Angst In My Pants

“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through Soho in the rain” – Warren Zevon.

Kellen and Sladed have been adding quotes representing the deep thoughts of others to their blogs so I will join in and add a good quote before each post. Mine could be more obscure, I must warn.

I quite nearly put another Zevon quote to this post that may have added more to the theme but it could be construed as a bit negative, although it would not have been intended that way. It goes “she’s hanging on to half a heart, but she can’t have the restless part. So she tells him to hasten down the wind.”

The “she” in that case would have implied the misses and I don’t want her to hasten my way down the wind. But the thought does go to the larger question: why do I appear to have this restless heart?

As long as I can remember – and there are those who believe I can’t remember things from five minutes ago so that may not be that long ago – I have lived my life with a rampant restlessness. The weird part is, I really haven’t been that fond of being restless. I’d like to be settled, even if it meant settling for less than the elaborate and warped life plan I have dished up for myself.

Despite all the time I spend mapping out my goals and expectations, I never seem to get where I want to go. Too often I fall far short, make a u-turn, try something new and the new thing ultimately falls short as well. These string of mini-failures (at worse) or tough breaks (in the middle) or minor successes (a good spin) add up and make me wonder what the hell I am up to; what’s my life plan anyway?

The bigger fear I have had lately is that my disease is a bit contagious. I see glimpses of the early stages of torment in the Boy and Girl. While both seem to be far more focused on who they are and what pleases them, I worry that life will continue to fall short of their expectations. Mind you, having lofty goals is what everyone should have, but I suspect there should also be a defense mechanism implanted that allows us all to fall down and skin our knees without having it become such a rough landing.

I may be wrong and the kids have developed better coping skills than I have managed. I just wouldn’t wish my case of anxiety on others; especially those I care most about.

The good ending to the story is that I am on to a new twist in my life and feeling that freedom that only comes from wrapping up one chapter to open a new one. So I am once again excited about the future and the promises it always makes to me. This time, however, I hope to plan better and to stop relying on my seat-of-the-pants method of trying to make things happen in a good way. I will also seek the advice and counsel of others who I have grown to trust (The Boy, The Girl, Mrs. Laz, Sladed and LP).

I was talking to Italiphil today and we both arrived at the fact that we are in the last quarter of our working life and still trying to find our way. We made something of a blood oath to make the next 25 years be our best and reach our goals. Hope it happens because, after all, it is the final stage of our working years. For my offspring and younger readers, may you be sailing by no later than the end of the first quarter of your working life. That would make us all happy.

Marley And Me

Who knows why we do certain things. For the past several months, I have secretly wanted my own dog. Watching the Mrs. and The Girl with their two dogs in their laps only made me want one of my own fluffy things in my lap. (I wonder if I should rephrase that. Naw, that looks OK to me).

Gradually I made it known what I was thinking and when the idea didn’t get shot down completely, I began one of my quiet and steady lobby campaigns.

The Girl was a pushover. I only needed to mention there was a possibility of a new pet joining the family and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would begin looking at http://www.petfinder.com/, a great site that allows people to look at several shelters for just about any dog imaginable. To get her total support, the dog had to come from a shelter, preferably a “kill shelter” so we could actually rescue a dog from the grips of death. I could get extra support from The Girl if the dog was missing an eye or a leg or was functionally dead since she is a sucker for tough luck cases. But I also know she is a sucker for any cute little puppy so I had some room to find a pet with all its limbs intact.

As for Mrs. Laz, all I needed to do to get her to see it my way was make a lot of impassioned statements about never being allowed to have my own dog. This I did with conviction and great feeling. Of course I also had to agree to pull my own weight and feed and walk the dog and clean up after it if it happened to make a mistake on our new carpet. For a new puppy, I would agree to almost anything, so this was easy.

With such a great advocacy plan, how could I miss? Last Saturday we decided to go to our local shelter and see if any dog – preferably a puppy – made a connection with us. But let’s be honest here, there is absolutely no way you can go to a shelter, find any dog that is remotely cute, hold it in your hands and then walk away. Fortunately we were very lucky to find a young female spaniel mix (who knows what she’s mixed with) that was young – at 7 months a bit younger than I wanted – and truly loveable. I knew the moment I saw her I would go home with her and this was even after we had a little competition from a woman who had spotted her first but, as it turned out, didn’t connect.

We had to bring our two dogs to meet our hoped for new puppy, who was named Krispy Crème by the shelter. I am not sure why we needed to bring our dogs into a weird environment to be able to take a dog off their hands. Dogs may not like each other at first, but they always work things out. The dogs ended up doing fine, even crazy Spooner acted semi-normal.

We took her home and she seemed very much at ease but the name Krispy just didn’t seem right. We tossed out a number of names and, after 24 hours, I threw out Marley after the dog in the book Marley and Me. Little did I know that The Boy wanted to name his eventual puppy Marley after the Reggae singer, but tough noogies, I got the name first.

Since she’s been home, Marley has been the perfect angel, sleeping between me and Mrs. Laz just like she’s been there forever. She loves to run as fast as she can at the park and wants desperately to play with Missy but Spooner, ever the boss, lets her know that she has not yet been cleared to play with her young charge.

I admit to being nervous making the decision to bring her home, but couldn’t be happier I have her in our home. I know I won’t live up to my promises, but it really feels good that I have my own dog, even if she likes Mrs. Laz the best. Thanks to my family for letting me have Marley and I hope she ends up being a great addition to the Hollyfelds.

The Truth About Hillary

Anyone who follows politics knows the Clintons have difficulty with telling the truth. Perhaps that’s a polite way of just saying the Clintons are known liars. The weird part is that they often get caught in their lies, face some nominal and momentary embarrassment, then go out and tell another lie later on.

With Hillary Clinton on the center stage now, she has assumed the role of Liar In Chief. Before becoming a contender for the presidency, Hillary’s lies had been overshadowed by her husband, a much more gifted and forgiven liar. Hillary has been working at perfecting bending the truth during her campaign, I suspect to demonstrate to the voting public she has the kind of experience people look for in a president – at least the kind of president her husband was.

My favorite Hillary-caught-in-a-lie episode happened just after she became First lady and has been mentioned in an earlier post. When she was being questioned on how she turned a $1,000 investment into a $100,000 profit in the rough-and-tumble cattle futures business, she feigned surprise at her luck but told the media that it was too much stress as she was pregnant with Chelsea at the time and decided to sell her futures rather than double-down. The next day it was quickly pointed out that she sold the futures before she was pregnant. Bill Clinton’s press spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers was sent out to explain. When the press asked about the obvious inconsistency in the answer, Myers responded that the earlier answer “was no longer operative.”

And that’s the way it is with the Clintons; they don’t actually believe they lie. The “misspeak,” things are “taken out of context,” there are stories that “are very old” and they have answers that are no longer “operative.” In the real world and not in politics, these are just called lies.

Hillary’s story about landing in Tuzla amidst sniper fire during the Bosnian war was eventually dispelled by press footage of her not ducking anything except a salute from a soldier. She’s been telling this story so long, a story meant to demonstrate that she’s had experience in the line of fire, that she may have actually believed it. I’m sorry, but even if she was under fire, it’s difficult to believe anyone would think this gives her the executive experience she so sorely lacks. Bill had to dodge a firing squad of dishes thrown by her when he was president, but I doubt it made him a better leader.

Her response to this flap was even more telling about the way the Clintons operate. First her hatchet men rallied around her, saying she was subject to viscous press attacks (another example of executive leadership under her definition, I suspect). When more and more evidence came out, including statements by people on the same trip (some of them laughing at her account), the new official campaign response was that she merely “misspoke,” and then it was put off to her being tired and therefore forgetful. If I was shot at and doing barrel rolls on a transport plane into Bosnia, I am not sure I would forget it, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she has irrational connections to events when tired.

Of course this forgetfulness when tired does not bode well for her 3 a.m. phone call ads that are supposed to put people at ease that she would be there to answer the phone to handle important events instead of other, less-experienced, pretenders to the presidency. I’d hate to think she would be so tired that she would think the Russians are nuking us and order a retaliatory response. I guess the next day, after half the population was wiped out, she’d have a good chuckle while explaining she misunderstood events because she was tired.

Her latest lie is being billed as not a lie at all, just a story that was told to her by someone she trusted and began repeating over and over on the campaign trail. It was a story about a young pregnant woman who had complications and went to a hospital in Ohio. The story goes that the pregnant woman was turned away because she didn’t have insurance or $100 to cover the cost of medical attention. When turned away, the baby died. She was sent to a different hospital but had the same problem and, while trying to sort things out, the women died at the hospital. It’s a perfect story to support Hillary’s belief in universal health care and the callousness of the medical profession. The problem is, key parts of the story turned out not to be true.

