The Obama re-elect is showing hesitation about the price of gasoline. While Mitt Romney thrashes and stumbles, the Obama numbers are wobbly. What is to be done? The White House starts the strange narrative (above) that the energy struggle will require years of policy and industrial rebuilding. This may be part of the "Built to Last" trope. It is weak soup. The squirmy Romney behavior in Detroit, the "two Cadillacs" line (below), again introduces the real possibility that Romney cannot stand up to the demands of a modern campaign. The transparency means that we can see and hear that Romney is uncomfortable as a salesman of a false narrative (he speaks beseechingly as if we are bout to shut the door on his foot). Romney is not and never was anything that was "severely conservative." Romney's politics are convenient to the moment and the bottom line of corporate management. Ergo, he has no recognizable politics other than driving the quarterly results and producing dollars per share in time for the deal. Romney is the deal. Facing the rhetorical and intuitive Rick Santorum, Romney presents himself as a better deal maker surrounded by a phalanx of arrogant and well-to-do ops. Romney cannot do and never will do ideology or vision. On the other hand,POTUS Obama cannot do and never will do results. The American condition, two ambitious men, no good choice, wobbly vs. squirmy. At a reunion event, a colleague asked me about the exoplanets that we will find that will be called "New Edens" (Earth-sized, rocky and wet, habitable zone of a G-Type): he asked, "Perhaps we can find a candidate also." My colleague did not reference the GOP or the nomination contest; however the room knew what he meant and smiled ironically regardless of partisanship.
I love gasoline! President Obama hates gasoline!
February 24, 2012
Dear President Obama,
Some day soon if I’m running across the national mall shouting “Wolverines!” carrying an empty gas can looking for some of that “Obama Algae,” at least you can’t say you weren’t warned. This nations 15 Trillion dollar economy is entirely dependent on the creation, refining, distribution, and consumption of natural resources like coal, oil, and natural gas. Each one of these components intermingle in a dance of price, supply, quantity, and demand. There existence and availability is constantly perturbed by people of your ideological ilk that threaten these companies with onerous taxation and nationalization; up to and including, through direct threats and/or intrusive regulation. A gallon of gasoline should be considered a national hero. It provides us freedom of movement, and the ability to move about a great nation with a level of convenience only known to modern humanity.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when a nation as vital as ours is to a stable and advancing world is; relies on a portion of the world wracked with insanity, like the middle east is and will always be, we are committing an act of insanity ourselves. We even set up a federal department to fix this situation, which of course, they have made far worse. We have all of the resources we need here to become self sufficient. We have the oil, we have the natural gas, we have the coal, we have nuclear power; but more then that we have the can do American ingenuity and positive spirit that has been and will always be our greatest weapon in defeating any adversary or national challenge.
Your administration has squandered billions on chasing the unicorn of the liberal free lunch, often referred to as “renewable energy.” One only needs to watch “Mr. Wizards World” to realize the foolishness in this pursuit on a national scale. I could build you a solar powered car, with a rechargeable battery, and then if I could find a human the size of Luke Skywalker action figure it would work just fine. Just so long as it never left the driveway. In reality, electric cars can’t work because of size and weight. If we abandoned the safety features of these cars they would work, and people buy motorcycles so why would they not buy those electric cars? I’ll tell you why. Because you look like a dork in one. On a motorcycle you look cool. But If you want an electric car it can be done, and somebody will buy it. But it can’t be done with crony capitalism, lawsuit city, and federal regulation, plus Ralph Nader in the passenger seat!
So you keep droning on about it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault we invaded Libya. It’s not my fault that we have destabilized Egypt who is possession of M1 Abrams tanks and F-16’s. It’s not my fault that tax receipts are falling. It’s not my fault that good Americans can’t find work. It’s not my fault that I’ve not done what had to be done to get this economy moving. It’s not my fault that I’ve so mismanaged NASA that we can’t even launch a capsule with an American in it without paying a gangster like Putin the vig. It’s not my fault that guns have been given to the worst of the worst because my attorney general ok’d the dumbest idea since the Edsel. Its not my fault that this war for one side of the same muslim/arab coin is lining up for a mushroom cloud. Would you like me to continue? Because I’m ready willing and able to do so.
