McAble?

You have to wonder about the people that John McCain surrounds himself with.

His running-mate seems to be conducting her own campaign for the nomination in 2012. His spokespeople are redefining reality daily (or trying to at least), making pronouncements about an impending McCain victory that would seem to defy both reality and logic. And his advisors are routinely giving bad advice.

At least, I assume that it’s his advisors that are responsible for his mistakes; the alternative is that he’s the one making the mistakes, that he’s ignoring the sound advice of his people, and that brings up a question of John McCain’s fitness for the job.

We’ve seen all of the old election tricks coming out of the Republican camp in a year when the old tricks just haven’t been working as well as they should. Yet still they hold to the same old strategies: the bitter practice of smearing your opponent with innuendo, half-truths and outright lies; the cynical practice of attacking a person based on things which have nothing whatsoever to do with their candidacy; the desperate practice of throw-everything-into-the-cesspool-and-see-what-floats politics that, in the past, both parties have practiced but which conservative Republicans have come to excel at.

These tricks ain’t working so well this time out.

(And yet these same tricks remain the pillars supporting the McCain campaign—and, it has to be admitted, they may still work well enough to win this thing for McCain. I hope not; I hope that we’ve finally moved past all of that rot. But I may be hoping in vain. We’ll find out in four days.)

The wonder isn’t that such tricks have been used in this campaign; the wonder is that the McCain campaign continues to rely on them almost exclusively at this very late stage.

I can only think of three reasons:

One, that McCain is getting bad advice, and that brings into question the quality of his advisors. His choice of advisors, in this case, is faulty, and this faulty judgment would make McCain, in my opinion, unqualified for the Presidency.

Two, McCain is ignoring the good advice of his people and forging his own way, going against their better advice and judgment. In this case the fault, the bad judgment, is entirely McCain’s and this would make him, in my opinion, unqualified for the Presidency.

Three, whoever is responsible for keeping McCain on this course, they’re right, and McCain will come away from this election as the president-elect. But he will have done it through appealing to the electorate’s fears and suspicions, not to their reason, to their baser rather than their higher natures. This would make McCain, in my opinion, unfit for the Presidency.

And I still feel that any victory through the electoral college that loses the popular vote, as a McCain victory is likely to, is going to leave such a bad taste in people’s mouths that there would be no hope of reconciliation, no hope of unity, no damn hope.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it for a few more days (or longer, if all goes badly for Obama): America needs hope right now, hope that (I feel) Obama brings and McCain kills.

But as Dennis Miller used to say, "Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong."

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

One blog just wasn't enough...

...so I went ahead and made another one.
http://blueblogslinks.blogspot.com/

Staying Alive...Why, Exactly?

Just what is that backpack doing in my trunk?

Once upon a time I was something of a survivalist.

You know, one of those guys who wears a lot of camouflage and has a wall full of guns and enough food stockpiled for ten years? Well, I wasn’t that bad; I never stockpiled more than a couple of weeks worth of food and a couple of guns, and I never looked good in camo. But old habits are hard to break; even now I keep a full backpack in my trunk along with a disassembled .22 rifle and a spare cane.

The backpack is because being handicapped I can’t walk out of trouble as easily as I once could; if I get stranded I may have to stay put a while, and living as I do in a rural area it might take a while to rejoin civilization.

The .22 is another matter; it’s in the car because I was taking it to the gunsmith to have the safety fixed, but I never bothered to stop by there so in the trunk it stayed.

The spare cane is because I’m crippled.

Recent conversations, including one on this site, have led me to rethink survivalism. Am I prepared if "the balloon goes up?" In a word, no.

When I was a survivalist, I had two good hips, a good heart, a fully functioning pancreas and properly functioning eyes and ears. None of these things are currently true. I depend on ten different medications on a daily basis, I walk leaning on a bent stick, I can’t read without glasses and my hearing sucks. In short, I am getting old.

But the real reason I’m not a survivalist anymore is this: I refuse to live my life as if the end of civilization is impending.

A friend of mine always said that he prepared himself to survive a nuclear war because if you do that then you’re going to be prepared for anything less than a nuclear war. My point of view is somewhat different these days; cut off from heart pills, blood pressure pills, insulin, and a few other goodies I probably won’t last a year. And with this damned handicap I’m not physically up to all but the most basic survival challenges.

In truth, I don’t expect that I’ll need to survive more than a few days cut off from civilization. In my backpack I keep a few days worth of food, a change of clothes, a compass and a good knife. I also have a light sleeping bag and a bivy shelter (a sort of one-man backpacking tent) that I had left over from my camping stuff. All this and a two-quart canteen and that’s my "bugout bag." With my bag o’ medication (which I always carry) I should be able to last a few days under most conditions. Not much of a "survival pack" I’ll grant you; not ideal for long-term survival, perhaps, but as I said my chances for long-term survival ain’t good in any case.

Besides the fact that I can’t last for long on my own, I sincerely doubt that I’ll need to. I hope not, anyway. And while I don’t see any harm in being prepared for trouble, survivalism encourages one to be over-prepared. If I were to encounter, say, a nuclear war, I’m probably dead with a fairly short time even if I do survive the first blast.

So no, I’m not a survivalist anymore and I don’t think that it’s going to be necessary to lock myself in a bomb shelter for a year, only to emerge amidst the rubble of civilization to try to rebuild with my trusty rifle and Bowie knife. I am, however, prepared to last a few days living out of the trunk of my car.

I think that’s enough survival for me.

The Blues Viking

P.S.: As I write this I am wearing a camouflage jacket for no better reason than it’s cold outside tonight. Just thought I’d mention that.

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Just to clear up a point...

I wouldn’t normally post something like this on the blog proper, it’s really more the sort of thing I’d do in a comment, but I’m going to break that rule just this once. Something I said, but didn’t say all that well, requires clarification.

