Head Injuries and Speeches

Hello everyone.

So far it's been a pretty uneventful Monday, and I'm thankful for that, because the weekend was anything but uneventful.

I drove Cathy to the Spokane airport on Friday morning so she could go visit relatives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So it was just Tucker and me--just us boys. We checked out the new Spokane dog park, where he proceeded to ignore the Boxer pup who wanted to play with him, and instead focused on the ball. But he did his business and wore himself out, so the stop was well worth it.

I intended to stop by the Guitar Center in Spokane and try out some guitars on this trip, but it turns out they don't open until 11 am on weekdays (slacker musicians!), and it was only 9:30. If they opened at 10, I might have grabbed something to eat or otherwise found something to do to kill a half hour, but there was no way I was going to wait around for 90 minutes. Your loss, Guitar Center.

Not that I'm the market for a new guitar right now. But I'm sure I will be at some point, hopefully sooner than later, and it's nice to know what's out there. I have to admit I'm a good old typical American consumer when it comes to certain products. Music gear is one. Beer is another. Fortunately, that's about it.

Anyway, on Saturday I was busy multitasking by stacking firewood in between throwing the ball for Tucker. He's obsessed with getting the ball. That's all he lives for.  It was a pretty healthy obsession until Saturday, when he ended up running head-first into a steel trailer hitch pretty much at full speed. Immediately after that he kinda stumbled around and even fell over a couple times, still looking for the ball. It sounds funny, but it wasn't. It was quite scary.

Of course, the local vet was closed for the weekend, so I had to drive for 45 minutes to an animal hospital in Post Falls. The good news was that Tucker was fine, and they gave him a prescription for an anti-inflammatory painkiller. Did you know they made meat-flavored anti-inflammatory painkillers? I didn't, but now I do.

When we came back home from the unexpected vet trip, the hills to the east of our house were on fire. I'm pretty sure it was a "controlled burn," as they had been planning one there for a while from what I'd heard. And the conditions were probably right because we had gotten a lot of rain recently, and it had been raining pretty much all day, aside from a brief break when Tucker decided to take a header into the trailer. But it was a bit unsettling to see big flames in the distance.

Once it got dark, we got a bunch of lightning, thunder, and hail. I can see hail, but lightning and thunder? At the end of a storm instead of the beginning? In late October? In North Idaho? Weird stuff.

I don't think Tucker appreciated the weather too much. He spent most of his time Saturday night cowering in the bedroom and sleeping off his headache. Poor guy.

And that brings me to Sunday.

Occupy News

I had planned on attending the Occupy Sandpoint general assembly meeting Sunday evening. It was the third meeting of the group, and I had attended the first two. The first one was great. About 50 people attended. We all stood outside in a big circle. We took turns introducing ourselves and talking about some of the issues we thought were important. It was great. It was full of energy. Ego was kept to a minimum. We agreed to get together the following week, this time at one of the local coffee houses.

So we did. I estimated there was probably about 100 people in attendance for the second one. It started out well. We watched this video, which is one of my favorites:



But from then on this meeting had a different feel than the first. The circle was gone, and in its place was a bunch of chairs facing an elevated stage. If you wanted to speak, you put your name on a list, and when your name was called, you went on stage and spoke through a microphone and amplified PA system. At one point, the mayor of Sandpoint decided she wanted to speak, and her name was moved to the top of the list.

I wasn't a fan of this system. I thought it was too hierarchical. I thought someone standing on a platform orating to a crowd was antithetical to the Occupy movement's ideal that no one should be considered more important than anyone else. I also thought having to stand on a platform and speak in front of an audience would be too intimidating for some people, and some voices would get left out.

While people were speaking, there were a few people in the audience who would occasionally interrupt, sometimes to support what was being said, but mostly to argue/debate with the speaker. It was frustrating.

The content being said by the speakers was also quite different than the first meeting. There was lots of talk about "freedom," but little talk about dwindling opportunities. Lots of talk about "government tyranny," but not much talk about corporate/Wall Street tyranny. One guy talked about the UN of all things, but no one talked about the WTO or the IMF. A woman talked about housing foreclosures, but no one talked about crippling student loan debt. As far as I know, I may have been the only one there with any student loan debt.

One guy was selling giving away right-wing libertarian DVDs (with a suggested donation to help cover the costs) and promoting InfoWars and Alex Jones conspiracy theory-nonsense websites. Another guy discussed "Second-Amendment remedies," and then took it further by saying (and I'm paraphrasing here because I can't remember his exact words, but I think I'm pretty close) that "We need to execute the criminals in DC." That doesn't exactly seem to jive with the spirit of nonviolence that the Occupy movement has been promoting, no? The suspicious side of me wondered if he was a plant trying to stir up shit to discredit us.

There was lots of talk about what people thought was wrong, and even what they thought we need to fix, but we never got around to planning an action.