“We the People” have taken enough blame from the likes of you. In short order, we are going to drive to those polls and register our firm displeasure. Even if we can’t afford the gasoline to get there.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
April 12, 2011
Dear Mr. Romney,
It has been said that the first act of insanity is writing a letter to a politician expecting that they will do something about it. The next step to real insanity is running for office. I’m not there yet but I’m getting closer with every letter I write. Then their is you. I truly can’t figure you out. Let me be clear, as Mr. Obama likes to say, I will be voting for anyone but Obama on November 6, 2012. There’s no debate about that. But I have an internal one about you.
When I sit here and write to Obama I know he is the problem, but are you the solution? Think about it from my perspective. I’ve witnessed this country fail to unify and fight islam based fascism and to this day they are a gathering force for Evil in the world. Our dollar has gone into the toilet. I know people who are police officers who are stock piling ammunition and guns. When police officers do that then there is something that is terribly wrong with our nation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a lifetime member of the NRA, been one since September 12, 2001, but if those officers think that then it is cause for great concern. I pay someone to do my taxes, all in, I give up 40% of what I earn in one year, which I’ve already filed and paid early because I’ve always made a habit of trying to do the right thing. Sometimes I’ve not done it. But who has? You seem like a guy whose trying to be something you are not when you try to appeal to voters like me.
Am I expecting you to buy a red sail boat, not pay your taxes, and go duck shooting like John Kerry? No. I guess what I’m looking for is something to hang the future of my family on other than a can of hairspray and a well oiled speech. We need to see the real you not the polished you. Obama is a highly manufactured individual. I’ve detailed that out six ways to sunday how this is so in letter after letter. We don’t want the white version of Obama with the Republican label on their lapel. We want an American. But what is an American? Take some time and think about that.
Having written these words and tried to tell the truth as I see it, I have no future in the Republican party as presently constituted. But a future party may welcome people like me who strive to tell the truth no matter how electorally geopolitically inconvenient it may be. As for you, like I said before, I’m voting for any one but Obama, I now this charade the rest of America is about to witness is more about not giving Americans a choice and more about presenting her citizens with two sides of the same coin. Why have an election when you can have a selection. I want my next vote to be cast for a team that is ready and willing and able to take drastic measures to save, protect, and defend a dieing nation.
My fear is that you are not that type of citizen.
Prove me wrong.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
"presenting her citizens with two sides of the same coin" Well said.
The Way We Live Our Lives Now: next February will look better than this February, and there may be snow, too. The White House is one-third of a bloated and ungainly federal government that no one much designed, it just followed the rules written by several generations of parochial politicians trying to get elected back home by strangers. Shrug.
You can get a Cadillac for under $40K. Michelle Obama took 17 luxury vacations in last three years - at a cost of millions to taxpayers.
Also like how Jagger/Richards said it in "Salt of The Earth"
"Say a prayer for the stay-at-home voter
His choice of cancer or polio ...."
When I was a teenager I used to be a halfway decent pitcher (but not much of a hitter.) In addition to being on the high school baseball team, we would play "fast-pitch" almost every day, a game which involved a hard rubber ball the exact size of a major league baseball, a large building with a vacant lot next to it (breweries worked great for this, schools were OK too) and a large batters' box painted on the side of the building. You could play it with as few as 2 kids - each side got three outs, usually way of counting balls and strikes. If you hit a grounder back to the pitcher and he caught it, or a popup and he caught it, you were out. If it got past him, a single, past a certain line on the fly, a double, off the wall a triple, onto the next roof, a homerun. You'd keep track of baserunners and score the usual way.
Anyway I developed a pretty good assortment of pitches - a big roundhouse curve, a snappy rising fastball, and a virtually unhittable forkball. I could never throw a decent forkball with a real baseball, but there was enough give in the rubber ball that I could wedge it good between my second and third fingers and it would dance around and drop and float in on the hitters and whatnot.