The hospital in question, not mentioned by name in her stump speeches, has been receiving angry letters from people around the country. Administrators looked into the matter and discovered the woman was a patient, had died, but did have insurance and was not turned away at all. The Clinton campaign has announced the candidate will discontinue telling the story, but still mentioned that what didn’t happen is still evidence that something has to be done about healthcare in the country. This was again sloughed off as not a lie, just an unfortunate misunderstanding of a story told by someone they trusted. When asked why they didn’t vet the story better, they told the press that they couldn’t look into the matter further due to patient privacy. So they had no problem using this poor woman as a prop for their misguided campaign pledge, but they do respect her medical privacy, so all is good.

In the world the Clintons live in, these are not lies but unfortunate lost opportunities. She’d still be telling the Tuzla story if Sinbad hadn’t spoken up about it, and I am sure she would still be offering her sympathies to the poor woman who wasn’t killed because she lacked government-backed medical insurance if only the hospital hadn’t meddled into her privacy. I think what is becoming clear with the mountain of lies that have built up over the years is that this is not about telling tall tales, it’s become pathological.

Saying Something Stupid

I hate to be writing too often but there is a certain craziness in the air these days. The latest nut case is the former news mogul Ted Turner who created CNN for the Clintons and 1,000 of their best friends – at least based on recent Nielsen Ratings.

Turner was a guest on Charlie Rose the other night and was rambling on about global warming. I know global warming deserves a decent debate but I am not sure it ends up where Turner was taking it. He appeared to guarantee that the world will be “eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow.” He said most people will have died by then and those who hadn’t would be cannibals, and then said the world would be one giant failed state like Sudan and Somalia.

OK, Sudan and Somalia are failed states but not because of global warming but because of greed and racism of its class of warlords. Maybe we will be eight degrees warmer in 30-40 years, but perhaps Turner would be willing to put some of his energy into suggesting ways to improve conditions in Sudan and Somalia and do it now. CNN has cameras in both spots. Why not use the money they are spending on keeping reporters alive and on the ground in these places on a few thousand pounds of rice and dried milk? Instead of filming the starving victims, feed them!

He went on to add, "We're too many people; that's why we have global warming…. Too many people are using too much stuff." He then pointed out he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth before saying, “I've gotten a lot better, though. It's been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid." Consider yourself caught, Ted. After all the stupid things he said leading up to that, he lasted only moments between stupid statements by suggesting all countries of the world have just one or two children; voluntarily, of course. Turner’s three marriages have produced five children so, taking his suggestion, we’re sorry to inform him he has to toss a few back.

Finally he railed on about the war in Iraq, calling the insurgents “patriots.” His reasoning is they are patriots because their country has been invaded. Think about that for a moment. If they are “insurgents,” it means they are from somewhere else and not Iraq. Therefore, the “insurgent's” countries have not been invaded, they lose patriot status and are merely invaders themselves joining in on the killing of Iraqis and Americans.

It would be best for Ted Turner to carry a tape recorder around all day and listen to the things he says. He may find that very helpful. And, yes, I am watching too much Arrested Development.

Sleeper Agents

Something worth pondering, not on the basis of what we learned, but on the basis of what we don’t know. Over the course of the past few months, a half dozen people have been sentenced on espionage charges over selling military and other secrets to the Chinese government. In the most damaging case, the Chinese government sent Chi Mak to the U.S. in the 1970s to embed himself in the defense industry, win promotions and higher security clearances and then send highly classified military secrets to Beijing.

The good news is he was caught and sentenced to 24 years in prison in what the sentencing judge described as a tough message to send to the Chinese government so they will keep their spies home. The bad news is that the Chinese government doesn’t care about Mak, other than the loss of one of its many pipelines of security theft, and that Mak is hardly alone in his efforts to steal military secrets and conduct industrial espionage on behalf of China.

Our own Justice Department believes that the recent arrests and convictions represent only a small faction of the Chinese government’s network in the U.S. The department believes we have been infiltrated by students, consultants, and employees at sensitive U.S. government sites and they seem to be overwhelmed determining who is a spy and who is a legitimate worker. The very fact that Mak had been sent here 30 years ago as a “sleeper agent” should demonstrate the patience of the Chinese government and the lengths it will go in getting the goods on us. If only they had sent people here to learn how not to make toys that poison our kids.

Of course there is a simple solution, although not a pretty one. Until China comes clean and removes its agents, we should not allow any student or work visas to Chinese nationals and should either revoke the security clearance of any workers born in China or give them all polygraph exams, something they agree to accept on a random basis when given the clearance. This effort, while extreme, may stem the tide a little and keep what few secrets we have left in the U.S.

Two other issues of note in this story: Some of those convicted were Americans willing to sell their country out for cash payments, which doesn’t say much about American workers. Also, assuming the Chinese government has been this successful in infiltrating our security network, what about the presence of other sleeper agents from parts of the world that are stealing our secrets with greater malicious intent? We are a free and open society that allows far too easy access to our borders and our national security institutions. We should be far more careful.

KK B Day

There are a few things worth celebrating today. First and foremost, it is The Boy’s 26th birthday and, while we no longer stock up on Thunder Cats and airplane pants, the memory of the joy he has brought us all these years is more than worth noting.

I only ruined one of his birthdays. In 2002, something in my body told my head to take a time out. Technically the doctors called it a Transient Ischemic Attack (or a TIA or mini-stroke as it is often referred). While my closest action to playing a doctor was literally playing doctor with my cousin (female), I disagree with the medical conclusion and think it was just stress forcing its will on me and telling me to “chill out” as Bill Clinton screams these days (there’s a guy headed for the Big One). Anyway, whatever it was, I am six years beyond that episode and I am told by doctors – who I believe this time – that the passage of time without another event is a good thing. So, rather than look back on this day that ordinarily belongs to The Boy with any kind of blemish, I will celebrate my disease-free brain.

The only part of this day that has an added emotional attachment is that this is the final birthday that will exclusively belong to us as his parents. Assuming nobody gets the wiser and The Boy and The Ber tie the knot this year, we will be handing over his birthday duties to his wife-to-be. I know future birthdays will be in good hands and we offer The Ber the following advice: when he makes a birthday suggestion, go out and buy it that day and give it to him, even if it’s a month early. Happy birthday Sonny!

Starting Over

This should come as no surprise to anyone who knew I was traipsing around the country, but I gained back all the weight I lost for the year -- 7 pounds -- in just two weeks. It doesn't surprise me, either. I ate poorly, exercised just twice, had a poor sleep habit and even had a decent amount of alcohol at various beer halls.

I tried looking around for someone else to blame but, in the end, I know I alone must accept the responsibility. I was in a pretty good exercise and eating routine before leaving and I think I believed I was more immune from the temptation of rich food and better prepared to exercise regardless of my circumstances. Instead, the two weeks I was gone were a complete disaster.

So now I am beginning my long path back to where I started. I went to the gym today and will get back into the practice of working up a sweat and embarrassing myself in front of shapely women in the abs class (women who don't look like they need an abs class) before slinking out the door and earning my nickname of "Jumper." Heaven help us all.

The Boy And The Blog

The Boy has a new blog and is off to a pretty good start. He had another blog a while ago but life and not having a clear objective of where he wanted his blog to go kept him from making a go of it. I suspect writer's cramp also had a role, a problem I know something about, by god I do.

His new blog is different in a few ways. For one, he emerges out of the shadow and goes by his real name. As you know, I, along with fellow blogger Sladed, have remained anonymous except to a few of our friends that we are willing to share our weird little thoughts with. The Boy figures if he has something to say, he wants people to know who's saying it. Tough to argue with that logic.

So he has outed himself and is loud and proud -- not that there is anything wrong with that -- about a variety of subjects. By outing himself and me linking to his blog, I will ultimately out myself, but I think that's OK. Perhaps it's time for me to be more out there. What do I care if people know who's writing this crap? I was actually thinking about starting a new blog and calling it "Mike's Blah Blog" as sort of a reminder that I write a lot of "blah blah."

I encourage you to read his blog; it's called "Mientras Vacilando (and is also listed under my "links" section to the right). He has a different, generational take on many issues and some great links that don't show up here. I actually hope it scratches his writing funnybone and leads him to writing an historical novel or something else that interests him. If he gets really good, I will be able to take credit for his success and maybe earn a buck or two selling dirty secrets about him to various tabloids.

Good luck with it Kel .... er, I mean, The Boy.

Putting On The Pounds

Forgive me Sladed for I have sinned. It had been six days since I last exercised.

All too true. Traveling, as I have found, sucks when it comes to keeping up with one's exercise routine. I switched to working out in ways that can easily be done in any hotel (treadmill, elliptical machine, stationary bikes) and even took classes to learn how to work my abs and strengthen my core (new word application in my dictionary). All the same, between a few airline journeys and running around a bit too much, I was either too tired or too overwhelmed to feel like exercising at the end of the day.

The downside is I feel heavier again and likely have gained back the seven pounds I have worked so hard to rid my flabbiness of. Tonight I took a brisk walk and ran some and feel better, but it is too little and, it would appear, too late.