In last night’s post (Don’t count your chickens before you scramble the eggs) I talked about the consequences if the election comes down to another close decision based (at least theoretically) on the Constitution. Part of what I said was:

"This, of course, would set up a bigger firestorm than we had with the old who-won-Florida debacle eight years ago. Remember? Remember not knowing who won the election until weeks after the election? Remember the Supreme Court stepping in and deciding the election for us, despite the fact that they had no constitutional authority to do so or that the electoral procedures in place hadn’t even been fully utilized? I certainly remember. And I dread the same thing happening again. Could the U.S. face another such without domestic violence breaking out? I don’t know...but I doubt it."

It has been brought to my attention that it might have sounded like I was saying that a close decision between Obama and McCain, made on strictly constitutional grounds, would be a bad thing. Well, I was...and I wasn’t.

What I wasn’t saying was that a constitutional decision would be, in and of itself, in any way illegal. Nor was I saying that such a decision, made on constitutional grounds, would in any way be unconstitutional.

What I was saying was a warning against a repeat of 2000, when the Constitution was sidestepped and a President was selected for us, a President who possibly (I say possibly because the constitutional process was subverted and we'll never really know) didn't actually win either the popular vote or the Eclectoral college. Selected by the Supreme Court, which had been asked to step in by GWB and which it had neither precedent nor authority to do.

(Bit of a history lesson here.) Here’s an uncritical breakdown of the Supreme Court’s decision from 2000. Briefly, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a manual recount of contested ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court, defying law and precedent, said that the recount was inherently unfair and stopped it. I happen to agree with the minority opinion of Justices Stevens and Ginsberg; that the Florida court’s decision was fundamentally correct and should have been respected. But who am I to say? Just one of the rare people who actually reads such things...

You know, I hadn’t wanted to get into all of that Supreme Court rehash, but here I am rehashing it all. But I think it’s important that you understand where I’m coming from, the half-dozen of you actually reading this, lest you judge me just another whacko who can’t let go of the past. But it’s all irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.

That point is this: that the very last thing that this country needs right now is another closely contested call, with a minority President (legally or not) presiding over a bitterly divided nation. Perhaps there’s no way to avoid the "bitterly divided" part, but I feel that without at least a majority of public support that no candidate has a hope of healing that particular wound. That is what I was warning against, what I’m still warning against, and I fear another such.

Look, I know that I’m just one guy writing a blog that hardly anyone reads. I know that my opinion doesn’t amount to much. That does not mean that I’m not going to express it. So this is me, expressing it.

Oh, and one last thing...I just want to be sure that you got this point from the previous post:

"Get this straight: I am not advocating domestic violence in any form, and I don’t think it would benefit anyone. If it happens it would be the darkest day in U.S. history thus far."

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Don’t count your chickens before you scramble the eggs

I think it was Yogi Berra who said, "It ain’t over till it’s over". The Republicans should take this advice to heart before their party eats itself in an orgy of mutual blame, finger-pointing and planning for careers after the election; McCain could still win this, and then where would they be?

A lot of information (admittedly, mostly second- or third-hand) has been coming to light regarding McCain staff quietly putting out feelers for future employment, acting for all the world like people who’ve already lost an election. Or rather, people who fully expect to loose an election. Moreover, Sarah Palin herself appears to be creating some distance from McCain, perhaps positioning herself for a future run for national office.

This all seems premature.

McCain seems to have placed his hopes on an electoral college strategy that would win him the election even while loosing the popular vote (sound familiar?). In fact, he appears to have given up on the popular vote already. Take Michigan, for example: he finds the probability of taking Michigan so slight he isn’t even campaigning there anymore. He’s not the first to adopt such a strategy, but what bothers me is that he might actually pull it off. Mathematically, it’s far from impossible.

This, of course, would set up a bigger firestorm than we had with the old who-won-Florida debacle eight years ago. Remember? Remember not knowing who won the election until weeks after the election? Remember the Supreme Court stepping in and deciding the election for us, despite the fact that they had no constitutional authority to do so or that the electoral procedures in place hadn’t even been fully utilized? I certainly remember. And I dread the same thing happening again. Could the U.S. face another such without domestic violence breaking out? I don’t know...but I doubt it.

(Get this straight: I am not advocating domestic violence in any form, and I don’t think it would benefit anyone. If it happens it would be the darkest day in U.S. history thus far.)

But let’s just look at it from another angle; what if Obama lost the popular vote but won the election through the electoral college? If you look at the polls thus far, it’s certainly possible...perhaps as likely as a McCain victory, I think. Would this be as great a disaster?

Hell yes it would.

The last two Presidential elections have been so close that it almost makes no difference. Hell, it didn’t make a difference in 2000. The voting public has shown itself to be sharply, and nearly evenly, divided, bitterly divided. One of the main reasons I have supported Obama for so long has been that I can see him as helping to heal this gaping wound on the body politic; I can’t see John McCain doing the same. I see a McCain presidency as continuing the divisiveness that has come to characterize American politics, and I see that as a very bad thing indeed.

Most of this changes if Obama wins through the electoral college but looses in the popular vote. In that case, any hope of healing this nation will have gone bye-bye and we will remain a bitterly divided, mutually disrespectful, mutually antagonistic society. I fear that. I fear what the consequences of such an election might be.

In light of this, I would find it difficult to accept any President who won under those conditions. So in that instance...and that instance only...I would favor John McCain over Barack Obama. But while it’s possible, I think it extremely unlikely. I think that Obama is likely to win both the popular vote and the electoral college. The next most possible event would McCain loosing the popular vote but winning through the electoral college; possible, but also extremely unlikely.

But then, I never thought Bush would defeat Gore in 2000. I still don’t think he did. So much for my ability to predict elections...

