President Bush explains his social security reform proposal.
WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don’t really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix the problem?
Verbatim response: (Pay Attention, now…you don’t want to miss anything important.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: “Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.”
The above is from a press release issued by the White House. You definitely should read the whole thing.

In 1918, Dr. Marie C. Stopes published Married Love — “dedicated to young husbands and all those who are betrothed in love.”
I still have my father’s yellow-edged and fingerprint-stained 1931 edition of the book. (I have not yet finished packing up my books, amazed at the titles that I’ve chosen to cart around with me.)
Apparently the book was banned in America until 1931. I wonder if my Dad was first in line at the bookstore. 🙂
According to the Oxford University Press, which has a 2004 edition,
“Married Love” (1918) combined a lyrical evocation of marital love with a no-nonsense and detailed account of sexual intercourse and sexual pleasure. It has sold over a million copies in Britain alone and was for many people a revelation.
With a “passion” for helping the individuals in heterosexual couples to achieve an enjoyable sex life, Stopes did not approve of homosexuality. In that way, she was an unfortunate product of her times.
But in other ways, she’s right on the money with her advice for men about how women’s bodies and psyches function in tandem. While biology doesn’t have to be destiny, hormones can sure set us up on roller coasters of all kinds.
“Well, Dad,” I think, packing the slim volume in along with John Lennon’s In His Own Write and the little Pocket Poet Howl from the 50s, “Good for you. I hope that Mom read it too.”

Hey, I know it’s summertime, you’re getting ready for a little vacation fun — a little escape from the humdrum.
And so it’s a perfect time for our government and its rabid supporters to begin slipping some mean deeds by us why we veg out under the trees with our cold beers. And they’re doing that “marketing” thing again, paying some high-priced flaks to sell us some more bills of goods that are toxic to this democracy of ours (certainly what’s left of it).
Pay attention. Follow the links.
The Republican group Progress for America released the television ad “Get Ready” on June 22. In a news release, the group reports that the ad will run through July 1 as part of a $700,000 effort to “warn opinion leaders in Washington, DC and beyond that some Democrats will soon unleash a fury of dishonest and ugly attacks about any Justice that President Bush nominates to the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur.
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department yesterday began working with a private marketing firm to create a database of all U.S. college students as well as high-school students between ages 16 and 18, to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment.
ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 23 /U.S. Newswire/ — The American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest Conservative grass roots organization, sharply condemned today’s highly controversial 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that local governments may use imminent domain to take people’s homes and businesses and turn them over to private developers.
Are you all feeling a little less relaxed now? Well, at least you’re not feeling as DUMB as I do after posting about “The Medium is the Massage,” a little paperback book by Marshall McLuhan that’s been nestled in my various bookshelves since the mid-sixties. I should have taken the time to do a little research before I posted, but time is something I don’t have much of these days.
But Mark Federman, whose blog “What is The Message” looks at all things McLuhanesque, left a comment. Between his explanation, and the one left by my friend Frank Paynter, I am now more informed about how the message got massaged into the little book in my possession.
I feel like a salmon swimming upstream. I keep realizing how much I don’t know anything about. I keep realizing that my mom and I each have too much stuff and I’ll never get it packed in time for the move. And I keep realizing that there’s no stopping Bush and his crew.
I’m definitely going to hide out in the woods until it all blows over. Which it will, you know. It’s all ebb and flow. The ol’ Dharma Wheel.

That’s my scream of frustration as I try to get my mom to start packing. Her apartment is a bottomless pit of scraps of fabric and paper; hats from the 50s; shoes he doesn’t wear; little boxes filled to the top with assorted paper clips, bits of string, nails, rusted washers, broken pencils, dried up pens………. But she watches so that I don’t thow anything out.
The packed boxes are piling up. I have no idea where she thinks they’re going to fit in the smaller space into which we’ll be moving.
I’m just tired of arguing.
And I still have my own packing to do.
aarrgghh!

In case you still think that Bush is right about Social Security being in big trouble, watch this flow-chart animation that explains why it isn’t and come to your own conclusions about why Bush et al should be.

Now, here’s a mom and kid I totally understand.

I’m not the only one who misremembers the title of Marshall McLuhan’s famous book about how electronic technology is reshapting patterns of social interdependence.
As I’m packing up my books, I come upon a paperback book dated March, 1967 entitled The Medium is the Massage, by, yes, Marshall McLuhan. Well, dagnabit, lookit that — its MASSAGE, not MESSAGE, as so many of us misremember.
What a difference a vowel makes.
Back in 1967 this paperback book cost me $1.45. Ah, those bygone days.
I’m not misremembering that it’s Father’s Day. But my Dad died more than 20 years ago, and I’ve posted about him many times before.