I feel like a contestant on Biggest Loser who goes home and can't keep up with what he's learned at the campus. So I have too choices, please vote for what you believe to be the best idea: One, I suck it up and exercise twice each day and get into a rhythm of working out so that it feels weird not to, or, two, gain an extra 30-40 pound to make me eligible to be on the Biggest Loser so I can get into that six-hour-a-day workout regimen, get on TV, and have a shot at the grand prize. From what I know of the show from paying attention real, real, hard is that to be on the Biggest Loser Couples show, I need to divorce and go with my ex-wife or have a partner who is not my girlfriend. At least that's as I understand it from the two women in my life.

I wonder, openly, if Diane Lane would put on a few extra pounds to be on the show with me? Actresses are always gaining weight so they can play a role with greater honesty. Being on TV with me would be one of Diane's most challenging roles. I think she should do it. Where is her publicist's number? I know I have it somewhere.

Great Website

I found a very good website that I wanted to share with you all. It’s called Hulu and it looks like it’s NBC and Fox networks teaming together to offer streaming video of some of their most popular TV shows. There is no cost to watch shows like The Office, Arrested Development, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, and even some older shows like WKRP in Cincinnati (Sladed, remember that one?), Married With Children and the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The shows are free to watch, you only have to wait through one commercial during the normal break for several commercials (and, no, you can’t fast-forward through them, I already tried).

It was a bit confusing when I first saw this website advertised on Yahoo! I couldn’t figure out why they were making at least the current shows available in such a manner. Putting them online must run counter to their desire to sell packaged seasons of shows on DVDs. Then it occurred to me that there is no cost to put these up other than to host the site. No need to produce the DVDs and create and pay for packaging and no reason to split the profits with distributors and retailers (or e-tailers). And, perhaps most of all, I suspect there is no need to share the wealth with actors, writers, producers and crew either. It essentially is just another bite at the apple for us to watch the shows again with new advertising revenue.

I hope the idea works for them because it has been great to watch while away from home. I can only imagine how great it is for people on extended trips out of the country. If you get the chance, check it out (but not at work).

Barack and White

I wasn’t going to blog too much tonight. Hey, I did my five for the month so I could have saved this for next month and been one ahead of my goal. But when you have something to say, you have to say it. OK, so I cheated and waited until after midnight so it shows up in March.

I read a rather pithy article in the Washington Post about how insensitive Saturday Night Live was to have a white man play the part of Barack Obama in one of its shows. The writer said it was reminiscent of putting on the black shoe polish. Give me a break!

First of all, cast member Fred Armisen auditioned for the role and was chosen from five others and I thought did a pretty good imitation of the Senator. Second, and this is really getting to grate on me, Obama’s background is only half black. Does this mean Armisen only needed half the black shoe polish?

As noted in a recent post, Obama was born to a white woman and a Kenyan man. He was raised by an Indonesian step-father. His roots are not exactly out of an Alex Haley novel. Since he was raised in a home mixed with American and Asian cultures, he has more in common with Armisen than he does with any other black actor since Armisen is half white and half Asian.

When Halle Berry won an Oscar, she was usually mentioned as the first African American to win the Best Actress award. Putting it this way is a bit disingenuous and not exactly accurate. Berry was born to a white British mother and an African American father. The father divorced her mother when she was four years old and was subsequently raised by her mother. Her father had little to do with her.

The media places a lot of pressure on Tiger Woods to be a racial icon when I think he’d rather just be a golfing icon, thank you. It makes no more difference that he is Thai and African American than it does if he is just African American, but it seems it does to various writers of race-related politics. Tiger’s father certainly helped him be the man and the golfer he has become and his death deeply affected Tiger’s life. Does it really matter that his father was black? He is just Tiger’s father and let it go at that.

This isn’t to say all of these people's African American heritage means nothing or Obama's, Berry’s and Wood’s father’s genetic code means nothing. It’s just that it always seems we’re so ready to label that we forget that our entire American culture is hyphenated. One of my friends is Sicilian-American, another is Irish-American. They consider themselves American and these friends are first generation Americans.

Let’s hope if Obama become president we can get past the racial descriptions and just have someone representing all of America. I would never vote for or against anyone because of their heritage and can’t understand why anyone else would. I don’t know where these prejudicial thoughts come from. Personally, I think the French started it.

Resolving Things

OK, so this is the first month of weight loss progress. I had made my rather tardy New Year's Resolutions last month that included the goal of losing 60 pounds this year at a meager rate of five pounds per month. I know what you're saying, "Laz, you don't need to lose 60 pounds, you look marvelous." To quote Cartman, "I'm not fat, I'm big-boned" and I need to shed a few pounds off my bones.

Last month was a dismal failure as I lost no weight (although I have a bit of an excuse as I vacationed at the all-you-can-eat buffet with a great deal of zeal). This month I joined a gym and have only missed a few days. I have been using the elliptical machine, the tread mill, playing some basketball (a lot of running, very little scoring) and even did a little boxing and tried ten minutes of an ab class but had to sulk out with a towel over my head while the instructor -- and The Ber -- called me a "Jumper" for leaving the class.

The bottom line is, I lost five pounds this month, most of it in the last 8-10 days. No big drop like they do in the Biggest Loser TV show. I even gained one pound during my "last chance workout" last night. Oh well, I'm happy I am losing and I feel better exercising. Hopefully I can lose another five in March and keep that up for the rest of the year. Thanks for listening.

Death Of A Blogger

The Boy sent this to me a few days ago. It's about a soldier stationed in Iraq who kept up a blog on what was going on around him. He kept a final post in his back pocket in the event of his untimely death while in Iraq. Sadly that day came and his posthumous report is both powerful and sad. It also has it's moments of humor and shares some of his deep insight. It is really worth a read if you have the time.

A Closer Look

Hey, I just noticed, I am getting closer!

Missing On A Promise

I am not sure, but at the present rate, I will not get to five blog posts this month as I resolved in my New Year's promises. I may fall short, but it may be too early to tell. I'll keep you posted.

Democracy Part Deux

Over the last several years, I have been ranting about a hypocritical and superior view of democracy as forwarded by members of our government and the major media. It’s been something of a private rant, but a rant nonetheless. Because I have a little time on my hands and feel a bit like ranting, I will share these views and maybe there can be a short test at the end to see what we’ve learned.

I started to notice a pattern of American democracy promotion after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and perhaps even before then with the shipyard protests led by Lech Walesa. It took me until recently while in Ukraine to recognize that our push to democratize others was more about using a political weapon then helping out people yearning to be free.

In 1983 President Reagan helped create a new agency call National Endowment for Democracy. To keep everyone in our democracy happy, funding for this agency was to be split among U.S. trade unions, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The agency was designed for the promotion of democracy in countries where we thought the citizens could use a little nudging to our side. Not surprisingly much of this early money went to Eastern European countries and places that had oil. Walesa got plenty of democracy training under these grants, which he used to pester the pro-Soviet Polish government and to have them respond by turning water hoses on Lech and his supporters without regard to political party affiliation.

Prior to the creation of the NED was the United States Agency for International Development, formed as part of the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II. Its mission, as stated on its website is to "extend a helping hand to those people overseas struggling to make a better life, recover from a disaster or striving to live in a free and democratic country..." Just to demonstrate the effectiveness of its push for democracy, the largest recipients of USAID funds, in order, are Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan, Colombia, Jordan, Pakistan, Liberia, Peru, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Turkey and Uganda. Strangely, only a handful of these countries are democratic and the others are rather dubious in their practice of democracy.

Nowadays USAID and NED are funded from the same sources and overlap a great deal. In fact, USAID oversees a lot of NED-funded projects. I must admit that I have taken some of the taxpayer’s hard earned money and worked on a USAID-funded project or two. While working in an Eastern European country, I ran into an old friend who worked for another U.S. agency with well-known initials. He was quite impressed by my agency’s success at turning former adversaries away from the old Soviet sphere of influence. In fact he said if his agency had the kind of funding my agency did, we would have ended the Cold War much earlier. Indeed, a number of USAID workers have either been thrown out of the country for spying or, in some cases, been murdered for being spies. I guess it’s important and acceptable to break a few rules to encourage participation in the American form of democracy.

Hopefully this background puts today’s rhetoric in perspective. It shouldn’t take you long to read about the evil countries not practicing democracy, particularly the American form of democracy. Excluded in this debate are countries that are led by monarchs and dictators and have the common denominator of having loads of oil or countries that make our consumer products for $1 per day or less. If a country does not fall into one of these two categories, we can get very cross with them, indeed.

One country that is the subject of official government scorn is Russia with the free and diligent U.S. press always ready to carry the message of Russia’s failing democracy. Not that Russia ever had much in the way of a democracy unless you count the drunken years that Boris Yeltsin allowed various mafia dons to rule his country. No, it seems that Russia fails in our definition of democracy and, according to many, is the worst example of a free nation in the world, quickly sliding to the dark days of the Soviet Union. As an aside, those who pushed Détente with the Soviets to ensure world peace are the same people shaking their fingers at the Russians today. Their reason for Détente years ago was the assumption that the Soviet Empire was too powerful to defeat and really not all that bad so why fight them. Now there are howls by the same people that Russia is rediscovering its Soviet roots. Please, make up your mind.

