Postcard from France

When people say, "I had never been here before but I felt like I was coming home," what they are really saying is, "I felt very happy just being here."  There are so many places where and people whom you simply have to endure in life, but there are some people and places which make you happy simply by their presence.

For Mad Dog, New York was one of those places, but not London or Rome or even Dublin. Paris is one of those places, for Mad Dog , as it was for Hemingway and for James Baldwin and for David Sedaris and for so many other Americans. Hemingway said, "The only problem in Paris was deciding where to be happiest," and Mad Dog now understands.

Paris has the energy and eccentricity of New York; but it is  as if New York were run by the Catholic Church. France is very Catholic. Mad Dog is not sure how seriously the French take the teachings of the Church, but they do not ignore it. There is no separation of church and state here enshrined in law, and Mad Dog prefers the American approach, but he has to admit, the presence of the Church here adds a creative tension.

France has been a surprise:

French economy: The country looks affluent and well groomed. The roof of every house is so superior to what we have in New Hampshire. No asphalt shingles: Every roof is slate. Along the Seine, in Rouen, is a long asphalt road and it is filled with affluent looking joggers in Spandex, and along the river are one sports club after another, with people jogging on treadmills overlooking the Seine. No jogging in basements in front of TVs running sappy Netflix movies.

French women: Their faces show bones, zygomatic arches. They have great style. They dress in black with spalshes of color. They wear high heeled shoes in the streets of Paris and Rouen, and the streets are cobblestone, which means they have to be determined to wear those heels. They take off the heels when they get to the office, but in the street, they are on display.

In conversation, Parisian women make prolonged eye contact; Mad Dog was thrilled a little by this, until  he realized there was no seduction there--they were simply thinking, "What language is it he is speaking? Certainly, not French."

Normandy:   For an American, this  is different.  Falstaff looking at a soldier's rotting corpse  held his nose and said, "That's glory for you. It stinks." Elizabethan audiences laughed knowingly.  But that would draw no laughs from an American  at Antiem or Gettysburg or at Normandy.

It matters little that most of the American soldiers who died here had no idea what a monstrous evil they were attacking. They were fighting for their friends and, yes, for some idea of country.  They knew they had become part of something much larger, and that ennobled them. 

Have there been any other wars or military deaths like those of World War II, since World War II?  

Most of the American warriors in 1944 could have been at home, did not need the paycheck. 

Food:  The French eat smaller portions. And they have some things we do not have in New Hampshire. His first day, Mad Dog was served some sort of hot chocolate which was heroin in a cup. From that moment onward, all he wanted was another fix. He has yet to discover the name of this stuff, tragically lost after that first sample.  The bread and cheese are also unlike anything we have in New Hampshire. 

French rain: It is the type of rain which invites the use of an umbrella, and couples walk along in a sort of umbrella intimacy one rarely sees in the States.

In New Hampshire, we are comfortable. We walk along the seacoast, and we love it, as we ought to love it. But sometimes, we have to remind ourselves we are part of something bigger. Mad Dog looked out from Omaha Beach and realized, on the other side of that ocean lay Plaice Cove.

Going to France is tame compared to travelling to China or India--there is much more here to give you your bearings. Paris  does not take the same courage as Beijing or Calcutta. But it's a start. It's worth the effort.

Be Thankful: We Live in America, and we vaccinate against Polio

"In July the Guardian revealed that the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, in the hunt for Bin Laden. In the weeks before the 3 May operation to kill Bin Laden, Afridi was instructed to set up a fake vaccination scheme in the town of Abbottabad, in order to gain entry to the house where it was suspected that the al-Qaida chief was living, and extract DNA samples from his family members."


There have been 260 case of polio in Pakistan this year; this year 65 anti-polio workers have been murdered in Pakistan. 

Mad Dog was as happy as anyone when they got Osama Bin Laden, but when he heard they had used an anti-polio worker as part of the plot, he thought "Uh-oh."
Of course, this has been used by the Taliban to bolster its contention that polio vaccinations are "dangerous to health and against Islam."

Wait, polio vaccination is "against Islam?"  Remarkable, really,  thinking the Prophet could have been so prescient as to inveigh against polio vaccination as being "against Islam"  so many centuries before the vaccine became available. But if the vaccine is used to hunt down heroes like Osma Bin Laden, okay, maybe this begins to make sense to villagers in Pakistan.

Prevention of polio has been one of major triumphs of 20th century medicine. It is a dreadful disease, a true scourge. A nightmare, really. Paralysis. Children. And even if the child survives, and even if the child is able to recover and to walk and function afterward, there is post polio syndrome which can make life pretty miserable decades later. 

