This Too, Shall Pass

 When Lincoln reflected on the state of the nation in 1859, the bloody internecine warfare in Kansas and Nebraska over slavery, the outbreaks of violence in the chambers of Congress itself, he said,  "This to shall pass." and he added, "How consoling in our depths of affliction." Of course, there were more travails to come. But he was right: Eventually, the nation rode out the dark times.

Should Romney and the Republicans prevail tomorrow, despite our best efforts to deny them, we can remember this.

There have been some odious Republican Presidents, and some odious Republican presidencies, but even in them, some good things happened.  As sleazy as Warren G. Harding was, he was one of the first presidents in the 20th century to speak out, at least mildly, for improving the lot and rights of African Americans. Nixon tried to institute extensions of health care coverage. 

We cannot know what Romney will do--which is a very good reason to vote against him. He simply tells each audience whatever he thinks they want to hear.  He is a man for whom truth is always mutable,  and he can convince himself the only thing that really matters in this world is what happens to him. In this, he is a classic sociopath, without any real capacity for genuine sympathy or connection with other people.  In that sense, Gail Collins got it right when she encapsulated her concept of Romney the man, as the guy to lashed his dog to the top of the car--it worked for Mr. Romney, if not for the dog.

He has played people for fools his whole life, and made a fortune doing it. We'll see if he can play enough people for fools tomorrow.

The Redskin Rule: Intimations of Defeat

"Redskins" 11/4/12 uniforms: 1937 Throwback Uniform

Real Redskins Uniforms

Bone Fide Redskins in Uniform

The Redskin Rule, as anyone who grew up in the Washington, DC area knows, or as anyone who follows sports knows, has held true since 1937, the year the Redskins moved to Washington, DC. The rule states that if the Redskins win their last home game the Sunday before the Presidential election, the President who is the incumbent  (or the candidate of the party of the incumbent) will win the election; if the Redskins lose, the incumbent President will lose.
Since 1937, 18 games have been played and only once (Bush vs Kerry 2004) has the rule failed to predict the outcome of the election.
So, if you believe in inexplicable correlations, Mr. Obama can start packing his bags.
Personally, I am superstitious. 
On the other hand, one might ask, did the Bush vs Kerry (2004) outcome establish a new norm? 
The rule worked, once again,  for the 2008 election.
One might say, as Governor Cuomo did, we are now seeing 100 year storms every other year.  The exceptional case in 2004 was followed by a normal year in 2008, so we might be due again.
Or, one might argue, the Redskins did not play this Sunday. Look at the uniforms. Are those real  Redskins? Everyone knows the uniform is the team; it is the brand. Just ask the owners when they suited up replacement players in authentic uniforms during the players strike and the stadiums were packed. People cheered for the guys on the fields running around in the uniforms which were the franchise uniforms. They carried the colors.

So, while Mad Dog quakes and is downhearted, learning of today's Redskin outcome,  he will still wait on line for hours on Tuesday to sail against Fate. If it is written, it is written. But as Lawrence of Arabia (or Peter O'Toole) said so eloquently, "Nothing is written." 

The Tangled Woof of Reality

Benjamin Franklin was a man, who, in his time would have severely disappointed most of his countrymen had they known more about him.  He was a first rate intellect, a gifted politician, a man who questioned and experimented, who discovered the electrical nature of lightning, an inventor of practical things like spectacles. But he was also an unfaithful husband, who enjoyed his mistresses while serving as a diplomatic envoy to France, and his womanizing would have scandalized 18th century America. D.H. Lawrence, looking over Franklin's public endorsement of prevailing American Puritanism, while practicing the libertine life in Paris, thought Franklin a moral reprobate for his hypocrisy, not for his behavior, but for his duplicity.

Lincoln, the greatest of our Presidents by several leagues, was a man of his times and of his place. He signed the order hanging Indians in the Midwest. He shared the view that Negroes were likely not the intellectual equal of whites, and he suggested that the most intelligent Negroes might, eventually, be allowed to vote. When the Great Emancipator issued the Emancipation Proclamation he said, "If I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do it.  If I could save the union by freeing some and leaving others in bondage, I would do that."  In the end, he took the third choice: He freed slaves only in states currently in rebellion against the federal government. So slaves in Maryland and other border states which remained "loyal" were not freed.  But he also said, when looking back over his tenure, summarizing during his second inaugural address, the war had been caused in some way by the existence of slaves in the South. Everyone wanted to deny it, he said, everyone wanted to think otherwise, to think some solution short of complete abolition was possible, but it was not possible, and so the war came.  Thinking back on all the carnage, Lincoln, not a man inclined to embrace organized religion, still thought in mystical terms postulating the war may have been God's price, God's requirement that to pay for the 300 years of bondage, a drop of blood had to be shed on the battlefield for each drop of blood drawn by the bondsman's whip.  A man with little or no formal education, no Harvard degree, became the 19th century's greatest American writer, its greatest political scientist and one of its greatest philosophers.