Our official government position is that Russia fails the test of true democracy because Russian President Vladimir Putin controls the press, suppresses his political opponents and gives favors out to his favorite industrialists. This is all true. Of course this is also true in the U.S., with the only difference being our controls are engineered by two political parties instead of just one. So, I guess, the real definition of democracy is when you get two political parties controlling the system and screwing the masses. A dictatorship is when only one party leader screws the masses.

Both Russian and American leaders are elected but in the case of Russia, the choices are limited to one main political party pitted against whoever is the permanent opposition of the day. In the U.S. we get to choose from two parties! All other people interested in putting their ideas out there are given an impossible task of fleecing special interest for money to run for office, getting airtime (ask Mike Gravel and Duncan Hunter about that) and not having the support of a political party machine and their allies -- trade unions, trial lawyers, wealthy Hungarians, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, casinos, corporate polluters and the like.

And what do we get for our form of democracy? We get a 71-year-old nutcase who naturally the press loves because he gave them more power with the passage of his bill on campaign finance reform. Like all star-crossed lovers, however, the press demonstrated it can yank his chain back when it wants when the NY Times published an eight-year-old story on Page One about him cozying up to a lobbyist in more ways than one. Reporting on lobbyists trying to influence influential senators is akin to the NY Times reporting that gaming is going on at Rick’s. Naturally the NY Times, in a very free and fair way, reported his denial on Page Eight.

U.S. democracy has also produced one of the most ridiculous and intellectually insulting primaries in my lifetime. We have an angry and petty white woman running for president along with an equally petty and temperament-challenged white man. We also have the first black candidate to get this far in our quadrennial political beauty pageant. Of course, if we’re being totally honest and attempting to act race-neutral, it should be noted that only the candidate’s father is black and his mother is white so I am not sure which part of his heritage people are voting for if, in fact, his heritage is really that important.

Each of the candidates has had their difficulties playing at the democracy game. When things have been at their darkest, Hillary turns to the dark side and unloads all the political dirt she has on her opponents. The dirt has been accumulated through very undemocratic practices such as holding on to 1,200 raw FBI files (1,200 federal offenses) and hiring sleazy private investigators. Her latest trick has been to make sure we remember her opponent for the democratic primary, Barack Obama, once lived in a Muslim country (although he lived there as a Christian) by pushing a photo that looked like Senator Obama had just returned from a Toga party. To Obama’s discredit, it was not very flattering or politically intelligent to dress up in such garb and violates an old political adage: if you don’t want to look silly wearing a stupid hat, don’t wear a stupid hat. Of course Obama is driving Hillary nuts because he has what she wants: votes and popularity. Not that he is really running a political campaign so much as he is running a movement, which means that no position on any issue is relevant to any of his supporters.

John McCain, for his part, seems very keen on getting to hell. He has announced that he will see bin Laden in hell and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad there too. He also wanted to let the voting public know that Cuban leader Fidel Castro will soon be joining Karl Marx in hell – presumably with bin Laden, Ahmadinejad and McCain. Perhaps the quickest way for McCain to get to hell would be for him to follow through with his plan to invade Iran and North Korea.

So this is what democracy in the U.S. has become: a hollow contest without the mention of any issue that a future president will face. We’re still getting questions about “boxers or briefs?” and “who would you like to meet in heaven (or hell in the case of McCain)?” This isn’t democracy, this is idiocracy and does nothing more than demonstrate how our country has devolved into a celebrity culture.

I think it would be good for America if we spent a bit more time tidying up our democracy standards rather than picking on others who haven’t been at it for the past 230 years. Certainly we’re not getting it right at more than two centuries, how can we expect others to have it down in two decades?

A Happy Day

Well, we are a blessed family today. The Boy gave the Ber a lovely engagement ring, the Ber gave him the answer he wanted, and we were given a new daughter. We couldn’t ask for a happier day or a better woman to welcome into our family. We also couldn’t ask for a better family that will be merged into ours by the joining of these two bright souls.

Not much in the way of wedding details and all signs point to a very small gathering. They are getting wedding planning "help" by the Girl who I think desires a budget that is the approximate value of the U.S. deficit. I do have to hand it to the Girl, she’d be pretty good as a wedding planner. If you have contacts in the business, pass her name along....

It’s been quite a month for the Boy. He earned admission into University of San Diego Law School and they were pleased enough with his academic record that they offered him a substantial scholarship. While the world barely needs another lawyer, I think he will be different and will use the law to be a better businessman, scholar, partner or advocate for those who are denied access to redress through the legal system. Any way one slices it, he will be one of the few who will give the profession a better name.

The month could be a home run for our family if the Girl is able to get what looks like a really good job for a well-financed charity in the Bay Area. Aside from wedding planning, she’d be great at managing the public relations for a company that is giving back some of the wealth it earned in the Dot Com industry.

This is the kind of news we always want to hear in our family. Generally I am writing about somone dying in our family or complaining about why the world doesn’t give me everthing I want (maybe because I want everything?). For today, I have everything I need (except Diane Lane). Muah, as the Ber says.

New Year's Revolutions

Well I didn’t quite get this in before the end of the year, but at least it can be noted it was posted before the end of the month. In what is an annual ritual of mixing hope and repentance, I hereby offer my New Year’s resolutions. First, however, forgive me Father, for I have failed to live up to most of my previous resolutions. Let’s hope this year brings greater discipline and focus on meeting my goals, or at least getting close in the areas I can control.

1. Isn’t this always the first one? We all promise to lose weight and when you are writing that you want to lose a total of 60 pounds in 12 months (five pounds per month, a little more than one pound each week) it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. So why can’t I ever reach this one? Two words, perhaps: cookies and candy. I guess it’s a few more words because I have not been that reliable in exercising away the caloric intake caused by my frequent detours of munching on a chocolate Payday when nobody’s looking. Of course at the beginning of a long journey comes the first step so I am looking at the 60-pound figure as a marathon and not a sprint. Since my weight loss for January is 0.00, I have a bit more pressure on me to catch up, but I think I am ready to lose the flabbiness that has come to define me. But, hey, be kind to me if I don’t make this and, for god’s sake, don’t give me that look when you see me sneaking a warm chocolate donut for breakfast. Dooooooonut.

2. Having moved to San Diego, ostensibly, to be more near my friends, I would like to be less ostensible about it and spend more time with them. And I don’t mean more time just because one of my friends is down the hall at my office, I mean more fun time like going to the beach or swimming laps at the YMCA – assuming I can get my membership back.

3. I want to blog more but I also want more comments. Hmmm, how does one do this? I think we have all learned that the famous Free IPod Giveaway post was a bit of a desperate cry for attention. I’ll try to stay away from those kinds of gimmicks. I also may cut back on the political commentary. Lord knows my political observations get very little comment as evidenced by my recent – and I think one of my best – posts that was something of a primer on how to live in another Clinton regime. My goal will be to have five posts each month. I have catching up in this area too, but should be able to squeeze in a few more to make the cut.

4. Here is my usual quixotic quest to alter the way in which I earn a living; even in just small and simple ways. I’d be very grateful to keep my name out of the paper this year unless I am rescuing a little kid named Timmy out of a well. I want what I do to mean something and for me to mean something to somebody for what I am doing. What do they call that word again? Charity? Not sure I am that acquainted with doing things for a purpose other than money so some serious retraining will be necessary. Still, I’ll have my eye out for that elusive greener pasture.

5. This annual pledge is as predictable as the swallows returning to wherever it is they swallow (don’t mean that in a dirty way, Agent 69). I pledge to finish my unfinished novel. The good news is I have a viable beginning middle and an end. The bad news is I have to put the words in the right order so it all makes sense and carries the brooding, interesting story I have imagined. All I have to do is re-write most of the 425 pages and remember the names of my characters. Can’t remember where I heard this, but someone said an “outline” would be helpful in this endeavor. Hmmmm….outline…..

6. This one is counter-intuitive, I suppose. I want to travel more and travel more to interesting places. I really enjoy the experience of walking in and around different cultures and navigating how to say “you give me massage” in numerous unfamiliar languages (OK, Agent 69, that was meant to be dirty). Traveling to faraway places also means I am likely being paid to lounge among the locals so that is also another super secret reason for this mention.

7. On the flip side of Resolution #6 is the goal to be a better husband, parent and friend; something of a trick if I am 11 hours away eating a chocolate Payday. I guess these qualities can be managed together as long as I continue to remember what it is to love someone completely and to meet them as they want to be met. I think it’s about understanding what friends and family want out of life, understanding better their needs and being a safe place for them to land if required. Perhaps it’s quality over volume and, including learning to love myself more, maybe we’ll have something good going in 2008.

8. Even though this is similar to the weight loss promise with my fingers behind crossed behind my back, I want to be more active athletically. I’d like to feel comfortable swimming 3,500 yards per day and have no difficulty walking at a brisk pace for at least an hour. I don’t want to include things like that Sladed character has up his sleeve like running in a marathon or swimming the Channel, and I especially don’t want to commit to having my eyes gouged out and being fish bait in swimming the La Jolla Rough Water. Although I will try to look good enough in a Speedo by September to give it fair thought.