Now, the payoff for all who have patiently read to this point. I played 95% of the time with my good friend Paul, who was the #1 pitcher on his highschool baseball team, Schurz, and Schurz went to the City championships a couple times. Paul pitched in Wrigley Field in the finals one year. So, good pitcher, and also pretty good hitter. And I played him in fastpitch over and over and over, probably close to 1,000 games over the years, and I never beat him. Never once. But I always played him close, until my arm would give out in the 7th or 8th inning and he'd pop a homer and that would be all she wrote.
Finally, my point. When I played Paul I would lose. But I got so good playing against him, I would destroy anyone else I played against. I pitched a 9-inning perfect game against this other kid who thought he was a pretty good hitter. Never came close to my forkball.
So, to finish analogy: Anyone who gets through this Republican nomination process is going to be good and ready to take Obama to the woodshed in the debates later this year. I disagree with those who say all the acrimony is hurting the party. We won't end up with a candidate like McCain, whose most moving moment was the film they played about him in the Viet Cong prison camp. But he said "My friends" so many times that even I started imitating him. We won't have any last-minute McCain or Palin debacles this time. We'll be ready and Obama's goin' DOWN.
Follow-up story re: fast pitch - there was this crazy Greek kid named Theodore moved into the neighborhood and he loved to play fast-pitch. At first the only words he knew were, "Hey Boy. Hey Boy, you wan' play fast peeetch?" So I would go play fast peeetch with him and it was an adventure because he was wilder than Al Hrabosky. One day we didn't have a rubber ball so we used a rubber-coated league (about intermediate in hardness between a rubber ball and a real league). Ol' Theodore unloaded a wild fastball right at my head. There was no getting out of the way. It hit me square in the left cheek. Unfortunately, I'd just been to the orthodontist and he'd put a new set of the little metal ties on to the archwire just that day. Well, Theodore's fastball literally stuck my cheek to those little metal ties and I had to pull my cheek out with my hand, feeling it popping as it sprang free of the metal ties one by one, all the while spitting blood and flesh and cursing Theodore who got a good lesson in blue English that day.
To all the Santorum fans out there.
We all know what cunning and unprincipled bastards Dems are. Do you seriously think they would be doing what's described below if they believed Santorum had a snowball's chance of winning the general? We know Nixon's minions engaged in a lot of shennanigans to manipulate McGovern into the nominee slot because they wanted to run against McGovern. Where do you think the minions learned those dirty tricks?
Democrats for Santorum
The liberals behind the political website Daily Kos are scheming to intervene in Michigan and several other upcoming primary states to help Rick Santorum win more delegates.
"Operation Hilarity" will try to rally liberal Democrats to vote in open primary and caucus states. "It's time for us to take an active role in the GOP nomination process," says a Daily Kos alert. "That's right, it's time for those of us who live in open primary and caucus states -- Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont and Tennessee in the next three weeks -- to head out and cast a vote for Rick Santorum."
The idea, say organizers of the effort, is to prevent Republicans from settling on a nominee to face President Obama for as long as possible. Rush Limbaugh launched a similar crusade of chaos four years ago to get conservatives to vote for Hillary Clinton and thus prolong the Democratic contest.
Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas is raising money via a Facebook ad to get out the Democratic vote for Mr. Santorum. "The Republicans have offered up this big, slow, juicy softball," says Mr. Moulitsas. "Let's have fun whacking the heck out of it."
But a campaign like this could easily backfire. Mitt Romney's greatest selling point against Rick Santorum is that he's the strongest foe against Mr. Obama. The left's efforts to help the Santorum insurgency may only reinforce the idea that liberals fear Mr. Romney the most. And what every poll shows is that conservative voters first and foremost want to defeat Mr. Obama.
The Daily Kos gimmick may only persuade Republican voters who haven't warmed up to Mr. Romney that if the former Massachusetts governor is really the one the liberals fear the most, then he's the best candidate still standing. -- Stephen Moore
The Republican (Crack-Up)
http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-heilemann-2012-3/
John Heilemann notes many Republicans "are already looking past 2012. If either Romney or Santorum gains the nomination and then falls before Obama, flubbing an election that just months ago seemed eminently winnable, it will unleash a GOP apocalypse on November 7 -- followed by an epic struggle between the regulars and red-hots to refashion the party. And make no mistake: A loss is what the GOP's political class now expects."
