January 4, 2012
Reading this morning about Rick Santorum’s success in the Iowa caucus vote made me wonder whether someone slipped LSD into my coffee. How else to explain a presidential candidate of a major political party doing so well while opposing birth control and advocating that states can make it illegal. Santorum is essentially saying that a man and premenopausal woman should only have sex if they’re willing for the result to be birth of a baby. He’s also saying that it’s all right for government — albeit not the federal government — to play such a life- and society-altering role in our private lives.
Let’s say Santorum gets his way. We as a nation would have many more children when we can least afford them, a lot less sex, and state governments empowered to regulate one of the most intimate aspects of our existence. That would make reality worse than a bad acid trip. And here I thought Republicans wanted government out of our lives.
Florida urologist Jack Cassell doesn’t want to treat 69,438,983 Americans. “If you voted for Obama. . . seek urologic care elsewhere,” reads a sign outside Cassell’s office in Mount Dora, reported the Orlando Sentinel, a newspaper I helped edit for much of my adult life.
Think of how shunning Obama backers could spread. When I next visit Orlando to see family, will restaurants owned by Republican zealots refuse to serve me? But this is about something much larger. Cassell is expressing revulsion for 52% of those who voted because of our political views. The revulsion is so rabid that the doctor prefers not to talk to us, not to touch us, not to treat us. For a change, a racial minority isn’t facing discrimination but rather a racially diverse majority.
Let me be the first to coin a word for this practice of avoiding, at all costs, fellow citizens who disagree politically with Republicans: Cassellism. I can already see bumper stickers, such as Proud To Be A Cassellist! and I ♥ Cassell.
A Cassellist version of the modern Hippocratic Oath is also inevitable:
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow beings McCain voters. . . May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling, and may I long experience the joy of healing those Republicans who seek my help.
There was a time in this country when journalists lived to expose politicians’ lies. Today, however, some let politicians trample the truth unchallenged just when the public most needs the straight story. I’m speaking of the ludicrous claims that health-care reform proposals would establish “death panels” and give the federal government access to peoples’ bank accounts. Those who utter such naked lies merely for political gain — Sarah Palin and Michael Steele come to mind — deserve contempt. The journalists — a misnomer to be sure — deserve worse.
Read the words. Listen to the words. Watch them sung. Then ask yourself what have — or did — we become? Ask why nearly every major news organization can’t bring itself to equate waterboarding with “torture” when, in fact, the United States executed World War II enemies for the same practice?
Maybe Jonathan Mann’s song, whose lyrics are drawn from one of the infamous torture memos, will finally awake the nation. And justice will be done.
Posting a comment on Facebook has landed me a radio show interview tomorrow. Topic: the implications of severe cutbacks at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, where I spent much of the last two years researching this book. Read More
How can the $165 million that AGI is paying employees be considered bonuses if awarded for failure and not success? And that’s just the start. The bonuses are part of $450 million to be doled out.
Some of my vanished retirement money came from annual bonuses while working at two Fortune 500 companies. Every manager knew never to count on anything extra until the checks were in hand. Why? The bonuses were tied directly to performance: performance of the company, performance of the business unit, and performance of the individual. Read More
Not posting to my blog for two days feels a bit like neglecting my toddler. Say, not giving him breakfast or lunch. Resuming with a chorus-of-snores subject — health insurance — is almost as neglectful.
But health insurance came to mind today when I read that President-elect Barack Obama is resigning his U.S. Senate seat, effective Sunday. Does it mean he has to pay the full cost of his premiums, including the share his employer paid? That’s what my wife and I have had to do under the so-called COBRA bridge plan. Read More
After closely following the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of the presidential campaign, I’m not surprised that much in Rolling Stone’s damning new portrayal of John McCain’s life and career isn’t widely known.
The piece feels like a hatchet job but only because the sheer volume of negative information is so shocking. I’ve read some of it elsewhere but mostly in bits. To see it aggregated in a single piece is jaw dropping. Read More
Long after midnight, I heard sea lions barking. The sound echoed off Yaquina Bay, exotic at first as if I was on an isolated Pacific atoll, alone except for the abundant wildlife. After awhile I craved stillness and had to step inside from my perch on a condo balcony to escape the incessant cacophony.
The next evening along the Newport waterfront, I saw the sea lions sprawled on a floating dock beneath the pier where I stood. They were quiet except for an occasional honk. Not so of their comrades on a nearby jetty. They swayed on the rocks as they called out all at once. Read More
Reading for me is breathing. A good story, fiction or non-fiction, is among life’s wonders. I like fiction because it opens another world and allows me to inhabit it. I like non-fiction because if well done, it illuminates truths otherwise beyond my reach.
All this brings me to Sarah Palin. The story she told at the GOP convention and reinforced by McCain and his staff is compelling in a superficial way. Buzz words such as hockey mom and reformer and maverick create a pleasing picture that people long to embrace.
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In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.
So proclaims John McCain. His short-term memory loss is, well, disturbing. Maybe Iraq doesn’t count. More disturbing are his efforts to interject himself into an international crisis for political gain. But then again, one of his top foreign policy advisers, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia. Like McCain, he also was an energetic proponent of invading Iraq.
McCain and George Bush’s ties to Georgia run deep. And now comes speculation that Karl Rove may have a hand in what’s unfolding. Would anyone be surprised if it’s true?
I watch and listen to McCain closely. I’m baffled that someone who spent years as a prisoner of war, was tortured and confessed to crimes he didn’t commit, appears so eager to see our nation go to war — again.
At any moment I expect to see McCain rip away his face, a mask behind which lurks Dick Cheney.
“Daddy, I see raccoons,” Atticus says over breakfast today, his third birthday.
The raccoons frequently visit our garage roof and use the ladder leading to our Portland backyard. Read More
I‘ve been known to travel with a laptop computer. I’ve also been known to write and store on its hard drive the most private of thoughts, not to mention personal financial information.
Now I read that the Department of Homeland Security has bestowed upon itself the right to search computer hard drives and other digital storage devices belonging to people entering the country. Without probable cause. Read More
