Marriages and Tornadoes and Terrorists, Oh My !

I certainly share the ambivalence felt by many over the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. I heard the news, as many did, while watching baseball on ESPN, the Mets at the Phillies (Mets 2-1 in 14 innings). There was ninth inning irony in the players’ ignorance as the crowd chanted “USA, USA, USA” after viewing their phones and twitter feeds while the athletes just played ball.

My own twitter feed started bringing in satisfaction (@DanielPink “RT @markknoller: Cheering crowd outside White House estimated at 2500.”) and angst at the President’s delay (@HeatherOsborn “I love that it took approximately 10 minutes for people to start bitching about Obama being late. I'm gonna go ahead and believe he is BUSY.”) and jokes (@TheThomason: “Obama: ‘Anybody else wanna see my birth certificate?’ Drops mic. Walks away.” Or: @CaitKitt “Also, now that we killed the dude, can the TSA stop fondling all our junk? #prettyplease” 9:54 PM May 1, 2011)

Unlike a lot of other people who first heard of OBL’s death while watching TV, but like a fair number of other North Alabamians, I was in a hotel room dozens of miles or more from home. We were avoiding the 600,000 person power outage that resulted from the “April Fury” tornadoes. Our house was fine, other than one downed tree top and one leaky window, and some slowly spoiling food as our fridge and freezers lost their cool. We are very fortunate to afford to simply drive to a Nashville suburb and check into a La Quinta with hot showers, clean sheets and breakfast. Many of my neighbors took this option, or went to relatives in nearby towns. We’re “rich” Americans. It’s incredible. But it’s also incredible how fragile our way of life is. Without electricity and Internet and gasoline and open stores and cell phones we were quickly reduced to land line phones (those of us who still have them) and battery powered radios. Hello 1952.

But those weren’t the problems that haunted me in the La Quinta in Smyrna, Tennessee on May 1st that kept me from truly processing the news of the death of bin Laden. Nor were they the problems that had kept me from gagging on the syrup drenched royal nuptials of William and Kate two days earlier, marriage coverage that censored the anti-austerity protests pervading Great Britain. I’ve gone without electricity enough in my life not to sweat it much. What was nagging at my mind was the damage from swirling storms that don’t even get names but, acre for acre, do much more damage than hurricanes. And the stories from friends and acquaintances that kept spinning out to me through the phone, the e-mail and the web (yep, wireless internet in the hotel, too).

A colleague runs a swim club with his son as a side business and it got hit; he was at the pool between storms, but went home at the urging of son and girlfriend just in time. I’m sure the pool office and bathhouses are gone. We saw what’s left of the bordering trees, snapped and twisted, from the adjacent highway on our drive home. Next to the highway we saw a house with only rafters for a roof left, the next house was just the concrete slab and debris – nothing bigger than a few feet long. Across the highway and into a subdivision a newlywed couple we know from the running community lost their house, and so far their cat. She runs about my speed, when I’m in shape. Their brick house disintegrated around the young woman, one wall at a time and even the rug she was on got sucked away (the husband wasn’t home). Their car was in the driveway and is now a neighbor’s lawn ornament, but the woman is banged up but okay. They would be staying at her parents’ home in nearby Tanner, Alabama, except that their house was also destroyed by one of the tornadoes.

A local photographer, who we also know from running, has posted an offer to provide free disks of photos she'd taken for anyone if they lost theirs in the storms.

A friend family’s daughter was in Tuscaloosa, she goes to the University of Alabama there, at her boyfriend's apartment. They are fine, but the gas station directly across the street is gone, as is the sideview mirror from her car. The neighbor of another friend’s daughter also went to Alabama; she won’t be coming home. They cancelled finals at UA, students get the grades they had, or they can schedule a final with their instructor. Tuscaloosa had one of the biggest tornadoes and it was the one to hit the most populated area. 5,000 homes damaged or destroyed.

600 people attended the funeral yesterday of a 12 year old girl who was the classmate of another friend’s son. There were 8 family members in a trailer, none escaped injury, but it was the youngest who was taken.

My office is still without power. Internet came back at my house late yesterday and is still out for many people so I don’t yet know who else has a story to tell. So I’ve been brooding on these twisters, these nameless micro-hurricanes that last for minutes rather than days, and it has kept me from digesting the death of Osama. But I know I’m glad that he, and his twisted soul, are gone.

