The Minds of Voters

Listening to NPR today, I heard  rural voters being interviewed. Apparently, Mr. Romney leads President Obama by substantial margins among polls of  rural voters. Mr. Obama won Wisconsin and several other states in 2008 by holding his own among voters in the rural areas. So this is not good news for Mr. Obama.

One man said Mr. Romney was a businessman, so he would be able to get businessmen investing in America again.

Apparently, this man had been listening to Mr. Romney say that once elected, businessmen would be likely to invest again, simply because he is not Mr. Obama, and  optimism would reign once more. And that is all that is really needed to get the economy back on track. Paul Krugman, bless him, noted this is exactly the same plan George W. Bush had for the American economy. But the gentleman from Wisconsin does not, apparently, read Mr. Krugman's column in the New York Times.

A woman said she had voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 because she hoped he would help the economy, but now, in 2012, the economy in her town was no better and so she said she could not vote for Mr. Obama again.

Of course, true to the NPR tradition of simply sampling, and not challenging, the man with the microphone did not ask her: Do you blame Mr. Obama for the lackluster economy?  Do you remember anything about the last 4 years? Do the words, "Financial meltdown," or "Mortgage backed securities" or "Glass Steagal" or "deregulation" sound familiar?  Do you read newspapers? Do you read?

No, that was not the interviewer, that was me snarling at the radio.

Or there is one of the ladies in my office,  who had not heard about Mr. Ryan's plans to kill Medicare, or Mr. Guinta's remark that he not only wanted to kill Social Security and "let individual enterprise lead the way," he wanted to erase all memory of Social Security so his children would never even hear that name. My coworker said, "Well, I'm not political" 
But she votes.

They walk among us, these people. 
Sometimes, I feel like that guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, who is walking down the street among all these apparently normal people who are actually only facsimilies of normal people, but inside, are nothing like what you and me.  Some may be normal people, but just as likely, they are body snatched, looking normal, but inside, not.

My question is:  What, if anything, can be done to snatch our fellow citizens back?

Globalization, Trade, Mixing

Here is an example of what the citizens of New Hampshire might learn from their neighbors in Maine. This is a street sign.  This technology allows for travel, people from outside the immediate vicinity to find their way to and through your home town.

I am now sitting in Quebec City, where I am listening to speakers who have come from Italy, Russia, China, South America, Scotland, France, Germany...you get the idea. And each of these folks are able to bring something new and something shared to the conversation--in this case of emerging understanding in the world of thyroid disease.

Displayed before me are the benefits of cross fertilization.  

It works in agriculture and it works in human culture. 

Once, attending a Bar Mitzvah of the child of a friend, I was subjected to the rantings of a rabbi whose message was that the "New Holocaust" was not contained in concentration camps but in intermarriage of Jewish boys and girls to Non Jewish boys and girls and as a result the disappearance of the "Jewish people" is on the horizon, through dilution of the gene pool and the loss of Jewish traditions in homes where Christmas trees might stand in the same rooms as menorahs.  

That this rabbi could not see the essentially racist nature of his remarks stunned me.  It made me think of my own secretary, a woman, raised in West Virginia, who though very bright, never graduated high school and she was outraged by the kids who worked at the McDonald's near her house, whose English was poor. She was fearful, if Spanish and Chinese were spoken in her community, she might be displaced and she might lose her status as a member of a favored group, the group of those who speak English.

Here in Quebec City, the Quebec quois  are very fond of French, but nobody seems threatened by the English spoken by the paying tourists.

Is it possible that the world would be a better place if we had more "interbreeding" and  exchange between people from different backgrounds, rather than digging in an fearing the exposure to new people and the new ideas they bring?

That Nasty 47%

Is this a great country? Or What?

I mean, where else on earth are the rich and successful the resentfully successful?

In most countries, it's the poor, the downtrodden, the dispossessed who burn with resentment against the winners, the haves, those to whom much is given.

Here, in the U.S. of A, it is the rich who burn with resentment against the poor!

Why, there is genius in that.

Just today, on the radio, I heard Mr. Romney, who paid nearly nothing (13%) in income taxes lambaste those who pay nothing at all in income taxes (retirees, active duty soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, people who make less than $20,000 a year) for not paying their fair share in income taxes. 

Never mind these non income tax paying free loaders, these people who have the gall to feel victimize, are paying payroll taxes, social security tax, Medicare tax, state taxes in sales, property, gas, and poll taxes.  

They are unworthy, and they are undeserving of whatever government programs they have been paying into all these years. They have a nerve,  to have a sense of entitlement.

That's what Mr. Romney is fighting for, a country where nobody feels entitled to anything. As my high school history teacher, Mrs. von Doenhoefer, used to say, "The only right you have in this life, is the right to starve."

Of course, I tried to object and pointed out that the whole concept of a "right" is a mental construct. The lion who meets you on the savanna recognizes no rights. It is only other people who grant you a right, like the right to not be eaten or murdered. 

It's the social contract thing. And Jefferson, with his inalienable rights, he certainly stirred up a can of worms. 