— sautee broccoli (or any other veggie) with olive oil, garlic, and honey
— add honey to basil pesto and every kind of marinade
— homemade salad dressing with apple cider vinegar and honey
— stir fry with honey and soy sauce
I always cook with honey. Love honey-mustard and honey-barbeque anything. Right now, pretzels.
I always cook with honey
To sweeten up the night…
That was one of my favorite Judy Collins songs.
Or maybe this one was really my favorite.
Or maybe I most like her versions of some of Leonard Cohen’s songs.
No, this is my all-time favorite:
ALBATROSS
The lady comes to the gate dressed in lavender and leather
Looking North to the sea she finds the weather fine
She hears the steeple bells ringing through the orchard
All the way from town
She watches seagulls fly
Silver on the ocean stitching through the waves
The edges of the sky
Many people wander up the hills
From all around you
Making up your memories and thinking they have found you
They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride
Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried
And tell you why
And ask you why
Any way you answer
Lace around the collars of the blouses of the ladies
Flowers from a Spanish friend of the family
The embroid’ry of your life holds you in
And keeps you out but you survive
Imprisoned in your bones
Behind the isinglass windows of your eyes
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone
Even now by the gate with you long hair blowing
And the colors of the day that lie along your arms
You must barter your life to make sure you are living
And the crowd that has come
You give them the colors
And the bells and wind and the dream
Will there never be a prince who rides along the sea and the mountains
Scattering the sand and foam into amethyst fountains
Riding up the hills from the beach in the long summer grass
Holding the sun in his hands and shattering the isinglass?
Day and night and day again and people come and go away forever
While the shining summer sea dances in the glass of your mirror
While you search the waves for love and your visions for a sign
The knot of tears around your throat is crystallizing into your design
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone
Come away alone…with me.

Hot. Humid. Ugh.
At least it’s not 111 degrees, which it is in Phoenix, where Randi Rhodes blows fresh into the air waves on Air America Radio.
According to Rhodes:
As I walked out of the Barry Goldwater Memorial Terminal (seriously) at Sky Harbor Airport, I couldn’t help but think about how many so-called Goldwater-Conservatives actually STILL believe that Sen. Goldwater and the Bushies are cut from the same cloth.
In fact, it was this 1964 Goldwater quote that came to mind:
I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
Terri Schiavo, stem-cells, corporatist judges, purposefully lying “journalists,” Downing Street Memos, etc, etc, etc. ENOUGH! Regardless of your party affiliation, how much more are you going to take?! And more importantly, how much more can we afford to take?
…………….
I dreamed last night that I went to see my former therapist, and when I stood in front of him, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even articulate what I was coming to see him about. And then the room was full of people getting in my way, and I left.
I’m packing for two. Move of big stuff is scheduled for July 14.
Hot. Sweaty. Tired. Need some fresh air.

If they spin us any faster, we’re all going to have scrambled eggs for brains and then we’ll all become dumb and dumber Bushites.
Source: Media General News Service, June 10, 2005
“The U.S. Special Operations Command has hired three firms to produce newspaper stories, television broadcasts and Web sites to spread American propaganda overseas.” [big snip] The firms will produce “print articles, video and audio broadcasts, Internet sites and novelty items, like T-shirts and bumper stickers, for foreign audiences. Video products will include newscasts, hour-long TV shows and commercials.”….
Source: Washington Post, June 8, 2005
“The new drug safety board established by the Food and Drug Administration to restore confidence in the nation’s drug supply will actually set back efforts to improve the safety of the medications Americans take and will not make it any easier to take dangerous drugs off the market,” the Washington Post reports…..
Source: New York Times, June 8, 2005
In a lengthy memo Rick S. Piltz, a former senior associate in the Climate Change Science Program, revealed that U.S. government climate research reports had been edited by a White House official, Philip A. Cooney, to emphasize doubts about climate change. According to Piltz’s memo Cooney, a former “climate team leader” and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, changed one 2002 document to “create an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about climate change and its implications.” …..
Source: CBS.MarketWatch.com June 14, 2005
ExxonMobil has confirmed that it has hired Philip A. Cooney, the former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality who resigned last week after it was revealed that his editing of government scientists reports downplayed the significance of climate change. An Exxon Mobil spokesman declined to provide details of Cooney’s new job, which he starts in autumn. Deputy spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, told the New York Times “Phil Cooney did a great job and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector.” ….
Source: The New York Times, June 8, 2005
In a joint meeting in Washington, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair brushed off a recently revealed British memo from July 2002 that said “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” to remove Saddam Hussein “through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D.” or weapons of mass destruction…….
All of the above, and more, are detailed on www.prwatch.org the website of the Center for Media and Democracy.
Don’t know what to believe any more? Check in with the watchers. Don’t get caught up in the spins.