Category Archives: politics

when comics were king and we didn’t worry

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It was the 40s. Comic books were 10 cents, and Mr. Wellman, who owned the news stand down the block from my house had a wall full of constantly updated comic books, which he let me read for free while I sat on the bench and munched on penny candy.

On the way back from visiting my mother yesterday, I listened to a piece on NPR about Harvey Kurtzman the creator and driving force behind Mad Comics and later, Mad Magazine.

By the time the 50s arrived, my interests were moving away from comic books and more toward True Confessions and Mad Magazine.

From Wikipedia:

Comics historian Tom Spurgeon picked Mad as the medium’s top series of all time, writing, “At the height of its influence, Mad was The Simpsons, The Daily Show and The Onion combined.”[1] Graydon Carter chose it as the sixth best magazine of any sort ever, describing Mad’s mission as being “ever ready to pounce on the illogical, hypocritical, self-serious and ludicrous” before concluding, “Nowadays, it’s part of the oxygen we breathe.”[2] Joyce Carol Oates called it “wonderfully inventive, irresistibly irreverent and intermittently ingenious American.”[3] Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam wrote, “Mad became the Bible for me and my whole generation.”[4

Irreverence and ingenuity. They sort of go together.

There is something endearingly irreverent about Alfred E. Neuman, the poster boy for Mad Magazine, and his philosophy of “What, me worry?”

Alfred E.Neuman

It was the 50s, and I didn’t worry about much.

Nothing good lasts forever.

Alfred E. Bush

Except maybe irreverence.

Here’s a great comparison of the sayings of Alfred E. Neuman and George Bush, asking “Who would you trust?”

Irreverence.

Alfred Obama

One of the many great things about Obama is his ability to be irreverent about himself.

Yesterday, when I walked in the door of my now home after visiting my mother, I was greeted with a scene that was a far cry from the 50s. My son in law was ironing his shirts for the work week and my grandson was imitating him, using his toy iron on one of his own shirts laid out on a tray table.

There are lots of good things about it not being the 50s, even though we all do worry a lot.,

look for me at TGB

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I’m Ronni’s guest blogger today at Time Goes By, as she spends a couple of weeks in NYC at work and play, including participating in the Age Boom Academy.

From an 04/02/09 Time magazine editorial:

For the past several years, I’ve been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life’s exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age – say, 80 – all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver’s licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We’ll let you proceed with your lives – much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case – without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We’ll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: “Tune in, turn on, drop dead.”

Read the whole piece here. and go over the TGB to get my take on it.

Paul, Ringo, the Mararishi, me, and world peace

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Yup, I did it in the 70s — took a course in Transcendental Meditation. It was, indeed, relaxing. And, after all, the Beatles were doing it.

And now Paul and Ringo, along with filmmaker David Lynch, are promoting (and funding) introducing TM to public school students, especially those who are “at-risk.”

Of course, as the above linked story indicates,

“Public schools are not supposed to be in the business of promoting religion – and that means any religion,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Advocating for a Hindu-based religious practice in public schools is the same as pushing Christianity or another faith. It’s equally unconstitutional.”

Personally, I believe that the process that is called “meditation” is a great stress-reducer and can open the meditator to attitude-altering personal insights that bubble up from the subconscious. But you don’t need a religious framework to accomplish that.

Shortly after the rise in popularity of TM, Herbert Benson wrote a book called The Relaxation Response, outlining a meditative practice that is really TM without a connection to any spiritual belief. Sort of a TM for the secularist.

From here:

The relaxation response represents a form of meditation which has been practiced for many years. The technique can be found in every major religious tradition. It is a simple technique, but it is not easy to practice or to incorporate into your life. You will find your mind wandering, and you will probably find it difficult to set aside the time to practice. It feels like setting aside 20 minutes a day to sit and do nothing.