What, exactly, does "inalienable" mean?

Anyway, I'm grateful to Mr. Romney for clarifying things for me.
Now I know who to loathe.

Street Sign Perversity in New Hampshire

First, let us get one thing straight:  living in New Hampshire is the culmination of a life long dream in my particular case. 

Brought to Lake Winnipesaukee at age 8, I was stunned by the air in New Hampshire. You could breath it and not struggle. We had left August in Washington, D.C., where the air, if you have ever been there in August, is and was close to unbreathable. Ninety five degree days and ninety degree nights with humidity in the same range, it left you gasping and desperate. In those days, it took two days to drive by Studebaker to New Hampshire. 

When we arrived, nothing was at all like the sultry south land, not the air, nor the accents of the people, nor the trees. New Hamsphire had these trees called birches, which had white trunks, sprinkled in clumps,"stands of birches"  among deep, dark pine forests.  The lake water was uncontaminated by oil or gasoline--in those days no motorized vessels were allowed on the lake--except for the Mount Washington tour boat. You could look down twenty feet to the bottom of the lake.  We drove into Laconia for blueberry muffins, and the blueberries were local.  I told my friends back in Washington the nights were so cool you had to wear a jacket, and of course, they did not believe me. I was spinning some Shangra-la tale and they knew no place like that could exist.

I told my parents I was moving to New Hampshire when I grew up, and they smiled indulgently and said, "You'd never last a winter."

So, now, in my crotchety old age, I'm back.

And I'm still in love with the place.

But there's this thing, a local perversity, about street signs.

 It's a state trait which extends from the north country to the sea coast: They simply do not believe in street signs, not even in tourist areas like the sea coast, where you know there are lots of people who have no idea what street they are driving down.

I ask my neighbors about this curious aversion to the placement of street signs, which  strikes me as a sort of basic courtesy to those who were not born and raised in Hampton, and I get blank looks, shrugs and utter lack of interest. 

I prod and probe. I accuse my neighbors of harboring some deep seated passive aggressiveness. I describe riding my bicycle down whatever road it is which comes off Route One between the Mobil station and the MacDonalds and it passes across Mill Road (I happen to know it is Mill Road, no thanks to any sign) , and continues down to an intersection everyone calls "Five Corners" but no road sign for this road. Here you have a major intersection with a flashing yellow light and a little wooden shelter if you are waiting for a bus. But no street signs for any of the five cross roads. Actually, there is a sign, "Little River" but it is placed at such an indifferent angle you cannot tell to which of the five intersecting roads it refers.   

Or there that intersection you come to having taking Cusack Road from Route 1 A (unmarked)  as it runs into some new, mystery road and there's a little triangular park maintained by civic minded gardener, but again, no street signs. It's enough of a spot of civic pride somebody has actually planted azaleas, but not enough to warrant a sign of any sort.

Of course, it's not entirely accurate to say there are absolutely no street signs. There are obviously a few street signs, just enough to give the non native a little hope, just enough to make you sound like a complete idiot trying to describe where you were or hoped to be by saying, well, I saw a street sign saying Ancient or Robie or Ann's Place  but these are almost always cross streets. You get on a main road and forget it. No sign. Or maybe, there's a sign for Mill Road where it finally terminates in Winnacunet, and Woodland Road is occasionally, tantalizingly, marked, just enough to get your hopes up that they really do know about street signs in New Hampshire, but then, nothing. You are riding down some long road from Hampton toward Rye and you can see cross streets occasionally marked, but what road is it which is carrying you north? 

It is as if the townspeople are saying, "Well, we'll help you with East and West, but if you don't know where you are going north/south, well then, you don't belong here."

I know I don't belong here: That's why I need street signs!

It's not like I'm asking the taxpayers to provide public garbage cans. I know about garbage cans: They require people to collect trash from them, and that means you have to pay people to do this work, and that means taxes, and taxes are something we don't want to even think about in Hampton, New Hampshire.  So, okay, just throw the trash on the ground and hope the Cub Scouts need some merit badges and hold a clean up day. I get the lack of trash cans.  But, really, how much could street signs cost?

Street signs are low maintenance. Even the initial expenditure must be pretty paltry. And the Cub Scouts might volunteer to put them up, if you give them a street sign merit badge.  

Street signs have all sorts of virtues: Repair men who were not born in Hampton can find your house.  Tourists do not have to turn around in your driveway.  New Yorkers do not have to stop their cars in the middle of the road, creeping along as you are walking your dog, trying find out what state they have got lost in. 

In some states people actually take pride in street signs: They have different and distinctive colors for different towns.  They even paint fire hydrants with faces and uniforms like Nutcracker soldiers in Rhode Island. It's fun. It's community. It's civic pride. 

There is a certain civilizing thrill in naming things, like roads. It can be efficient. If you are trying to give directions you can simply say, "Take Mill Road to South Road and take a left," rather than, "Take that road which you cross where there's a 4 way stop sign, not far from the doggy day care, near that big, burnt out oak tree and go until you see the sign for "roto-tilling" and go past the house with the turret and the sign on the lawn that says, "Save the Middle class." 