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Orson Scott Card, Republicrat

I find myself in the unusual position of having been asked to write an article on a specific topic. I don't ordinarily do this sort of thing, and here's why.

Today someone sent me a missive penned by Orson Scott Card, a highly regarded science fiction author and a somewhat less highly regarded political columnist, to the extent that Democrats were responsible for the current economic crisis. Card's position is that the Democrats could have stopped it years ago, that Republicans tried to stop it but were prevented by Democrats.

Yeah, right. So the fact that the Republicans have controlled Congress for most of that time, that since the Democrats had the majority nearly every effort to achieve real change has been blocked in the Senate by Republican filibuster, that the Republicans held the White House and all the cabinet posts for the last eight years, that they've controlled the post(s) of anyone who actually could have done anything for the last eight years, these mean nothing? Give me a break.

(My own opinion: A lot of people seem to have seen something like this coming, and tried to sound warnings, but no one in power was listening. Damned few people not in power were listing, either. And when the crunch came, the wolf bit down harder than anyone expected. No one is blameless here, not even the lowly like us. The difference here is that the power to do something was either in the hands of the Republicans or effectively blocked by the Republicans. But I digress.)

I'm not going to spend a great deal of time refuting Card's nonsense; there's a hell of a lot of it (do a Google search on "orson scott card" and prepare to get buried), and frankly I don't have that much time. I will say that Card isn't nearly as much of a Democrat as he claims; he's a supporter of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, has called for the criminalization of homosexual behavior, and has called for the bombing of Iran, Syria, and Lybia. Among other not-very-Democratic things.

I'm certainly not blasting Card for his opinions, but he doesn't come across as much of a Democrat.

Instead of me ranting against Card and his bile, do some research yourself. Go to these pages and read some of it, and some commentary on it.

Original article: It's quoted here, and several hundred other places on the Web. It also claims that the press has been burying the Democrats' culpability.

On Card's homophobia: Just try a Google search on orson scott card homophobe.
Also read this article at Salon.com and this article at About.com.

(I should also mention that Card is a practicing Mormon, and homophobia runs unchecked through the halls of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's something they believe in, and what they believe is their own damn business except where it infringes on someone elses' own damn business.)

On Card the anti-democrat: Read Card's own article at the Wall Street Journal.
Also read his column on "diversity" as reprinted on The Ornery American.

(Please note that I am not blasting Card for these opinions (not here anyway), I am merely citing them as evidence that Card has no business calling himself a Democrat, conservative or otherwise. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that; Card is simply a dishonest bastard.)

Card at Wikipedia

I should also mention, in the interest of fairness, that I never much cared for Card's novels and I thought Ender's Game sucked.

In the end, it dosen't much matter what opinion Card holds or espouses, or what political party he chooses to associate himself with. I was asked to give my opinion, so here it is: Card's opinion matters about as much as a fart in a hurricane.

The same can be said of my opinion. (Well, Starglider, you asked for it.)

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

20/20 Hindsight

A few days ago I wrote that I didn't feel that I knew enough about the economy to comment intellegently upon it. It appears that I wasn't alone.

Speaking to the House Oversight Committee, Alan Greenspan described himself as being "...in a state of shocked disbelief" over the state of the credit industry. (Read all about it.) Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. In this post he virtually ruled the U.S. economic system, and his conservative fiscal policies guided the U.S through three presidents and a long period of economic prosperity. His policies have been continued by his successors.

And they have failed us miserably, and it appears that no one was more surprised than Greenspan.

For years, Greenspan's financial philosophy has been to let it regulate itself, assuming that the banking and financial institutions he had power over would simply never do anything that wasn't in their own best interest. He was wrong; they smelled money and it made them stupid. In retrospect, and looking back with flawless 20/20 hindsight, anyone who had ever seen a teenage sex comedy could have told them how that would turn out. Gotta love that hindsight; it never fails to let you know a disaster is looming once you've already been buried in shit.

Nor would it be accurate to say that no one warned Greenspan that trouble was coming; but he looked at all the signs, consulted his Ouija board, read his tea leaves and pronounced the economy sound. Be fair, though; even though there were warning signs, even though there were people telling him that there was trouble on the horizon, the scope of the trouble that showed up surprised everyone, not just Alan Greenspan.

The difference is that Alan Greenspan was the person we trusted to protect us from something like this, the person we endowed with the awesome economic power that was supposed to protect us from our own greed. He kind of dropped the ball on that one. Even after he had left office, we continued to place our trust in his successors just as if he were still on the throne himself. He set the tone of the office, he made the policies, he was the hand on the tiller and we kept to the course he set for us. Straight for the shoals.

It's not like all of this just suddenly happened; it had to have been happening over a very long time. The problem didn't just suddenly occur; it had been building up for years. Nearly twenty of them, to be exact. Greeenspan's laisez faire attitude didn't just suddenly bugger us, we'd had our pants around our ankles for years but didn't have the brains to realize we were being screwed.

Nor are we, the people, blameless. We didn't just wake up one morning a couple of months ago all greedy; the greed was there and we happily wallowed in it.

We entrusted one man with the responsibility to protect us from our own greed, and kept to his policies after he was gone, and his way of "protecting" us was to leave the economy alone in the hope that it would regulate itself. In the end, this policy failed. Big time.

Perhaps the problem was that we were ever willing to entrust any one person with the power and responsibility to govern our lives to such an extent.

Shame on us.

The Blues Viking

Greenspan on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Scroll down to Friday, Oct. 17...

There's an article there that I originally abandoned, but have just finished and posted. But it posted as the 17th, the date I started writuing it. So you'll have to scroll down to read it. Sorry.

Or, you could jusr click here...

The Blues Viking

Fear and loathing on the campaign trail. Literally.

Listening to the rhetoric coming out of the McCain camp, you’d wonder if they actually know what century it is.