If you do incorporate this or any relaxation technique into your life you may notice at least the following four benefits:

* You will gain increased awareness of whether you are tense or relaxed. You will be more “in touch with your body.”
* You will be better able to relax when you become stressed-out.
* You may even reduce the resting level of your autonomic nervous system – walking around more relaxed all the time.
* Your concentration may improve. By repeatedly bringing yourself back to the meditation you are strengthening the part of your mind that decides what to think about.

Devotees of Transcendental Meditation believe that if enough people participated in the practice, world peace would be achieved. Well, maybe so, if meditation really does reduce stress and, therefore, related frustration and aggression.

But maybe it also would be true that if enough people practiced the Relaxation Response every day, we would move steadily toward world peace. Or, at least have a population less stressed and more insightful.

I wonder what would happen if public schools offered a “Relaxation Club” rather than a “Meditation Club” and used David Lynch’s foundation money to pay at-risk students to attend after school. It would be an interesting study to see if the process had a beneficial effect on those students. It would be the same process as “meditation,” but presented in a different package, one more legally appropriate to the “separation of church and state” Constitutional mandate.

The Transcendental Meditation website cites the value of meditation (AKA “the relaxation response”): creativity, focus, health, happiness, success.

I don’t know about “happiness” and “success,” but three out of five ain’t bad.

The site also quotes Dr. Gary Kaplan, a neurologist at NYU’s medical school:

“The TM technique simply and naturally allows the mind to settle down to experience a state of inner coherence and calm during which time the left and right hemispheres, and the front and back of the brain, begin to work in harmony with each other. This brain wave coherence has been correlated with improvements in memory, problem-solving and decision-making abilities. This change in brain functioning also affects the rest of the physiology, reducing high blood pressure, strengthening the heart, and overall improving health.”

I really do need to meditate (whatever you want to call it), but that means I have to spend less time online.

That’s the hard part.

first we take Manhattan
then we take Berlin

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Those are words in a Leonard Cohen song that keep running through my head as I read about the religious right in Texas trying to make fundamentalist changes to the state’s Social Studies curriculum. There are terrorists and then there are terrorists.

A press release from the Texas Freedom Network examines the situation, providing

…. the names of “experts” appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality.

The Texas Freedom Network is a nonprofit, grassroots organization of faith and community leaders who support public education, religious freedom and individual liberties.

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No, neither I nor my keyboard has gone completely haywire.

The above are the first lines of the results of geneticists’ efforts to sequence the genes of the swine flu (renamed H1N1).

I don’t understand any of that scientific mumbo jumbo. I also don’t understand why (from Harper’s Weekly):

Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting Coptic Christian pig farmers.

Well, I guess I do understand why. I just think it’s stupid.

Some sciences might be awfully hard for lots of people to understand, but, I swear, even more often, I find it hard to understand the people who don’t understand.

I watch my home-schooled grandson as he moves each day toward understanding more. While he already knows “where babies come from,” my daughter has been waiting for him to ask how they got there. And he finally did, the other day.

Using videos on the web and available books designed to help children understand the process of conception, gestation, and birth, my daughter is helping her son to begin to grasp the complexity of it all.

While I am unswervingly Pro Choice, I also understand the awesomeness of fetal development. And that’s why I don’t understand why those who oppose abortion don’t make a big deal of disseminating information about how babies come to be and how “sacred” (see 5th definition here) and amazing the actual, factual process is. I wonder, if young children were instilled with awe while explained the facts, would they be more likely, as teenagers, to avoid unwanted pregnancies — not out of fear of some god, but rather because they would value life more. Maybe it shouldn’t be called “sex education.” Maybe it should be called something more scientific, like “human procreation.”

C’mon, even Sarah Palin’s daughter admits that abstinence doesn’t work. She certainly has learned that from her own experience.

