October 27, 2005
Was Harriet Miers just a ploy?
Come on now. It the nomination of Harriet "we hardly knew ya" Miers wasn't a skillfully played hoax, it should have been. And the president should take credit for it in his memoirs.
He should say something like, "It was a nucular Thursday and everyone, you know, was badgering me about my next nomination for the Supreme Court. Even Laura put her two cents in. And then the girls.
Everyone wanted a woman.
"I thought, Oh Yeah? And just then the White House counsel walked by the oval office and I thought, 'Boy that would serve them right.' So I did it.
"I stood up and said my choice to become the next Supreme Court Justice is the woman who spent about 30 years with a Texas law firm and managed to get out of trying any cases except 12, which rivals my National Guard attendance record.
"My choice is the woman who it was said of in her yearbook, 'Very good at sports, or so we hear.'
My choice is a woman who headed up the lottery in my home state has known my family for years and knows stuff about me you wouldn't believe.
"My choice is Harriet Miers."
"I never intended for it to go any farther than that. I mean, ya know, it was a joke. No one told me the cameras were on and then there she was, beaming like one of those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. I had done what everyone wanted. I nominated a woman.
You're a woman right Harriet?"
"No kidding, I knew all along they wouldn't let her in. I mean my own political power base said the equivalent of 'George don't be an idiot. Have you slipped off the wagon? This is no time for one of your pin-head jokes.'
"But I fooled 'em all. I nominatd a woman and they turned her down.
"Now I can get on with the Hispanic thing.
"So that's when I got up and said, "My nomination for the next justice of the Supreme Court is Cheech Marin."
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
Posted by Hourihan on 8:11 AM | Comments (13)
October 24, 2005
Politicians just don't get it
Sometimes the government's great ideas for us tattle on themselves
and bring to light things we never knew were going on in the first
place.
President Bush just did that a few weeks ago.
In hopes of conserving gasoline he told the American public to drive
less.
Then he jumped into his airplane and flew back and forth across the
country logging about 15 hours in 7 days at a cost of about $40,000
an hour, most of it in fuel consumption. And I thought, man, for
$600,000 I could buy 218,181 gallons of gas at $2.75 a gallon, and,
at 35 miles-per-gallon I could cruise about 7,636,335 miles, which
would be difficult to do in 7 days in a Toyota. But, hey, I'm willing
to give it a shot if it is good for the country.
But that wasn't even the real giveaway.
He also told his White House office staff they could save money by
scaling back on nonessential travel, turning down air conditioners,
turning off office equipment when everyone has gone home for the
night, and by using public transportation.
OK, I have to ask, if the travel is non-essential, then why just
scale back? Why not stop taking unnecessary trips entirely, and why
are they taking trips they don't need to take anyway? How long has
that been going on?
And as to turning off office equipment when no one is there to use it
as a means to save money, I wonder why they have been leaving it on
up until now. They are on our dime, and they don't even have the
decency to turn off the equipment when they go home?
Which makes me think that if he really wants them to use public
transportation, maybe he should draw them a picture of a bus - just
so they know what one looks like. Otherwise they might make a mistake
and jump on his 747 at 40 grand an hour.
It all reminded me of a press conference several years ago where,
none other than, Ted Kennedy came to our newspaper in Massachusetts
and, among other things, talked about the need for energy
conservation. And for the hour he spent with us inside, his limo
driver kept the car running outside so the air conditioner could stay
on and the car would be comfortable when the Senator returned.
The more politicians open their mouths, the more I realize they have
no idea what is going on outside their little, tiny, catered-to,
insulated-from-real-life worlds.
Posted by Hourihan on 8:06 AM | Comments (6)
October 10, 2005
The horror of daily life
With all the horrendous events in the world; hurricanes, typhoons, quakes, wars, and diseases, there is one thing that scared me last week worse than all of it.
I pulled in to a drive-up ATM, turned in my seat so as to miss the steering wheel and shoved my card toward the slot. Then I looked at the instruction panel, and I realized the directions were in braille.
I am thinking there are only a few possible reasons why this would be so.
1. Our politically correct rush to universal tolerance has run amok.
2. It is more cost-effective for the machine makers to make only one kind of ATM, and that kind has the instructions in braille.