Who could find a dark lining in that story? Militant fundamentalists, apparently.

But before we get too superior about those wacko Islamists, we have to look around at our own well meaning neighbors who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against measles, pertussis, tetanus and HPV and yes, even polio.

But we can be thankful our rational citizens can be vaccinated.
And here is another bit of good news to be thankful for: In the first week of open season more than a million people signed up on the government site for health insurance. The Affordable Care Act is actually working. 

But we can be thankful, there's a new Congress on the way, all set to kill Obamacare, castrate hogs (and maybe other species)  and maybe even stop those damn vaccination programs. 

GOP Pick of the Litter Or How I Learned to Love the Tea Party

Mr. Hice, Not Asking His Wife's Permission

Gary Trudeau once bemoaned losing George W. Bush as an inspiration for his daily cartoon.  Now that we have so many Republicans in the House and Senate to entertain us, Mad Dog can appreciate the feeling. They're back! Better than ever. Who needs George W?

What could be more invigorating than to explore the new personalities available to us in Washington, D.C. It's really a wonderful confection shop--so many wonkies and so little time. How to choose among them?

There's Rep. Glenn Grothman from Wisconsin, who informed voters that women should not complain about being paid less than men for the same work because, "money is more important for men."  Mad Dog is sadly lacking in context here, but he can only imagine money is less important for women, because they are, in Mr. Grothman's mind, supported by men, and only working because they want to be able to afford a new refrigerator.  Mr. Grothman is not burdened by a reluctance to tell other people what they can talk or think about, so he would forbid teachers from mentioning homosexuality in the classroom. (Presumably, he does not tape the episodes of "Modern Family" he misses.)  And he is bracing-ly honest about the reasons for his support of voter ID laws. He does not focus on the overwhelming fraud at the polls; his argument is practical--there's more people who believe in what the Democrats say, so we have to limit  Democratic sympathizers from voting if we want Republicans to win elections. Now, here's a man you can understand. 

Alex Mooney, now a Congressman from West Virginia, has demonstrated it doesn't matter where you draw boundary lines on a man, when it comes to running for a seat in the national Congress; what matters is whether you can find a place filled with like minded souls.  He ran for the state House in New Hampshire, unsuccessfully, then moved to one of those parts of Maryland which the people of the Free State have been trying to forget is part of the Free State, and he won a seat in the Maryland State Senate. Now he is representing a hollow in West Virginia in the U.S. House. He hates gays and all those who tolerate them. He rails against those who find his homophobia virulent, claiming the free speech rights of homophobes have been trampled.

But my favorite, thus far, the pick of the litter, is the New Republican Congressman from the 10th District of Georgia, Jody Hice, who believes no woman should serve in Congress without the freely given permission of her husband. (What he thinks about unmarried female candidates is unclear.) Taking a page from the Taliban, he has staked out a courageous stand on the wife-as-property platform and, at least in Georgia, prevailed.

This opens up so many other possibilities: What other things does a wife need to apply for permission to do, in the Georgia 10th? The mind simply runs wild. Georgia Stepford wives. This could spread. This could become a movement.

Mr. Hice's success is understandable: Unlike most Democrats who suffer from that endemic Democratic malady "afraid to offend," Mr. Hice charges right in, saying that Islam is, in truth, not actually a "religion." It's a lifestyle. Mr. Hice edifies, and Mad Dog had not previously appreciated this, that Islam is "a totalitarian way of life with a religious component," which "does not deserve First Amendment protection." Well, talk about a fresh perspective. I feel so much better about Gitmo and Abu Gharib now. 

Oh, and Representative Hice has a sense of history, too. Legal abortion is "worse than Hitler's six million Jews," and he throws in, just for dramatic effect, "or Mussolini's three hundred thousand." (That may have been a pitch to the Italian-American voters in the 10th District.)  It's really striking how often Hitler gets reference by Tea Party acolytes.  Hitler is just never far from their minds.  He was a flamboyant leader, Adolph was, and his followers had a great sense of color and theater--all those scarlet flags and that snazzy Swastika icon, not to mention the SS logo, but really can we not get through one paragraph without lumping Mr. Obama and his merry band of abortionists in the same bag as Adolph Hitler? You know, as the very least, it would make der Fuhrer uncomfortable.