Knowledge and understanding can sidetrack many bad decisions, and “knowing” and “understanding” are not the same thing. If children truly were helped to understand the scientific marvel that they are as human organisms — right from the very beginning — perhaps as they mature, they would have more respect for themselves and for other living things. And then, maybe, abortions wouldn’t be necessary except in extreme cases.

Of course, I’m just speculating. What do I know? I’m just a little ol’ grandma raising hell at the keyboard and trying to understand this world that seems to be “going to hell in a handbasket.” (Hmm. Why a handbasket, I wonder.)

Some extreme things that are happening I understand and accept, some I understand but despise, and some I just don’t understand. All of the above are reflected in the following, again lifted from Harper’s Weekly Review:

Sweden recognized same-sex marriages.

A food-service industry survey found that schoolchildren would like to replace lunch ladies with robots.

Kenyan women’s organizations called for wives to boycott sex, and for prostitutes to be paid not to work, until leaders in the coalition government stop feuding.

South Korea bioengineered four fluorescent beagles

A senior Buddhist monk in Thailand named Phra Maha Wudhijaya Vajiramedhi vowed to teach gay and transgender Thai monks better manners, which would include the elimination of their pink purses, their sculpted eyebrows, and their revealingly tight robes.

Officials in New Delhi were investigating the case of Shanno Khan, an 11-year-old girl whose teacher allegedly forced her to stand in the hot sun for two hours as a punishment for not doing her homework, ignoring Khan when she promised to learn her alphabet and begged for water. The girl fainted and was hospitalized. “I never want to go to school again,” she told her mother, and died a day later.

ways of aging

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We are each a combination of nature and nurture, but it does seems as though how we look and feel as we get older is a lot more dependent on “nature” — on the genes we inherited that keep our bones strong, our brains sharp, and our skin not too badly wrinkled.

How we take care of ourselves, of course, can make a difference. How we view ourselves or want others to view us also can make a difference.

A link in a comment left on Ronni Bennett’s post on The Appearance of Age got me thinking about how I have chosen to appear as I age.

The link takes you to this photo of a group of women over 50 who aspire to be models.

They all have enhanced their natural looks to give themselves a uniquely attractive aesthetic. My way of dealing with my aging face and body is to make a similar (although not as successful) effort. I still love clothes and shoes, I still get my hair cut by a professional, and I still wear makeup and style my hair if I’m going to be out in public. The way I look has always been important to me, and apparently I’m not changing in that way even as I approach the age of 70.

Ronni, on the other hand, has taken a more relaxed and less expensive approach. Her identity and self-image require less vanity than mine, and I envy her for that.

A cousin of mine sent me a link to the video, below, which gives a hearty glimpse of 88 year old Hazel McCallion, mayor of Mississauga, Ontario (a city without debt) for the past 31 years. Watching this video sure made me wish that I had had the brains and heart and courage to age as she has.

“Hurricane Hazel,” as she is affectionately known, still gets on the ice and pushes a hockey puck around. In the video, she gets to fulfill one of her dreams — to make a music video.

Now, that’s aging with style.

the tax hike boondoggle?

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Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By and I are the same age, so I’m launching this post based on what she has written about the mistaken notions many people have about income tax rates and the history thereof.

From our early youth to our early twenties, the top tax bracket ranged between 81 and 94 percent. (See here.) For most of that period, those tax rates were placed on incomes over $400,000. That level of taxation on the wealthy helped to propel us out of the vestiges of the Great Depression and into the middle class prosperity of the 1950s.

Understandably but not forgiveably, the Republicans are waging a war against President Obama’s plan to make the tax burden placed on all economic classes more fair.

From here:

It [Obama’s plan] would boost taxes on the wealthy, oil companies and other businesses while cutting Medicare and Medicaid payments to insurance companies and hospitals to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care. It would also limit charitable and other tax deductions for the affluent and trim spending on government subsidies to big farms.

Predictably, Republicans complained, much as they had done during last year’s presidential campaign, that Obama was pitting the haves against the have-nots.

