SeniorJunior

Things Are Looking Up When National Public Radio launched its re-make of Edward R. Morrow’s “ This I Believe ,” I was almost motivated to take a shot at making an entry. I say almost because I just never got around to doing it. I thought about it a bunch. Even my subject and position were clear in my head. Never happened. Darn. Not to let a well formed idea go totally unpublished, here ‘tis. It’s simple. Things are getting better. Generally speaking and on a long time scale, that is. Of course some things are getting worse; they always are, but most of the downers are on shorter time scales. And any such judgment on the better/worse balance has to reflect a cosmic perspective, no small task in our quarter-to-quarter, Wall Streetish culture. I have to admit, attaining cosmicity hasn’t been my strong suit. If you riffle through all the posts on this blog, you can’t help but note that I’ve been much more vocal on worsenings than betterings. Drought, wars, political chicanery,

Learning to Love Dandelions (Update) Speaking of being demonized (as in the Wolfowitz post below), how about the poor dandelion? Noxious weed. Besmircher of perfectly manicured lawns. Victim of hyper-gonadal gunslinger types advertising weed killers (akin to Agent Orange) on TV. I have to admit, I have shared the reflex to slaughter dandelions on sight - after all I lived in Dallas for 20 years. When you become addicted to Saint Augustine turf... But now I live in the country, yea the woods and meadows of Albuquerque's East Mountains, eastern slope. Wild flowers abound. And, truth be told, dandelions are wildflowers. Real beauties at that. They decorate the meadows with brilliant yellow sunburst flowers and serrated leaves that look like mediæval lance blades. Or lions' teeth in some opinions; can't see that myself. Soon the flowers morph magically - overnight, I think - into amazing puff balls of seeds on parachutes. The first illustrated story book I fell in love with (

Wolfo- Whatz ? What a record What a legacy A career based On sheer fallacy Chief architect Of the war in Iraq Deep in the red Never the black Got the foundation wrong So the structure is gone. Number One among NeoCons Famous for saying (The rest of us praying) They’ll welcome us as liberating Anyone at all With any sense Saw from the start The incompetence Cheney’s creature It is said Grinning Familiar To the Deathhead Embarrassed us all At the old World Bank Another Bush Baby Down the tank Helped write the words Of W’s song “I may be mistaken But I’m never wrong” He pushed to the metal The dead wrong pedal Guess he will get The Freedom Medal

Read (beg, borrow or steal) the Opinion piece in yesterdays [4-23-07] Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper) by Jonathan Kellerman called Bedlam revisited . (subscription) It's dynamite. And it has an absolutely terrifying illustration by David Klein. I was moved to write a letter to the editor about it. Of course the odds of getting a letter published in the WSJ are pretty skinny. The nice thing about having a blog, is that I can publish my letter! So here 'tis... Letter to The Editor The biggest question raised by Jonathan Kellerman’s powerful “Bedlam Revisited” is this: Can our country reverse a truly monumental mistake? When “institutionalization” morphed into “community psychology” in a few short years, and we quickly developed the witches brew of mass homelessness as Kellerman notes, and prisons full of psychotics, there was not so much as a “woops” from the political class. Huge mistake? What mistake? We had several recent instances here in Albuquerque in w

Inject this , anti-universal-health-care people! The most common argument from the right wing “free market” health care advocates is “just look at Canada.” Well a big, well-designed research project (I should know – 30 years owning a market research company) did just that. Guess what? Canadians spend half as much per capita and get the same or better results as the U.S.A. See an abstract of the study at: http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 Here’s a press summary from The Toronto Star : Apr 17, 2007; Anne-Marie Tobin; Canadian press "In looking at patients in Canada with a specific diagnosis compared to Americans with the same diagnosis, in Canada patients had at least as good an outcome as their American counterparts – and in many situations, a better health outcome," said one of the 17 authors, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a cardiologist and clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton. "And that is important because in the United States, they'

Shameless Plug If you want to read about the game, I mean deep into the psychology, the philosophy and the priapsis of golf, aim your browser (consider the wind) toward http://bogiejohnson.blogspot.com/ and have a giggle along with your new driving-chipping-putting-betting insights. Sam Johnson (NO one calls him "Bogie" to his face) is an old bud of mine. And I do mean old. You can read some of his stuff at www.tees2greens.com - he's one of their "5 star" columnists - but it's easier to read his blog, navigation-wise. Have fun.

