The Longest Palindrome I Know...

Dog Sees Ada

Adam? I'm Adam! Moody, me? Dam it (sic)! Are we all? I know Ada. I saw Ada.

Ah, a short symbol to no denial: Eyes omit naive dog-desserts. Evil right, old-name diets. A tree-bonnet foliate, relax: If Ada did pull order, read. Ada had a foe, fire-rose facade tool, too-hot yard Iraq: arid Elijah at a haj. I lead a reviled noose, Canadian!

It is coded, on a pistol by Rome, "Man is an ardor pelt, tactiler, sad." A tacit sin, a rude Roman enema. I ran; Agnus Dei, Dada lived on.

I, a gap, a zero monad, Ada's nose: "Rift on, evil royal pilots!" I pass a nasal acolyte. I pondered, now idle.

His flack: late no-no's, tits, a cow. Two-cow, to tenor of God! A sin is a sign, ignoble udder-cases! La femme fatale gnawed at a phone-post, also lost call, eh? She'll act solo, slats open. Oh, pat a dew-angel at a femme false. Sacred duel, bonging is a sin; is a dog? For one to two-cow two, cast it so none talk calfs!

I held, I wondered. No piety local as an ass. A pistol (I play, or live not) fires on sad Ada. "No more!" Zap! Again. O devil! Ada died, sung an aria. Men, enamored, uranistic at Ada's relit cattle prod, ran as in a memory blot.

Sip an ode, Doc; sit in. Aid an ace, soon deliver Ada! Elijah!

At a haj, I led Iraq (arid ray to hoot), looted a cafe sore, rife of Ada. Had Ada erred? Roll up. Did Ada fix ale, retail? Often. "No beer taste," I demand, "loth girl! I've stressed! Go, deviant!"

"I mosey!"

"Elaine, Do not lob my Stroh's!"

Aha! Ada was I; Ada won. Kill a ewe, racist.

I made my doom: "Madam, I'm ADA!"

Ada sees God.

Christmas In September - Part 2

Back at the community center:

Three contestants in the orange Nehi drinking contest suffered from post-competition vomiting. Only two of them made it to the bathroom. The other grabbed a nearby bucket.

Jean Shepherd would have loved that.

During the lecture by the Famous Biographer, five kids played kazoos and pushed each other off of the bleachers, making it impossible to hear the Really Interesting Lecture.

Jean Shepherd would have loved that too.

The kid who won the Ralphie lookalike contest, Parker Danner, 5, really and truly looked like Ralphie. A dispute over a raffle ticket almost came to fisticuffs. The line for the leg lamps, lunch boxes and BB guns was really, really long, while the book vendors sat quietly, looking at their hands.

Scott Schwartz, who played Flick and then moved on to a sad career as an actor in porno movies (i.e. 1997's "Dirty Bob's Xcellent Adventures, 35"), said he had renounced his former acting career to sell baseball cards and movie memorabilia. During a cigarette break he said, "This movie is our legacy. People ask what it's like to be a has-been. But I can say that in 50 or 100 years, what we did will still be here."

The air smelled of sausage, fried peppers, onions and Nehi. As the crowds thinned out, the actors started to pack up their leftover merchandise. The day had been a success. An estimated 1,500 people came together to celebrate Hammond's role in creating an American classic. Sue Rzeszut, director of the community center, thinks this event will help put Hammond on the map.

A few die-hard fans remained to help close down the hall. They launched a plan to meet up with the actors later at Flick's Tap.

Just now, Hammond didn't seem dreary at all.

Jean Shepherd would have hated that.


Flick's tongue and other trivia:

A Q&A session with the "Christmas Story" actors at the Jean Shepherd Fest drew a large crowd, who learned that:

- The movie was actually filmed in Cleveland. The school scenes were shot in Canada.
- Flick's tongue was stuck to the pole using suction from a hose mounted inside the pole.
- Shepherd was such a perfectionist that director Bob Clark had to bar him from the set because he kept interfering with the kids' performances.
- The actors had a lot of fun making the movie but didn't stay friends. They're all more or less still in the entertainment business, but they struggle to keep working.
- MGM was so unenthusiastic about "A Christmas Story" that the studio chose not to promote it, concentrating instead on promoting the re-release of "Yentl."

--A.D.

Christmas in September - Part 1

The Southeast Side of Chicago, where I was born and grew up, was a lot like Hammond, IN....

"The creator of a holiday classic gets a merry little tribute from the hometown he loved to hate "

Published September 26, 2004

Everybody has to be from somewhere. Ernest Hemingway hailed from Oak Park. Saul Bellow comes from Chicago. Two hometowns fight over who gets to claim Mark Twain.

In the literary hometown sweepstakes, Hammond scored big. Hammond has Jean Shepherd. Shepherd, master comic writer and monologuist, was until a few years ago a somewhat obscure genius who enjoyed cool-cat cult status. Through the 1960s and '70s, Shepherd's biting and hilarious short stories, mainly published in Playboy, grew his literary reputation.

From 1956 to 1977, Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show from WOR in New York City. For hours each night, he unspooled his often-melancholy musings, completely unscripted. Shepherd's tales could start with an encounter at a local diner, meander through his opinions on sports, politics and culture, and often land with a burst right back in Hammond, with a story of a childhood misadventure or familial outrage. He was Spaulding Gray and David Sedaris rolled into one. He was Garrison Keillor off his meds.

Thanks to endless holiday showings on cable, "A Christmas Story," the 1983 filmed version of Shepherd's tale of a particular Christmas from his childhood, is now on its way to eclipsing "It's a Wonderful Life" as a must-see holiday classic.

Shepherd, who died in 1999 at age 78, either hated Hammond or loathed Hammond, depending on his mood. Sometimes he merely despised the place. And yet, he couldn't stop talking about it, tingeing memories from his adventurous childhood with great affection.

Now it's payback time.

On a beautiful late-summer day, hundreds of the humorist's fans gathered at the handsome new Jean Shepherd Community Center in Hammond for the first-ever Jean Shepherd Fest. Ringing the large gymnasium were booths and tables sporting all things "A Christmas Story." Fans could purchase CDs and DVDs of Shepherd performing, books by and about Shepherd, leg lamps (just like the Major Award won by Ralphie's old man in the movie), Red Ryder BB guns (the "Holy Grail" of Christmas gifts, according to Ralphie), figurines (including one of the character Flick with his tongue stuck to a freezing pole), and Christmas ornaments. Young fans waited to sit on Santa's lap and compete in a Ralphie lookalike contest.

Judging from the antic mood at the event, the residents of Hammond don't seem to hold much of a grudge against their famous native. Donna Thurman Musella grew up in Shepherd's neighborhood but now lives in Queen Creek, Ariz. She came all the way home just to pay homage to "A Christmas Story." "I'm here representing my whole family. My dad worked in the steel mill. Now my kids are home screaming and my husband is mad at me for not bringing him," she said, laughing.

The white-hot center of the action was the merchandise table manned by four former child actors: Scott Schwartz (who played Flick), Zack Ward (Farkus), R.D. Robb (Schwartz) and Ian Petrella (Randy). Peter Billingsley, who played the lead, Ralphie, sent his regrets. The actors sold collectibles from the movie and autographs ($10 unless you bought the merchandise from them), answered questions and happily posed for pictures with fans (free).Hammond natives Erick and Melyssa King waited in line for more than an hour to approach the table. Erick was wearing a "Show Me How the Little Piggy Eats" T-shirt. Melyssa was sporting her "You're Gonna Shoot Your Eye Out" T-shirt.

