I'll admit it: better than I thought...

I admit it: John McCain did far better in last night's debate than I gave him credit for in a recent post.

It's obvious he has had a long career (never denied this).

It's obvious he understands the complexities of the world (never denied this either).

But it's also obvious he's cranky, sarcastic, dismissive, and completely wrong for the role of POTUS. He wouldn't even look Obama in the eyes. What's that about?

For the last eight years we've had a stuffed shirt in the job: a clueless, fumbling, bumbling, dufuss who seems more content with correctly pronouncing the name of a head of state than with saying anything with any substance. His one "moment" was immediately after 9/11, and he had my respect and admiration, but he then just kept opening his mouth and inserting not just his feet, but the feet of all those around him who had anything to do with the policy BS he was spouting. It's completely clear we need someone in this position who has gravitas, heft, and substance. We don't need a weenie, and the new John McCain is a weenie.

No, I'm not resorting to ad hominems. Look back at my previous posts: I've liked and respected the guy for a long time. But I have to clearly state the problem with the new John McCain.

The old John McCain, the one who stood up to --- but was ultimately savaged and ruined by --- the Rovian Machine in the 2000 campaign was a good man, a straight-talker, and a consistent, steady person for whom I could have voted. But now, he's a pandering, grumpy, rude, mean-spirited, disrespectful, angry curmudgeon who wears his lack of congeniality like a tie, who makes irascibility a point of pride.

He's perfect as senator and, as such, is where he should remain, and you've only to look at the quality of his recent decisions to see he lacks the temperament needed to accede to higher office. His ready-fire-aim style is not the level-headed strategy we need. He should not be given the job of representing the US to the rest of the world.

This isn't the wild west. We've had a clueless cowboy for eight years and look where it got us; therefore, we don't need a maniac maverick (a wanna-be cowboy) for even another eight hours.

This isn't an international pissing contest, John, so put it back in your pants.

DWC...

Driving While Californian (DWC) has set a new standard.

I'm sorry, but people should not have to be told not to be stupid.

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!

Sorry to shout, but I've just about had it with John McCain's mealy-mouthed, sanctimonious, self-righteousness. He's postponing his campaign to fly back to Washington to help get the Bush Administration's (or his version of their) proposal for quenching the financial meltdown passed.

Puh-LEASE... spare me. Barney Frank said it best: "It's the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys."

McCain's campaign is foundering and he's trying to force Obama into joining him in Washington when few on the left or the right feel their presence is anything but a distraction.

Admit it, John, you're simply not ready to debate. You breathed a sigh of relief when Obama declined your town hall meeting invitation (a side-show that would have accomplished little), and now that it's time to actually discuss issues that matter --- instead of read what's been written for you --- you're freaked out by it.

Admit it!

All your campaign knows how to do is pose and posture.

Yes, this financial crisis is real and it matters, but there are far better heads tending to it than a guy who said he's not an expert on the economy. Heck, John, your wife runs a business: she has better credentials for helping solve it than you ever will. Besides, you were "the deregulator," so you and your ilk share in the blame for it.

God I hope people in this country don't fall for this stunt, because that's all it is: a craven and transparent head-fake to try to get people's attention off his poor campaign performance and get him into a free photo-op so he can look all presidential.

I really used to think a great deal of you, John, but you've turned into a pandering fool who will say anything to anyone about anything just to get elected.

George F. Will said it quite well: "Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama."

This stunt reeks! Please don't fall for it America! Please!

It won't be enough...

Barack Obama announced he's leaving the Trinity Church in the wake of all the controversy that has followed his campaign.

What else could he do?

But you watch: his decision will not satisfy the extreme right-wing talking heads. Sean Hannity will continue to make it the issue. Laura Ingraham will continue with it as well.

These sharks smell blood in the water.

And don't get me wrong...

Left-wing hacks are no less smarmy than right-wing hacks.

A hack is a hack. And left-wing groups, like moveon.org, and their 527 ilk need to back off as well.

They all need to stay out of the process and stop hiding behind claims of free speech. Free speech is a right given to individuals, not to non-profit groups with enough money to build a giant megaphone or to corporations with enough money to buy phalanxes of lobbyists.

From the left or from the right, it's just wrong no matter from what direction it comes.

Not that he cares, but...

...I'm losing respect for John McCain.

When he was presenting himself as more of a moderate, I liked the guy: his positions were less extreme; his behavior less bellicose, less erratic. He claimed in the media, recently (via his wife Cindy), that he was going to run a clean campaign, but what he's doing is quietly standing by as Sean, Laura, Ann, Bill O, Bill C, Rush, and others, nip at Obama's heels in hopes of eventually taking him down in a cloud of off-topic "issues" that amount to pretty much nothing (and this doesn't even consider the right-wing 527 groups that will go after Obama when the real campaign starts this summer).

