Random Thoughts

Perspective and petty problems

Yesterday was Not A Fun Day.

It was a really warm day. 96F in the shade.

Just as I got ready to dry my hair after my AM shower, a planned power outage kicked in. No hair dryer. No air conditioning either. Did I  mention that it was 96F? And they planned to cut the power between 8 AM and 4 PM.

Fortunately the power came back on before noon, but long after I’d been doomed to a Really Bad Hair Day and the house was hotter than heck.

As I grumbled about my discomfort, I thought about what I’ve been reading lately, about individuals who lost their homes and their families and everything precious to them, and I felt really small with my whining about petty little problems.

That insight lasted until I couldn’t find Younger Son after school. We’re still new at the whole drop-off, pick-up thing, still trying to figure out how to get around the masses of slowly moving cars, still trying to guage the best spot to meet up. Younger Son was about twenty feet away from my parked car, walking toward me, when he was redirected by the school traffic patrol who refused to let him walk to my car. He was forced to walk away from me, into an underpass leading to another building with which he’s unfamiliar, where I lost sight of him. It took me nearly an hour of walking and driving around to find him.

He had left his cell phone at home. So the simple solution of a call locating him was impossible.

I was Not A Happy Mother when we finally reconnected. Later, after he’d gotten over being sad and I’d gotten over being angry and we’d both cooled off (literally) I reflected on how utterly stupid the whole thing was. I was upset about watching him walk away from me, knowing it would be “hard” to find him. Please. He was as safe as kittens, on a lushly landscaped private school campus with plenty of shade, water fountains, and no one going to be anything but helpful if he approached them. It’s not like he was walking onto a transport train headed to a concentration camp.

Germans deporting Jewish women and children of Miedzyrzec, Poland, to the death camp in Majdanek, May 1943.

The idyllic location where my son and I were separated for a brief hour in August, 2009.

I felt an echo of the cognitive dissonance Rachel Lucas spoke of. My mind during this past week has been on the Holocaust, and the immense pain and suffering it caused. How dare I be so upset, much less worried about a totally trivial event that was, at very worst, simply inconvenient?

Apparently I still hadn’t gotten the memo yet though. Later in the evening Younger Daughter approached me with her new computer, which (at less than a month old) has suddenly begun displaying the Blue Screen Of Death every time she plugs in her Ipod.

It’s only technology. It can be fixed. No lives are at risk in the process. That didn’t mean I was exactly cheerful about spending the bulk of my post-dinner evening trying to figure out what the problem was and how to resolve it. At one point I was reduced to grumbling to Smallest Dog (by then the only sentient creature in the house willing to sit next to me), muttering “This is exactly why yellow legal pads and pencils will always be better than computers.”

I finally solved the problem this morning, by Googling it, reading what several tech geeks on computer sites had to say, then following their advice. Apparently a routine Windows update caused all the aggravation. Deleting it fixed the problem.

Hours wasted, emotions drained, snappishness toward loved ones, all over a stupid electronic gadget.

Sometimes I think we spend far too much time and energy on the wrong things. And I think we were better off before life centered so much on technology. When it centered more on family and less on things.

I am such a slow learner, but I’m trying.

Cognitive dissonance and deliberate remembrance

Two book reviews in a row…what can I say? Summer is winding down and I’m trying to get as much reading done as I can before I have to do a ton of reading for school. It’s different when you have to read a book.

I just finished this rather weighty tome, but it is well worth the time and effort: Why We Watched by Theodore Hamerow.

Hamerow explores with meticulous research “why mass brutalities, accepted as almost understandable, almost predictable while they were occurring, began little by little to be perceived as unspeakable atrocities.” By looking in turn at the attitudes and experiences in both Europe and the Americas during the 1930s and 1940s, Hamerow reveals that Germany was not alone in its attitude toward “The Jewish Question.”

Why read this now? Well, for me, the growing push toward socialism in America has struck a nerve. I want to understand how Germany could go from a republic to a heinous example of dictatorship and ethnic slaughter. It happened, but how could it in a “modern” world? How could reasonably intelligent sophisticated people accept what their government pushed upon them, beginning with socialized medicine and ending with genocide?