Then there was Grant, a failure for much of his life, the classic example of the hedgehog as in "the fox is clever and knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one thing and does it very well."   For Grant tenacity, persistence and humility trumped whatever demons brought him to drink, and occasional unpreparedness. He knew one thing:  The war could be won only by destroying Lee's army. Unlike any other union general, he latched on to Lee like a bulldog, teeth sunk into the lip of a bull, and he would not let go. His tactic was the assault, the flanking maneuver, but always keeping South of Lee, allowing him, in the end, no escape.  And when he wrote his magnificent memoirs, Grant showed his career was no accident but an outgrowth of a character of monumental proportions.

When Barack Obama is criticized in the pages of our greatest newspapers and magazines and on line, I can only think,  "who are these midgets, attacking this giant?" It's the attack of the Lilliputians.  The man is not clairvoyant; he can be maddeningly reluctant to engage his opponents; he can fail to see the true nature of the forces arrayed against him, but he is so far beyond the Mitch McConnells, the John Boehners, the Samuel Alitos, the Antonin Scalias, the Maureen Dowds, the David Brooks, the George F. Wills, the Charles Krauthammers, the Rush Limbaughs and the Mitt Romneys and Paul Ryans, the comparison is almost not worth considering.

Win or lose day after tomorrow, it will not be Mr. Obama's failure, it will be a revelation of what sort of nation we actually are.

Try Not to Turn On To/Things that Upset You

Vietnam: The Price of Uncritical Thinking

When I was in college, in 1968, I found myself standing in a bank line with one of my favorite professors, Robert Jay, the anthropologist.  I told him I thought the war in Vietnam would never end. It would just go on and on, at higher and lower volume, until  my own kids, if I ever had any, were fighting over there, too.  My brother, a physician, was already on his way over and any able bodied American male eventually would exhaust his exemptions and find his way on a plane bound for Saigon and parts beyond. It seemed to affect our family without affecting any of our neighbors, back home. For most people, it seemed, just letting it happen, just accepting the idea that we were at war to "defend freedom" seemed to be enough to not get involved, or to embrace ideas which were clearly bogus, like the idea we were over there because the Vietnamese people wanted us there. 

Professor Jay shook his head slowly, "No," he said.  "Eventually, when enough boys from enough small towns die, when enough mothers have to actually face the prospect of losing their own sons, then those parents will actually start thinking, and  the war will end."

As it turned out, he was correct, although it took seven more years for that to happen.

Until then, the uncritical thinkers of America allowed the war to grind on, to consume more lives, American and Vietnamese.  And now, more than forty years later, we still have uncritical thinkers who provide the ballast for the American ship of state. We have people who want to believe Romney is a "businessman" so he will know what to do for the economy, and they believe Paul Ryan is trying to save Medicare by destroying it.

Today, is my last day wandering the roads of Hampton, New Hampshire in pursuit of voters.  As I have previously mentioned, many roads, and most intersections,  in Hampton have no street signs, and now I realize many homes have no visible address. It is as if we live in a village of Hobbits, where addresses and names on homes are considered somehow undesirable.

How the fire department or the police ever finds a home in trouble, I have no idea. 

Outside of one home a deer was strung up by its neck, dangling from a limb, and the home behind it had no address. Neither the deer nor the home was contained on my computer sheets, which directed me to the addresses of likely Democratic voters.

News is that 38,000 more Republicans than Democrats have voted early in Colorado, giving Romney, presumably,  a 38,000 vote lead in that swing state-- pretty depressing.  Florida has similar numbers, apparently.  Voters in likely Democratic strongholds in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been scattered by Sandy, rendered powerless and likely Obama will not get those votes.

So, two days before the election, things are not looking good. It may take another four, or eight years before things get uncomfortable enough for enough Americans to start thinking critically to ask how we lost Medicare and Social Security and how abortion became, once again, illegal and how the upper 1% became the upper 1/4% and how school prayer become legal again and how gay marriage became illegal, and how all those immigrant kids got deported when they didn' t self deport and how the Tea Party and the Free Staters came to power. 

And we may be asking how sending an army of American boys and girls to fight in Iran happened, and how that became another fight to protect our freedom.