Erick, a steelworker at ISG Steel in East Chicago, has done some research on the writer's life at the Hammond library. "He had a very dark view of this area, and it is a pretty dreary place, let's be honest. But a lot of people identify with `A Christmas Story' because it was like their own childhood--for good and bad," he said. When he got to the head of the line, Erick paid Petrella $10 to sign his T-shirt.

Ward played up his "bully" status as Farkus, referring to himself as "The Terminator of kids' movies." He tended to mock-punch people and good-naturedly threaten to "kick your ass." He has a role in "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," which he repeatedly urged fans to see.

Hammond has changed since Shepherd's time. The sky no longer glows orange from the effluvia of the refineries and mills. The downtown has largely disappeared. But Warren G. Harding elementary school, made famous by the movie, survives, as does Flick's Tap, which was once owned by Shepherd's boyhood friend and is still a hangout for fans and locals.

"Jean Shepherd had a love/hate relationship to everything in his life but especially his hometown. He really felt he had to leave Hammond," said Eugene Bergmann, author of "Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd," a scholarly biography to be published in December.

Shepherd's boyhood home, a slightly run-down powder blue bungalow, is an unassuming presence on leafy Cleveland Street. No one was home, but Ray and Leilani Suchanuk came across the street to talk. Ray's mother, who died recently, was a custodian at Warren G. Harding School, as well as a Shepherd neighbor."Jean Shepherd called it right," Ray said. "It is the armpit, but it is our armpit, and we love it."

"We have very few tornadoes and no earthquakes," volunteered Leilani.

BushSpeak

BUSHSPEAK by PHILIP GOUREVITCH
New Yorker Issue of 2004-09-13
...

[George W. Bush, in a speech at Las Cruces, NM] just declared the past four years a success, and said that more and better was to come. What was the alternative? John Kerry? Bush spends a good deal of time on the stump deriding his rival, and the rest of the time he projects the attitude of a man who is running unopposed—which he could be forgiven for thinking if the election depended simply on who is the better campaigner.

Bush campaigns with the eager self-delight of a natural ham. There’s an appealing physicality about him. When he says he wants your vote, he does not just mouth the words but follows them through with his entire body, rising to his toes, tilting toward you yearningly. When he works his way along the edge of the stage, waving, shaking hands, he has the concentration of an athlete in the thrall of his game. He seems to hold nothing back. He reaches for the hands around him, tipping so far forward that it appears, in the frozen fraction of a second captured in photographs, that he has lost his balance. He twists, and stoops, and spins, and stops abruptly to wave, and the raised hand seems to lift the rest of him with it, up and forward. Bush is said to be charming, and polls show that Americans tend to find him more likable than his policies, but one does not even have to like him to admire how truly at home he appears in his body.

He has a repertoire of stock poses and expressions, as does any professional performer, but the freedom of his movements is striking. Flip through snapshots of him, and you’ll find any number that catch him in a bizarre or comical position. The mobility of his face leaves him open to lampooning, not least because of its simian modelling, which is underscored by his affectation of an equally simian gait—the dangle-armed swagger, like a knuckle-walker startled to find himself suddenly upright. But even when he looks foolish, or simply coarse, Bush is never less than an expressive presence.

The same can be said of his language. He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.

...

His speeches rely on the same stagger-stacking of phrases and refrains that characterizes popular songs and sermons. ... He is nothing if not insistent.

The best sendup of Bushspeak was published by the Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles this spring. It was a drawing called “George W. Bush Press Conference Refrigerator Magnet Set,” and showed an icebox door arrayed with a patchwork of words and phrases: “I want to say / I mean / clearly / the situation was / a / tough week / tough / dangerous / because the / terror / terrorism / threat was / a nation / that was dangerous / because of / weapons / programs / activities / we’re still looking / but even / though / I was briefed / a lot / steadfast / and strong / about / historical / killer / terrorist / suiciders / who would / fly it into buildings / which was / a gathering threat / in / easy hindsight / that / empty words / would embolden / dangerous people / hidden in a turkey farm / where / I was tired of swatting flies / so / I want to be clear.”

...

Bush’s performance on the stump is more a rap than a speech, a sequence of talking points strung together by applause lines. In style and substance, his discourse is saturated in churchiness: he touts the rights of the unborn, pooh-poohs same-sex marriage, speaks of marshalling the “armies of compassion” and transforming America into a “culture of responsibility” and an “ownership society” by changing “one heart and soul, one conscience at a time.” But, for all his God talk, he is remarkably lacking in humility. No fault, no blame, no regret, no room for shame attends him as he goes about changing the world. Nor does he appear to entertain the possibility that the changes he is imposing could be anything but improvements. To hear him tell it, the economy is terrific, public education is thriving, health care is better than ever, terrorists are on the run, democracy is spreading throughout the Middle East, and everywhere America is living up to what he describes as its “calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.” Because Bush does not appear able to recognize his own errors, much less admit them, he is incapable of self-correction. Indeed, he boasts tirelessly of his resolve and steadfastness, making a virtue of rigidity. Like it or lump it. [Emphasis added]

[When I despair of the dirty tone this campaign has established - on both sides - I was so glad to have read the following...]

Bush’s motorcade withdrew to Las Cruces’s tiny desert airfield at mid-morning; he was off to give the same performance at rallies in Farmington and Albuquerque before flying home to the White House for the night. Not far from Air Force One, on the tarmac, a Kerry-Edwards campaign plane waited for John Edwards, who was holding a rally at noon in the historic town square of Mesilla, just a few miles from where the Bush crowd was dispersing. The last time that Republican and Democratic rallies coincided in Mesilla, in August of 1871, sharp whiskey and sharp words resulted in brawls and gunplay that left nine men dead and as many as fifty wounded. The memory of that massacre provides a heartening reminder that there is a good deal of both hype and plain ignorance behind the claim, widely upheld among the political classes this year, that we are in the throes of the bitterest, most polarizing electoral contest in American history. Sure, as both the Bush and the Kerry camps keep saying, much is at stake. Sure, the race has become plenty ugly. But what makes it most discouraging is not the divisiveness but the falseness and the foolishness of so much of the debate—and, thus far, it is Bush, the self-styled heir to such great statesmen as Churchill and Truman, who has contributed most to lowering the tone.

Four years ago, Bush ran for President as a champion of compassion at home and humility abroad. After the September 11th attacks, he recast himself as a man of action, a warrior, whose basic message to the world is: They messed with the wrong guy. In a video clip shown at the Republican Convention, he said, “I think the best part of this job is to set in motion big changes of history—it’s unbelievably exciting to be in a position to do that.” He has done so by force of arms, and also by force of words. For Bush, rhetoric is reality, and he operates as if things were as he says they are. If reality does not conform, he remains undeterred, and on message—as with his insistence that even if he’d known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he would have invaded and occupied the place anyway. Indeed, as his Presidency has progressed, and his policies have failed to create the circumstances he has proclaimed—whether in regard to the economy, education, prescription drugs, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, nation-building in Afghanistan, or war and occupation in Iraq—the gap between his grandiose, self-glorifying rhetoric and our anxious and unsettling reality has grown steadily wider.

...

It is not apparent that most Americans think of themselves as living in a nation at war, or that a sense of being engaged in a struggle to the death with an unseen but all-threatening enemy is the defining political experience of our time. But that has been the premise of the Bush presidency since the day when, as he insists on putting it, “everything changed,” and that was the dominant theme of the Bush Convention.
...

[In concluding the Republican Convention] out came all the kids and grandkids, and, love them or hate them, everybody watching seemed to agree that the Republicans had just had a hell of a successful Convention.