Noticeable Serendipity: Roseanne Cash Two Times

Now I realize that authors and artists sometimes have a product to pimp, or even two, so things that at first seem highly coincidental are really not so spectacular. But Roseanne Cash isn't exactly a "celeb ubiquite" (that's faux french), so when she popped up on my not-so-mainstream mass media twice last night in the space of an hour and a quarter, I noticed. First she was on public radio's World Cafe on my drive home about 9:20 with a song ("Sea of Heartbreak" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3LSrcKksCo) from her new record. I found it curious that Bruce Springsteen was singing the harmony (I previously liked the harmony she did with her dad on "September When it Comes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WilM6ljUg, but she won't be doing that anymore as The Man In Black is no longer among the living; at least until technology can repro his voice, say, 2021?).

Then I flipped to Steve Colbert at 10:30 and he was soon disparaging Bruce Springsteen's "The River" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAUyAogHtYk ) as a good candidate for use as a torture song at our Guantanamo Bay prison (wow, that makes me cringe, calling it "our" prison, but that's what it is and I feel the shame). Bruce is a pretty big name, so two mentions didn't raise my eyebrows. I flipped to soccer, Houston and Seattle still tied at zero after 70-some minutes of hard play; that's soccer.

Hey, Colbert, whatever your view of The Boss (I've never been a huge fan), he's still got some grit and some great lines: from "The River": "Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true?"

I flipped back to The Colbert Report, and he's introducing Roseanne Cash, in person at his desk. Now I've noticed the serendipity (editorial aside: and we have our blog post title) and get engaged in their banter -- and its good, partly because Colbert is trying hard to maintain his right wing persona but his distaste for the goings-on at Guantanamo is seeping through. He signs her petition asking that our government (there's that "our" again) release the list of songs used to torture the detainees there. He signs, he says, "because it'll make it hard on Obama" (since he hasn't made good on his promise to close that facility). You can see the whole Colbert bit video at http://www.closegitmonow.org/.

Capitol Steps, Falling Down

Caught a bit of the Capitol Steps latest production on NPR at noon today. It was less than stellar. They riffed on Sarah Palin to the tune of "A Holly Jolly Christmas", but it had no insight, stale jokes about Russia being nearby and such. Then they think they need to find faults with Barack Obama's performance. I think, I hope, there are other ways to find humor than just finding fault. They dissed his handling of the Boston arrest of a black Harvard professor breaking in to his own house. Sure, he gave the loonies an opening by using a slightly offensive word - "stupidly" I think it was (yep, pretty inflammatory, huh?). But the transgression was by the police, using too much suspicion and not enough parsimony. The Capitol Steps also picked up on Obama's win of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Simply removing the old regime of Bush W, Cheney, Rice, Rove and Rumsfield was enough. It's like a weeklong cloud cover of gloom and storms has been rolled back and the sun is shining on the happy valley again. That's no small feat; to turn a scorched earth atmosphere into one where hope prospers. Sure, hope is more promise than reality; but hope is more peace than oppression, exploitation, lies and torture. If that transition isn't enough for the Nobel Peace Prize, then it is indeed a noble prize; I expect he will rise to it in any case. I plan to support him as I can and push him as he needs it. Shouldn't we all?

Obama Bandwagon

I'd swear I'm seeing more Obama bumper stickers now than ever before. Right up until the election you really had to keep your eyeballs peeled in order to spot the handfull of cars with Obama propaganda on them. Ever since then it seems the percentage of cars on the road here in Northern Alabama with "Obama '08" or "Yes We Can" (still not many "Alobama" slogans around) has been, it seems to me, steadily increasing. Now even a short ride to the store often contains a sighting.

Not that it's a problem for me. I'm as enthusiastic as ever about our choice for "next President", even if the timing, what with the economy wretching, is a bit of a downer. And I'm psyched to see more and more people jumping on the Obama Bandwagon -- I hope we really do all rally around him and our new Congress and make this a greater country and a great time to be in it. Only a dozen more days until the swearing in!

Books for Christmas

I received a few books for Christmas, and I'm looking forward to all of them.
My wife and kids got me:
1) War of Honor (audio book) by David Weber, a science fiction author that I'm unfamiliar with but was recommended by a coworker.
2) Best of Gothic Horror: Edgar Allan Poe Collection, Frankenstein (Mary Shelly) and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Rober Louis Stevenson) (audio book). I'm sure I've read the Poe previously but it's always inspiring. I read chunks of Frankenstein in a college class called Frankenstein to Bioengineering in about 1983, when bioengineering was as much science fiction as science, I think I've only read the Classic Comics version of Dr. Jekyll it should be a fun listen.
3) The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien (edited and published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien). Of course I loved the LotR, dog-earing my copies until I had to replace a couple of them, and enjoyed the Silmarillion. The cover illustration on this one is fantastic.