McCain is conducting an old-fashioned Republican campaign. That is, lots of innuendo and misleading statements; running against the man himself (Obama) and his background (or what they can make people think is his background) rather than the issues.

I realize that lies are one of the strongest weapons in any politician’s arsenal, but McCain has been firing indiscriminately. We keep hearing about Joe the Plumber, William Ayres, "redistributing the wealth," how Obama will raise taxes, increase welfare, and so on endlessly. McCain and Palin keep making these "arguments" and the partisan crowds cheer. And their surrogates, from local politicians to McCain’s wife, from right-wing radio talk show hosts to assorted blue collar workers standing squarely in McCain’s camp, make even nastier attacks; attacks on Obama’s race or on what he might do as President; implications that Obama is hiding something about his birth, his citizenship or his race. (Are there still people who buy this stuff? Apparently so...and they keep coming to McCain rallies.)

They keep making speeches on these topics, keep hitting the same talking points, keep implying the same exaggerations half-truths and outright falsehoods, and the McCain faithful keep lapping it up and applauding and cheering. It plays well on television.

Their problem is that it isn’t playing well in people’s living rooms.

Republicans are running a campaign designed to make voters fear and despise Obama, to make voters think that a vote for Obama is a vote for terrorism or socialism or radicalism or whichever ism they can make people afraid of. What they don’t seem to realize is that people aren’t buying it this time.

We’ve come into a time when people care a lot more about where a candidate stands now than on where his acquaintances stood forty years ago. We care more about what a candidate says than we do about who his father/friends/whatever are or were. To put it simply, we seem (finally) to care more about issues than we do about talking points.

Not that this is entirely one way. For example, a lot of ink has been expended in the last couple of days describing Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, and the amount of money spent to keep her and her family looking good for the cameras. Of course they’re being groomed for the cameras...they’re in front of the cameras!

Am I the only one that noticed that Barack Obama was wearing a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit in the last debate? He looked good. No one is holding it against him that he looked good; Sarah Palin, however, is being dragged through the mud for trying to keep herself (and her family; they’re on camera too) from looking shabby on national television. Who can blame her? Not me, certainly.

But back to the issue...What the Republicans seem unable to learn is that the old "vote-for-me-because-my-opponent-is-scary" kind of campaign doesn’t work any more. It’s not entirely their fault; Republicans had years to prepare for running against Hillary Clinton only to find themselves running an entirely different campaign against an entirely different candidate. Four years ago, hardly anyone believed that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. I’m sure the Republicans had lots of quotable lines ready about her clothing, her shoes, her makeup, her demeanor, and a hundred other things that would have the democrats crying "Foul!" even as they rushed her to have her hair done.

Welcome to Underdogland, Sarah. Have a pleasant stay.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

As long as you're here...

...you might as well check out my other blog.
http://blueblogslinks.blogspot.com/

It's the economy, stupid...

I haven't had much to say about the current economic crisis, but I have a good excuse; I don't understand it.

Not to say that I'm dumb. The economy is frightfully complex and even the "experts" seldom agree about much. Frankly, I don't think that anyone without a degree in Economics knows enough about economics to offer intellegent comments on it. And that excludes college-dropout me.

I did, however, write one good article on the subject, back in late September when I was off-line. It was fairly intellegent and fairly insightful (if I do say so myself) and at the end I promised I'd keep updating it until I was able to post it. The problem was, things were happening just too damn fast and to damn often for me to keep that promise for long. In two days, I'd updated that article more than half a dozen times and large parts of it were no longer applicable to the crisis (after two days!) so I gave it up as a bad job and stopped.

This experience also pointed out to me just how much I didn't know about the subject, so I did me some readin'. A month later, I don't know much more than I did, not when you compare it to how much I would need to know to comment intelligently on the subject.

I was able to teach myself about the International Paper Market and what it had to do with the world financial meltdown. (Hint: It has nothing to do with buying giant rolls of newsprint or toilet paper in bulk.)

I now know that there's a difference between micro-economics and macro-economics beyond scale.

I understand how debt is bad and credit is good. I also understand how debt is good and credit is bad.

And I understand enough to know that I don't actually know anything.

I can only hope that I know enough to make an intelligent, informed opinion on whose policies will be the law of the land after November 4. I think I do...but perhaps not. Perhaps no one does, unless they've got one of those fancy degrees in Economics that I mentioned earlier; those degrees that don't stop "experts" from endlessly arguing with each other and that didn't seem to help anyone predict this mess.

All I can do, all that any of us can do, is listen carefully, ask questions, read more about it, and based on what we learn make the best choice we can.

But be warned: If you follow that advice, you may end up selecting a President by closing your eyes and going "eeny, meeny, miney, moe..."

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(I would have posted a list of links for further reading, but I'm having a bit of trouble on the Internet today; try doing a Google search on economy (add you favorite news service) and see what you get. Good luck. -BV)

The Right Demotes the General

Today Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, came out in favor of Barack Obama for president. (Here's what Reuters had to say.)

This didn't really come as a surprise to anyone; partly because all the news services have been anticipating Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama, but also because Fox News has been making every effort over the last couple of days to make Powell appear more "black" than he has appeared before. I suppose that this is intended to minimize the impact of Powell's endorsement of Obama.

In one report on Fox's web site, I found this interesting quote regarding Powell: "At the same time, he is a black man and Obama would be the nation's first black president." Why would Fox feel the need to make that seemingly irrelevant point?

Another story from several days ago carries this headline: "Hip-Hop-Dancing Colin Powell Fuels Speculation He'll Endorse Obama". Huh? Powell doing a "black" dance means that he's going to make a political endorsement? For what, Dancemaster General?