Of course, the same was said about the Democrats a month earlier. But Bush and his crew had pretty much wiped away Kerry’s advantage, even before they gathered in New York. They had fought him dirty, with the lying Swift Boat Veterans’ ads, and they’d fought him mean, caricaturing and taunting him, jabbing and lashing at him with sharp tongues. They’d ganged up and piled on, and they’d made no apologies. In fact, they’d enjoyed every minute of it.
“Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called walking,” Bush said at the Garden. “Now and then, I come across as a little too blunt—and for that we can all thank the white-haired lady sitting up there.” He indicated his mother. That was the joke in his speech, the self-deprecating part, but the President wasn’t kidding. Kicking ass is just his nature. And, while he had been effectively tied with or trailing his challenger all year, and still was behind on many issues and in many states, an early post-Convention poll showed him opening a national lead beyond the margin of error.

Even so, both candidates must now recognize that neither of them inspires any great enthusiasm in a majority of the electorate. Neither can expect to win on his merits. Rather, for each the best hope is to make the other one lose—and, for the moment at least, Bush had succeeded in turning a referendum on himself into a referendum on the other guy. [All emphasis added]

The Fishin' Magician

HOOKED by IAN FRAZIER New Yorker issue of 2004-09-27

President Bush conceded yesterday that even many of his friends have doubts about America’s role in Iraq. . . . “There’s a lot of my friends who come and bass fish with me. They don’t say it out loud, I know they’re thinking it: ‘Why?’” Bush said. —The News.

George Gilder, tournament economist and senior bass analyst, Discovery Institute: “G-Dub and I had just put the boat in the water at Lake Claiborne and burned some gas over to a productive little piece of bottom structure that I know about. I was chunking a crankbait made from pork rind cured in a special bass attractant I’d got from Milt Friedman—real fragrant stuff, part pure market forces, part liquefied offal. My eyes were watering from the fumes, and I was working that rind along a submerged tire reef, and suddenly a shapeless, interrogatory-type word began to form in my brain. At the time, I couldn’t have told you exactly what the word was, but of course the President is right. The man can read minds.”

Henry McKinnell, Jr., chairman and C.E.O. of Pfizer, Inc., a.k.a. “The Fishin’ Magician”: “When I bass fish with President Bush, I don’t care how many I catch, because it’s fun just to be out. The other day, though, on Lake Privacy, I was reclining on the casting deck, taking in some sun and sprinkling powdered fish-stunner over the side when—I don’t know how to put this, but I started to have an urge to say a . . . what’s that thing? When you don’t know something, and want to find out? Question. But then I decided to forget about it. I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere. Also, bass are very sensitive to sound.”

Tony (Bassmaster) Blair, foreign official: “Spot on, Mr. President! You have isolated the crux of the biscuit, as we say, and hit upon the very word I was thinking. I remember you and I were on a great impoundment lake in Texas or Delaware or somewhere, and I was trying to impale this great moist wriggling worm on this great hook, and the Secret Service people were rocketing past on Jet Skis, and the boat was heaving, and the infernal American sun was beating down, and just for a moment I looked to Heaven and thought, Oh, bloody (that word)?!”

Georgette Mosbacher, cosmetics tycoon, author of “A Lady’s Guide to Largemouths”: “When my third husband, Bob, and the President and I cruise the swamps and bayous for lunkers, we’re very relaxed and informal. Every fish is eaten raw as soon as it’s caught, without the bother of place settings or finger bowls. One afternoon, I had just snatched a tasty-looking one from the live well when the President’s eye met mine. O.K., yes, I admit—for the fleetingest of small seconds, that particular question had very briefly crossed my mind. But in another second, thankfully, it was gone. By then the President, with Lincolnesque tact, had turned away.”

Sanford Weill, chairman of Citigroup, Inc., owner of Sandy’s Bass Hatchery: “I believe I know the incident the President is referring to. We were fishing from my boat, the Marie-Josée Kravis, on a lake, pond, or other body of water left off maps for reasons of security. The evening was calm, and I recall the lures arcing through the twilight and the small splashes making ripples that widened to the shore. At a certain point, I became aware that the President sensed I was thinking something; with old fishing buddies, you don’t have to talk. He is mistaken, however, about what I thought. True, I did think some of it, but not the whole word. So as not to aid our enemies, I mentally stopped at ‘Wh—?’”

Richard Mellon Scaife, bass fanatic, currently unemployed: “Just the President and I, sprawled in deck chairs on the stern of a factory ship trawling bank to bank up the Mississippi on a lazy afternoon, bass flopping all around us as plentiful as a fisherman could desire; and the President suddenly leans over and lifts my hat and stares into my face and says, ‘You got anything you want to say, Ricky?’ What could I do? He had seen into my soul! Recovering quickly, I blushed crimson and replied, ‘Well, Mr. President, now that you mention it . . . jeez, no.’”

General Colin Powell, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Bass: “Your bass is an elusive why creature who hunts by why night, and if we wish to why outwit him we must adapt our how come methods, first and foremost by why thinking like a what for bass why, acquainting ourselves with his why haunts, the lily pad whatever for or submerged cypress stump why, where he waits for his incautious why oh why prey, and where we may ease up on him why in the world and by properly presenting our what possessed you plug, spinner, or in heaven’s name why minnow entice him to why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why bite.

“In all tips and lore about bass fishing, I completely agree with the President.”

The Character Thing

Here's a hypothetical situation for you.

Say you are in a very visible position. Your unpopular government job involves conducting inspections of a technical nature - sort of like OSHA. But it's not OSHA. But if the inspections are doing what they are supposed to do, then they prevent terrible accidents which could involve loss of life. If the inspections are doing what they are supposed to do, they piss a lot of people off and can even get you personally attacked in the media.

Right away you start aggressively doing your job. You either shut down or threaten to shut down some significant operations on the grounds that they are unsafe. It even attracts some press coverage and embarrasses some powerful people. But it's fun.

OK. So some people come to you and say that they have potential candidates for inspector jobs. If you approve hiring these two candidates, you feel confident that you could train them, and that they could become very competent doing what they are supposed to do. If you hire these candidates, you will also be making some people very happy - people who helped get your boss his job, and helped him keep his job. The candidates are awfully young and inexperienced, but you think you can train them. Hell, they might make better inspectors than many of the people already working for you, who got their jobs under politically influenced appointments from many years past. And it's just possible that they were sent to you at the direction or condonation of your boss. Since a lot of people less competent than these people are already working, you either say OK or you kind of don't notice it.

So one of the companies you've inspected and pissed off finds out about this. It happens that they own and operate a lot of media and have been publicly embarrassed by your inspections. They break the story, saying that only a moron or political hack could possibly allow something like this to happen.

Part of the media story says that the organization that sent these candidates gave significant help to your boss. So your boss reacts by condemning the action that he himself either requested or tacitly condoned. He goes to the media and says that such actions cannot be tolerated, and that he will soon clean house. "Privately," he demands an undated resignation letter from you. You provide it, and then are sent to meet a hostile press. You tell the press that the two people recently hired will be checked out and, probably, fired. When asked if you will quit your job, you say you serve at the pleasure of your boss. You then return to your office to finish up your Friday not knowing whether your boss is going to fire you, wondering how you're going to send your two children to college or, for that matter, make your mortgage payment.

So far so good?

So, if this was you, what would you do? Check all that apply...