It is something you can do for other people. Really, New Hampshire, try that idea on--do something for someone you do not know, who was not born in your town and did not go to your church or your high school. Put up a street sign. You'll see. You'll like yourself better in the morning. 

Michael Lewis, Terry Gross, President Obama

Okay, stop reading this and go on line to NPR and click on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and click on the Michael Lewis interview about his months shadowing President Obama. Then come back.

So, okay, you're back now.
Did you have the same feeling I got, hearing the details of the time Lewis spent with Obama, this is a guy you know?  He's the sort of guy you knew in college. He will never be a professional basketball player, but if he could have been, he would have preferred that to being President. He knew himself and his own abilities well enough to know he would be successful as President but not in pro basketball.

He is intensely competitive, but he "stays within himself," i.e., he does not try to do things he is not likely to succeed in doing. 

He understands what most Washington people learn quickly, that the blowhards like Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell et al who call him a socialist, or a racist,  or a closet Muslim or foreign born  Kenyan or whatever  the charge de jouris, they are not describing  him but themselves. 
He is not hurt by criticisms which pertain to a fantasized Obama rather than the real Obama.

He took a long time to realize that Mitch McConnell had no intention of cooperating with him on anything, that if Obama said black, McConnell would say white and that was his only agenda. When he finally saw the game, Obama thought, well, then McConnell will pay the price of looking obstructionist, but no, back in Kentucky, McConnell was celebrated.

I'm going to run right out and buy Vanity Fair and read Lewis's article.

It struck me that Lewis observed Obama is really a writer, at heart. He stands back and observes, for which he's been accused of being "aloof." 

And it strikes me that sometimes this nation gets a President who is better, far better, than we deserve.  It was that way with Lincoln. 

And that's something which on a certain level makes me very uneasy.  One of the things Lewis talks about is how strange Air Force One is. It has special bay doors which are meant to be big enough to allow for the loading of the President's coffin.  

It is an eerie and sobering reminder of what this man faces every day.
I'm old enough to remember Kennedy.
 And I grew up in the South.
There are haters out there. 
Let's celebrate him while we have him.

Proper Dog Car Riding Etiquette

Mad Dog has felt the pressure from certain quarters, including the estimable blogger, Maud, to address the critical issue of proper technique for transportation of dogs as relates to automobiles.

This particular dog uses this technique at bars and brew pubs around Portsmouth. He is standing in a crate, which is hidden behind the back seat, inside the car and when the car is in motion he lies down to enjoy the ride.

Note the roof of the car is above the dog, not below him. 

--Cave Canem

Unwavering

Mr. Tugboat, canvassing a voter on Plaice Cove Beach, Hampton

Last night, on The News Hour , Ruth Marcus, playing the role of the liberal voice opposite David Brooks, said "I know this is supposed to be a civil discussion, on this show, but really, what Mitt Romney did with the news of the killing of our ambassador was--there is simply no other way to put it--disgraceful."   

Then she noted that for the first time in many elections, the percentage  of "undecided" voters is in the teens. Usually, two months before a presidential election, it's 30-40%. 

Much pondering ensued, about why people have already made up their minds, if this poll accurately assesses the public mind. No firm conclusions were drawn.

I hope this reflects a widespread awareness that  Romney/Ryan would kill Medicare first and then, likely, Social Security.  But,  if the ladies in my office are any barometer, this is not true. Only one of the nine ladies I work with had any idea Romney/Ryan had ever said anything about Medicare. 

I do know certain voters make up their minds over issues which do not capture the spot light. Take the citizen pictured above, who has been unwavering in his opposition to Mr. Romney ever since his consciousness was raised a year ago by Gail Collins,  about an incident he considered revelatory of Mr. Romney's character, concerning a certainly family vacation and a roof rack.  I have pointed out this incident was entirely consistent with the oft expressed Republican conviction there is simply not enough room in the life boat, not enough room on the wagon train, for everyone and we have to pick and choose, make hard decisions about who we will favor in this life.  And, after all, the dog was not thrown under the wheels, or left behind at a gas station. He was given an opportunity, for Pete's sake.
Unimpressed by this line of reasoning, the pictured Hampton citizen,  is also pretty upset about the New Hampshire voter ID law, which likely will disenfranchise him.  Only certain classes of dogs are eligible for  a government issued ID--working dogs who accompany patients, usually blind patients, to their doctors' appointments.  

No poll has been taken of these working dogs with respect to party affiliation, but I suspect they are mostly Republicans, because some of the most ardent Republicans, who are most indignant about government control of our lives,  have been sucking on the government teat for years--they tend to be ex soldiers, who often had 20 years in the service, who got out and worked for the state department of roads, then the VA, then got a job with a factory that made parts for airplanes on a Defense Department contract, and then they worked for the Portsmouth shipyard before they retired on a Federal government pension we could all envy, especially when supplemented by Social Security.

But they built their lives and their fortunes and their financial security, all by themselves. And don't try to tell them the government had any hand in it.