That story also contained this paragraph: "His address at the 'Africa Rising' celebration inside London's Royal Albert Hall fueled speculation that an endorsement of Barack Obama is imminent." I'd like to say that I can't find a single thing anywhere that would support this conclusion, but a lot of other sources seem to have come to it themselves. As much as I'd like to, I can't just blame Fox.

Why is it necessary to find an excuse for Powell's support of Obama? More importantly, how can we take seriously any attempt to make Powell appear "blacker" when for his entire cerreer he's been the very epotomy of a man who "just happens to be black."

I think perhaps it's because Powell was perfectly acceptable to the Right; GWB's first Secretary of State, Vietnam vet, four star general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ran the Gulf War for GB1, and decorated like a Christmas tree. Will this exceptional pedigree be enough to quell McCainistas who continue to attack Obama on the patriotism/military experience front? Probably not...but it certainly makes such arguments seem even more pathetic.

(Now, this next bit is going to sound a tad racist, but it's hard to talk about this campaign without race coming into it somewhere. I wish that weren't the case. I hope that it won't be, someday. Soon.)

For years Powell was held by the Right as an example of the diversity of their side; his name was held high as they effectively screamed "See? We're not racist!" But now all the efforts to make Powell seem like "one of us" have backfired, now that he's declared for Obama and made himself effectively "one of them."

(And by "one of them" they would mean something other than what I would mean; I would mean one of us, Obama supporters. This is me trying not to sound like a tacitly racist white liberal.)

In light of this, it's understantable that the Right would feel the necessity of minimizing Powell, but I find the tools being used to be distasteful.

One thing that occurs to me is that the Colin Powell endorsement makes hash out of many of McCain's best anti-Obama arguments. And looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I think that Colin Powell would have been a better selection for VP than Sarah Palin; he could have dissarmed Obama's best anti-McCain arguments in the same way. Hell, I'm not sure he wouldn't have been a better choice for Obama than Joe Biden. And I like Joe Biden,

I do note that while Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama, he isn't planning on campaigning for him. Because of that, this will probably all die down in a couple of days. There will be no more news on this front...and no news is no news.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Colin Powell on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell

By the way...

You are checking out my other blog, aren't you?
http://blueblogslinks.blogspot.com/

The high cost of living

That's "living" as in "living and breathing."

There used to be a comedian on TV, many years ago, who (in a skit) called the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare on the phone. He said into the receiver, "Hi, George, how's your health?...Good, because we've only got enough money for your education and welfare." I feel like I'm living in that joke.

According to a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Servces, Medicaid spending is expected to grow at a much faster pace than the economy is expected to grow.

Why am I alarmed by this? Maybe because I am fifty years old and in poor health, and as poor as dirt. I am kept alive by Medicaid. I take ten different drugs daily to manage my heart, my cholesterol, my blood pressure and my diabetes. I see at least one doctor every week for something or other, and they expect to be paid. My hearing aids, my orthopedic shoes, my drugs, and my diabetes supplies are all paid for by Medicaid. My insulin alone would cost me a hundred bucks a month if I had to pay for it out of my own pocket. Without some sort of medical coverage, and right now Medicaid is all there is, I slowly die.

So perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on this. Perhaps I can't be objective. Perhaps my views on this matter cannot be trusted by the averege taxpayer.

(This is where the long pagraph that I cut should have gone; the one about how the average taxpayer hasn't had to go through what I go through. Of course they haven't had to go through all of this. I hope they never do. Nothing would make me happier than if not one more person in this nation (or in this world) had to take a dime of public assistance for their anything, let alone for health care. Hell, I can dream, can't I?)

If Medicaid continues to grow faster than the economy, Medicaid will be unable to continue to provide health care services for those without any other option. If that happens, a replacement will have to be found and I mean soon. What sort of replacement is the question.

(And why, you ask, would we have to find a replacement? Well we don't...not if you're OK with a lot of people dropping dead because of poverty. Here we'd sit, still one of the richest nations in the world, with our people dying from being poor. Are you OK with that? I'm not.)

Obama and McCain both have plans that address the problem to varying degrees, but I can't recommend either since they both leave control of the system in the hands of the people who have messed it up to begin with, be they the government or the health care industry. I don't trust them to solve the problem they've created.

Fully socialized medicine is one option, but it's one that is anathema to most Americans. (I think it's mostly that word socialized. Maybe we could call it something else?) Nearly every industrialized nation on Earth has some sort of "National Health" and it's true that they've all got their problems, but try this: ask someone from a country with a National Health system, say Canada or the UK for example, if they'd trade their system for ours. I don't think you'd find anyone who'd trade their National Health system for the mess we have.

From everything I can see, National Health works better for everyone except the doctors (and, of course, the business people who manage medical programs without having gone through the unnecessary step of medical school). Like most of us, doctors want to be rich. Not to say that they won't still be very well off; they're doing well up in Canada and over in the UK and they're not suffering or going hungry, though they may have to drive BMW's instead of Bentleys.

But you'll never get any kind of National Health through in America, because it wouldn't let doctors and "managers" make as much money as they want. That's the American way, after all; anything else would be socialism. Better dead than red, as they say.

I fear that, one day, that may actually be the choice we face.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Coming Soon to a Car Bumper Near You!

My friend auntiezel sent me this from a bumper sticker; I thought I'd pass it along.

"Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor"

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Why Bother?

The last debate is finally over. The audience has gone home, the press has put both their papers and themselves to bed, the rabid supporters of either candidate have retreated (for now) back to their caves to immerse themselves in "news" and blogs that only support their favorite candidate (like this one). And after all of the hype, after all of the newspeople have had their say as to who won or lost, after all of the pundits have had a chance to dissect what each candidate had to say, one incontrovertible fact has become absolutely clear:

Barack Obama was wearing a much nicer suit than John McCain.

And, sadly, that’s about all that is absolutely clear.