9. I getting near the end, so be patient. This one is a bit subtle and abstract, but I want to have fewer fears. My vacation was partly burdened by fear of not accomplishing a task expected by a client. All was well in the end and my gut told me it was going to be OK, but I still let the irrational fear side of me dictate my mood and outlook. Fear can be debilitating and I have to learn to roll better with the ups and downs of my business life, and life in general. I think I am already seeing signs that I am making strides in this area.

10. And, there is always a silly one in the end. I want to attend a wedding this year that includes people I really care about. Can that be done? Can it?

A Word About A Would-Be Queen

Returning from a trip to Texas with dreams of independent candidates shaking up the two-party cartel dancing in my head, New Hampshire voters are offering their own independent minded statement by making Hillary the second coming of the Comeback Kid. While disappointing to me and most of normal thinking Americans, it should make a serious independent bid for the presidency much more likely. And I think that’s a good thing.

Instinct should have dictated that the polls, the pols and news creatures are not to be believed as they were busy working the engine room of the Obama Express; especially when it’s about a Clinton because it’s always about them, and they should have learned that by now. As a result, the prediction of 12-point margins of victory by the man from Jakarta (at least not from Hope) looks more and more like a set-up for a bad actor to steal the show.

Perhaps New Hampshire voters took Clinton’s tears over Obama’s “O” factor. In a world of feelings over thought, it wouldn’t surprise me. But in an electorate that seems to be demanding change – at least I think we are – how did a tantrum and a sad face trump change? If one were to check Lexus Nexus I suspect we would find slightly more than 1 billion uses of the word “change” over the last several months. Nobody is quite sure what it means, naturally, so it’s a great campaigning tool and allows the candidates to put fluff over substance. No need to connect change to a particular policy or have to define the term to the least intellectually curious news media since the Hair-Spray Pavilion was invented.

The message is mixed from New Hampshire as Granite Staters proved hard-headed and stubborn yet again by rejecting one outsider (Obama) for an insider (Hillary) and then accepting a decidedly independent John McCain by larger margins than ever imagined. In the real world, New Hampshire means very little – just three measly Electoral Votes – but in the world of spin it knocks Obama out of the spotlight, costs him donors and loses the momentum that seemed so solid only a week ago. If one can get by the smirk on Hillary’s face, we’ll have to admit she may well be back in the driver’s seat. And I am sure this is a bad thing.

Hillary is the only candidate running on the mantra of change who believes we must find that change in our past. Nobody should expect the slogan “It was morning in America” to resonate, but it seemed to have done just that in New Hampshire (leaving Dixville Notch out of it because they had the good sense to give her no votes).

For those old enough to remember, the Clinton years that Hillary loves to take situational credit for, i.e. taking the good, ignoring the bad, were not exactly the best in American history. She never misses the opportunity to talk about her eight years in the White House and how it gives her the experience to be president. As Dick Morris said, she did spend eight years in the White House, but “so did the pastry chef” and that doesn’t make him capable of running the country.

By any measure Bill was a political savant; intelligent, a quick read on a wide variety of issues and exceptionally charismatic. He was also a highly flawed man with governance ADD and no core and no soul. His chief political strategies James Carville once took a piece of paper and drew a square and pointing in the box remarked, “Where is the hallowed ground?” Hillary appears to be lacking the same slice of hallowed ground due in large part that she got very little of her husband’s attributes and all of his flaws including, indelicately I admit, the part about being a flawed man.

But because we may find ourselves living under a another Clinton administration, we should at least examine what that would look like. It’s not difficult to see who would be joining her administration when you see who’s standing behind her on stage: a veritable who’s who of Bill Clinton has-beens. People like Richard Holbrooke, Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger were in over their heads 16 years ago and there is nothing that has occurred since to demonstrate they have learned anything. While candidates love to run on it’s the economy, stupid (and the economy’s looking pretty stupid at the moment), they end up be being defined and judged on foreign events. Or as Hillary recently noted and by means of demonstrating both her ability to predict and her penchant for stealing good lines, this one from Mario Cuomo, “You campaign with poetry, but you govern with prose.” I suspect she will be ambushed by the prose of knowing nothing about foreign policy.

This is the part that scares me: Holbrooke gave us the war in Serbia, Albright inflamed an already burning situation in Somalia by backing a criminally stupid Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali (why would anyone trust a man with two first names, anyway?) in his personal vendetta against Aidid, leading to an America looking so weak it produced Rwanda and bin Laden’s view that America was a paper tiger, and, finally, Berger who gave men new ideas on how to impress women with things stuffed in their briefs – say, is that a national security document in your pants or are you just glad to see me?

The Clinton gang, particularly in the area of foreign policy, was not ready to lead from Day One and, based on Hillary’s insistance that she is, only makes a stronger case that if she is elected, we will be turning our government over to those who did not learn from earlier on-the-job training. And I am very certain that is a bad thing, particularly in this very dangerous world.

Obviously the primary battle is not over between Obama and Hillary and it is even possible Edwards will have something to say about who becomes the democratic nominee since their primaries don’t engage in winner–take-all voting as is the case with republicans. But I suspect Hillary can taste the power of winning the White House and two things are certain about that fact: anyone who gets in the way of Hillary and her manic lust for power better watch their back (Obama: "Hillary, what are you doing with a shovel and duct tape in your trunk?"); and the more progress she makes toward wrapping up the nomination the more certain a third party candidate will emerge. Mr. Mayor, we could use another hero. Hope you’re listening.

P.S. I know I owe a New Year's resolution post, but one of my resolutions is to go on vacation and write more on my blog. Tonight I wrote this for the blog and tomorrow I go on vacation. That's two down!

Wither Democracy?

OK, I am probably out of my depth here and running the risk of Google Blog searches sending many unwanted viewers to my sleepy little Blog, but I may as well spout off anyway. This post is about the naïve view of democracy as practiced and shoved at the world by the Bush Administration and others who have turned into political pushers of this drug of majority rule.

The most recent evidence that democracy isn’t for everyone just occurred in Pakistan – or nuclear-armed Pakistan, as the media prefers. Of course we all know about the recent assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Her reason for coming out of exile was due to a grand plan hatched by Condoleezza Rice and the President that was supposed to put a power sharing arrangement in place with Pakistan’s current president, Pervez Musharraf who arrived as president in the decidedly non-democratic manner of leading a military coup and naming himself the leader of the government.

Of course this is where things get dicey because Musharraf is an enemy or our enemy (Al-Qaida) and, as a leader of a huge military, he is seen as something of a stopgap of growth of the terror group. Although he has not been altogether as successful as we would like, he does just enough to keep Washington’s billions headed his way. His willingness to hold elections gained him even more support.

Enter former Prime Minister Bhutto, who became a “former prime minister” after being sent into exile on corruption charges, leaving a mostly hostile country behind but not without at least $20 million to avoid living in exile on a skimpy budget.
American and European meddling forced Musharraf to hold “free and fair” election – a wonderful catch-phrase that doesn’t even work in our own country – and he won a sizeable majority of sitting lawmakers. An independent Supreme Court in Pakistan attempted to nullify the election but Musharraf fired the court and suspended the Constitution for several weeks. It is believed Bhutto declined to run for president because of the power-sharing agreement that was being worked out between her and Musharraf and pushed principally by the U.S. Naturally any agreement put in place that appears to exclude the voters, no matter the amount of international symmetry, was bound to smell to everyday Pakistanis and they viewed it as a deal between a corrupt former prime minister working in concert with a corrupt president. Of course they were likely correct.

All this set the stage for Bhutto to make a triumphant return to Pakistan for what was supposed to be a coronation. Everything seemed to be aligned; the international press, full of press kits from huge PR firms such as the U.S.’s Burson Marsteller (you can’t have a PR firm or a press without press kits), cleaned up her image outside of Pakistan while world leaders rejoiced at their own progressiveness of backing a woman in a male-dominated culture. Someone forgot to include the one million suspects who wanted her stopped at all costs and we had what most real analysts would say was a predictable result. Not only was her murder the second attempt on her life, Musharraf too has been a target, narrowly escaping two assassination attempts, all in Rawalpindi, coincidentally, which happens to be the head of the Pakistani military apparatus. This would be the equivalent of attempting to assassinate a sitting president in the U.S. in the middle of Fort Bragg.

So we have one sacrificed at the altar of democracy and this didn’t need to happen. Bhutto shouldn’t have believed her international press clippings and should have stayed in England as a permanent opposition group, and we shouldn’t have forced democracy on a people who are neither ready for such a form of governance nor ready to be governed, for that matter. I head one Pakistani say the killing of Bhutto was the same as the Kennedy assassination. Maybe to him it was, but I don’t remember a riot breaking out in the streets after Kennedy was shot and I don’t recall 50 people being killed from the civil unrest that’s been pushed by Bhutto supporters. Pakistan, with all its tribal factions among 170 million diverse people probably needs more of a dictator than someone promising a newest pro-democracy phrase, “rule of law.”