Sprint to the Finish: The Last 15 meters

November 3, 2012.  Even the indefatigable Gail Collins sounds tired, in her last column before Nov 6. 
My swimming coach used to say races are won in the last 15 meters, when you are really burning out, arms like lead, legs dead, and there's that finish wall ahead, can you hold your breath and burn your last few molecules of sugar and ATP?

It has all come down to who is more motivated, Democrats or Republicans. Who is willing to wait on line. That is all democracy demands of its citizens in this nation. And for some, even that inconvenience will be too much to ask. They will stay home and watch it on TV. They will have excuses for why they did not need to vote or did not want to vote.

The choice can be crystallized into a simple proposition: Do you believe in the possibility of good government or do you believe in no government? 

Or, if you are one of those who votes on "the man" rather than the issues:  Do you believe in President Obama or Mr. Romney?  

Mad dog admits to a certain color blindness on this one:  Mr. Romney is the ultimate con man--look up "con man" in the dictionary and they'll have a picture of Mitt Romney right there. He is a complexity of hating government regulation, except when he doesn't, banking in off shore accounts and accusing Mr. Obama of apologizing to the world for America (as if an offshore account is an endorsement of America), of bragging about Romneycare until it became Obamacare, when it became an anathema.  The list goes on... and on. The fact is, this guy is not even a Republican. He's a fast-talking, slick used car salesman, selling not cars, because he insists American car companies are shipping jobs to China. No, he is selling fantasies, or, put less delicately, lies.

If I were a Republican, a Republican who had voted for Ronald Reagan, for George H.W. Bush, for Gerald Ford, for Eisenhower, I would still be unable to bear the stench emanating from Mr. Romney. Couldn't do it. 

But for Mad Dog, the basic proposition is are you more afraid of Big government or of Bad government. You surely will get Bad government from the Republicans, by design. Even if you get Big government from the Democrats, well, maybe, sometimes, that's not so bad. Like when you have a really big problem, which covers the entire Atlantic seaboard.

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

Republicans: Thugs R Us

Mitch McConnell, Republican, Kentucky 

Here's what passes for punditry now a days.  David Brooks, deep thinker that he is, the man who has power lunches with all the movers and shakers in Washington, the man with inside information closes the door to his study and thinks about how he can get to the conclusion Mitt Romney ought to be elected.

Brooks has to get past certain, ahem, problems, with Mr. Romney: Namely, that he has no character, if you define character as what you do when you think nobody is looking. The only thing that matters to Mr. Romney is who is looking: So he says government regulation is all that is standing between America and prosperity when he is speaking to the Republican right, but when he is speaking to a mixed crowd, he is the new champion of government regulation--can't live without it he says.  The man is the definition of an empty suit: No conviction, no courage, just a con man doing the soft shoe trying to sell you a used car he knows is a lemon but he figures he'll be gone by the time you figure it out.  This truth about Mr. Romney poses certain, not disqualifying issues for Mr. Brooks. 

So, here's how Brooks comes to his grand insight.  Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate states, baldly and honestly that he has never and will never vote for any bill which might improve the U.S. economy because that might improve the chances Mr. Obama will be re-elected. He says so on national T.V., and it runs on The News Hour. In one sense, this is not surprising: It is exactly what the entire Republican House of Representatives has been acting like. It is clearly the strategy Republicans have reached in their caucus, behind closed doors. It is the ultimate scorched earth policy.  

So, Brooks reasons: Well, the Republicans are die hard partisans. They don't care if they burn down the whole building, as long as they take Mr. Obama down with them. His destruction is their only goal. Given that mind set, the only way to govern this country is to elect Romney and then the Republicans in the House and Senate will behave in the interests of the country and they'll undo the gridlock, and we'll have a functioning government again.

So, the question Mad Dog wishes to put before his thoughtful readers is this: Do you see anything wrong with this picture?



P.S.:  Unrelated but wonderful cartoon

Matt Davies, Tribune Media Services

FEMA: Big Government's Got Your Back

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle 

Mitt Romney said the Federal  Emergency Management Agency ought to be dismantled and it's work given to the states, or better yet, to private industry.

All the Tea Party folks cheered. 

The private sector is always better, more efficient Mr. Romney says.

Keep your government hands off my Medicare Joe Sixpack roars.

We don't need government. We need to shrink government until it's small enough to drown it in my bathtub. That's the Republican line. 

Don't want no govment. Until we need it.

Like when the Coast Guard (federal government) picks you up out of your floundering yacht.  The billionaires get that service for free. No, wait, their taxes pay for it, or their taxes would pay for it if they paid taxes--but their money is in the Cayman Islands, untaxed.