I am too damn old to believe that what the candidates say now will have much of anything to do with how they’ll act once they actually get into office. The history of politics in America is a sad history of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. Sure, their intentions may have been good, maybe even the best, but what is that but a white stripe down the center of the road to Hell?

Am I being cynical? You’re damned right I am. After more than thirty years of participating in the electoral process, I think I’ve earned the right to be a bit cynical. I’ve seen too many politicians succeed in getting elected only to fail in office. Worse, I’ve become weary listening to people who have failed dismally trying to spin their failures into shining examples of their character and tenacity in the face of adversity. And when they can’t spin the facts, they lie about them. And I do not expect this election to be any better.

So why am I still doing this, still listening to campaign speeches despite the implicit dishonesty of them, still voting for my best choice for office despite knowing that I’ll ultimately be disappointed, still choosing a candidate based on his values when all I have to go on isn’t much more than what that candidate says their values are?

Because it’s too bloody important not to.

Look, I know I’ll be disappointed. I know that I’m setting myself up for a major letdown. And I know that, as bitterly disappointed as I’ll be if Candidate A wins, I’ll be even more disappointed by Candidate B’s performance if I vote for him and he falls flat on his face. And I know that there’s always a chance that somehow one candidate or the other may find a way to steal the election, some electoral trickery to make my exercise of choice meaningless. (After all, it’s happened before.)

The office of President of the United States is too damn important to not try to exercise my freedom of choice, no matter how feeble it may be. Regardless of what we (as individuals) do, if we (as a group) don’t exercise our right to choose then that choice will be taken away from us. A new leader will be chosen; do you want to at least try to have a say in that selection or are you content to have someone simply tell you who it will be?

I have a friend who is fond of quoting the band Rush; I’m going to do it myself (even though I don’t really care for Rush):

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Ultimately, it’s not as important how we vote as it is that we vote.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

A New Patrick O’Brian...Anyone?

I've spent a month off-line, but I've kept busy writing articles off-line to post as soon as I was on again. The problem is, most of them are too damn dated to bother posting at this point. For example, I wrote a rather good article on the disintegrating ecomomy, but trying to keep it somewhat up-to-date every damn day proved to be far too much bother. So I quit.

This is an article that contains nothing whatsoever about politics, the ecomomy, or anything else that's likely to need to be updated regularly, so here it comes.

I’ve written this while my Internet connection was down, to be posted as soon as it’s up again...or perhaps as soon as I can get to a computer elsewhere. If you’ve been waiting patiently for my words of wisdom, why? No one besides me is likely to be interested in this. But I’m way tired of politics right now, so while my Internet connection is down I’m going to answer a simple question that no one has asked: "What are you reading lately?"

September 14, 2008

Years ago, more than fifteen but less than twenty years, I became bored.

Really bored, without even a good book to occupy my mind. So I did what I always do when I'm really bored...I went to a bookstore. Up until this point I had read almost nothing but science fiction or fantasy, but to be honest I was pretty damned bored with science fiction and fantasy. It may seem to you that a person could never grow tired of a genre they had loved for so many years, but I had read so damn much that I had gotten almost sick of it. So I was looking over the general fiction section, and I came across Patrick O’Brian.

I had no idea who Patrick O’Brian was. If you don’t know either, a quick lesson: Patrick O’Brian wrote novels about the British Navy during the early nineteenth century. You know; Napoleon and Nelson and all that. (OK, so he wrote other stuff as well, but he’s not really known for much besides his nautical fiction.) There. You now know far more about O’Brian than I did.

I think I just liked the ship on the cover. I had always had a thing for sailing ships, but had never ventured in to the genre called "nautical fiction" and perhaps known more widely as "sea stories." On a whim, I decided to give this book a chance.

It was Master and Commander, the first in a series (I think there were sixteen or so at the time). Since I hadn’t read any O’Brian, or indeed anything like O‘Brian, I didn’t know what to expect.

The first thing that struck me was the prose. O’Brian had a way of writing that was almost Dickensian in its richness. Frankly, that nearly put me off; I come from an era of artless letters where publishers won’t touch anything that reads above a fifth-grade reading level. This stuff required an education; at the very least the ability to read at college level. It was a bit tough to get through at first, being used as I was to literary pablum, but after ten pages I couldn’t put it down.

His prose evoked the early nineteenth century more realistically than any book or movie I have ever encountered, and that includes most of the novels I have read that were written in the nineteenth century. Here’s what I’m talking about:

"The music-room in the Governor’s House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli’s C major quartet. The players, Italians pinned against the far wall by rows and rows of little round gilt chairs, were playing with passionate conviction as they mounted towards the penultimate crescendo, towards the tremendous pause and the deep, liberating final chord. And on the little gilt chairs at least some of the audience were following the rise with equal intensity: there were two in the third row, on the left hand side; and they happened to be sitting next to one another. The listener farther to the left was a man of between twenty and thirty whose big form overflowed his seat, leaving only a streak if gilt wood to be seen here and there. He was wearing his best uniform - the white lapelled blue coat, white waistcoat, breeches and stockings of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, with the silver medal of the Nile in his buttonhole - and the deep white cuff of his gold-buttoned sleeve beat the time, while his bright blue eyes, staring from what would have been a pink-and-white face if it had not been so deeply tanned, gazed fixedly at the bow of the first violin. The high note came, the pause, the resolution; and with the resolution the sailor’s fist swept firmly down upon his knee. He leant back in the chair, extinguishing it entirely, sighed happily and turned towards his neighbor with a smile. The words ‘Very finely played, sir, I believe’ were formed in his gullet if not quite in his mouth when he caught the cold and indeed inimical look and heard the whisper, ‘If you really must beat the measure, sir, let me entreat you to do so in time, and not half a beat ahead.’"

- Master and Commander, opening paragraph

Before I’d read half of that first O’Brian novel, I’d already bought the second.