Why is what happened in Pakistan so important, I hear you ask before giving up on this messy post? Mainly because pushing democracy on an unsuspecting people has been done before and will be done again, and our Western leadership seems to have learned nothing from it. The Lebanese were pushed into voting for new leadership and the voters gave us a power struggle between two warring terror organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas. The moderates we supported came in third. We wanted free and fair elections in Nicaragua and because of American intervention, we got Daniel Ortega back in power with only 37 percent of the vote. What we was fought with bullets in the Eighties was turned around 20 years later with ballots.

The new weapon of choice of over-the-hill lefties is democracy, not armed conflict. In the past five years, voters have elected Socialist leaders in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico. These four countries make up more than 70 percent of our oil imports so we have to be nice even if we don’t like them.

In case you think this is a Bush Administration problem – and it is a big one – this happened under President Clinton too. How many remember the reason we sent the military to Haiti? Jean-Bertrand Aristide won what some say was the first democratic election, which ended the regime of the Duvalier family. Actually the younger Duvalier was, in fact, elected but immediately named himself ruler for life, a good job if you can get it. A well-armed American military re-installed Aristide who quickly lived down to most Haitian leaders, was re-elected in what is largely viewed as a Chicago-style, vote-counting scandal, only to be voted out by a former ally because he had done little to improve the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Makes one wonder why we helped in the first place.

Clinton also decided to become indirectly involved in internal Israeli politics by sending U.S. tax dollars to his politicos James Carville and Paul Begala to make sure Ehuad Barak was voted in instead of the strong-willed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It seems Clinton couldn’t work a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians and it was having a negative impact on his Nobel Peace Prize chances so he made sure the dance cards were re-arranged. A wimpy Barak eventually made a deal with the devil with the Oslo Peace Accords which ultimately resulted in peace in our time as evidenced by the First and Second Intifada.

Clinton also let Richard Holbrooke try his hand at dictatorship in the Balkans when the spoils of bombing former allies in Serbia allowed us to dictate who held the pink slip on Bosnia, the center of ethnic cleansing from all sides. Holbrooke’s idea – with a lot of help from other idiots – took place in the drafting of the Dayton Accords which said Bosnia would be trifurcated into a Muslim area, a Serb area and a split Muslim and Croat area. Leadership would be supplied by interested Europeans in what is called the Office of the High Representative, which can remove elected leaders from office and pretty much do what he or she wants. It is the only dictatorship in Europe, but don’t ask and don’t tell on that one as nobody involved likes to admit it.

Also out of the Balkans sprang up Kosovo. A district of the former Yugoslav Republic and strongly viewed by Serbs as a historic region of greater Serbia (strong as in willing to go to war to keep it from going independent). The Western world feels sorry for the ethnic Muslim Albanians who lead this tiny region that has no economy and no ability to survive on its own, so it’s forcing independence down the throats of unhappy Serbs. This has led to other breakaway republics around the world anxiously raising their hands and saying, “me too,” despite the fact that wankers like Holbrooke insist Kosovo is not a precedent. Fortunately his involvement in any future government is not a precedent either.

Bush doesn’t have clean hands in ensuring dummies get elected either. We spent what some will admit to be $160 million (probably twice that) to elect leadership-challenged Victor Yushchenko as president merely because he was not pro-Russian. I was there and I am certain that the U.S. government and its European allies stole the election from Viktor Yanukovich, thereby splitting the nation down the middle. All Yushchenko has done since elected is name is 22-year-old son as his economic minister and head for the office around noon where he paints for four hours before returning home. Meanwhile, the country is in the tank. The democracy pushers are very good at fixing elections but fall well-short when help is needed to actually lead a country. It should be no surprise that his approval rating is at 12 percent, up from nine percent after a number of Americans came on the scene to improve his image.

When the U.S. wishes to scold countries around the world for not being democratic enough, it likes to pick on Russia and its neighbor Belarus. We all hear about the evils of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose personal approval rating is nearly four times that of President Bush. We read in self-important journals that the great former chess players Gary Kasparov has been marching to stem the rolling back of democracy in Russia and his travails are well-chronicled. What is not so well-chronicled is that when he marches, he has fewer than 1,000 supporters and it only looks like more because he marches alongside the neo-Bolsheviks who believe Putin isn’t autocratic enough.

In poor Belarus, where life is relatively safe and stable, U.S. leaders don’t like their president in Alexander Lukaschenko, who has won recent election in Castro-style with almost 90 percent of the vote (strangely American leftists don’t mind such lop-sided elections in Cuba). A New Jersey Congressman named Chris Smith got the “Belarus Democracy Act” passed, which essentially ends economic relations with the country and making them even more dependent on Russia for survival. Essentially a Congressman from a state like New Jersey has told the Belarusian people to vote out their president if they want to do business with us and become a nice puppet for future NATO expansion.

This seems like a good place to finalize the endless sham of democracy. While we do have this Belarus Democracy Act and thunderous media denunciation of President Putin, we seemed to have missed putting in place the Saudi Arabia Democracy Act or the Chinese Democracy Act or even the Azerbaijan Democracy Act. I guess if you sell us oil, give us space to put air bases and produce lead-based toys for our children, you can skip right beyond the need for democracy. And if we Americans don’t like that, we can always have a vote. I think there is one here next November. I wonder if the computer voting screens will be in place by then.

Airing Grievances

Demands were made by some kid (Agent 69) to write a Christmas post. I suppose I haven’t felt as much in the Christmas spirit as years past, so I have put it off until the actual day is almost upon us. But with our Christmas lights and ornaments in a box somewhere, I still haven’t been able to muster up enough holiday cheer – despite a gallon of eggnog – to write a post worthy of the day.

Part of my grumpiness has come from a number of irritating events that has turned me more Grinch than giving. Then it occurred to me there is another holiday that is practiced on December 23 where we get to air our grievances. What a better way to spend the holidays then to air grievances?

According to Wikipedia (which is almost always accurate unless it’s about me), the holiday of Festivus is a real holiday created by a Reader’s Digest editor who happened to have a son who became a writer for the Seinfeld Show. Hence the holiday wormed into our popular culture thanks to Frank Costanza. As invented, there really is a Festivus Pole, an “Airing of Grievances” and, following a Festivus dinner, a “Feats of Strength” involving a wrestling match between the head of the household (me, I guess) with other revelers. The last part should be fun.

But I want to focus, for the sake of the holiday, on the Airing of Grievances. Let’s begin in the bathroom. You folks with your Bluetooth headsets have got to stop your conversations upon entering the men’s room. Not only do I not want to hear you carrying on about nothing important while on the throne, I don’t want the person you’re talking to listening in on one of my private moments. In fact, I doubt they want to hear my private moments, along with the private moments of several others who went into the bathroom for its highest and best use.

Keeping in the bathroom, can we do something about the water-saving, low-flush toilets? I have a real problem with tossing a Kleenex into one and needing a plunger to get it down the drain. It’s designed to save precious water, but it ordinarily takes three flushes to complete the job. How does that save water?

In the shower the do-gooders from environmental central want you to save water with a shower nozzle that drips on you rather than cascades. It’s a real problem for me to take the nozzle off the shower head just to drill out a larger hole so I can get that luxurious shower I deserve in the morning. Sure the hot water runs out faster, but I can still get in a good 35-minute shower every morning.

Here’s another grievance: smart people who make stupid predictions, mainly those in the news media’s polling division. First we were told we wouldn’t spend as much this holiday season based on minimum-wage employees calling a few hundred people out of 300 million. This tidbit, sold as fact, made every headline in the country. The other 299 million defied the polls and went out and bought up the GI Joe and Barbie Doll as usual. Polls as news must always be correct so it was explained that while we purchased as many items, we didn’t spend as much since the prices were lower because everything is made out of lead in China. Please infer from their reporting that our economy teeters on the brink of a depression.

I heard a pundit today explain that Big Saturday (today) needed to be a big bang so the retailers wouldn’t all go out of business. However, another smart guy opined that we buyers wouldn’t purchase today because the retailers were only desperate and we’d wait until Sunday when they were panicked and then wait again on Monday until they were suicidal enough to give away a TV set with every purchase of a pack of chewing gum.

Pollsters and those who confuse the art of polling for news, is also worth complaining about on this great night of Festivus. It used to be that reporters covered elections by actually focusing on positions taken by candidates and what was good and bad in speeches they made. It’s true! I’ve read about it in books.

Today, reporters only write about which candidate is ahead in the daily polls – polls that appear to change based on a story about the polls. But polling has seemingly become too complicated for most political observers, so now they write about which candidate has the most money. As I understand it, having squeezed the most money out of special interest groups now best prepares a candidate to become president. And to think some are still stuck on the quaint notion that a president should have a certain set of what we call “positions,” “values,” and “experience.” Oh, and they must not have the last name of Clinton too, although that’s a grievance for another post.

My final grievance is referring to the season and the “holidays.” We can’t say Merry Christmas anymore for fear of offending someone who happens to celebrate something other than Christmas, such as Festivus. I tell friends to have a “happy birthday” even though most people who can hear me make this pronouncement are not having a birthday. I don’t get complaints about that unless it’s at one of those restaurants that makes the person having the birthday wear a big hat. I also have been known to say “Happy Thanksgiving” and “have a happy Independence Day” when I know full well that foreigners could be within ear shot. I don’t think this makes me insensitive to others, does it?