1. Go home and drink your way through the weekend.
2. Stay sober because you're still getting emergency pages from your managers about unsafe conditions.
3. Blame your boss for everything.
4. Not only take personal responsibility for what happened, but decide to set and implement even higher personal standards for leadership and job effectiveness, regardless of whether you get fired or not, because self-respect is even more important than the respect of others.
5. Take an unscheduled vacation to Cancun to avoid the media.
6. Show up to work on Monday.
7. Crawl to your boss's office and beg to keep your job.
8. Immediately convene a meeting of all your inspectors and apologize to them for compromising the professionalism of the inspections staff.
9. Barricade yourself in your office and refuse to take visitors or phone calls.
10. Conduct an internal review of inspector credentials and find a few more with bogus cred.
11. Borrow an untraceable automatic weapon and go to your boss's office for a reality check.
12. Terminate the employment of inspectors with bad credentials and actually relish the opportunity to improve the quality of your staff - given lemons, you make lemonade.
13. Publicly lambast your boss as a hypocrite who really directed the hiring of these people to begin with, and get a lawyer for a whistleblower lawsuit.
14. Find yourself on the following Friday still working and even, quite remarkably, whistling while you work.
15. Quit, because the stress of all this is too much to take.

What was your score? Give yourself +2 points for every even numbered response, and -1 for every odd numbered response. If you end up with a positive number, that's pretty amazing.

I am unbelievably proud to know a guy who got a 14. I wish I could be more like him, and I want my children to be like him.

John Kerry's Management Style

Dear Rob,

I know you believe that the NY Times is biased, and biased this might be. This article discloses what could be some important objective concerns about John Kerry's management style. Of all the stuff I'd read about Kerry, this - more than just about anything else - gave me some pause...

I do believe in what Teddy Roosevelt recommended: hire good people, assure yourself that they know their jobs, and then let them do their jobs. The article discloses a classifically ineffective leadership style. Now I don't know if I should vote for him regardless of the Republican political attacks.

I guess I am, like Kerry, the classic undecided...

:)

John Bernat


Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions
September 26, 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - For 15 minutes in Milwaukee the other day, Senator John Kerry pummeled his staff with questions about an attack on President Bush, planned for later that morning, that accused the White House of hiding a huge Medicare premium increase. Talking into a speakerphone in his hotel suite, sitting at a table scattered with the morning newspapers, Mr. Kerry instructed aides in Washington to track down the information he said he needed before he could appear on camera. What could have slowed down the premium increase? How much of it was caused by the addition of a prescription drug benefit? What would the increase cost the average Medicare recipient?
Mr. Kerry got the answers after aides said they spent the morning on the telephone and the Internet, but few of those facts found their way into his blistering attack. The morning Medicare call was typical of the way Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator with comparatively little management experience, has run his campaign. And, his associates say, it offered a glimpse of an executive style he would almost surely bring to the White House.
Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document - acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case. He stayed up late last Sunday night with aides at his home in Beacon Hill, rewriting - and rearguing - major passages of his latest Iraq speech, a ritual that aides say occurs even with routine remarks.
"He attacks the material, he questions things, he tries to get it right," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United Nations ambassador and an adviser to Mr. Kerry. During a recent conversation about Iraq, he recounted, Mr. Kerry "interrupts me and he says, 'Have you read Peter Galbraith's article in The New York Review of Books? You've got to read that, it's very important.' ''
In interviews, associates repeatedly described Mr. Kerry as uncommonly bright, informed and curious. But the downside to his deliberative executive style, they said, is a campaign that has often moved slowly against a swift opponent, and a candidate who has struggled to synthesize the information he sweeps up into a clear, concise case against Mr. Bush. Even his aides concede that Mr. Kerry can be slow in taking action, bogged down in the very details he is so intent on collecting, as suggested by the fact that he never even used the Medicare information he sent his staff chasing.
His attention to detail can serve him well on big projects, as it did when he sent aides scurrying across the country to find long-lost fellow Vietnam veterans who could vouch for his war record. But sometimes, his aides say, it is a distraction, as it was in early 2003, when they say he
spent four weeks mulling the design of his campaign logo, consulting associates about what font it should use and whether it should include an American flag. (It does.)
His habit of soliciting one more point of view prompted one close adviser to say he had learned to wait until the last minute before weighing in: Mr. Kerry, he said, is apt to be most influenced by the last person who has his ear. His aides rejoiced earlier this year when Mr. Kerry yielded his cellphone to an aide, a move they hoped would limit his seeking out contrary opinions.
"He considers options, synthesis, antithesis - he's a thinker," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who traveled with Mr. Kerry last week, and whose own presidential campaigns were known for their disorganization. Still, Mr. Jackson added: "A boxer needs a manager and needs a cut manager in the corner and needs someone to handle the towels. But once the bell rings, a boxer needs his instincts."
Unlike Mr. Bush, who was a governor and a business executive before he ran for president, Mr. Kerry - who has spent the past 20 years as a legislator, with a staff of perhaps 60 - has little experience in managing any kind of large operation. Several Democrats suggested that this
presidential campaign was in many ways a learning experience for him.
Mr. Kerry was described by his associates as more interested in the finer points of public policy than the mechanics of politics. Scott Maddox, the chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said he could not recall getting a call from Mr. Kerry checking in with what was going on in that critical state. Mr. Kerry reads briefing books and newspapers in the morning (often grousing about stories critical of him), watches television interview shows like Charlie Rose's late at night and dials senators and old friends at all hours. At meetings, Mr. Kerry poses contrarian questions in an often wandering quest for data and conflicting opinions, a style that his aides call Socratic. Mr. Kerry, in an interview, said, "I ask the people delegated and responsible what their take is on a particular event, and then I'll have a series of things on my agenda I want to talk about."
In his quest for information, he is always consulting an ever-widening circle, rarely comfortable with relying on one person or giving anyone too much power. There is no Karl Rove in Mr. Kerry's orbit.
Mr. Kerry has also, in this campaign and earlier ones, repeatedly upended his staff, edging longtime advisers aside or dismissing aides outright when things threatened to run off the tracks. As a result, while some stalwarts from Mr. Kerry's first campaign have stuck with him since 1972, the senior staff of his campaign includes few people who call themselves his friends or are personally loyal to him.
This month - as Mr. Kerry made staff changes, as he was shaken into focusing on his campaign's problems, as he reached out yet again to friends and advisers - he displayed a management style that could hardly be more different from Mr. Bush's. For better and for worse, Mr. Bush takes his counsel from a small, unchanging group of strategists. His senior campaign staff has not changed in 18 months. Mr. Bush's hunger for information and conflicting opinions is limited. His management style is crisp and insular, and it does not change between easy days and tough ones.
Mr. Kerry's circle is as wide and changing as Mr. Bush's is constricted and consistent. He is always calling one more friend, and the campaign lineup has shifted so often that rumors of staff changes have become part of the daily gallows humor at Kerry headquarters on McPherson Square in downtown Washington.
Instead of delegating authority to a single adviser, Mr. Kerry relies on different people for different advice. And, he made a point of saying in the interview, none of them have too much authority. "I am always in charge," he said. Mr. Kerry's willingness to upend his staff has brought him some come-from-behind political triumphs, and was invoked by several associates in describing him as a decisive executive ready to make difficult decisions under fire.
"John believes that you have to be willing to take on talent even if it is provided by people you don't know," said Dan Payne, a Boston political consultant, who was pushed off Mr. Kerry's 1996 campaign for senator in favor of the strategist Bob Shrum when things were looking bad.
But that management style has come at a cost. Mr. Kerry's top aides in this campaign are, with a few exceptions, longtime political professionals who have little history with the man they are working for. One result, aides say, is that Mr. Kerry's campaign has been afflicted this year with infighting and newspaper articles have detailed the dissension, a constant source of irritation to the candidate.
Mr. Kerry has less of an interest in the processes of politics than the president does. If Mr. Bush likes to talk about party registration breakdowns in southern Ohio, Mr. Kerry drifts off when the subject turns to the demographic details of campaign polling. While Mr. Bush screens new television advertisements in the White House, Mr. Kerry is often satisfied with viewing a rough cut, or skimming a script. He is also apt to exhibit a blank face when he runs into a Democratic leader he should remember, one aide said.
Representative Ted Strickland of Ohio said that during a recent bus trip through the small towns of the Appalachian region that make up his district, Mr. Kerry peppered him
with questions about the way the reduction of import tariffs had affected the pottery industry - not about the voting patterns in a state he is struggling to win. "He's not involved in the details," said John Marttila, who has been working with Mr. Kerry since his failed bid for Congress in 1972.
That does not mean he is detached. Aides say he takes interest in matters large and small, but typically only after he senses his candidacy is in peril.
It was Mr. Kerry's idea, an aide said, to attack Mr. Bush on gun control with the expiration of the assault weapons ban. Mr. Kerry said he also was the one who thought it best to go after Vice President Dick Cheney on his ties to Halliburton.
Mr. Kerry delegates most of the operational management to Mary Beth Cahill, his campaign manager, with whom he speaks a dozen times a day, usually starting before breakfast. It was Ms. Cahill, not the candidate, who extended recent job offers to two veterans of the Clinton administration, Michael D. McCurry and Joe Lockhart. David McKean, Mr. Kerry's chief of staff in the Senate, said he often arrived on Monday mornings full of ideas from things he had read over the weekend and called aides in to ask for memorandums, which he would later return with
comments in the margins. In his daily round of telephone conversation, he frequently
presses for information and conflicting opinions. "It's 'this is what I think, what do you think?' " said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who frequently talks to Mr. Kerry about foreign policy.
Aides were eager to attest that Mr. Kerry is not a micromanager. Still, he took such a close interest in planning the tour on which he announced his candidacy that the campaign had to keep delaying release of the logistical details until Mr. Kerry finally signed off. Aides began discussing last October whether the campaign should opt out of the public financing system for the primaries, freeing them to raise and spend as they wished in any state. Howard Dean, Mr. Kerry's chief rival for the nomination, announced he would do so on Nov. 8; it took Mr. Kerry a month to follow suit.
Several politicians who have traveled with Mr. Kerry say he is on the phone much more than other presidential candidates they have accompanied, making calls from the front cabin of his Boeing 757, on the bumpy bus rides through Ohio, even while waiting on a Nantucket beach for the wind to pick up so he could go kite-surfing. "Some of his staff think his cellphone is a negative for him, because it reduces the orderliness of the campaign," Mr. Holbrooke said. "Others think it is an asset because it keeps him in touch. But whether you think it is good or bad, it is John F. Kerry."
For all his eagerness to seek advice, Mr. Kerry does not always take it.
After he delivered a 35-minute speech at the University of Pittsburgh last spring, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania gently tried to reinforce a message Mr. Kerry's aides had been struggling to impart. "I said I thought it was a little long for an outdoor speech," Mr. Rendell recalled. "My rule of thumb for an outdoor speech is 15 to 20 minutes."
That night at the Philadelphia Convention Center, Mr. Rendell prepped Mr. Kerry by saying the crowd was full of party veterans and urging him to keep his speech short. He talked for 32 minutes. When Mr. Kerry arrived in Allentown early this month for a rally at the fairgrounds, Mr. Rendell did not even mention his rule. "I've given up," Mr. Rendell said. "He listens sometimes, and he doesn't listen sometimes."
Mr. Kerry spoke for 38 minutes.