And from my parents:
A history of the American People by Paul Johnson; this is a tome and I expect to wade through it slowly, but with great interest, especially as the Obama administration gets rolling.

Obama's Initial "To Do" List

This piece was recently in The New York Times:
"(Obama) has begun an effort to tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters, and will remind Americans regularly throughout the transition that the nation’s challenges are substantial and will take time to address."

Sorry Mr. President-Elect, that boat has sailed. We expect miracles, or at least heroic efforts on the substantive and addressable problems that you are about to inherit. Not on the economy -- the economy is a long term issue and very difficult to control -- and it is likely to self correct, don't let it be an albatross around your neck -- get something else done.

Here's a nice place to start, a mini-rant by a well-informed friend of mine. Go ahead, pick any 3 to get done in your first 100 days; that'll be a good year's accomplishments and you'll have 265 days to work on less solvable issues, like the doling out $700 Billion dollars to someone that might do some good with it:

“…the Bush administration destroyed so much of what works in government that the Democrats should have a relatively easy time making corrections, like giving Bankruptcy judges the power to revise mortgages, giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices with the big drug companies, closing Guantanamo, not torturing captured terror suspects, not illegally spying on Americans, no (or less) snowmobiles in Yellowstone, no roads in roadless federal areas, not butchering the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, ending don’t ask don’t tell in the military, not letting the navy torment whales, not giving health care providers a conscience opt out on abortion and other female health issues, not appointing right-wing Federalist Society judges, not wasting money on abstinence education, getting out of Iraq, capturing Bin Laden …”

While your advisors are busy lowering expectations, could they also discourage, just a little, the focus on your being the first African-American elected to the Presidency of the United States. I really don't care -- I mean it's great indication that maybe our nation is maturing, but I didn't vote for you because you are African-American or to prove that such a person can be elected. I voted for you, and I think so did a lot of others, because you are eloquent and visionary and persuasive and strong and you seem to be honest and moral and "in touch" and forthright but still clever; and those are the qualities we need in a leader right now, no matter what color his (or her) skin is.

Please find the issues that we can make quick progress on and make it. I'm looking forward to it.

A President Who Can Think on his Feet

In a speech that reminded me of some of the strongest moments from the film The American President (full script here, I’ll add a sample below), Barack Obama demonstrated that he can inspire, that he can be tough, that he has an open mind, that he values fairness and American values in all their diversity and, most encouragingly, that he can articulate these points without fumbling; that he can give a 45 minute speech without veering off into incoherent sentence structures and without inadvertently flipping what he means to say into its own opposite. George W. Bush can’t do it and I have yet to see John McCain get passionate and stay coherent on any topic.

Some quick quotes (full speech text is online here too):

“This, too, is part of America 's promise -- the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.”

"That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors - found the courage to keep it alive."

“You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq .”

"I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

“ -- that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington . Change comes to Washington ”

Sure, the speech was pre-written and well-rehearsed and not so different from the one I saw months ago in Birmingham (Alabama), but he delivered it with interest, on tempo, with vitality and with sincerity. A President we can believe in.

Here’s a bit of Michael Douglas as Alan Shepherd in The American President:

“Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. Nobody has ever won an election by talking about what I was just talking about. This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they're terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We're a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

I hope we all stay in touch with this inspirational vision and that we elect Obama and reject the continuity offered by John McCain as he has moved closer to George W’s policies of war for oil’s sake and gotten tighter with the closed minds of ultra-conservative religious minorities.

Let’s bring a fresh quick mind with a powerful vision to the Presidency – we should never settle for anything less.