So, for the kid who asked for this post, I have the following politically correct plea: Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To my friends and relatives: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Eccentric Ideas

I thought I would try this out on you all before kicking this as far upstairs as people are willing to listen. To get to the meat of what I hope will happen, there are a few things that must be accepted.

For the people who are roughly my age, we remember how we felt as Americans at the end of the Seventies and the “malaise” that had settled over most of us. At the time, we were facing inflation above 14 percent, unemployment more than 10 percent in most states and as much as 15 percent in some areas. Interest rates on mortgages got as high as 21 percent for a brief time but were always up in the high teens (imagine people complaining about 7 percent mortgage rates these days). In addition, Iranian student revolutionaries held 66 Americans captive, 52 of them for 444 days. In effect, this held America captive and made us all feel powerless, especially so after a botched attempt to rescue them failed miserably. Of course the crisis in the oil rich region caused gas prices to rise dramatically and shortages to occur.

All of the negativity that seemed to swallow us whole during that time was within five or six years of the U.S. military retreating in defeat from Vietnam and from the embarrassment of a president and vice president resigning in disgrace. For you younger folks, I think you had to live during that time to understand how small we felt as Americans. Perhaps only during the Depression 50 years earlier did America suffer from such collective anxiety.

The rough news to this story is that I think we are headed down the same path as we were 30 years ago. America is deep in the middle of a downward spiral with no real expectation of pulling out before we crash. We have no faith in our political leadership, we’re mired in a war with no real way to declare a victory, our dollar has become a joke with no corresponding benefit because our country produces very little worth selling to the world, having shipped that work out to the Developing World. We’ve had two bubbles burst due to avarice and the expectation that the stock market and housing market are required to rise at 20 percent per year, we’re viewed by many others around the world as, let’s face it, losers, and with the rise of Russia, Europe and China, we’re looking less like the world’s only superpower and more like a paper tiger. Again, malaise has settled in and nobody seems to have a prescription.

When Reagan was elected in 1980 he did very little from a policy perspective to change things. All he really did was make Americans walk a little taller and convince people that we are a great nation with great personal strengths and we needed to get out there and get the economy going again. I remember him telling the nation during one of his press conferences to go out and buy that washing machine and new car because there was no reason not to. And people did and the economy grew at the fastest and longest pace in U.S. history. It didn’t take Congress to enact new laws – although the tax cuts didn’t hurt – or any great change to the fundamental way our economy was structured. It took a grandfatherly man to tell us things were OK and for us to believe him.

This brings me to my grand idea, which is really not a grand idea at all, just an opportunity for nationwide redemption and something positive for us as Americans to be judged. The sad part is, we have been wearing the Ruby Slippers to accomplish this goal for years, but we’ve been programmed by many to believe it to be impossible.

While Reagan improved the American psyche, he ratcheted up the rhetoric against our enemies both real and imagined. Russia, or the Evil Empire as he noted, took most of the brunt, but there was plenty left for others who were considered our mortal enemies. In the end, the Russian Knight had been dead for years and was just waiting for the coroner’s report on the time of death. We did a little to help out, but mostly we kicked them while they were down.

In 2000, in the middle of the Russian economic meltdown, I attended a World Economic Forum summit which generally focused on what a mess Russia was. I sat next to a man I considered a friend for a number of years who happened to be the leader of the Duma at the time. The Russians were hit hard by every speaker and virtually blamed for all the ills of the world. I asked my friend how he could stand by silently while his country was trashed so thoroughly. He told me his country deserved the criticism but added they were learning from their mistakes and would be well again soon. He also warned that the tide will turn and America will face the same condemnation from the rest of the world. All of his predictions have come true as Russia is indeed well and we are facing worldwide scorn for our economic and foreign policy transgression.

All of this long-winded blather is to say we need to change our ways and reach out to others to become relevant again and regain our prestige. And the benefit to this relevance will send a message to Americans and the rest of the world that we are not bad people and we still matter.

President Bush is about as lame as any lame duck president has ever been. He has no hope of passing any sponsored legislation and is left merely as a caretaker for a war he started but will not be able to finish. Nobody even thinks about him much anymore unless it’s as a punchline for a joke. The only power he has as president that can help America, and not coincidentally his own image, is to reshape foreign policy and our place in the world. While he shows no sign of making any positive changes, the good news is the changes I want to recommend would be playing from his strong suit.

The President’s current Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, is an original Russophile. She was a Fellow at the Hoover Institute on Russian affairs and was a key advisor to Bush 41 on the delicate issue of how to deal with a collapsing adversary with thousands of nuclear weapons. She’s been forced into on-the-job training to learn the ways of the Muslim world, something that hasn’t come easy for her. So why not go back to what she knows and go to work with the Russians and solve problems that can actually be solved? It also wouldn’t hurt to change the public debate away from war in Iraq and escalating rhetoric of future wars.

We haven’t had a real summit with real goals with the Russians since 1991. This is puzzling because we still have not reached an agreement on short range nuclear missiles and the thorny issue of a missile shield, especially one in Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin is on record suggesting an end to the missiles – the only real potential mass destructive weapon that could get in the wrong hands – but is understandably bothered by a missile shield in Eastern Europe, especially when the reason given is to protect the Poles, et al, from an attack from a rogue nation like Iran. That doesn’t pass anyone’s smell test.

Putin, to his own detriment, has been using his short term energy supply to bully his neighbors, sells military hardware to Iran and North Korea and other undependable states that could turn them on his country some day. Like Bush, Putin needs to leave a better legacy, in his case a legacy other than presiding over an economy fueled by petrol-dollars, and his time to do so is running out as he is forced to leave office next April. The good news is he has amassed such power that the ability to make changes rest solely in his hands.

While Bush needs Congress to ratify any treaty he makes, changing the dialogue will throw off his adversaries, and who would want to oppose a reduction in the nuclear threat, especially in an election year?

So let’s get together and make a deal on nukes. While we’re at it, let’s work on dealing with our shared threat posed by radical Islam, the looming problem in Pakistan, poverty in Africa and the flailing dollar. In the end, success will make both our countries feel better about ourselves and put us back in the same position we have occupied for 70 years as the only two superpowers. Together we can do more than we can do alone and working with each other will push back the European smugness and China’s petulance.

Bush has been surrounded by people who are used to a Cold War approach and most of official Washington is negative on Putin. The Russians are nervous about a uni-polar, one superpower world and are still understandably a bit prickly over our actions in Ukraine and NATO’s advancement to their borders. Having said this, Russia has a need to be reinstated as a legitimate superpower and Americans need to believe we are still capable of doing good in the world. It won’t take much to begin this process, just the desire for the two leaders to do what’s right and good for each of them. Hopefully they will see the value for what’s in it for themselves and be satisfied that it will have the ancillary benefit of helping those they lead walk with a little lighter step. At least one can hope, can we?

All Is Well

When we last left our heroes, we were just arriving in San Diego. Some of us were full of angst and feeling a bit sorry for ourselves for having to leave friends and memories behind in Sacramento. OK, it was mostly me, but there’s no need to dwell on those character defects.

The family seems to be settling in fine: The Boy found a very nice condo in Encinitas and shares it with The Ber; Emily moved into our humble condo and immediately took over the remote control; and Mrs. Laz and I, after an exhaustive search, found a home worth buying (see photo) and we’re waiting for escrow to close the end of the month.

In the end, I guess we managed our transition down here with aplomb and even a bit of grace – words not usually associated with the greater Lazlo family.

The Big Deal that was mentioned in earlier posts did come through and kept most of us occupied to the point we had little sleep and little time to think of much else but the work at hand. Consequently I have been a non-existent friend to a few people who reached out and were ignored by me. Apologies go to Miss E, who made several valiant attempts to visit and converse only to be treated rudely by me; to Susan, who never reads this Blog anyway; and the Big Wopper, who probably needed me to be a better friend these past weeks.

One person who got snagged up by the Big Deal was Sladed, who started working with me and probably now wonders why I have been doing what I have been doing for lo these many years. Trust me, he saw things at their worse and, in a business that’s generally not a pretty sight, he saw it at its ugliest. Working together leaves less time for joint blogging and swimming, but we’ll figure out how to make time for each of these important parts of our lives. Also we have a lot of catching up on Guitar Hero.

So, finally a post filled with a reasonable amount of happiness and contentment; something we haven’t seen in these parts for a while. Maybe it’s in the air?

Of Selling Homes and Family Pets

Our house is a very, very, very fine house. With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard." -- CSNY

Well, I’m a San Diegan now despite living in temporary quarters. My arrival has carried with it more of a permanence as we close on our estates in Virginia next week and we are now in that delightfully nerve-racking escrow period on our home in Sacramento. I think these are both good things.