The novels deal with Jack Aubrey (the naval officer in that first paragraph) and Doctor Steven Maturin (his neighbor at the concert). Before the fifth page they’ve agreed to meet the next morning for a duel; a rough start for one of the most enduring friendships in literature. Over the next twenty books (and a fragment of a twenty-first) they fight Napoleon, the French Navy, the American Navy, assorted pirates, thieves, cannibals, diseases, card cheats, spies, wives (not always theirs), storms, shipwrecks, starvation, scurvy, and the occasional British admiral. The books read like one extremely long novel (I read them that way recently; it took a year) and I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Over the next couple of years I read all of them that had been published. I also read two other sea stories of his that weren’t part of the Aubrey-Maturin series, The Golden Ocean and The Unknown Shore. As O’Brian was still alive and writing (though over eighty) I eventually caught up with his publishers and was able to buy the last two novels as soon as they came out in hardcover.

Then, in January of 2000, Patrick O’Brian died.

It may have been selfish, but I couldn’t help but wonder who my next "favorite author" was going to be. In truth, I had been looking for some time. Naturally, I first looked to the type of nautical fiction ("sea stories" if you prefer) that I had by then come to love.

(You won’t need to be very astute to notice that nearly all of the novels listed below are adventure stories; that’s my preference and I make no apologies for it. But of all the authors in this article, the one who transcends that level is Patrick O’Brian, who elevated the "sea story" to literature. I think that, perhaps, is what I’ve been looking for, what I’m still looking for. Maybe it’s time I read Moby Dick.)

First, I tried C. S. Forester’s Hornblower stories. When you’re talking about nautical fiction, I think Hornblower is the first name that comes to most people’s minds. I had never read any of them, and my only familiarity with the character was from the old movie with Gregory Peck and the recent television series with Ioan Gryffud. (I liked the TV series.) I picked up a couple of Hornblower books; frankly, they didn’t do much for me and I still can’t fathom what all the fuss is about. The TV shows are better. Hell, that old picture from the 1950’s with Peck was better than the Forester I read, which after O’Brian seemed rather juvenile.

I tried Dudley Pope’s character Nicholas Ramage. The Ramage series ran to nearly as many books as O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin but much lighter reading, much like the Hornblower books. Only more enjoyable, if not more literary. Shorter, too. Still, I was in the mood for something I could read with my brain on stand-by, and I finished and enjoyed the entire series. But Pope as well had recently passed on, and when I’d read the eighteenth there were no more. Onward.

I had much the same reaction to Alexander Kent’s Bolitho novels. Richard Bolitho was supposedly the "action man’s hero" as opposed to O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey being the "thinking man’s hero." If that’s true, I must be a thinking man because I didn’t think much of the two Bolitho books I tried. The series had the advantage of still being written, however; Kent is still cranking them out. I think Richard Bolitho is an Admiral now.

Next I tried reading Captian Fredrick Marryat’s novels; no one main hero, but nautical nevertheless. The interesting thing about Marryat is that he actually was a naval officer during the war against Napoleon; he wrote his first novel while he was fitting out a frigate sometime before 1820. As such, his novels posses a genuine quality that modern writers like O’Brian can only mimic. Still, I found O’Brian’s evocation of early nineteenth century prose more interesting than actual early nineteenth century prose. Moving on...

Next comest James Nelson, an author who is a historian and a sailor and whose novels are as salty as you'd like. I started his Revolution at Sea series (which I believe he’s still writing) but just couldn’t get into it. However, I read his Brethren of the Coast trilogy (think Pirates of the Caribbean rather than Nelson at Trafalgar) and loved every word. His novel The Only Life that Matters was also damned good, dealing with pirates Anne Boney and Mary Reade. Not O’Brian, perhaps, but damned good reading and I look forward to his next novel.

Next I come to Dewey Lambdin’s Alan Lewrie series (no, I am not making these author's names up). If Jack Aubrey is truly the "thinking man’s hero" and Richard Bolitho is the "action man’s hero" then Alan Lewrie must be the "fornicator’s hero" because he seems prepared to jump on anything with a pulse. I actually gave up on this series after the first novel (The King’s Coat) because I had no respect or sympathy for the character. A few years later McBooks re-released the second Alan Lewrie book (The French Admiral), and I decide to give it a try. It was, quite frankly, one of the best novels I had ever read and since then I have enjoyed the entire series. I was even able to reread the first book with new appreciation. I eagerly read each book as it’s published (they’re still being written) and I enjoy them thoroughly. But I still can’t say much for Lewrie’s morals.

What all of these authors failed to give me was the literary fix I was craving after so much O’Brian. It occurred to me that perhaps I should look outside of nautical fiction, but short of reading Jane Austin I had no idea where to turn. And I hate Jane Austin. (Besides, I don’t think she’d know a crossjack from a crowbar.)

H. P. Lovecraft filled this need for a while; you can’t get much more literate than Lovecraft, despite his habit of not writing dialog. Even though Lovecraft is a horror writer, and I dislike that whole genre, I read quite a bit of him for a while. In the end, however, he was a man of his era, a time when racism was institutionally accepted and the strong racist undercurrents in much of Lovecraft’s work ultimately put me off. So it was back to the sea (in a literary sense) for me.

The closest I’ve come to the rich descriptive prose and memorable characters of Patrick O’Brian is Julian Stockwin’s Kidd series. Thomas Kidd starts out a young apprentice wigmaker "pressed" (read "shanghaied") into the Royal Navy, where he discovers a knack for the seafaring life and over the course of nine (so far; I’ve read seven) novels rises to command of a warship. As unlikely as that sounds, it happened quite often before the Royal Navy started requiring its officers to be gentlemen, during the later years of the war with Napoleon. The prose is sharp, the storytelling very well done and the characters are richly drawn and, in spite of how unlikely they may sound to us, totally authentic. I can’t wait for the most recent novel, The Admiral’s Daughter, to be available hereabouts.