Oh, and did Mad Dog mention Mr. Hice has a radio show? On said show he finally helped us understand the underlying pathology responsible for all the school shootings: It's--and there can be no real surprise here when you think about it--the liberal Democratic demons who are responsible for "kicking God out of the schools and ...kicking God out of the public square." Had God only been permitted to enter these places, then those gun wielding wackos would have fled in fear and never fired a shot. The solution was just so simple, there in front of our eyes all along. Mad Dog is ashamed to have missed it. 

Another thing to consider: Who had the power to kick God out of schools and the public square? This is clearly not the omnipotent God of the New Testament. But then, Mad Dog is no theologian, and Mr. Hice, is also a pastor, so he must be right.

One thing we have to ask about Mr. Hice however, is whether his ambition got ahead of his conscience: After all, Mr. Hice is taking the seat of Paul Broun, who famously informed us that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory were "lies straight from the pit of Hell." 

Mad Dog could not help but think that Mr. Hice should offer Mr. Broun his seat in Congress back. Who could represent the voters of the Georgia 10th better than Mr. Broun? If he decides to keep the seat, I'm sure Mr. Hice will remember where he comes from.

What Mad Dog is still wondering about is how embryology got on that list. Mad Dog studied embryology in college--it's all about how a sperm and an egg develop into a two cell thing then divide and reshape and divide again and finally a little human being emerges. Hardly seems like a hair ball from the pit of Hell.

The Big Bang theory, that Mad Dog can understand. It's sexual double entendre is so obvious and offensive. (Fresh talk, as Maud's mother would say.) Mad Dog, in his dark past netherworld of sinful desire, has to admit, sought the Big Bang for most of his febrile days as an intern and resident, exploring the cosmos of the nurses' residence and the bars in the shadow of the the New York  Hospital with names like "The Recovery Room," and "The Intensive Care Unit" and  "Healing Touch."  And Mad Dog can attest, that experience, with some happy exceptions, was straight from the pit of Hell.

More Women In Congress

Joni of the Sharp Shears

Even though she is a Republican, I was somehow cheered to see the Castrator made it to Congress.  Joni Ernst ran on the platform that because she grew up castrating hogs, she should would bring something new and valuable to Washington, D.C. I can see her point.  She replaces Tom Harkin in the Senate and she will be a breath of fresh air: She believes states ought to be able to nullify federal laws, an idea which harkens back to what resulted in the Civil War; she has called for arresting federal officials attempting to implement Obamacare; she agrees with Glenn Beck about a world conspiracy centered in the United Nations; she still insists George W was correct about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq--we just haven't found them yet. This is a woman with a fresh perspective on things. The great mystery to Mad Dog is she is from Iowa, not South Carolina, Arizona or Texas. In those states, she is main line.

Fact is, she has got herself a promising career and she is not mired in conventional thought.

When Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in the early 1960's her major, breakthrough insight was that women were unfulfilled and unhappy despite having  been told paradise on earth was a home with lots of modern appliances, a husband, children and material wealth. Friedan made it acceptable for women to look at their lives and ask themselves if the conventional life was really as honorable, fulfilling and wonderful as everyone said it was.  Each woman, in the privacy of her home, had to ask herself if one man, one life was enough. She did not have to feel guilty for asking this question. You have everything. Why are you looking for more?

Betty Friedan 

 So women went to work, and found new satisfactions and new frustrations, but who could be as happy as a castrating female Senator?

Betty Ice Princess 

Of course, this was the trap which Betty in Mad Men found herself: Beautiful husband, great house, kids, cars, horses to ride, but somehow, something was missing. In Betty's case, the hole in her life could not be filled by a single liaison in the men's room of a Manhattan bar; eventually she traded for a new husband, which did not seem to solve the problem either.

The problem, of course, was never the golden trap of wealth; the trap was buying into what you had been taught by the prevailing authorities about  what will make you happy.

When Mad Dog was struggling through his adolescence, when his seventeen year old with red lips was not concealed inside, but in full display, he kept running into girls who had been told that happiness was being a virgin on your wedding night. These were mostly the girls with good grades and hot college prospects. He ultimately discovered girls whose grades may not have been as stellar, but who laughed at the idea of restrictions on their sexual appetites or their prospects in life.

"I'll go through men the way men go through razor blades,"  one hotly pursued girl friend told him. "Men are disposable. I'll be a partner in a law firm and I'll command my own destiny."

That was a breath taking notion to Mad Dog in those days, because he did not feel he was at all in command of his own destiny.  In fact, she went off to college, then law school, and now works in Washington, DC in the federal government. She did go through quite a few men along the way.  