Here’s a reminder from Ronni Bennett’s Crabby Old Lady rant linked to above:

The rate remained around 70 percent until Ronald Reagan was elected when the rate was dropped to 28 percent for awhile. George H.W. Bush raised it to 31 percent and Clinton increased it to 39 percent. Then George W. Bush got the rate down to 35 percent in 2003, where it has remained.

The rich have been making out like bandits for half a century on the backs of working stiffs. No one is asking them to pay 91 percent and a few more percentage points isn’t going to change the lives of the rich and famous much, but it will help a bit to offset needed spending.

As President Obama has mentioned and any thinking person knows on their own, we all need to make sacrifices now, and the rich cannot be exempt.

It seems to me that the Republican way of solving the country’s economic problem would just be another Bermie Madoff Boondoggle.

lessons from the future

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Mike Brotherton, scientist and SF writer, lists this among the reasons he likes science fiction:

Seeing sides of humanity possible in no other way. How would we react to the discovery of aliens? Or aliens much smarter than us? Aliens with different belief systems and good reasons for having them? Or technology that gives us opportunities and challenges we’ve never had before? Or we will have, but not yet?

As an avid science fiction reader for more than 50 years, I continue reading sci fi novels because they push the boundaries and bonds of my attitudes about societies and beings very different from what I’m used to. They challenge me to examine my beliefs about how to deal with uncompromising adversaries.

Contemplate, for example, the following descriptions of alien cultures whose values clash with those of most of the inhabitants of planet Earth:

Considered within their own ethos, the Aalaag are extremely just masters — mistreatment of their human “cattle” by one of their kind is a serious offense. But they demand obedience and a rigid code of conduct that rankles the human spirit. Actually, the Aalaag are a conquered race themselves, fleeing from some unnamed but awesomely powerful enemy that took their home worlds. They are in essence warriors, tall and proud, each with a collection of personal arms and possessing a Spartan outlook on their condition. Every single Aalaag views duty as the highest virtue, and all duty is directed towards one day regaining their lost worlds. The races they themselves conquer are used to exploit resources in support of this ultimate goal.

The Psychlos don’t just conquer planets. They don’t just conquer galaxies. They conquer universes. Only they have the secret to instantaneous teleportation. And one of their biggest operations is the Intergalactic Mining Company, which knocks natives back to the Stone Age and then systematically strips their planet of all available ore, almost down to the very core. Oh, and the Psychlos find cruelty to be “delicious.” The crooked — even by their standards — Security Head of Earth is named Terl and he is scheming to get rich by “training” native humans to do some illegal mining for him.

As humans are a culture of individuals, as ants are a colony culture, the Fithp are a herd culture. [snip} — and being herd creatures, they do not understand the concept of diplomatic compromise… you either dominate or you submit.

….these tongue-in-cheek tales of derring-do and human ingenuity in the face of human diplomatic incompetence have sold quite well for many years. In most of them, there is an insidious plot behind whatever the current weird aliens are doing that is being masterminded by the Groaci. No slouches at the diplomatic bargaining table, the Groaci are nonetheless almost incapable of dealing squarely.

Although the “worms” are the most visible face of the Chtorr, what we have here is nothing less than the attempt of an entire biosphere to conquer Earth.

Sometimes there is no way to compromise with “alien” beings and cultures, and so the decision is to go to war with them. But is that really the only solution?

A friend of mine from college, a retired CIA polygraph examiner who has written several books on the subject, emailed this article from February 3rds New York Post.

After my post yesterday about wanting to bring back the “banned” movie Song of the South, I hesitate to share my views regarding what the Post piece by Ralph Peters suggests about the way we (America) deal with our “alien” enemies.

But Peters, while beginning his piece with a rather shocking assertion (that motivates you to read the whole article), ends with these statements that contain some common sense:

The point isn’t to argue that Afghans are inferior beings. It’s just that they’re irreconcilably different beings – more divergent from our behavioral norms than the weirdest crew member of the starship Enterprise.