The sale of the home in Sacramento carries with it some amusement. We got an offer, we countered, she accepted. That was simple and happened over a 24-hour period. Seems as though she wanted the house and didn’t want to dicker like the dickering that was done to us in Virginia. However, our buyer in Sacramento had four items she wanted included in the purchase price: our spa, our refrigerator, our barbeque and the family cat. Yes, the cat.

Now some truth: the cat was not loved in our family, despite being with us for 10 years. It was rescued as a malnourished kitten by a soft-hearted and, as it turns out, soft-headed Mrs. Laz, and was appropriately named at the time, Bones. Over the years Bones developed decidedly unfriendly characteristics. She swipes at you as you walk by, loves to stare down small dogs and let them taste “the claw” when she’s feeling particularly feisty. If you decide you want to get near her and scratch her on the chin, you have about 30 seconds before she bites or claws you. She also enjoyed torturing mice, birds and lizards and bringing their dying and mauled bodies into our house just in case we wanted to watch the final fatal blows.

So when our counter offer was returned, our realtor wrote “refrigerator, spa, barbeque and cat convey with no warranties and no value.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. I hope our buyer loves our house and the cat. The house is certainly worth loving; can’t say the same for the cat. Bye Bones!

All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers

A wiser philosopher than me (Georg Hegel, I think, although if I could remember this kind of detail I would have made it out of college with a piece of paper other than a reminder not to return for the next semester) once observed, “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” I think this means we often miss the signs that important things are going to happen after it’s already too late to do anything about them. I think I may have missed my owl taking off.

There has been a growing realization that I am the first to know about something and the last to act on it. While I wasn’t the original instigator – that role belongs to the Boy – I think I was the first one to figure out the snowbell was heading downhill and we were meeting up with it in San Diego.

To be clear, we’re not leaving Sacramento because it is an absolutely awful place to live; we’d lived in worse places. But San Diego is viewed as a lifestyle change; the ability to live in what most call near-perfect weather, well equipped for 365 days of outside activity, and to live near my two best friends, in no particular order, Mr. Sladed and Italiphil.

Mrs. Laz has been there for the better part of the past two months and the Boy just arrived with Ber in the past two weeks. The Girl, who has decided to take a dip in this familial experiment as the Control Group, is not far behind, perhaps three or four weeks away. It seems everything is in place for me to make my move and join my family in what feels like nothing short of Manifest Destiny. Instead I am stuck with one foot out the door and the other foot with my remaining heel clearly dug in and I am hoping someone can tell me why this is the case.

I can offer up a few theories:

1. I have been someplace other than what I call home for the past several weeks and the thought of packing up a car in the next 72 hours and driving 10 hours sounds exhausting. But I have to do it sometime and better sooner than later as I am beginning to forget what the Mrs. looks like (and the dogs, too).

2. While we were willing to get filleted in Virginia in selling all our land holdings there, we have no interest or ability in doing the same in Sacramento. Therefore we have a beautiful albatross draped around our necks and it doesn’t feel right to leave it unattended with nothing more than the silly hope that we will find a buyer who hasn’t read a newspaper in the last six months and still believes property values in California are at an all-time high. Since this person would be in the same basket as Santa Claus, unicorns and real estate agents that don’t lie and cheat, I don’t think I will hold my breath.

While I am concerned about our real estate curse, we can likely rent our home and hope for a later rebound in the market. Of course this carries the risk of a still larger “correction” and the fact that I will have to pack up an entire house full of furniture and memories and stick it on a moving van that will have to circle around San Diego until we can afford to buy a house there. More exhaustion but I may have a few tricks up my sleeve on this front and will discuss them with Mrs. Laz assuming we are in the same city for more than a few hours.

3. I happen to love sports and, frankly, I may need a larger pull than the Chargers and Padres to tickle my sports fancy. Trevor Hoffman can’t save a game these days and the Pads are languishing. As of this writing, they are not headed for the playoffs unless the bullpen remembers how to pitch again. The Chargers looked great last year until a playoff meltdown was extended into a front office meltdown. This led to the hiring of a gypsy NFL coach with a spotty record who will implement a new system in a situation that screams, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Also, I prefer the NBA to these other minor sports and despite the Kings turning into a League joke with its own front office meltdown, I still get more excited about watching and following the NBA than any other sport short of nude volleyball. Let’s see how the home teams in San Diego perform before passing final judgment, but for now, they’re suspect.

4. Another thought is that I have a practice of making friends with nearly every acquaintance. My friends don’t become best friends – that job was already taken by, in no particular order, Italiphil and Sladed – but I have come to enjoy their company just the same. I worry about what becomes of this collection of misfits who reciprocate their friendship, or at least ask to borrow money. Am I destined to burn through friendships no matter how close a relationship I have with them? Or will settling in one place allow me to build better and longer-lasting friendships and push the other two “best friend” knuckleheads to start giving me a little more respect lest I drop their best-friend status in favor of an outsider?

As mentioned in a previous post I have been saying my good-byes. I have learned that I am not particularly good at it as I don’t like the lonely feeling that I will never see someone again. While no plans exist to never again see any friends we made up in Sacramento, I know there is a possibility our paths may never have the chance to cross. Distance in miles and time are not the best tonic in maintaining friendships as I have found many times in my life. I know each member of our family has to go through this, including Mrs. Laz saying fare-thee-well to Judy, her best friend and soul mate, but I think it affects me more, or perhaps I just complain the loudest about it. I just know I don’t find any joy in this part of moving to a new city. And I also know I have moved away from parents, friends and relatives before and survived, this time it just hits me a little later in life when the twilight for making friends may be slipping away.

Certainly there are other reasons out there to examine, but perhaps my list is more comprehensive than I at first thought. I guess, in the end, I am just dealing with a lot of crap and working through it at a time my mind and body needs to be elsewhere. Or maybe I can bring in another great thinker, Emerson this time, (and of this I am certain and I also know that his partners, Lake and Palmer, were pretty good too). He once wrote that “events are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Maybe he was warning us that it is useless to fight things we can do nothing about, like the fact that I am just listening to Janis Joplin and I continue to be amazed how awful her band the Holding Company truly was. I want to listen to Janis’ raspy voice but her band can’t keep a beat. “Man,” as she would say.

In the end I know I’ll do what Jackson advises. I will go and pack my sorrow, knowing the trashman comes tomorrow, leave it at the curb, and just roll away. Maybe I’ll even do that on that elusive windy day.

The Perils Of A Roller Coaster Life

Funny how plans can change so suddenly and have such a ubiquitous effect on so many parts of life, and on so many lives. Those who are close to me know I was working on a “big deal.” It’s not unusual for me to be working on a big deal as my business life is nothing more than chasing one big deal after another. Like most big deals, they tend to be elusive and you lose far more than you get. Well, it looks like the latest big deal isn’t going to happen, although that could change again before I finish this post, such has been the roller coaster ride on this one.

It’s not the fact that this latest big deal hasn’t come trough that bothers me, it’s the recent string of perhaps dozens of big deals that haven’t come through that is shaking my confidence. I’ve been on a roll of bad luck, broken promises and bad choices of people I have trusted. It makes me want to take stock of the whole “big deal” way of doing business and look for a simpler way to earn a living. But, of course, that’s not really my personality.

I am a person of faith who believes things happen for a reason and that we are to learn lessons from each disappointment and success. But I am sort of stuck at the moment trying to understand what the two-year streak of “bad luck” is all about. Could it be as simple as just learning how to endure? In my most calm moments, I can see it that way or see it as a way to toughen me up or even just be smarter about the people I deal with. In my more maudlin times, I question my hopes and dreams and if they are meant for others.

Don’t get me totally wrong, I have enjoyed a successful business life by most standards and I couldn’t have wished for or expected a more complete family life. I am more bothered by the fact that I have reached a point in my business where success should be more frequent and reliable and where I should be making better choices in my side ventures.

Last year, in one of my never-ending searches to better my financial position, I started a business with a very close friend. The friend turned out to be not as close as I would have imagined, lied a great deal, chased his own hugely unrealistic dreams and cost me a bundle of money and our friendship. What’s the lesson in this one; not to trust even your closest friends? Not to work with friends? I will likely never know the answer to that. I have made more mistakes in trusting others lately, but this one is a very deep and profound disappointment that makes me question things on many different levels and I have not yet put it in a forum like this except in an abstract way. Now, I suppose, it needs to be said.

It is difficult to convey the ripple effect in these up and down moments (and as of this paragraph, my “big deal” is back on again) and what it means to my family life and current transitory lifestyle. For the moment I am the proverbial man without a country – or a home or home life at least. I have one foot stuck in the mud in Sacramento, I have my wife and my love in San Diego and my dreams for a more complete professional life in faraway places. I had my own plans (kept largely to myself) on a series of moves, but they were dependent on the most recent “big deal.” Without it, I am short a plan.

My mother almost marveled at my ability to cope with diversity. Perhaps because she said it so often I tried all that much harder to live up to her expectation. It could be, however, that I am beginning to reach my limit on things that require me to cope. At my age, I should be coasting more and having to cope less. Finding comfort and peace in my turbulent head seems to be the answer, getting there looks like the challenge.