Mad Dog has heard, from mutual friends, she's had some rocky times, emotionally, but not because she chose to reject convention.  About that, reportedly, she has never had regrets. She ultimately did one conventional thing: She married the coolest guy in high school. He played football, became a Rhodes Scholar and ultimately a war correspondent. Mad Dog used to listen to him cover Bosnia on NPR. But then a college friend of hers visited them in London and her husband  ran off to Europe with the friend on the back of his motorcycle. So she came home, went to work for the government.   

Mad Dog hopes she's considering a run for Congress.  

As a Democrat, of course.

A Republic, Madam, If You Can Keep It

"Consider a pack of jackasses. Now, consider the United States Congress. But, I repeat myself."
--Mark Twain

That sentiment, some have said, is a gross insult to jackasses everywhere.  
Personally, I've known some very intelligent, decent and well meaning Congressmen, but every class, every Congress is different.  This one coming in is a real prize.
From New Hampshire, a Congresswoman who was described by a New Hampshire Republican legislator as "ugly as sin" was re elected, which might offer hope for the judgment of New Hampshire voters had another district not elected Frank Guinta, whose good looks were never at issue, but he does compete for the Jurassic Park Prize for prehistoric thinking:  The man believes life begins at conception, that any limitations on a citizen's individual right to an attack rifle is a violation of the Constitution and God's will, that Social Security ought to be privatized and, you name it, if it's Tea Party, he's just slightly to the right of that. 

Hampton elected Fred Rice to the state House of Representatives. Mr. Rice is revered for his firm belief that building more motorways,( more roads) would be the best way to prevent air pollution in New Hampshire, and clearly superior in environmental impact to building bicycle paths over the same abandoned railroad lines.  

On the other hand, New Hampshire did manage to reject Scott Brown's bid to make New Hampshire's Senate delegation the Senate's most photogenic duo. It had to be difficult for Granite Staters to resist that temptation--Kelly Ayotte and Scott Brown arms around each other's waists--hard to stop fantasizing about how many new HBO programs that one might have inspired. "Scandal" would have simply had to go sci fi to compete.  "House of Cards" has now entered the realm of documentary.  Life is not simply imitating art; art is simply trying to keep up.

Of course, John Kennedy inspired much talk in Washington, when he was in Congress, as he and his wenching buddy, Senator Smathers, a Republican from Florida cut a swath through Washington as swordsmen who never spent a night at home.  Who would have predicted JFK would have eventually settled down and tried to do some good? So, there's hope. Some people will prove pleasant surprises.

 Mitch McConnell, now the Senate Majority leader, has vowed to disembowel Obamacare, but, of course, he'll leave the wildly popular Obamacare program (Kynec) in his own state untouched. That ought to be a nifty trick.  
Prospects for changing the Supreme court got flushed down the toilet: Even if Justice Ginsberg departs the court, no way Mr. Obama will get any nominee short of Robert Bork or Roger Taney through the Republican Senate.
So now the Republicans have the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court. Why would they even want the White House?  As it stands they can blame the Democratic President for not delivering government to the people. If they had Jeb Bush in the White House, they'd have nobody left to blame. 

It's a glorious new day for the Republicans, whoever they may be. They are Tea Party Republicans and a whole melange of folks who may not be quite as mad as hatters, but they are surely not Democrats.  This last election was our very own version of The Red Wedding, and the winners are smirking and very satisfied.

But, as I write this, my train pulls out of New York City, rolls past fields of baseball diamonds filled with players happy in their fall ball leagues, past waterways plied by boaters, past towns with Christmas lights strung from the street poles (and it's not even Thanksgiving) and the country looks to be doing quite well.

The Well Kept Obamacare Secret: It's Good for the Deficit

This morning's New York Times signifies a new leap forward in editorial offices: Apparently, the editors have actually been reading one of the Times' own columnists, namely Paul Krugman. 

For some years, Krugman has been delivering a Jeremiad, saying the worst thing governments can do when faced with a recession is to stop spending and start trying to save, to start cutting government outlays.

The European Union did this over the past few years, cutting, singing the austerity song, only to provoke a slide into worse recession. The United States, well not the whole United States but the part of it which is the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, did what it could to imitate the European Union, pushing through a "sequester" and trying to push the country off the fiscal cliff, which hurt the economy some, but not as much as it would had there not been a little item called "Obamacare."

Here's a little secret: Obamacare has resulted in such dramatic cuts in health care spending that $1.6 trillion in budget savings are on schedule and the deficit has actually declined, despite a fall in tax revenues caused by the "sequester" and the Republican attempt at "austerity."

