Miles will always be cool

This blog is named “Birth of the Cool.”

Here is another photo of Miles that I had not seen before.  It can only be described as “cool.”

O’Donnell wipes the floor with Rush, much to the delight of Jesus

I was raised in a religious Christian family, but long since have drifted away from it.  While I still have a blurry recollection of things biblical, I am at a loss when I want to confront right wing religious nuts with their hypocrisy.  I know Jesus said this and did that, but I can’t rub the right winger’s nose in the New Testament. 

That is why last night I was mesmerized  and delighted over Lawrence O’Donnell’s rant against Rush Limbaugh’s lame attempt at weaseling out of the “What Would Jesus Do” question.  You have to see this.  It’s well worth the 10 minutes you will spend, and I guarantee that you will come away armed with all the biblical ammo you need to confront the next hypocritical phony Jesus freak you run into.   And be sure to memorize, and then use,  Lawrence’s challenge to Rush to find anything in the bible where Jesus sympathizes with rich people for having paid too much tax, or for having been too generous, or forced by anyone to be too generous.  

I’m really getting to love Lawrence. 

~ Tom

The Civil War: Thoughts

This month marks 150 years from the start of our Civil War with the attack on Fort Sumpter.  I had not really focused in on that fact when by sheer coincidence I began watching Ken Burns’ epic nine-part series on the Civil War.  It was being presented on Amazon’s streaming video service and I had not seen the whole thing before so I gave it a shot.  The series had a pretty deep effect on me because it made me put today’s bitter political conflict in context.  Sure, I may get apoplectic over the right wing’s callous, selfish, often racist positions, but I’m not trying to kill them in an all out war between our competing views.  That really happened in the Civil War and it makes me pause mightily to imagine how much hatred I would have to conjure up to be able to maim or kill my own countrymen.

The series also made me want to learn much, much more about that conflict.  Thus I decided to read about it in great detail.  A big part of the Burns series was the commentary of Shelby Foote, who is considered a true expert on the Civil War.  Plus, I really dug his accent, his humor, and his gravitas.  So, I ordered the paper back boxed set of  “The Civil War” by Shelby Foote, which arrived today from Amazon.  It is comprised of three fat volumes in an attractive, sturdy sleeve, and it weighs 9+ pounds!  I can hardly wait.  (More on that later). 

I wanted to make a comment about Foote.  Many of the Amazon reviews I read said that Shelby Foote had sympathy for the Southern cause, yet was fastidiously objective in writing about the War.  I tumbled to that right away in his commentaries in the Burns series.  He reminded me of a mother whose son is in prison for awful crimes that she does not deny.  Even so, she loves him and can always come up with an anecdote about something funny or praiseworthy that he did before “he went down that road.”

As I said, I can’t wait to get into this massive tome.  I’ve always been like that.  When I was 16, I got into Thomas Hardy for some reason, even to the point of actually reading “Jude the Obscure,” much to the amazement of my father.  I liked to read dense, long works, which is still true today.  For instance, I am one of the few people I know who actually read and enjoyed Yukio Mishima’s “Sea of Fertility” tetralogy, which consists of four lengthy novels tracing one protagonist from 1912 to 1975.   When I was younger, I think it was the joy of getting into a world where I never wanted it to end, and I was sad when it did, and I had to say goodbye to all those characters I had come to love (or hate).  Now, it’s a bit different.  Added to the prior feeling is a new overlay, which is that long, dense books are an affirmation of my intent to live longer than I though I would.  That is, no one with a diagnosis of 3 months to live is going to order Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War!” 

~ Tom

Obama: Unsung hero as usual

This latest budget/shut-down saga left the Tea Party people referring to the Speaker as “white flag Boehner,” and the left calling for the President’s head because he supposedly gave away the store.  Knowing Obama as I have come to know him, I am certain that he truly believed that a shut-down would be disastrous to the economic recovery, and that he deeply cared about the suffering it would bring to hundreds of thousands of citizens who would not receive a paycheck, along with all the services the whole country would lose.  I had a feeling that there was a deeper, untold story that the main-stream press was missing in its insatiable quest to highlight conflict and criticism.

So, when I opened the main section of today’s S.F. Chronicle and saw this article, I was elated, and also vindicated.  I was so excited  that I practically had to read the whole thing out loud to my wife, who is not nearly as rabid as I am when it comes to politics.  But she was a good sport about it and in the end agreed that this is something that everyone should read and understand.  People, especially our friends on the far left, need to remember that George Bush and his cronies left our President with a horrible mess, but the President, while pointing that out, has never complained or shirked what he believes needs to be done to save our country.  Again, this article is a “must read” that needs to be widely disseminated.  If any of you are blogging, “Face-booking,” or tweeting, please pass the link on.

Vocabulary lesson

ol·i·gar·chy

1.  a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

2.  a state or organization so ruled.

3.  the persons or class so ruling.

~ Dictionary .com

Oligarchy

1.  government, or State governed, by a small group of people.

2.  members of such a government.

~ Pocket Oxford Dictionary

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία, oligarkhía) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words "ὀλίγος" (olígos), "a few" and the verb "ἄρχω" (archo), "to rule, to govern, to command". Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who pass their influence from one generation to the next.

Throughout history, some oligarchies have been tyrannical, relying on public servitude to exist, although others have been relatively benign. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, but oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by bloodlines as in a monarchy. Some city-states from ancient Greece were oligarchies.

~ Wikipedia

“The King’s Speech” and some other stuff

We’re up here at the Tahoe place for some skiing.  Going back down to the Bay Area in a couple of hours.

We did not ski on Friday because there were 90 mph winds over the ridge tops.  Instead we drove to Reno and saw “The King’s Speech.”  I thought it was a wonderful movie – perfect in every way.  I like the way that they did not make the story come out to be an unbelievable triumph – just an “ordinary” triumph was better.  What I am getting at is summed up in the final scene where the King at last gives his speech.  I was sort of expecting that he would pop up to the microphone and rattle off the speech like Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton combined.  That would have been the unbelievable triumph.  Instead, he still had serious trouble getting through the speech and even his loving daughter said he was “halting” at the beginning but got better as he went alone.  A triumph to be sure, but an ordinary one.  Let me close by saying that often times the favorite wins because it is the best.

On Saturday on the way to ski, we had to get gas.  The price for REGULAR was $4.49 per gallon.  It cost me over $68 to fill my tank.  The oil companies have us right where they want us.  We are the classic captive market to be preyed upon by a truly heartless monopoly.

I’ll close by pulling your coats to this excellent column by E.J. Dionne in today’s WaPo.  To the barricades folks, lest our country be taken over by the super-rich while the poor and needy circle the drain.