McCain’s Desperate Gambit

Sarah who? Governor of which state? For how long? John McCain’s running mate is in her second year as Governor of one of the least populous states in the country, Alaska . It’s not lost on me that Alaska is an oil state, too; although apparently she’s been a critic of big oil to some extent, still her state receives a big pile of oil money every year. So McCain wanted a woman, one with “maverick credentials”, to me that’s because he’s lost his own set. He began losing his independent voice sometime before 2006 when he visited Alabama and cozied up to some very right-wing religious groups, some with ties to white-supremacy and other hate groups; and shredded the rest as he has backed George W. Bush’s plays in Iraq and the former Soviet Union. But I can see why he picked a woman, and why he didn’t want her name out in the media on his short list. He wanted to let Obama pick a non-woman, i.e. someone other than Hillary Clinton, and then he’s hoping to swoop in and pick up the disenfranchised Hillary supporters, particularly in the large swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania , where Hillary did better than Obama. I’m sure most of the Clinton-ites will see right through this. Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton. She is not a statesman the way Hillary grew to be as First Lady and has carried on now as a 10 year veteran of the U.S. Senate. We know Hillary’s passions and foibles. Sarah Palin is an unknown and there is not enough time now for the American public to ensure that she is qualified to be one heart beat away from the Presidency. She is younger than Obama, but we know that he can handle pressure, we’ve seen him on the campaign trail for 18 months; we saw him at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. What was Sarah Palin doing in 2004? Can she stand up to the pressure of the office that she now seeks, or the one that might be bequeathed to her suddenly? We can’t find out in the next 68 days, but we would need to in order to be swayed to their ticket. It’s a desperate gambit by a man seeking an office where desperate gambits can put us all in harm’s way.

Avoiding Lloyd Bentsen's quote.

I understand the pressure on Obama to move to the center during the general election cycle and I'm sure his advisors are telling him to appear strong on foreign affairs and terrorism, but Hillary Clinton managed to vote against the new FISA and it's retroactive-and-prima-facie-unconstitutional retroactive telecom companies immunity. But that's not the leader that had me excited about public service in America again. That's not the leader that voted against the Iraq war (Hillary Clinton didn't manage to vote against that, when Barack Obama did.)

It's a disappointment when I find that an inspiring leader is on the opposite side of an issue from the ACLU. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against this new FISA; from their complaint: "...supplies none of the safeguards that the Constitution demands. It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents without identifying the people to be surveilled; without specifying the facilities, places, premises, or property to be monitored; ...; without obtaining individualized warrants based on ... probable cause".

I find myself largely agreeing again with Dave Winer here and here and I will similarly be redirecting my donations henceforth (but not my vote). I'm also disappointed in Obama's non-acceptance of public campaign funds and a couple other reversals; I think the other party can make more hay out of his flip-flops than his progressive positions; "Change You Can Believe In" -- do You believe in it, Mr. Obama? I would hate to think that we could apply Llyod Bentsen's most famous quote. I hope Obama gets back on point, and stays there.

Okay, Montana, You're Up.

You know I'm talking to you there with the cowboy spirit, big open sky over yer head, and to the few open-minded folks from the right coast that have been imported . Let's get 'er done and let Hillary get some rest....

You, too, South Dakota, with your monuments to great presidents past. I know Obama said his ears are too big to be carved in big stone but I still think he can fit the qualifications: "...that certain Presidents transcend partisanship into monumental granite... Father of our country. Author of our Constitution. Creator of our National Park System. (Leader through) our Civil War."

Let's see if we can put this long march into the win column and get Barack Obama home to the nomination.

The Unwelcome Candidate

For the past couple of months I've been writing to the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President (via their Contact Us page) about once a week to suggest that it is time for her to give up the fight. I have no illusion that she will listen to my plebian voice, nor even that she will personally ever read my messages. Nonetheless, I endeavor to present compelling and concise arguments detailing why she should cease and desist from her crusade. I do hope, however, that whatever zealous staffer reads my missives is, at least a little bit, demoralized by it -- by hearing from those of us with kindred values that we decry her distracting efforts. It's time, Ms. Clinton, to let the spotlight illuminate your distinguished colleague from Illinois.

I have given time, my voice and cash money to the Barack Obama campaign and I regret it not, but in recent days I've also begun to wonder if there might be a more efficient use of that cash portion of my support, paltry as it is. My meager funds are a mere tumbler-full in the tide and, particularly at this ebb in the process, that is, between locking up the nomination and beginning his deconstruction of the candidate from the other major party, I am inclined to think that small donations might make more difference to a fledgling campaign. The newly announced national candidate of whom I'm thinking, is likely, in my estimation, to take votes away from the Republican candidate, particularly in the South. While votes that swing from Republican to Libertarian are only half as good as those that swing from there to Democratic in this year, they may be considerably more than twice as easy to move. I'm referring to Bob Barr, former U.S. Congressman from Georgia and freshly minted nominee from the Libertarian Party. Give it some thought, won't you?