So, here's what the Times' editors have figured out: The Republicans, who are basically the Koch brothers and a lot of oligarchs who are supposed to be good at numbers and money and the economy are actually clueless, and they would shoot themselves not just in the foot, but about three feet higher up, thinking they are aiming the gun at the tax and spend Democrats.

Oh, well.

But keep it a secret, until after the election. Then it won't really matter. We'll have Kelly Ayotte and Scott Brown in the Senate letting the private sector lead the way. Tally ho!

Здравствуйте, Україна, від планети Нью-Гемпшир.

З різних причин відомим тільки Бог і inscrutable і невидимі Інтернет сил, більше поглядів The Phantom говорить і Хемптон Mad Dog демократ ніж зі Сполучених Штатів. У нас також невелика кількість хітів від Франції, Німеччині та Англії. Ми повинні повністю ігнорується Індії і весь субконтиненту. Південна Америка не має інтересу б то не було, але які б фігура, враховуючи закон взаємної незацікавленість. Але...Україна? Якщо хто-небудь в Україні пояснення скажена собака і привид б ціную почути про це.

З повагою

Фантом, esq.

Скажена собака

The Kynec Paradox: Republicans Enter the Orwellian World of Doublespeak

Who would Steve Vaillancourt predict would win this contest?

"McConnell has some difficulty with the Obamacare issue because the Kentucky version, known as Kynect, has been a huge success. About half a million Kentuckians signed up for health insurance, many receiving it for the first time. Fewer than 100,000 joined private insurance plans; that means the bulk of the population joined Medicaid, which was greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. But at the same time, Obama is deeply unpopular in Kentucky and polls indicate that many Kentuckians do not associate Kynect with Obamacare. So McConnell threads a very difficult needle here, suggesting the Web site can continue while the law that created it must be scrapped"

Here is a place we all love to be:  Have your cake and eat it too. Kynect, the new healthcare system in Kentucky which took form as a result of the Affordable Care Act, is a huge success.  Even those folks down in the hollow can cotton to the idea of better coverage for a lot less money, which Kynect has brought them. 

So they love Kynect in Kentucky.

Trouble is, they hate Obama in Kentucky. So if you ask them if they like Kynect, it's, "Yes, indeed!" But if you ask them whether they like Obamacare, it's "Hell, no!"

And if you point out to them that Kynect is, in fact, Obamacare, they react thusly, "Say, what?"

This is the Kentucky version of, "Keep your damn government hands off my Medicare and Social Security!"

Why the visceral reaction against Obama in Kentucky?  Same reason, Mad Dog suspects, they hate him in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and parts of Florida, Georgia and, yes even in some parts of  New Hampshire. You see, pssst...he's Black!

And, of course, he's a Democrat and he's in power. So Reince Priebus, if that is a real name--the guy who heads the Republican National Committee--was explaining yesterday to Robert Siegel, on NPR, the President is a complete failure, and everything he touches goes sour. So, the Ebola infections of those two nurses in Texas,  all those kids streaming across the Rio Grande (or wherever it is they stream across) the ISIS beheadings, the war in Syria, the financial collapse in the European Union (never mind our government kept us going into a recovery here in the USA), the refusal of Republicans to pass a comprehensive immigration package through the Republican House, it's all because Mr. Obama is a catastrophe as a President.  The worst EVER.

And he says it with such fluency and conviction, you just get carried along and you know he must be right, because he sounds so sure. 

Our local candidates are cast from the same agency:  From Fred Rice, who believes the best way to end pollution in New Hampshire is to build more roads, so automobiles will  not have be line up at red lights with their motors idling, to Scott Brown who believes we ought to solve all problems by letting "the private sector lead the way." 

Whatever that means.

If the the private sector were still leading the way in heath insurance, they'd be maximizing profits for their stock holders by excluding anyone with a "pre existing condition" or by charging prohibitively high rates for anyone who is guilty of ever having been sick or being of the female persuasion.  Remember those bad old days before Obamacare?

Edwin Muskie of Maine once remarked there are only really two opposing sides in politics, and they are not Democrat vs Republican, or even conservative vs liberal but of confidence vs fear.  

Franklin Roosevelt knew this, and he used this in his famous, "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."  But somehow, the most vigorous, self assured fearless sounding candidates are the Scott Browns and Fred Rices and Mitch McConnell's who stand up tall and straight and intone the chicken little rap--we are all going straight to Hell behind this man who was conceived on Mars and borne in Kenya.

President Obama's Birth Certificate Ceremony