Said GOP strategist Ed Rollins: "Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, 'We're gonna win, we're gonna beat Obama.' Now even those who've endorsed Romney say, "My God, what [an effing] mess."'
It's absurd to allow anyone (and by that I that mean Dems) to vote in a Rep primary. It should only be registered Reps.
Rove on Fox mentioned a similar strategy when Bush was running in Michigan: i.e. Teachers were told to vote and disrupt the primary process. I wonder how that went.
re: "Bill Maher gives $1 million to Obama Super PAC... http://t.co/8UE9xLzL"
Good for him putting his money where his mouth is (and buying his way into a WH invite). Now I wish he'd just shut up.
A refreshing take on our Apologizer in Chief.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYEctbGSkkw
"John Heilemann notes many Republicans "are already looking past 2012."
I've been "looking past ever" since Bill Clinton's reign. When do we finally our groove back?
Does anyone outside NY read the NY Magazine? Author of the article JB quoted moonlights at MSNBC so I don't expect a lot of rigor in his treatment of GOP candidates. At least the Republicans are having a debate. Progressives have eaten the Democrat party whole. Obama led them off a cliff. Republicans will control both houses in 2013. Primary looks bloody now but we have an eternity until November.
"Does anyone outside NY read the NY Magazine?"
I did back in the late 70s & early 80s when Alan Rich was the music critic. I quit when Peter Davis became the music critic. They used to have some great investigative articles too, but when they combined with that other pub listing where to go and what to see, I lost all interest in even those.
"Republicans will control both houses in 2013."
The longer the dreadful primary goes on, the less likely that becomes. Fred Barnes is now predicting maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe 3-5 new Republican senators, with emphasis on 3.
"A refreshing take on our Apologizer in Chief.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYEctbGSkkw"
Cannot be certain, but that pic upper right in the screen sure looks like Col Allen West.
Cue it, boys....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is7SoPgaphg&feature=related
One of my heroes. Now I am adding this "apologizer". Outstanding! At ease.
Small world. My wife had Alan Rich as a massage client for several years. He passsed away either last year or the year before. Anyway, when he found out I played piano he put us on his newsletter and it quite frequently contained swipes at Rachmaninoff (bad) and Brahms (unforgivable.) I remember one phrase he turned in particular: "It's not difficult to write better music than Brahms". Anyway, being the bully I am, I picked a fight with him over his continued berating of Brahms and it got ugly. My wife got pissed at me for offending one of her clients. I told her that if you insult Brahms you insult me. Anyway, if there is an afterlife, Rocky and Brahms are probably making Alan pay for all those nasty things he said about them. Nice guy (I suppose) and I was sorry to hear of his passing. In fact, my wife went to his funeral. I was invited but was too busy playing Brahms and Rocky to be able to attend.
"Wait long by the river and watch the bodies of your enemies float by."
I have two pictures hanging over my desk at work of my two biggest heroes, one imaginary, one real. Columbo and George Patton. The pic is of the real Patton, not Scott (although Scott did a great job portraying him.) Patton has a heavy down jacket on and a helmet with the three stars on it and a look in his eyes like he's getting ready to kick some butt. My favorite part of the movie was Patton reading of the 63rd Psalm, words of which are hanging right underneath his pic:
"But those that seek my soul, to destroy it,
Shall go into the lower parts of the Earth.
They shall fall by the sword;
They shall be a portion for foxes."
Music critics in general are the branches of the tree that bear no fruit. Them as can't play, criticize.
Small world indeed. Who'da thunk I'd run into someone who knew him!
I always admired Rich's criticism. He made me listen more closely and gave me enough history to intrigue. He never belittled Baroque opera conventions either, like Davis did. As column inches became more scarce, it got to be increasingly difficult to find a reviewer who was alloted enough space to convey that there was something between the reviewer's ears. While the Washington Star had him, I loved Ted Libbey. His review of a certain essentially amateur performance of Aida, about which opera I knew too much for my own good, and which performance I attended, would have made G.B. Shaw proud. Paul Hume was a tribulation many times, but I tolerated him for his prickly and graceless review of Margaret Truman's concert. Take that, Mr. President! The fracas was delicious. Joe McClelland treated us to a delightful review in the late 70s. At least I think he was the one who reviewed a concert durnig which he fell asleep and didn't catch the program change. He reviewed what was in the published program just as if it had actually been played. There got to be a point where I ceased reading reviews because I'd developed enough not to be enlighted by what was in the papers anymore - reviewers in Gramophone and Records and Recordings and Music and Musicians and Musical Times were more substantive and reviewed more things that matched my exotic tastes.