Independent Workers

Independent Workers Are Changing the Employer/Employee Relationship
by G.A. "Andy" Marken
President, Marken Communications Inc.

The factory dominated the 19th Century. Everything evolved around it. People spent their lives working for the man. Today less than 15% of the U.S. employees work in production or manufacturing.

The 20th Century was dominated by the office. According to the department of labor by the end of last year at least 44% of the employees were gathering, processing, retrieving and analyzing information...in the office.

Lou Gerstner, president of IBM, and many other business leaders have already dubbed the first half of 21st Century the Internet and knowledge era. They explain that the Internet is about competition, growth and reaching out to customers and that real time access to information is the key business differentiator.

We are more inclined to agree with Will Hutton, chief executive of Britain's The Industrial Society. Hutton states that while we don't yet fully understand the rules and dynamics of the new era we do know it is turning the workplace inside out. He asserts we are entering a network economy that is driven by information and communications technologies and that the network will increasingly be made up of independent workers who will change the employer/employee relationship.

The Empowered Worker
Already more than 30 million U.S. workers are free agent contract workers. Over the next few years Charles Handy, author of The Age of Unreason, estimates that less than ½ of the industrial world's workforce will hold conventional full-time jobs in companies. Every year, more and more people will be self-employed and full-time insiders will be the minority.

In the 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century there was a real or implied promise that the corporation would provide employees with job security and career progression in return for loyalty and commitment. But in today's competitive environment firms have to restructure, outsource, downsize, subcontract and form new alliances to survive. To maintain their competitive edge companies are traveling lighter, covering ground more quickly. Management has quickly found that the organization has to constantly accelerate or die. The company that is lean, agile and quick to respond has the edge.

Competition, technology, recession and increased shareholder value are constantly driving the firms to the point where no one believes the old corporate commitment and employee loyalty and commitment is rapidly disappearing.

Given this environment it is little wonder that the new free agent worker is becoming the mainstay of the workforce and is doing what is important for his or her career. Far from being "me" oriented, this rapidly growing workforce understands that the best way to enhance their intellectual, social and professional capital is to constantly network and constantly move forward. Just as the rapidly changing world deals ruthlessly with organizations that don't change, the new breed of contract employee is quickly learning that the blur of ambiguity is good for their career.

Dealing With the Legacy
They are exploiting the flexibility, capacity and capability of the Internet to allow them to work in totally different ways with the "legacy" parts of the economy.

Because of this firms are going to great lengths to recruit, pay and keep employees happy. A new class of job brokers and talent scouts have emerged with employee search firms growing twice as fast as the U.S. economy. Check any issue of the business or trade publications you receive. There will always be two to three articles on recruiting and job enhancement.

Look at the on-line and print classifieds. Listen to what companies and search firms are offering. The attention is on a stimulating work environment, relaxed dress codes, attention to work/life issues and a fun place to work. Firms that fall short in these areas know they will lose the best people…he people they need to survive and grow.

The empowered independent worker knows the ground rules have changed in the employer/employee relationship. They have quickly learned how easy it is to network in much the same fashion as the trade guilds of the 18th Century.

Forget unions. The new contract worker has a better infrastructure - the Internet network. A growing number of portals are available for them to share job and company work experiences information, buy goods and services and control their own growth and destiny.

The global communication technology is radically changing the speed, direction and amount of information flow even as it alters work rolls across all organizations. The new free agent worker is creating role clarity for himself and herself. They figure out the top priorities and point themselves in that direction. They don't pull back. They don't wait for someone to give them details or marching orders. They give themselves permission to attach to the job. They feel their way along to the future. They are willing to "wing it." They have reduced improvising to an art form. They accept the fact that work life is fuzzy around the edges.

They are confident that organizations aren't going to look out for people's careers as they did in the past. Because of this, it's increasingly important to behave like you're in business for yourself…you are. Today's "employees" have to build emotional muscle. As Lily Tomlin once said, "we're all in this alone."

Practice Kaizen
Given the working world shift people have to continuously practice Kaizen - the relentless quest for a better way, higher quality craftsmanship, daily pursuit of perfection. Kaizen keeps you reaching, stretching to outdo yesterday. These incremental changes yield a valuable competitive advantage. You need to assume personal responsibility for upgrading your performance. Your productivity, response time, quality, cost control and customer service should show steady gains.

The era of entitlement is past. People aren't automatically entitled to pay increases, promotions or their job…even if they perform well.
The new empowered free agent worker is taking responsibility for his and her own career…and future. These guild workers are forcing companies to personalize contracts as firms bid for their knowledge. With unemployment at record lows and flexible/flattened organizations a key to corporate agility the free agent workforce isn't an anomaly.