3. Blind people are driving cars.
I'm hoping it is the second.
Otherwise I am real frightened.
Posted by Hourihan on 3:27 PM | Comments (11)
October 8, 2005
Katrina Response Wasn't Racist
We didn't always call Walter, "Mumbles."
But it wasn't until that time of life when that had become his name, that he finally taught me something about politicians.
Walter and I used to cut out of high school early, go down to the factory parking lot and steal his old man's '52 Chevy. We'd get "Bullet-Head" to buy us a couple GIQs and drive around until 4:45.Then we would bring the car back to the parking lot and turn the speedometer back to what it had been, because old man Rattini knew his son and wrote down the mileage every day when he went to work.
He'd come out at 5 and drive home, never knowing the difference.
So, why am I telling you this?
Because we can't learn unless we're listening. And if we aren't listening now, we will learn nothing from the second horror that befell the poor people of New Orleans: The first being the storm, the second being politics.
The Illinois Senator, Barak Obama, said of the response to the storm that, in effect, politicians didn't understand when they were making evacuation plans that some people were just too poor to be able to put a hundred dollars worth of gas into their SUVs, along with some sparkling water and drive off to a motel and pay with a credit card.
To career politicians, for the most part, the word "poor" is just that, a word. The poor are numbers: Like, there are 1.1 million new poor people this year than last. They understand the 1.1 million, but they don't understand "poor."
I've always known that, but I never understood it until I ran into Walter about 32 years after high school at a time when had grown into the name "Mumbles."
Mumbles had had a string of decades of bad luck. We started out the same, went to the same high school, both went into the service and both came back to the same town. We smoked together, and hung out on the corner together, then I went off to college and didn't see him again for a long time.
The day I bumped into him and we sat over coffee, it was hard to understand what he was saying. Life had beaten him down and eventually he had done so many drugs that not only had his hair fallen out, but his teeth along with it. He hadn't had a balanced meal in 20 years, and he spent his time going from jail to a half-way house. He had had a girl friend but now she was gone, and he had been living in a third floor walk-up on Central Street, which he felt was at least better than the shelter.
I was embarrassed that I had tried to avoid him when I saw him in the coffee shop and he had seen me trying to hide behind a newspaper in a corner booth.
He shuffled over to the table and stood there waiting for me to notice.
"Hey, Walter, sit down."
He mumbled something I didn't understand.
"How are you? It's been a long time."
He had brought his coffee with him and now he poured more sugar into the half drunk cup and hovered over it for a few seconds. Then he took a deep breath.
"Bad day," he said.
"How so?"
His day didn't really interest me. I assumed he was looking for a handout, you know, like poor people do.
His wisps of hair didn't even try to cover his nearly bald head, and his clothes wouldn't have been accepted at the thrift store at the church. His old green and black plaid cloth coat was just a decoration. It couldn't possibly keep him warm.
"I got evicted," he said, or something like it and I interpreted.
"I had to go to the clinic for my dose, " he went on.
I was starting to listen, I hadn't realized he had gone so low.
I hadn't realized anyone had gone so low.
"While I was there, my landlord put all my stuff out on the curb."
"Damn" I said.
I leaned forward and began listening in earnest. His eyes were still Walter. He was still the guy I used to hang out with.
I wanted to know what happened to him.
"It was garbage day," he said and smiled showing about three teeth, pallid skin and a new twitch I had never seen before.
"No," I said as I realized what must have happened.
"Yup, they picked up all my stuff and trew it in the truck."
"Where are you going to live?" I asked, hoping he wasn't looking to flop at my house in the suburbs.
"Well, I just went up to court and instead of sending me to the half-way house again, I'm going to the …. three/quarter-way house."
He laughed and slapped me in the shoulder.
"But what about your stuff?"
"My landlord felt bad," he mumbled. "He said he'd pay me for it."
I couldn't help laughing a little.
"He said he'd give me fifty bucks."
I sat back and stopped laughing.
This was so far removed from where I had ended up, and it startled me that we started in the same place and were now so different.
Mumbles was shaking his head and looking at his coffee. "I told him no," he said without looking up.
Then as if he wanted me to understand something, he pushed his coffee away, looked me square in the eye and measured his words.