And they're not attacking Obama for his positions on the dollar, on the economy, on Iraq and Iran, on health care, or on political reform, but on the church he attended and on the pastors who speak there. They're using their own special brand of hate speech to decry what they claim to be hate speech.

Since when have a candidate's religious views been a metric for the presidency? We're not a theocracy, and the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence set things up to preclude this from happening. But we're moving toward a theocracy, nevertheless.

The irony is that these same attack dogs, don't even like McCain, but the thing they like even less than McCain is the idea of a Democratic administration in November. So, they're willing to subordinate their already low ethical stances by being even more unethical just to have a Republican, any Republican, in the White House.

Obama is no saint. His relationship with Rezko was probably not terribly bright, and he might have other skeletons rattling somewhere as well, but who doesn't. Saints have to be officially canonized, and last time I checked, the papacy hadn't ruled on Obama. And what about our current president's and vice-president's questionable associations throughout the years? What of McCain's lobbyist "problems?" Why are these exempt? Why don't Sean, or Bill, or Laura, or Rush spend half their shows talking about these?

John... please... tell these lackeys that you don't need their hateful interference.

Be the stand-up guy you were in 2000 and 2004.

Let your straight talk be the straight truth.

Put these jackals back in their kennels.

RIP Harvey Korman...

Mr. Korman died yesterday, and I would have liked to tell him how much I've appreciated his contributions to my sense of humor.

He was Hedley Lamarr, Rat Butler, the Great Gazoo, Professor Auguste Balls, Dr. Charles Montague, and always funny.

Although he was usually the straight man — to Mel Brooks or Carol Burnett — his lines were usually great, telling Nurse Diesel (in High Anxiety), "More bondage, less discipline," or Slim Pickens (in Blazing Saddles), "My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives," or "'Ditto?' 'Ditto?' You provincial putz?"

He was great.

Rest in peace, Mr Korman, and thank you.

Of bottle tops and toasters...

Please explain to me how we can put spacecraft on the surface of Mars, build enormous dams and bridges, and cure all manner of diseases, but we can't seem to make an olive oil bottle top that fits tightly on the bottle.

Perhaps it's a conspiracy within the olive oil industry to have olive oil go rancid, forcing us to buy more olive oil.

And as long as I'm talking about food, why can't anyone make a toaster that doesn't suck?

Please give me a toaster that works and an olive oil bottle top that stays on tight.

Another "Pit?"

If anyone remembers the Frank Morris novel The Pit, we seem to be entering a phase similar to the one Norris describes in his early 20th-century work, in which commodities traders trade in such things as wheat, for their already-rich clients who often make mere pennies per trade.

The direct parallel that Norris draws is that as greed-driven wheat prices rise — traded ever higher in the Chicago Commodity Exchange — and the rich get richer, the little people who need the bread made from wheat, suffer.

Morris's title refers to the literal trading pit in which brokers work and to the metaphorical pit of despair into which the poor fall as prices and hunger rise. The current parallel is, perhaps, undeniable.

Instead of wheat, however, we have corn's increasing use for biofuel production (principally, Ethanol) driving its price ever higher (250 percent since 2006, by some estimates). Further, corn is already used in so many products (in its syrup and other forms) that our reliance on it as a food is clear.

What effects, then, will commodities brokers and the people for whom they trade, have on corn's price, on its availability as a food source? And might there be another crop — on which we don't rely for food — that could instead serve the biofuel needs of our over-driven nation and leave corn to be used primarily for food?

Sadly, the answer might be seen from the opposite direction: if it was discovered that there was a food that could be made from oil, do you really think a dime would be spent in its development?

Oliver Stone's Gordon Gecko said, "Greed works," but the question is, for whom.

It takes a village...

First, read this piece, then come back.

Now, tell yourself — honestly — that you're not horrified by it.

Sure, there's any enormous number of currently horrifying things available to consider (Iraq, Darfur, tornadoes, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.), but this is the horrifying thing I'm considering here, and I am horrified.

Lives are snuffed out to protect the "honor" of a village? How in the world is this honorable? How can this be justified by anyone? What sort of sick mind(s) thought this one up?

Please, don't argue this savage practice should be safe under the rubric of religious freedom. All manner of religious "freedoms" have gone down under the force of societal scrutiny and pressure. Christianity and other religions have been responsible for all manner of horror, but no matter who carries it out, it's still murder and is never justifiable: not state-sponsored murder (i.e., death penalties) and certainly not religiously-sanctioned murder.