I have also recently read This Has Happened: An Italian Family in Auschwitz by Piera Sonnino. Published after her death in 1999, it is a poignant memoir recounting the experience of Sonnino’s Italian Jewish family who perished in the Holocaust.

Coincidentally, Rachel Lucas has finally blogged on her recent trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her first-person experience is stunningly powerful.

…first you have to pass through the most infamous gate in history. It was the most surreal moment of my life so far. There I was, facing this object I’ve seen in a thousand photographs, something that is attached in my mind to pure abject despair and massive human suffering…and it’s surrounded by happy tourists. It was almost like a Disneyland version of hell, just because of all the serene camera-toting tourists. Of which I was one, I know that, but still. It was nothing short of the worst case of cognitive dissonance I think I’ll ever experience.

…I will tell you right now. The entire day was a series of intensely upsetting moments of terrifying and physically sickening clarity, interspersed with tears, laced with disbelief and all surrounded by a general feeling of impotent but genuine strong rage.

Click the link. Read her blog. Follow the links in her blog. You will not come away unmoved. This is not ancient history, and it behooves us to remember.

Reading Julie & Julia

I just finished reading Julie & Julia, chosen in part because I truly enjoy cooking. Unfamiliar with the blog that spawned it but aware of the new movie created from it, I figured I’d like the whole Indiana Jonesish odyssey of the thing; it seemed to me Julie Powell approached her “Project” in much the same way and for somewhat similar life stage reasons I tackled law school. I thought I might find some resonance with an author who was looking for a way to bring focus to her life through a daunting year-long educational experience centering on food.

I still have yet to see the movie, but now I’m not sure I want to; I was so disappointed in the book. Not because Ms. Powell isn’t a good writer. Not because it wasn’t an astounding labor, cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, but because so much of the book was a case study in stereotypes. I know Powell’s a New York liberal. I guess I just never expected that to permeate her writing, with a knee-jerk loathing of “Republicans” echoed repeatedly through the book.

“…Democrat, Libertarian, or Pure Evil…”

“…Since when do Republicans talk like that? I thought that was the one thing to admire about Republicans.”

And then there’s the bit where she drops a leftover dessert on a city sidewalk, then puts the dessert out on a counter of her office’s staff kitchen with the note “Please Enjoy!” only to chortle that she “had to go to the six Democrats in the office and tell them they might want to take a pass since there might be ceramic shards or antifreeze in it.”

I guess she doesn’t think Republicans would enjoy reading her work. Or if they do, she doesn’t care how narrowminded and mindlessly vicious her attitude is toward them.

Weird. And bitter. And shallow. Which sums up the persona she reveals through the book. A perpetually whining woman. A woman who continually bemoans the ticking of her biological clock yet sells her eggs anonymously to pay off a credit card debt. A woman who is afraid to tell her best friend not to commit adultery with a stranger because “I might lose her.” A woman who regrets not sleeping around with more men before she married her husband. A woman who also fantasizes about and then unsuccessfully attempts to seduce a minor actor, not even trying to hide the attempt from her husband.

Powell’s response to every crisis-virtually all of her own making–is to yell profanity. And then yell it louder. Often at her hapless husband.

At least she’s honest about the dreariness of her own narcissitic life.

There is a law out there, if not of thermodynamics then of something equally primary and inescapable, that explains why everything from instant messaging to fabulous sex to aspic can in the end be defined as an illustration of the futility of existence. And it really, really sucks.

Despite the fact that she managed to create a successful blog, spin it into a successful book deal, and then option it into a major motion picture, I do not believe Ms. Powell is capable of being happy with her success. She does not seem capable of happiness at all; to her “joy” is a naive concept to be disdained even while being desperately sought.

I suppose the point of the book is that the author believes that many people–certainly most of the people described in the book as her friends–are just like Powell herself. Working at jobs they hate, drinking far too much, grasping for some kind of pleasure in life through sex and food, because in the end that’s all there is for them. Transitory pleasure, lasting only as long as the act itself.