It's the environment organizations will work in tomorrow…and its here today.
email Andy at: Andy@markencom.com

The Undecided

by PATRICIA MARX
New Yorker Magazine Issue of 2004-09-20

"The Los Angeles Times poll said one-third of the voters surveyed said they did not know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush." —The St. Petersburg Times.

“What do you stand for? Who the hell are you? And what are you passionate about, other than holding office?” asks Frances Montrosso, 58, a house cleaner from Syracuse, N.Y. —The Los Angeles Times.

I know, I know, I know. At the last focus group, I said that I’d make up my mind by the next focus group. But how can anyone choose, given how little we know, even today, about John Kerry? Sure, I’ve read all his speeches and I’ve done an online background check, looking into his possible unclaimed property, deadbeat parents, and outstanding fines owed to the Department of Motor Vehicles. But is this enough? As a voter committed to making a responsible decision, I want to know the real John Kerry.
—We know, for instance, that John Kerry went to Yale, but did he ever meet my friend Penny, who also went there?
—Has John Kerry taken a position on whether he would rather freeze to death or burn to death?
—It’s safe to say that everyone is curious about how pants end up on the side of the highway. What light can John Kerry shed on this?
—Do you think John Kerry needs any capers? Because I bought too many, and something tells me they’re too foreign for Bush.
—O.K., forget policy. When it comes to John Kerry, we have no information about even the basics. For example, what’s his lucky number?
—We have evidence that John Kerry played bass in high school with a band called the Electras. In light of this, does he know what “In-a-gadda-da-vida” means?
—In the upcoming Presidential debates, is John Kerry willing to debate the question “Who’s your favorite Stooge—Larry, Moe, or Shemp?”?
—Is John Kerry familiar with all 57 Varieties?
—John Kerry’s height (six feet four) is public knowledge, but who knows his depth?
—Why has John Kerry remained silent on the issue of men wearing sandals with socks?
—What does John Kerry think of my proposal that there be a rating for stupid movies, called IQ-13?
—If John Kerry were offered the choice between, on the one hand, being President but looking like Jackie Mason and, on the other hand, not being President and looking like himself, which would he pick?
—Can anyone tell me what John Kerry majored in? If he majored in something impractical, like Celtic and Norse studies, his chances of getting a job would be slim, so I might be more inclined to give him a break and vote for him for President.
—Would John Kerry support an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee monetary compensation to people in focus groups?
—While on the campaign trail, do John Kerry and John Edwards share hair products?
—I know what George Bush thinks about the environment. He’s against it. But where does John Kerry stand? I hate eating out-of-doors; does he?
—The Hokey Pokey. Is John Kerry prepared to go on record as saying that “that’s what it’s all about”?
—Let’s say John Kerry were single. How would he feel if my friend Penny asked him out on a date? How about if she did it now?
—Here is something I must be apprised of or I will not be able to pick a candidate in November: Is it faster to go down Broad Street or take the expressway to get to my polling place? I can’t decide.
—I could also do with some juicy personal details about the other people in this focus group.

The Sims 2

Some years ago the most successful PC game in history was released. It was called The Sims after having been called "The Doll House" while in development.

Tomorrow my daughter and I will drive to Johnson City, TN to claim our pre-ordered copy of The Sims 2.

Two weeks ago, on her sixteenth birthday, I wrapped the software-sized box the pre-order came in and we presented it to her.

When she opened enough of the box to see the Sims 2 logo, she went insane. She cried and screamed for joy. Of course, the cruel (if unintentional) tease was that somehow I'd been able to get a pre-release full version of the game. When we explained that it was a pre-purchase, we settled down for the long, interminable wait.

Each player of this game might have their own reason for liking it so much.

Many years ago, when I gave a copy of it as a gift to the children of a really close friend, he asked why I'd choose such a thing. He was skeptical about the value of computer gaming; having his bright, extraverted children hunched over a mouse and monitor was not his idea of healthy recreation. "Why is this game so good?" he asked, long before its lasting popularity had been established.

I said, "Because it recognizes and rewards balance in life experience." You don't "win" the game by getting the most money, the most fame, or the most anything per se. Rather, as you maneuver your Sims through the game's stuff, they have to balance a number of attributes including health, intelligence, social popularity, and other stuff.

It seemed that that would educate our children to life balance.

Fast forward to tomorrow. The new game, by its promotional material, determines that each Sim 2 has a different aspiration, and the means and relative success of satisfying that aspiration is what makes the game successful.

A sim might aspire to wealth. If they become rich, they win.

A sim might aspire to raise children. If they have a healthy and succcessful home life, they win.

A married sim might have extramarital affairs. If they realize that they really should stay at home and patch up their shattered spousal trust, they win.

The Sims was successful because it reduced happiness and its attainment to comprehensible terms for our children. Our new generation might have derived greater aspirational clarity and focus from playing.

Then again, since little is treated regarding God or spirituality, an argument could be made that the game accelerated an ongoing drift toward secular humanism and self-service.

Simulation games are called "God games." One sim game development company is called "Gathering of Developers" or GOD. The amusement we get from them is because the player is empowered like a god. The player has God-like influence over events, formation of personality, and can manipulate the characters in ways not possible in real life. Moreover, it could be said that the game teaches us that God is, in fact, of human origin and construction. We are God. God really did not pre-exist our own individual or collective consciousness. We were created by our parents, can create little versions of ourselves, and can manipulate them and others around us for our own amusement. Then our machines break down, we sicken and die. Life's meaning is...

Well, I'll find out tomorrow.

Remembering 9/11 - Part 2

Our moment of silence was over. Before people left, though, a 30-ish male student looked at her and said, "I want you to know that I got us some payback in Afghanistan."

He went on to describe his work in surface-to-air missles, and could personally assert that people died as a result of the ingenuity and craft applied to our missles.

She reacted with polite enthusiasm. I was suprised at how small my personal satisfaction was.

Our military are incredibly dedicated, committed, hardworking people. I'm grateful for their sacrifices. I also believe that they do what they're ordered to do with enthusiasm and professionalism.

This context offered little gratitude, however, and it was strange. The notion of Afghani people dying in payback for 9/11 left me without any satisfaction.

The military mission there was to make our world safer, and a case can be made for that without much question. That is satisfying; although we still have considerable hostilities there, few doubt that terrorists used that forlorn place as a base. Our actions there have reduced a terrorist capability, at least for now. I'm grateful for that.

Revenge is, though, a cold dish. (Klingon proverb? No, actually I think Nietschze said it first.) I like a hot meal. Comforting a 9/11 victim with reports of more deaths was well-intentioned but inadequate. Well, then, what brings comfort or release?

Final quandary: does this mean that 3,000 Americans died meaninglessly three years ago? On one level, the answer is indisputably yes. A small group of people with remarkably little money pulled off a spectacularly successful raid on us. Terrorists win. We lose. You can have all the 9/11 commissions you want; that won't change.

On another level we are always supposed to learn from bad experiences. We learned

1. That we are vulnerable to attack.
2. That people in the world hate us bad enough to do this.
3. That the world is a dangerous place.

Right after 9/11/2001 a local Tennessee man who'd served in the Middle East diplomatic corps placed that last point in context. In our world, plenty of people hate plenty of other people. Nations ostensibly at peace are committing atrocities against their own citizens. Ethnic rivalries stretch back for centuries with no respite.

What will change this fundamental state of conflict? More importantly, what can the United States, being the most powerful single nation on earth, do?