As an analytical exercise, try to understand Afghanistan as a hostile planet to which we have been forced, in self-defense, to deploy military colonies. How do the bizarre creatures on that other planet view us? What do they want? What will they accept? Is killing us business, pleasure – or both?

Are there tribes among these aliens with which we can cooperate? Which actions of ours inflame the alien psyche? What will the alien willingly die for? What does the alien find inexplicable about us? Must we preserve a useful climate of fear?

Do we intend to maintain our military colonies out there in deep space? For how long? Can the angry planet ever be sanitized of threats?

Of course, there’s more in play than images of our “starship troopers” combating those alien life-forms that call themselves “Taliban.” This exercise is just meant to break our mental gridlock, to challenge our crippling assumption that we’re all merry brothers and sisters who just have to work through a few small understandings.

This is a “war of the worlds” in the cultural sense, a head-on collision between civilizations from different galaxies.

And the aliens don’t come in peace.

This is what’s bothering me: America (or rather those in power in America) seem to believe that it is this country’s right to go out and convert those “alien” cultures to our version of capitalistic democracy That missionary zeal (as all missionary zeal does) generates dislike and distrust — and even hatred, in the case of the Taliban — among those we consider “others.”

Sci fi novels present a variety of “what if” scenarios in which the protagonists have to learn to survive — despite, within, or alongside of — disturbingly “alien” cultures.

Maybe someone should suggest to Obama that he assign a sci fi reading list to his international and military advisers.

power and priorities: what are Obama’s?

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(No, I’m still not officially back, but this was something about which I just had to post.)

Democrats are giddy at being back in power. But I will suggest that being in power is all about priorities. One should watch carefully to see what the priorities of the new administration are..

The above is from an piece in the Huffington Post by Ian Welsh, What Obama’s Nixing Family Planning Money Tells Us
And what it’s telling us is that Obama’s priority seems to be bipartisanship at any cost.
From PlanetWire.org:

Obama was reported to have asked Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chairs the House committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid, to drop a provision that would enable states to provide family planning to low-income families without having to seek permission from the federal government. Other outlets said he was “distancing himself” from the provision as “not part of” his $825 billion stimulus plan.

According to the news tonight, the plan just passed by the House is, indeed, lacking support for family planning. And the Republicans didn’t vote for it anyway.,
Providing these family services might not seem very important in light of the priority to restore some economic stability to our faltering capitalistic system. However, an increase in unplanned pregnancies in all of those individual “little pictures” would put a drain on the economy on its most fundamental level.
According to PlanetWire,

…the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research and policy analysis, points out that Medicaid spending has long proven good for the economy. In its own study in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office found publicly funded family planning would save the federal government $200 million over five years by helping women avoid pregnancies that otherwise would lead to Medicaid-funded births.

Publicly funded clinics provided contraceptive services last year that helped women avoid 1.4 million unintended pregnancies that would have resulted in 640,000 unintended births and 600,000 abortions. Without these services, abortions would have risen by 49 percent, the Guttmacher Institute says in a statement.

Having worked for a Senate Majority Leader in New York State, I am well-aware of the horse trading that often goes on to get major legislation passed, and so I understand why Obama might have chosen to sacrifice a part of what he wants in order to get Republican approval — not just for this stimulus package, but for other legislation still to come.
Well, you made your choices and took your chances, Mr. President, and it didn’t work.
There’s still hope, though. The Senate can put the family services request back into the stimulus plan legislation and then send it back to the House, where the Democrats can just go ahead and pass it again in the form in which they should have passed it in the first place.
Or the family services request can be incorporated into the next stimulus package, which is sure to come soon — although some legislative bill writer will have to be pretty creative to figure out a way to include it in with shoring up the banking and housing industry.
Whatever the strategy, President Obama needs to put his power behind making the family services request as a priority.