He had been thinking too, and didn't want me to think bad of him.
"I told him no. I told him I'm 50 years old, and that stuff was everything I had in the whole world. All my clothes, and my dishes and pans and books and …everything I saved over 50 years. Everything I have.
"I told him I need to get 75, bottom line."
I wanted to cry.
Politicians don't understand us the way we don't understand the truly poor.
What we have to learn from Katrina is that too many decision-makers are millionaires and have no idea even what it means to be middle-class, and that is why the poor are totally off their radar.
If we're listening we know that the horrible response after the storm wasn't a problem of white politicians not understanding black people.
It was rich politicians not understanding poor people.
It isn't that they dislike them. It is more like they don't want to believe they even exist
Posted by Hourihan on 7:51 PM | Comments (3)
October 7, 2005
Is there ever a proper time for war?
The question of whether our soldiers should be in Iraq fighting a war of attrition continues to surface, but, no matter which side you take, it seems to be a peripheral question to the real dilemma.
That being, for Americans, is there ever a time for war anymore?
It seems our country is caught between knowing all wars are abominations, and knowing there are situations where we believe we will lose our free and open way of life if we don't fight.
We have a split personality. Intellectually we know wars have very seldom settled anything, but sometimes our human animal instincts say, "This is not a time for flight."
To find the elusive answer, we have to ask why is it we won World War II, but faltered in Korea, Vietnam, and in the first Iraq war?
First, in WWII we were attacked by a major power, and something we tend to forget is that we could have lost that war.
At that time, there was a perception in the country by most people that to lose the war meant to lose America. Right or wrong, the people were predominantly behind the war.
We geared up, we sent the troops, we fought the war, and we showed the enemy that we were not afraid to totally annihilate him if it came to that. Two atomic bombs showed, Japan directly and Germany indirectly, it was surrender or be decimated.
We won.
What has changed since then that keeps bogging our soldiers down in distant lands where they sit as targets for "insurgents?"
In World War II, Americans felt the crush of having been attacked directly.
We didn't feel that in Korea, Vietnam, or the first war in Iraq, and it translated into a lack of popular support for those wars. Korea remains un-ended in an armistice, Vietnam was lost, and the first Iraq war was ended short of Baghdad.
But that isn't the answer, because on 9-11 there was most assuredly a direct attack on the United States prior to our current war, and still polls show that the majority of Americans want out of Iraq.
Either we didn't feel the attack came from the country with which we went to war, (sort of if when Japan attacked us, we went to war with Turkey.) or there is some other answer. The other answer is that our country no longer has an "end game" in war.
The end game in wars that have succeeded has always had to do with proving you are willing to annihilate the other side.
In order for Americans to allow that, there has to be a clear and present danger.
We live in a society which will not allow that end game because
as Americans we feel it is wrong unless it is in self-defense.
That is why we continue to fight half-way wars and continue to falter after the initial assault even though we are a superior military force.
To make matters worse, when the other side doesn't believe we will actually win it, it does what has been done in all wars since WWII.
In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq-one, the enemy has always known if it holds out long enough we will go away, and we have. They say the same thing now of the insurgent war in Iraq.
They are right. The United States, for all its military might, as a country, feels that to annihilate another country is wrong, unless the clear and present danger is that they will annihilate us if we don't.
The government hasn't proven that lately.
If we go to war we must fight to win; if we don't, we will lose.
The answer seems evident. There is never a time for war unless you must win it at all costs. War doesn't work part way.
Most of us believe that somewhere high in government there is information they don't share with us. If this is true, they should make it much clearer to us now than they have.
If some major terror war, beginning somewhere in the 1940s is culminating in the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri and is bent on the total destruction of the United States and our way of life, show us the proof. Make it clear, and it will be a time for war.
If not, we as a society that is truly different from any other that has ever existed, will not allow the necessary end game of war.
We will fight with half our strength and half our weapons and will take care not to hurt civilians and places of culture and religion. And we will lose.
If history has taught us anything, if religion has taught us anything, if the ideal of America has taught us anything, it is that there is a time for peace and a time for war.
We have also, obviously, been taught that if the situation doesn't merit an end game, it is not a time for war.
Posted by Hourihan on 12:03 PM | Comments (10)