Rich wrote a book of memoirs/autobiography? (I didn't read it, much to my wife's consternation, but she never read it either ... Mark Twain said classics are something everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read) back in about 2005 that you may be interested in tracking down.
I don't have a problem with a critic saying "I didn't enjoy this piece of music". That's fine, it's their opinion and that's what we're reading them for. What I have a problem with is their insolent damnation of all those who they deem to be unworthy of their admiration. The phrase live and let live has not occurred to many of them. You can compliment Beethoven without taking a swipe at Mendelssohn in the process. Etc. Poor Mendelssohn was really sorry he wasn't Beethoven, now do you forgive him, Mr. Music Critic?
My other gripe to Alan Rich and I expressed this many times when we were still reasonably amicable with each other, was that if you had a population at large with 100% of the people liking classical music, then his berating of certain composers would be less troublesome. But when you have maybe only 10% of the population or less being able to recognize anything more than Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies and Pachelbel's Canon, it serves nobody to put vilify certain composers. Let's say I'm a young, impressionable concert-goer who hasn't made up his mind about classical music yet. Somebody like Rich writes a column in which he basically says only idiots and airheads enjoy Rachmaninoff. So, I don't bother giving Rachmaninoff (or Ipolitov-Ivanov, or whomever) a chance. Now, maybe there would have been something in Rachmaninoff's compositions, say, Isle of the Dead, that would have blown me away and gotten me hooked on classical music for life. I'll never hear it, and I'll assume that classical music isn't something that can really move me. Maybe I would have eventually abandoned Rocky in favor of some composer that Alan Rich did favor, but nobody will ever know.
To put it slightly more positively, classical music is like this restaurant you walk into with an immensely varied menu. The idea for people like Rich should be to make people stay in the restaurant and keep trying new things till they find something that hooks them for life. That benefits music critics, musicians, it benefits everyone. Whom does it benefit when the critic says, "Don't try the Brahms and Rachmaninoff sections of the menu, that food is disgusting?" It benefits absolutely no-one. And somebody of Rich's august age should have long since figured that out on his own without my having to tell him.
"What I have a problem with is their insolent damnation of all those who they deem to be unworthy of their admiration."
Agree completely. I've had to wade thru a lot of critics who don't, or didn't, "get" Baroque music that wasn't sacred or by Bach. Insufferable lot of pinheads, creatures of their time, which was when Mozart and Haydn were considered Early Music.
"The idea for people like Rich should be to make people stay in the restaurant and keep trying new things till they find something that hooks them for life."
Agreed. Rich did that for me.
Of course I've been inclined to . . . um . . . avoid music of the Romantic era forward because of over-exposure. Stuff that isn't over-exposed, like "little" Brahms (late solo piano music, viola sonatas, quartets and quintets), "little" Liszt (solo piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies and Schubert songs), "small" Tchaikovsky (solo piano music like the original Seasons, quartets [vastly underexposed]). "small" Rach (piano preludes). The big stuff like symphonies and concertos I've heard so much I just don't like to spend time on them any more. I'd much rather explore the Vivaldi and Telemann I can't hum in my sleep, as well as medieval music - the past has way too much undiscovered territory for me to waste another minute on 19th-20th century stuff, with the exception of French music, which is practically ignored.
I got so lost in parentheses that I for got to add the verb: I like that small and little stuff enormously. Suits my preference for smaller forces vs. 104-member orchestras and 200-member choruses.
Does anyone outside NY read the NY Magazine?
Yes, as a matter of fact, someone does; it behooves all patriotic Southerners to know their enemy.
You might find this article on an earlier phase in Mr. Batchelor's life, "Money Changes Everything," to be interesting reading.
I used to date a massage therapist and hardly ever got so much as a crummy back rub out of the deal. Life is like that sometimes.