That’s probably why buldozing her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking like it was some sort of nonstop endurance test appealed to Powell. Intricate recipes requiring endless hours of prep, keeping her focused on the physical acts of cooking and eating day after day for a solid year.

Thing is, when the year ends and all the recipes are made, what’s left to do? Besides clean up an apartment whose level of filth put me off eating entirely. I can imagine maggots in a filthy horse stall, been there, seen and dealt with that, but maggots underneath washed dishes draining on a kitchen countertop? I’d like to think Powell made that part up, but sadly, much like her hatred of “Republicans,” it is undoubtedly all too much a disgustingly real part of her life.

Given that Powell is as snide about religion as she is about Republicans, undoubtedly Catholic Pundit’s review of the book and movie would garner only an all too typical F-you. I found it particularly apt though.

…the richness of Julia Child’s life experience, relationships, and accomplishments (especially in Paris) contrasts sharply with the poverty of blogger Julie Powell’s life, friendships, and ambitions in Queens and Manhattan.

..I have to agree with Julia Chld’s reaction to the blog: she said it was a stunt and that the writer was shallow and wasn’t a serious cook.

One thing that is patently absurd is that…Powell set herself a year’s deadline for cooking all the recipes and then wailed that if she missed it she would have wasted a year. Huh? There was nothing to lose if she missed the deadline, nothing at all. It was inspiring to me that she got a book contract and a movie out of her blog, but was what she wrote actually worth all that?

From a purely materialistic standpoint, sure it was. It got Julie Powell out of a cubicle job, and undoubtedly into a better home than the wretched dive she was living in during the Julie/Julia Project. Beyond the materialistic though, it was worthless. But then focusing on anything beyond her own needs is not what Powell (or her approach to things culinary for that matter) is about.

For what it’s worth, I can understand why Julia Child was not enchanted with Julie Powell’s project. I don’t blame her. Russ Parsons has a first-hand explanation, and it makes me like Julia Child all the more.

While I don’t think Julia was at all put off by Julie Powell’s character’s constant drinking and swearing, I do think her constant complaining was part of what Julia perceived as a lack of seriousness…

Julia Child was part of the generation that had seen Depression and war. She had known bad times, and she believed that the only way to meet them was head-on. You picked yourself up, dusted yourself off and got on your way….I don’t think she could begin to know what to think about the blogging generation, where a beef stew can result in 800 words of anguish.

Come to think of it — just pipe-dreaming here — wouldn’t it be great if in addition to absorbing Julia’s love of food and zest for life, a few moviegoers picked up on a little of that character as well?

I doubt two hours in a cinema is enough to affect anyone’s character for the better. 365 days with Mastering the Art of Cooking apparently won’t do it either.

God’s partner in matters of life and death

This morning I took Youngest Son to his new middle school for the first time. Dropped him off, watched him walk confidently away. The sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky (it’s SoCal and this is normal August weather). I was feeling pretty good about the day.

I got home, checked my email and found that I’d sold another of Youngest Daughter’s last semester textbooks on half.com. Wonderful system, half.com; I’ve saved literally hundreds of dollars each semester in textbook costs and resold most of the books I’ve bought. The day was really looking good.

Then I read this:

In a morning conference call with about 1000 rabbis from across the nation, Obama asked for aid: “I am going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform,” the President told the group, according to Rabbi Jack Moline, who tweeted his way through the phoner.

“We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” Obama went on to say, according to Moline’s real-time stream.

Well there went my happy morning. On a certain level the arrogance of Obama’s statement engenders cynical laughter. So, if he’s “God’s partner in matters of life and death,” did God have a vote when it came to Obama’s support of Planned Parenthood, and his refusal to vote against partial birth abortion? Just wondering.

God’s partner in matters of life and death…

Far more than laughter though, Obama’s declaration of partnership with God in “matters of life and death” makes me feel rather ill. That deep-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach something-is-horribly-wrong-here sort of ill. There is no end to the man’s profound arrogance, no limit to the power he presumes, even to take on equality with God in “matters of life and death.” He’s not Jesus Christ, he thinks he’s more powerful than Jesus Christ. Christ himself “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” Servanthood eludes this particular public servant though, and Obama calls himself God’s own partner in determining mortality.