If the belief in karma is to be taken seriously, every member of this village will come back as a pregnant woman who falls in love with a man in her village, or as the man who loves her, or as the innocent baby they share.

These ignorant honor murderers can then be victims of honorable murder and allow this absurdly dishonorable cycle to continue.

I'm well aware this proposed outcome is not at all honorable of me, so I'll go on with my day as a sign of respect for the idea of religious freedom, even though, sadly, I'm moved to thoughts of murder, as we might just need freedom from religion as well.

But it takes a village to commit a murder of morality.

Planning for "that day"...

I recently spent a week in Arizona trying to help my mom and my sisters through a hospital stay of my dad's. I'm not sure I was able to do much, but I had a lot of time to think and have concluded a few things that might help others who are reading this with a similar situation now or when "that day" arrives.

Plan Early

As much as you're able, develop a plan for when your parents get old. Most of my contemporaries have already lost their folks, but there are many who haven't. If this means you need to save a bit more money to be able to help them be comfortable, then that's what will need to happen. Figure out who will take care of them. This will require talking with your siblings (if you have them) and coming up with a plan.

Communicate Constantly

If you have siblings, talk with them. Come to as much consensus as you can. Siblings' relationships can be challenging, but a unified front will help when a crisis happens. Talk with your folks as well. Sometimes people don't like to talk about this: it's too much like confronting mortality, but again, having a plan will help and talking about it is the only way to develop that plan. You are advocates for your parents' health care. You have to talk about what's going on.

Don't Fear Doctors

Too many people think MD means Major Diety. Doctors are people who you have to talk to and ask questions. They deal in jargon and will often say things you just don't understand. The best way to gain understanding is to ask questions. You're not questioning them; you're asking questions. Big difference. If you get resistance, keep trying.

Know Your Rights

You have the right to communicate for your parents if your parents are unable to communicate for themselves. You have a right to ask for a second opinion. And patients have rights as well. Know what these are so you can work with health care professionals rather than against them.

Ultimately, it's about your parents, and not about you, doctors, or nurses. Keep this foremost in your mind.

This might all seem like common sense, but the problem is that all too often sense is far too uncommon.

Masters Tournament Prediction...

Tiger will secure the 36-hole lead, will hold off a Saturday charge by Ogilvy and Mickelson, and will go on to win the Masters handily at somewhere between 6 and 9 under... but I could be wrong and frequently am.

April 14th update: Oops... like I said, I'm frequently wrong.

If Tiger had managed to sink even three of those putts he barely missed, we might have a different outcome.

But... congratulations to Trevor Immelman!!!!

Hey Monty!

Until you actually win a golf tournament in the U.S., the U.S. golf world will take you as seriously as they currently do.

I know it's harder to make more birdies than it is to whine and complain, but give it a shot: your golf game will be farther along and you'll get invited to all sorts of events.

No one was ever invited to a tournament for complaining well, but hundreds get invited for playing well.

Affecting one's legacy...

I've been reading lately about President Bush wanting to ensure (and some have used the word "salvage") his legacy via various actions he's taking late in his second term, and it occurred to me that this behavior, this hind-sighted goal, sounds surprisingly familiar.

I teach writing at the university level and my syllabus discusses, among many other things, extra credit. Simply because this topic arises so often led to my need to address it at the semester's outset. Prior to including this in my syllabus, the subject of extra credit was broached toward the end of a semester when some students suddenly (if 16 weeks can be thought of as "sudden") realized their grades might not be what they'd hoped. In fact, I've actually had students tell me, "I had hoped for an 'A'," which I always love hearing because there are a few things I hope for as well, but many more for which I work.

Anyway, as a result of this seemingly surprising development they often ask, "Can I get any extra credit?" My response to them is usually something along the lines of, "Rather than thinking of extra credit after the fact, think instead in terms credit before the fact: in other words, do appropriate work when it counts and receive appropriate credit for that effort."

Perhaps President Bush might have benefited from reading my syllabus sometime in late 2000, so he wouldn't have to worry about extra credit now.

Slazenger's golf ball ads are stupid!

I'm a golfer, but I will never buy a Slazenger golf ball simply because the advertising is so incredibly stupid.

"Made to be pounded?" Are you kidding me? Is that all you could come up with?

A bleeding golf ball might have seemed like a good idea when you were sitting in the conference room with your marketing department and ad company, but it sure doesn't seem like a good idea now.

Here's an idea: try not smoking that fattie before your next marketing meeting. Perhaps the decisions you make won't suck so bad. Sure hope you didn't spend too much money on this ad campaign.

Oops... silly me... of course you didn't.

Slazenger: Made to be avoided!