Of Radishes and Presidents

Our row of radishes grew from dirt to food, from seed to leafy leftovers, and still Barack and Hillary raced on. Three weeks from first watering to first nibbling, a double row about 5 feet long flourished while there wasn't so much as a primary, until Pennsylvania broke the drought. They were the usual mixed success (the radishes, not the candidates, I find Obama unusual, in a good way), about half went to all green with barely a bulge below ground, most of the others were small, from dime sized to about quarter sized, with only a couple growing any bigger and not much even then. But I ate any that rounded, 3 or more dozens. My family cares for them not. In any case they are gone now, and the peas are starting. Not enough for a pot, or even soup, but enough to crack a pod or two and share the sweet contents with the kids. By the time the first tomato turns red our candidate from Illinois will be ripened on to his own competition with the Republican presumptive nominee. I'm looking forward to both.

BOb', the President

As you likely know, "W" is the cutesy, ultra-short nickname for our current President. On the eve of the next primaries to end this quadrennial's primary season I'm getting worn out with the long names and the false formalities; I'm wondering if we could just call Barack Obama BOb'. It's sort of like HyperActive Bob -- a generic American name for a complex individual. HyperActive Bob is the flagship product from my old company, HyperActive Technologies (foolishly they have an anti-linking policy so you'll have to do your own search to see what they sell at HaT (see, they have one of those oddly capitalized ultra-short nicknames and it serves me well when I reference them)).

Here's hoping that Obama rolls through Indiana and North Carolina and we can move on to the next phase of this biathlon, defeating the incumbent party.

May Pennsylvania Have Mercy on Us All

On the eve of Primary, after a six week hiatus, "I see a lot of parallels between Wallis's crusade in favor of what is right and just and Christian -- like working to alleviate poverty, and Obama's push for fundamental change in the orientation of our government...."
-- from my latest review of God's Politics by Reverend Jim Wallis

Barack Obama: Hope's Audacious Author

On the eve of the "Potomac Primaries", I finished listening to Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, and have provided a brief review here: "He also has a good voice -- both literally and figuratively."

Alobama

In the spirit of Dave Winer's I'm a California Voter for Obama, I'm an Alabama Voter for Obama.

I stopped by the Huntsville Obama Headquarters at lunch and picked up a couple bumper stickers. There was a lot of buzz a-happening there this afternoon. Tomorrow should be a banner day.

Obama in 'Bama

Today I drove down to Birmingham to see and hear U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the Bartow Arena on the UAB campus. It was a capacity crowd with a lot of young people; I guess that should be expected in a university setting, but it still took me a little off guard. He is erudite and personable; a realistic idealistic pragmatist. And I believe I feel the same way that Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, said she felt in her endorsement yesterday of Obama. She said that he is the first candidate to ever make her feel the way people tell her that her father made them feel about a Presidential candidate.

(Click on the links to see the snapshots that I took.) He was introduced by the local congressman, Artur Davis. Davis, representing Alabama's seventh district which includes Birmingham, is currently the only African American Congressman (or Senator) from Alabama. The historic relevance of this Congressman and this Candidate sharing the spotlight in this city did not go unremarked. All the same, it was a diverse crowd that cheered plans for ending the war in Iraq, increasing the national focus on education and healthcare, for open honesty in Washington D.C. and for an end to the era of George W. Bush and his cronies.

Obama spoke for almost an hour. And I listened to half of his audio book on the drive to and from Birmingham, "The Audacity of Hope". I enjoy listening to him talk; he has a Rod Serling-esque cadence and has an excellent command of the English language. He does not do the bumbling good ole boy that our current President does, yet he's still friendly and he can joke and tell a story: "...and everybody loves my wife Michelle. Yes, everybody loves Michelle! Hey, friend, don't be grinning THAT much...." And he riffed on "Hope": he hopes to have an Enviromental Protection Agency that protects the environment; and he hopes to have a Federal Emergency Management Agency that knows something about managing federal emergencies. And right now I hope he gets the chance.

Pollsters? Pooey

Having recently become more of a fan of Barack Obama and his run for the Presidency (I was impressed by his Google interview), I wasn't thrilled to see his second place finish in the New Hampshire primary this week. But I was thrilled to see the pollsters get it wrong.

One pundit tried to explain away the unrealized Obama victory prediction by saying that New Hampshire voters don't like to follow suit to the Iowa voters. I think it is just as likely that the New Hampshire folks don't like their outcomes to be predicted and treated as a fait d'accompli before the fact -- that is, they just liked messing with the polls. More power to them.