At least this clarifies one persistent question about Obamacare: Obama thinks matters of life and death ought to be in the hands of the government. And that speaks volumes about the murky mystery that is his health care reform plan.

For further consideration:

Victor Davis Hansen explains the rather creepy and sudden invocation of religion in the health care debate (H/T The Anchoress).

Neo-Neocon provides an eloquent and thorough examination of the problem with health care reform:

These are some of the very basic problems with any health care reform bill:

(1) Good health care is extremely expensive, and cutting costs will always mean denial of benefits. And even if the rhetoric says that only the unnecessary fat will be cut, medicine is not a good enough science that we can tell in advance what’s a necessary test or procedure and what is not.

(2) People logically assume that insuring everyone will have to cost more money, and they also know that there’s no magic way to get that money. People are also aware that government estimates of the cost of programs are usually underestimates, sometimes by a large factor.

(3) People are especially wary of government control over this particular aspect of their lives because it is so personal and so vital at the same time.

(4) Government-run enterprises are generally distrusted, and considered inefficient and intrusive. People know that from past and present experience.

(5) In this country there is still a widely-held philosophical strain of belief in personal initiative and responsibility rather than nanny-statism. This is in contrast to the belief system of European populations, and so it’s no surprise that European governments have encountered far less resistance to government involvement in health care than is found in this country.

Therefore it’s no surprise that the US has failed to pass universal health care so far, and especially a public option. And it’s also no surprise that there’s been a great deal lot of opposition to Obamacare, since the basic problems presented by the five points above have been compounded by the fact that the rhetoric of those pushing the bill has been entirely unconvincing in its attempts at reassurance.

And Richard Bean sums up the underlying problem with Obama’s entire approach to health care:

This fantasy–that the government will take away all our worries and pay for everything–is the result of years of the entitlement mentality that is sponsored by liberalism. It takes only a few glances at history to see where socialism leads. The shiny allure of handing over your life to be paid for by others has never led a society to greatness or goodness. It has led to a decay in morality, productivity, responsibility, and most importantly a decay in freedom.

Scottish values

There are many reasons why Scotland never has been and never will be a world power. Why it was rolled over by England. Why it–despite persistent calls for Scottish independence–is of no substantive worth in terms of global politics.

This is one big reason:

The release from prison Thursday of the only person ever convicted in the 1988 bombing that killed 270 people aboard a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland angered and outraged victims’ relatives, who said they were left feeling wronged again.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released Thursday after serving eight years of a life sentence in a Scottish prison. Scottish officials said the former Libyan intelligence officer’s prostate cancer was advancing and that they were bound by Scottish values to release him. He was recently given only months to live.

“Scottish values?” What the heck would those be, I wonder. Apparently making sure that a mass murderer has a comfortable death at home is “Scottish values.” Apparently “Scottish values” come down firmly on the side of a convicted felon who gave no comfort nor mercy to 270 innocent travelers. Apparently Scottish values include trampling on the law that demanded a life sentence for the murderer, figuring that 8 years served was enough. That would be about ten and a half days served for each murdered passenger.

Cohen and other relatives said they believe he was released so world leaders could appease Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi because access to his nation’s oil is so important….The Times of London reported that al-Megrahi was to return to Libya in Gadhafi’s jet — something else the victims’ families saw as an affront.

Gadhafi will be visiting New York in September, where he will address the UN immediately after Obama. We can look forward to the photo op of the two men smiling and shaking hands like old friends. Nobody is as cordial to dictators and thugs as the current US President.

Obama and good buddy Hugo Chavez

“Twenty years later, this is the last sad chapter where government leaders have no moral backbone,” said Bert Ammerman of River Vale, whose brother Tom was killed on the flight.

Certainly Scottish leaders have no moral backbone. I suppose in that way they’re no different than any other politicians.

Obama was bold enough to call al-Megrahi’s release “a mistake.” Mr. President, putting a tablespoon rather than a teaspoon of salt in the stew is a “mistake.” Letting a convicted murderer go scot-free (pun totally intended) is a disgusting travesty of justice.