We can keep knocking over rogue regimes in the approximate order of their strategic importance to our resource pool and relative military vulnerability.*

Or we can resign ourselves to a constant wheeling and dealing diplomatically.

Either strategy must be driven by securing and keeping the moral high ground. On 9/11/2001 the United States was a victim - a role we hate, and that's good. In our victimhood, however, the world's "heart" poured out for us.

It was easy to love us then. As victims, we were pure of heart and spirit. And we bore our suffering well, with dignity, compassion and a sense of moral center.

That's worth something all by itself - feels like a hot meal to me.

-----

*Not intended as a characterization of current foreign policy, but if da shoe fits...

Remembering 9/11 - Part 1

We were at the supper table a week ago, and I brought up an issue...

[I'm now teaching a graduate course in Human Resources management for Troy State University.]

"I will be teaching on the morning of 9/11/2004, and want to do something to commemorate the event during class. I have a presentation I want to share with them."

"You can't do that," my Princeton-educated 16-year-old daughter said.

"Why not?"

"You'll get in trouble - it is like doing something religious in class."

"It does not have to be religious. I would just show this non-religious presentation and say, 'Let's observe a moment of silence to remember the victims of 9/11.'"

"That's religious."

Ensued a long conversation about academic freedom in graduate school, the fact that my employer is a state unversity of Alabama, and that, as a state agency, religious discussions in class constitute violations of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

I listen to my children. My mom told me so before she died, and so it must be true. SO I wanted to work out something acceptable to my daughter...

"How about if you ask whether any of your students lost anyone on 9/11, and empower them to determine what the class should do?" she said.

"OK, that's what I'll do."

Saturday morning came along. Class started at 8 am, at the educational facility at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

A third of my 20-odd students are active-duty military, another third retired military working in civilian careers, and the remainder civilians who'd never served.

It got to be 9:20 am or so. As the clock got closer and closer to the half-hour, I felt sadder and sadder, remembering the sudden and catastrophic loss we suffered...

"I know we're about due for a break. However, it was about at this hour three years ago that our nation was attacked and suffered significant losses, and I want to mark this occasion. DId anyone here suffer any personal loss three years ago?"

A student, who'd been very reserved and quiet, raised her hand. "I lost people in the Pentagon."

"Then I want you to tell us the best way to honor the memory of the people you lost."

She looked very uncomfortable and confused. I finally said, "For example, we could all have a moment of silence..."

She said that sounded great.

So we all stopped. I stood at the podium and remembered what this felt like. I had my head down and watched tears fall from my face onto the classroom floor.

FLASH! Bush never flew a plane; Kerry never piloted a boat

Big controversy now about documents purporting to show that Bush's service record was not good. Some say they were forged...maybe they were. And those swift boat dudes have changed their stories, too, in the face of leadership from people affiliated with the Republican party.

My buddy was really digging into the Bush document fraud, and I got testy with him...in hindsight, I overreacted (not the first time, but for maybe the 20th time) but I do mean what I say...

I was not all that stirred up about what the documents said about W anyway, even if presumed true. But since you seem interested…

My opinion: getting all squirrelly about W’s actual service or AWOL status here in the lower 48 states is just as idiotic as focusing on Kerry’s merits in getting decorated with “real medals.” What the hell difference does it make either way?? (Kerry went overseas for us and W didn’t. Will we see those facts revised some time soon?)

But, as Frank Zappa says in “Watermelon on Easter Hay,” who gives a f--k anyway?

We’re into this pissing contest because we’ve swallowed a great big placebo pill: that any proposed leader’s character is defined by the nature and quality of his past military service. Who started it – Democrats or Republicans? I don’t really care. Our vote should be cast based on our assessment of “the whole man” (since no women are running that I know of): his policies, his stated positions, his prior record and…the character thing. The “Character Thing” as defined solely by “decorated foreign military service” would have nuked the majority of twentieth-century presidents. By this definition, if I’m not wrong our best presidents in the last 100 years were Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, George H.W., and…

Jimmy Carter?

Nondecorated active duty foreign service? Now we get, let’s see, FDR, Reagan, Nixon, Truman, Harding, Coolidge (?), but we lose Clinton and Woodrow Wilson. Don’t even ask me about William Howard Taft. Before the 80s or Dan Quayle, would national guard service even make the cut??

Sounds like a great way to vote, yes? Think about how many presidential races were between veterans of some stripe or another – wouldn’t it be the majority of them? Do you remember a recent presidential race where the loser lost solely because he was not in the military? Was not overseas? Was not decorated? Was decorated but with fake Purple Hearts?

I try to look at my own assumptions before debating the facts. Personally, I don’t assume that military service predicts presidential success at any event.

So I guess what’s left is the relative quality of the mud slung: Perhaps we’re to evaluate the candidate based on bulls--t campaigning tactics. Hell, I reckon they’re both about even on that now: swift boats veterans changing their stories versus presumably forged documents. Which is the greater evil? Most importantly, does this influence who we should vote for?

Not for me.

It’s all horses--t to me, done by campaign strategists who apparently believe that dirty tactics call for dirty responses. A plague on both their houses…and I wish this was the first time in our history where campaign stuff like this has happened, but it is not. Remember what H.L. Mencken said:

“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

John Edwards Jokes

"John Edwards earned a fortune from medical malpractice. Some polls show John Edwards with higher approval than Dick Cheney. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? For the first time ever, the lawyer is ahead of the guy in the ambulance!" —Jay Leno
"This Edwards guy, he's going to be trouble for the Bush-Cheney ticket. He's charismatic, and that's going to hurt Cheney. And he can speak, and that's going to hurt Bush." —Jay Leno
“As soon as Edwards was announced the Republicans put out a new attack ad calling him unaccomplished. He was born poor and became a multi-millionaire. To Republicans isn't that the definition of accomplished?" —Jay Leno
"John Edwards based his campaign on the fact that there are two Americas, one for the wealthy and one for everyone else. And after his speech, he thanked everyone else and went back to the America for the wealthy." —Jay Leno
"On the campaign trail today, John Edwards continued to talk about there being two Americas. Unfortunately, neither voted for him." —Conan O'Brien
"John Kerry announced that his running mate would be North Carolina senator John Edwards. It's already getting nasty. After Kerry selected Edwards the Republicans immediately denounced Edwards as disingenuous. When he heard this President Bush said I didn't know this guy was a foreigner." —Conan O'Brien
"John Kerry said I can't tell you how proud I am to have John Edwards on my team, especially after John McCain turned me down." —Jay Leno
“Have you been watching Kerry and Edwards on the campaign trial? These guys have done more hugging in four days than Bill and Hillary have done in 26 years." —Jay Leno
"Have you seen John Kerry and John Edwards? They're touching, they're hugging, they're groping. Even the 'Queer Eye' guys are going, 'Get a room!'" —Craig Kilborn

http://www.joke-pages.com/jokes/funpage_frame.asp?funpage_title=John+Kerry%2Dn%2DJohn+Edwards%2C+BFA&funpage_redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enoedesign%2Ecom%2Fdev%2FKerryEdwards%2Findex%2Ehtml

And they say homophobia is dead? Well, no.

Get Well Bill!!!

Good to hear that Bill Clinton will recover fully from his recent bypass surgery.

We need Bill. With the current presidential campaign hitting full stride, things are getting so strident and nasty. We really need to lighten up, and without Bill, where would our best jokesters be?