Starvation by Biofuels Ah, the absolute certainty of the Law of Unintended Consequences. In a nutshell: Food prices are rising because – surprise! – the demand for corn, soy and sugarcane/beets to make ethanol and biodiesel is driving up the cost of these basic food commodities. Quoting from The Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117608539258763747.html?mod=world_news_whats_news Soaring prices for farm goods, driven in part by demand for crop-based fuels, are pushing up the price of food world-wide and unleashing a new source of inflationary pressure. The rise in food prices is already causing distress among consumers in some parts of the world -- especially relatively poor nations like India and China. If the trend gathers momentum, it could contribute to slower global growth by forcing consumers to spend less on other items or spurring central banks to fight inflation by raising interest rates. …And, on the more human side:

The mighty Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper) has been hopping with pot talk lately. What's the Voice of Capitalism coming to? It started with an editorial page commentary on March 16 by constitutional expert Randy E. Barnett called "Reefer Madness". It was a learned assessment by Professor Barnett on how the federal courts go through constitutional contortions in maintaining the prohibition on medical uses of marijuana. The commentary was keyed by the Angel Raich story. On March 23 there were four letters in response. If you are a Journal reader, you know that's a lot for any one commentary, meaning there were probably hundreds that didn't get printed. There were letters from organizations "Common Sense for Drug Policy" and "Marijuana Policy Project" decrying criminalization of a useful drug. President Carter's drug czar Lee Dogoloff weighed in - saying "every major" scientist says there is no medical benefit. Ol

I want a follow-up story! As the Washington Post reported today (March 23 - 07) the Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission say the Bushies cheated us taxpayers on how they accounted for their expenditure of public money. The Republican members of the commission say "did not." An excerpt: "We had a disagreement on this audit, and it was a doozy," said one of the Democrats, Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub. The dispute centered on the use of what the commissioners called "hybrid" ads, which were intended to promote both the president and Republican members of Congress. The Bush campaign argued that it should not bear the full cost of these ads, so it split the tab with the Republican Party. As a result, only half of the cost would count toward spending limits imposed on the campaign when it agreed to take public funds. Weintraub said the spending limit is an essential part of the agreement candidates make to accept public financing.

I notice I've been grousing a lot on the old blog lately. Time - sez I to myself - to write something uplifting, or at least useful. Vacation time is just around the corner. So here: Don’t Deny the Devil There are certain things in the making of recreational choices that color one’s judgment, like a well-tinted pair of sunglasses can make a day look more glamorous than it really is, or a quickly drained dram of tequila can have the same effect on a candidate for social intercourse. The hint of danger is one of those “certain things.” Hints of danger have various thresholds for individuals. Popping one’s ‘chute a thousand feet closer to the ground than usual might hint of danger to a jaded skydiver making the experience beguiling recreation. To the rest of us there are usually less well-defined danger hints. Just considering that hit of tequila, for instance, puts some people off as being ‘way over the limit, fully into danger.’ Depends on your age sometimes

In today’s Washington Post, Susan Jacoby reviews Stephen Prothero’s book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007). Here are a couple of mind boggling excerpts: Americans are … the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Approximately 75 percent of adults, according to polls cited by Prothero, mistakenly believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." More than 10 percent think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels, and -- a finding that will surprise many -- evangelical Christians are only slightly more knowledgeable than their non-evangelical counterparts. Check it out: http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/prothero.html And… http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/

I had a powerful deja vu experience this evening. On PBS Fareed Zacharia was interviewing Professor Shibley Telhami , holder of the the Anwar Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland about the new Zogby Poll on Arab attitudes and opinions. (Telhami designed the questionnaire and analyzed the results.) As you might expect, the good old U.S. of A. doesn't fare too well. G.W. Bush is by far the "most disliked" world leader among Arabs of all stripes. He far surpasses the traditional winner, whoever was the current leader of Israel. In fact, Bush beats the combination of Olmert and Sharon. Professor Telhami noted that the polarization against America has become the driving force uniting Arabs, Shiite, Sunni, et al. The main reason the Arabs admire anyone (including their # 3 favorite world leader Hugo Chavez ) is that they stand up to America. In these powerful findings from a well designed scientific poll there is strong guidance about what's wrong with our c