In other news…

The MSM is determined to brush off concerns about Obamacare. Gateway Pundit offers startling insight into the mentality behind end of life care and the Obama health care plan. When they say “You don’t need to worry,” that’s when you ought to really start worrying.

The creator of the Obama Joker posters is 2009′s answer to Cool Hand Luke. H/T Brutally Honest.

And this ought to be mandatory reading for anyone even remotely curious about the whole Cash for Clunkers program. H/T Flopping Aces.

No cash yet for clunkers

Apparently all is not rainbows and unicorns with the Cash for Clunkers program.

…the government has received applications for about 412,000 rebates totaling $1.7 billion. But so far, the feds have approved only a fraction of those, leaving dealers furious.

The Transportation Department won’t say exactly what the rejection rate is, but in an Automotive News survey, some dealers said up to 80 percent of their rebate applications had been rejected. Some dealers are waiting for payments totaling as much as $200,000, the survey found. About 13 percent of dealers said they’ve suspended clunker deals because of red tape and concern about getting paid by the government.

I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

If the government can’t handle running a relatively simple buyback program, involving a very small percentage of the total US population, however will they manage health care covering every single US citizen?

The mind reels.

My dead grandma, and the everpresent O

Welcome to Build a Straw Man Argument 101. At the lectern today is Professor Obama.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Now, it’s personal. President Barack Obama invoked his own anguish over the death of a loved one as he challenged the debunked notion that Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care would include “death panels.” “I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love, who’s aging, deteriorate and have to struggle with that,” an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with “the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma.”

My father died of cancer too. It was a painful, heartwrenching experience to watch him “deterorite” as well, Mr. President. Nice appeal to pity though. And your point is…?

For what it’s worth, I don’t think–I doubt anyone does–that Obama ran for public office in order to off granny. I think he did it because his ego compelled him to do it. The same reason he has his own special logo to slap on everything he pushes; the Presidential seal used by so many other ordinary men before him just isn’t enough. I can’t recall any other politician continuing to use a campaign logo after they’d taken office, much less a sitting president. Maybe this is just part of all that “change.”

I know that Rush Limbaugh made the comparision, but I could not figure out what the caduceus had to do with the Third Reich, until I went looking. It IS an unfortunate image to parallel, but hey, it looks like what it looks like.

The caduceus, a symbol typically used in North America to represent medicine:

The Reichsadler, a symbol of Nazi Germany (throughout Europe stone versions of these with the swastika chiseled away still remain on buildings):

How Obama chooses to brand his health care plan:

Perhaps Obama ought to ditch the O marketing graphic already, ’cause it is not helping. He surely does have a penchant for altering seals that really ought to be left alone. You’d think he would have learned back in Chicago in ’08.

The reason I’m harping on visual images, and the ego that underlies them, is that this man’s ego matters. It matters a lot. It is the impelling force behind his actions (ego drives every one of us to some extent). Balanced by wisdom, a healthy ego can make for good leadership.

I’m waiting for evidence of wisdom, because thus far it has been sadly wanting. Neo-neocon presents a starkly revealing illustration of the lack of wisdom inherent in Obama presuming to lecture on health care reform:

…in thinking about Obama and the amputation remarks, there’s a great deal more that’s troubling in what he said. His statement was part of a tendency of his to speak out authoritatively on matters about which he knows nothing or almost nothing.

One of the most off-putting things about Obama is his arrogance. And it’s not just a personal arrogance, it’s an intellectual arrogance as well. The most dangerous ignorance is the ignorance of a person who doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t know. And it’s even more dangerous when someone who fits that description—Barack Obama—is in a position of great power and filled with the righteousness of his cause, as well as the ruthlessness of the true believer.

…It’s clear that Obama’s statement about diabetic care is riddled with difficulties, some of them obvious and some of them only emerging after deeper reflection. Are Obama’s critical thinking skills really that poor? Is his judgment that bad? Is his grasp of these really rather elementary concepts that weak? Or is it that he just cannot stop lying to the American people in order to attempt to reach his health care reform goals?

I think that the answer is “Yes” to all of the above. I also think this is becoming clearer with each month the man is in office. It is going to be a long four years indeed.