Like David Letterman, on the publication of Bill's 999-page biography:

Top Ten Chapter Titles In Bill Clinton's Memoirs

10. "I'm Writing This Chapter Naked"
9. "I Pray Hillary Doesn't Read Pages 6, 18, 41-49, 76 And Everything Past 200"
8. "Protecting The Constitution: How To Get Gravy Stains Out Of The Parchment"
7. "A Few Of My Favorite Subpoenas"
6. "From Gennifer to Paula to Monica: Why It Pays To Keep Lowering Your Standards"
5. "1995-1998: The Extra-Pasty Years"
4. "Kneel To The Chief"
3. "What's The Deal With That Moron You Guys Replaced Me With?"
2. "NAFTA -- Bringing America Into... Ah Screw That, Who Wants To Read Some More About Bubba Gettin' Down?"

And the number one title...

1. "The Night I Accidentally Slept With Hillary"

Imagine how unfunny this would be if the knife had slipped...

Renewing After 9/11

Just saw a terrific movie about the 9/11 project:

http://www.projectrebirth.org/

Look at the time-lapse film. Very impressive; reminded me of Koyaanisqatsi. I guess their intent is "watch this space for details."

NASCAR

You might be a NASCAR fan if

· You've ever written Richard Petty's name on a presidential ballot....
· You're not actually able to read The Richard Petty Story, but you sure do like to look at the pictures....
· You have the word NASCAR in your wedding vows....
· You go to a stock car race and don't need a program....
· You have a life-size cutout of Dale Earnhardt in your Living Room....
· You know who is actually leading the Winston Cup series....
· Your favorite NASCAR souvenir was a direct result of a crash in turn three....
· You spell out NASCAR in Christmas lights....
· You can remember the entire NASCAR series schedule but can't remember your wife’s birthday, kids’ birthday, or anniversary....
· You can remember every NASCAR driver and their car number but can't remember how old your children are....
· You think the most effective form of advertising is on the side of a car going 200 mph.....round and round and round....
· The word "Bank" makes you think of turn three at Daytona....
· Your wife's nickname is "Lugnut"....
· You've spent more time on the top of a Winnebago than in one....
· You know the "Back way" to Talledega....
· You can change a tire faster than you can change a diaper....
· You hit the wall when Earnhardt [jr.] hits the wall....
· You make engine noises while watching racing on TV....

From Jeff Foxworthy

The Good New Days

Since our daughter turned 16 a few days ago, I've fretted about the evils in the world she lives in. Found myself longing for the good old days...and then I realized how many things are better now than when I was her age...

o The internet brings any information we need to us, instantly. Remember the computer on the original Star Trek TV series? We have that now, and assume its presence like it was electricity or running water.

o I was not informed about birth control, STDs, date rape, or addictive behaviors. D.A.R.E. was the "Reefer Madness" movie. Alcohol use was not only accepted - it was required.

o We now have front, side, upper, lower and lateral air bags. Used to have sheet metal...loved them chrome horn rings!

o We also have ABS, traction control and [coming soon] proximity control. Used to have drum brakes that faded after one use...PUMP!! PUMP!!

o Overt racism is not acceptable. It used to be...

o Now many, many entertainment choices, versus three networks and local TV. Big innovation: UHF!

o Now digital music, versus scratchy, temperamental vinyl disks or tape that broke.

o Now higher levels of self knowledge regarding eating habits and health.

o Interstate highways.

o Michael Jordan.

o NTI meds - hey, who knows how many lives have been saved from suicide or homicide?

o Cardiac cath procedures.

o Picture IDs.

o Lintless pants pockets.

Life is indeed...good. I would not want to go back, would you?

Our Little Town

I live in Kingsport, Tennessee. It is on the edge of dying.

Of the communities in our area, it is led politically by people with a startling lack of vision and a resolute inability to provide anything of interest to progressive, farsighted businesses. People here don't just resist change; they belive that change is the work of Satan.

Gets so you'd love to hear some good news. I heard some just yesterday! Yesterday I heard from the ONLY business in Kingsport reporting a banner year and near-record profits.

Our Rotary club was addressed by an executive from BAE systems, which is a British company that operates Holston Army Ammunition Plant. We're not supposed to talk about it, but they make C5 explosives, among other things. One of the speaker's PowerPoint charts showed that the tonnage of explosives had been projected to be less than one this past year but, due to Iraq and Afghanistan, it exceeded ten tons. It caused the parent company to scramble to upgrade the physical plant and actually hire some staff (after having laid off many; the headcount is now only about 15% less then when they took over).

So war has been good to us. If it were not for war, we would not have even this little bit of good news....

o Kingsport Press was taken over by a Canadian company, its assets reduced, employees laid off, and operations virtually shut down.

o Willamette Paper took over a local paper mill and, to their credit, recapitalized a badly faded plant and are doing well - after a round of layoffs.

o The largest employer in town, Eastman Chemical, recently sold off an operating division [located elsewhere] and posted record profits. So, I'm waiting for them to take all that profit and rehabilitate and revitalize its decaying physical plant. I know they will; I know they won't open operations in Mexico or China or India and shut down the local operation which once provided work for 25,000 and now sustains 11,000 [CORRECTION: 7,500] of my neighbors. They won't do that, even if it means increased long-term profitability due to incredibly lower costs per labor hour. In fact, I'm so sure of it, I will hold my breath until they sink some serious bucks into Kingsport...

If you don't hear from me, would you send someone over to resuscitate?

Anyway, back to the good news. The explosives maker said that before this recent recapitalization, every single bit of their explosives they made had been shoveled by hand. That absolutely staggered me. I can see this plant out of the window I'm sitting next to right now. Until 4 years ago, workers shoveled extremely high velocity explosives, as much as ten tons' worth, entirely by hand, about six Chicago blocks from where I write this.

Makes ya think.

Those stoker guys were probably among the first ones laid off. Hugely to their credit, there were no incidents of worker violence. Here in East Tennessee, violence is not caused by a rebellious attitude toward your employer, I guess. We get domestic violence, we get vehicular death, we get fights in bars...but nobody around here goes postal, it seems. People here are respectful and righteous. I admire that a lot.

If Eastman announces that they are opening a new facility in a foreign land, and shutting this one down, causing over ten thousand people to lose their jobs (in addition to the ten thousand plus that dribbled away since the 1960s), there will be no protests, no riots, no trouble at all except maybe a few people getting drunk and beating their spouses and children.

That's the way people here are. It reminds me so much of the song that ended Robert Altman's film, "Nashville."

If only we could figure out how to become irresistable to successful, progressive businesses. If we could, I can tell you there are some first-rate, committed people ready to work. Could almost guarantee that they won't shoot you.

Things Dick Cheney Said Which are Not True

When you run for office you have to say stuff to get elected. I understand that. But these statements are so untrue that they insult the intelligence:

CHENEY: Our nation has the best health care in the world and President Bush is making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans.

FACT: Our country has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation. Health care increased in cost last year at a rate almost triple the cost of living. Health care now consumes a higher percentage of our GNP than in Switzerland, and the share is steadily increasing. Fewer Americans have health care coverage than ever before in our history. More than half of American small employers have now decided that health coverage is too expensive and do not offer it. Source: Kaiser Family Foundation report on health care, 2003.

CHENEY: President Bush and I will wage this effort with complete confidence in the judgment of the American people. The signs are good, even in Massachusetts. (APPLAUSE) According to a news account last month, people leaving the Democratic National Convention asked a Boston policeman for directions. He replied, leave here, and go vote Republican.

FACT: This story is apocryphal at best. No Boston policeman has corroborated this story.

CHENEY: Our president understands the miracle of this great country. He knows the hope that drives it and shares the optimism that has long been so important a part of our national character. He gets up each and every day determined to keep our great nation safe so that generations to come will know the freedom and opportunities we have known and more.

FACT: "How can I know what you hear?" as Firesign Theater once said. Some days George might get up because he wants a glass of water, or marital relations with Laura, or he has to pee.

I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I fancy myself an independent. But how can anyone vote for someone with such a attitude toward the truth??