. Congratulations to all hate-mongers out there. Your efforts are apparently paying off.

 

 

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