But even I get tired of the maritime printed word, so I tried mysteries, and found something I liked; Lindsey Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco series of mysteries is set in ancient Rome, featuring Roman "private informer" Marcus Didius Falco. I had read the first one of these, Silver Pigs, back when it was first published in the early 1980’s and had really liked it, but not being a great mystery fan I never knew that there were more of them. By the time I rediscovered Davis she had written half a dozen more Falco novels, so I reread Silver Pigs and read the rest of the series as fast as I could get my hands on them. The books are basically hard-boiled detective fiction set in ancient Rome; as one critic put it, "Sam Spade in a ratty toga." I would have said Philip Marlowe in sandals, myself. She’s still writing this series, but all too slowly for my taste. By my calculations, she should be about up to the eruption of Vesuvius by now.

I should also mention Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, even though I started reading them about the same time I started reading O’Brian. (For a while I was alternating one O’Brian with one Cornwell.) Cornwell's Richard Sharpe is a tough former street urchin who, in the army, saves the life of the Duke of Wellington (or rather the man who would one day be the Duke of Wellington) and as a reward is made an officer. This, too, was unlikely but did happen more often than you might think; but unlike most such "jumped up sergeants" Sharpe rose to higher rank (most of them ended their days no more than lieutenants). Interestingly, after taking then-Lt. Sharpe from the French invasion of Portugal all the way through Waterloo as a Lt. Colonel (and beyond into civilian life, but I didn’t care for that book much; Sharpe’s Devil it was called) he went back before the beginning and started Sharpe out as a private in India, taking a few books to get him up to saving Arthur Wellesly’s life (the man who would be Wellington), then started writing books that "filled in the gaps" between the earlier novels. He’s still at it; this is another author whose works I buy as soon as I see them. (I should also mention that he’s written a lot of novels that have nothing to do with Sharpe. All that I’ve read have been damn good reads; historical fiction set from the building of Stonehenge through the American Civil War. He is truly a master of historical fiction.) Oh, and by the way, there's an excellent BBC TV series based on the Sharpe novels, well worth checking out. It was this TV series that hooked me on Sharpe in the first place.

And while I’m on the subject of historical fiction that doesn’t go to sea, I should also mention John Wilcox’ Simon Fonthill novels. This is a relatively new series set in Africa and India/Afghanistan (so far) and features an officer who comes through the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift (the Zulu War in 1879) and decides, as a result, that he’s through with the bloody Army. But the bloody Army isn’t through with him, and the books (four of them so far; I’ve read three) follow him through the outskirts of the British Empire during its last years of expansion. Interesting characters and a period much ignored in literature; well worth reading.

But still I come back to nautical fiction (I hate using the term "sea stories"). Once I got on this kick, that was pretty much it for me and science fiction/fantasy; where it was once nearly all I read, I doubt I’ve read as many as five science fiction novels in the last seven years. It’s just not my cup of tea any more. I blame O’Brian; if not for him this yearning for nautical authors specifically, and better authors in general, would certainly have never come to pass. But as things are, with a few exceptions I’ll still take a good book full of gunpowder smoke and tarred hemp to nearly anything else.

Which, oddly, brings me to what I’m reading now. The title? I’ll get to that. First the premise: it’s set in the early nineteenth century, during the war with Napoleon, and the hero is the captain of a British frigate. All very O’Brian-esque so far, right? But in this world both sides in the conflict are using dragons to give nineteenth century warfare a vertical component. Imagine if Jack Aubrey had been Jack Aubrey but Stephen Maturin had been a flying dragon the size of a locomotive. I’m only about fifty pages into it but so far, so good; the author, Naomi Novik, is an acknowledged O’Brian fan (Jane Austin too, but we’ll let that pass) and it has something of the ring of authenticity that O’Brian’s work always had. It’s a series, and so far has run to five or six books with (hopefully) more to come. The first book is called His Majesty’s Dragon and the series is called Temeraire (the name of the dragon). To early to tell, of course, but I have high hopes that this series will become one I like. We’ll see.

Odd that my current fondness for nautical fiction has brought me around again to science fiction/fantasy. Then again, there’s this story I’ve been thinking about writing, with a steam-powered wooden spaceship...

The Blues Viking

(Oh and one more point of interest. O’Brian based his fictional naval hero, Jack Aubrey, on the real life Lord Thomas Cochrane. As it happens, C. S. Forrester did the same thing when creating Horiatio Hornblower. In fact, nearly every naval hero of fiction set in the early nineteenth century is based in whole or part on Cochrane. And Captain Frederick Marryat, while still a midshipman, actually served under Cochrane. He’s a fascinating character and worth reading about. -BV)

And just to give you all something to read...

This is by no means a complete list of all the nautical fiction (and other stuff) I’ve read, just the authors mentioned in the article. A complete list would be far too long and I had to end the article sometime. Enjoy.

Patrick O’Brian: Books available from W. W. Norton.

C. S. Forrester, Dudley Pope, Alexander Kent, Captain Frederick Marryat, Dewey Lambdin and Julian Stockwin: Books available from McBooks (I love McBooks; they publish a lot of nautical fiction).

H. P. Lovecraft: His novels and stories have been around for a long time and are available from various publishers; try searching amazon.com.

Bernard Cornwell: His early Sharpe novels were published by Penguin and are still available on bookshelves under that publisher, but are being reissued by Signet. His later Sharp novels and other books are available from Harper and its subsidiaries. (Oh, and don't worry about reading them in order; he certainly didn't write them in order.)

Lindsey Davis: Books available from St. Martin’s Minotaur.

Naomi Novik: Books available from Del Rey.

John Wilcox: Books available from Headline.

You should be able to find any or all of these at amazon.com


The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.