At times I felt like I was at a Tea Party rally, or even a militia meeting, rather than an Occupy meeting.

The alpha-males dominated. Within a movement that was supposed to be leaderless, people were jockeying to lead.

I could tell many people in the audience were turned off by this. Some people voiced their disapproval. Some walked out. Some later made comments about it on Facebook.

To be clear: I don't blame the organizers for this. They did the best they could with what they were given. We're all learning here, and everyone is trying to make things better the way they know how. These are not professional organizers. They're regular people finding their voices and learning how to use them.

Still, there were certainly some encouraging moments. Many of the people who spoke had great ideas. Many reiterated a commitment to nonviolence. There seemed to be some real potential for the movement.

I wanted to speak, but I was flummoxed. I had thoughts, but they weren't yet organized. I'm not quick on my feet. I'm a processor. I need time to organize my thoughts, to stew on them, to write them down, to look at them from every angle.  Only then am I ready to speak.

When I was younger, I would react and speak without thinking. Usually I'd end up saying something stupid. Later, I would think back on it and wonder how I could be a reasonably intelligent person yet end up sounding like a blithering idiot. So I learned to shut my mouth and open my ears and let my thoughts ripen before sharing them.  It's served me well.

And I'm a writer. So during the week between Meeting #2 and Meeting #3, I did what I always do, which was to write down my thoughts. I formed the thoughts into words and sentences, and I organized them into something relatively coherent that I could share with the group. I wrote a lot--way more than I had originally planned. I basically ended up writing a speech, though that wasn't my intention initially.

There's a lot of ego that goes with writing. You really have to have a high opinion of yourself if you think other people would be interested in reading what you have to say. It's even worse with the spoken word. But I felt like I had a perspective that no one else did, and that what I had to say could contribute to the group, and maybe help steer it in a useful direction.

Still, there's a certain irony of trying to lead what's supposed to be a leaderless movement, even if the intention is to stave off other leadership. Over the years, I've tried to develop a "bullshit detector" (also known as critical thinking), and it's not confined to just other people. I use it on myself all the time, mainly to keep things real.

So when I thought about what I was going to say, my most critical side came out, and I found myself wondering what I hoped to accomplish.  Was I going to show up and give a big speech, and then suddenly the movement would go in the "right" direction, and once the revolution is over, the crowd will remember my speech, hoist me on their shoulders, and parade me around town singing, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"?

Bullshit detected.

Keeping one's ego out of it is an ongoing process, at least for me.  I tried to focus on the movement, and think about what it was.  That was what was important.  I tried to leave myself out of it.  And I thought what I had to say was important, but I realized it wasn't because of me since my ideas aren't terrible original in the first place.  They're just ideas I'd picked up from other sources, and those sources probably picked them up from other sources, and in the end it's the ideas that are important, not the people.  We just combine them with other ideas and transmit them to others.  That's what I was determined to do. 

So then it came time to head to Sandpoint to go to the meeting.
And I just couldn't do it.

After the weekend I'd had, I didn't have the energy, physically, emotionally, spiritually. I couldn't handle the idea of driving for 45 minutes (each way), for the third day in a row, to attend what was likely to be a contentious meeting. I didn't have the strength to assert myself and my point of view. I didn't have the patience to listen to and potentially work with people who held beliefs that aren't supported by facts, or that go against what I value. Since I'd dropped Cathy off at the airport two and a half days prior, the only people I'd interacted with in person was the owner of the Boxer at the dog park, the vet, and counter person at the animal hospital, and I'd had a couple of brief phone conversations. That was it. I just didn't have it in me to be around a large group of people, let alone speak in front of them.

And mainly I'm tired of arguing.  It's exhausting.

So I stayed home, even though I couldn't help feel that I was chickening out.  I had to give myself the same advice I often give Cathy, which was that I'm doing the best I can, and I shouldn't be so hard on myself (along with the requisite, "Heh-heh, you said, 'hard-on.'")  I played guitar in the basement and sang screamed for a couple hours. I drank probably more IPA than I should have. I felt better.

But I had this speech I'd written. I'd spent a lot of time on it. And since I missed the meeting, and I don't know what was discussed, it's probably obsolete. I still want to share it, though. Good old ego, I guess. So here it is, with a few links added in case you don't know what I'm talking about:

I want to start by saying that at last week’s meeting, I heard a couple of derisive comments about the Tea Party. I think it’s important to remember that the Tea Party started out as a legitimate protest against Wall Street bailouts that was quickly hijacked by pro-big business political interests, mainly the billionaire Koch brothers and their Astroturf group, “Americans for Prosperity.” The movement’s energy was then redirected into electing politicians to enact policies favorable to the Koch brothers themselves, as well as their Wall Street friends. I think we can learn from their mistakes and make sure this movement doesn’t get hijacked, too. I also think we should be reaching out to the Tea Party members, because we have a lot more in common with them than we do with politicians in DC and corporate CEOs.

I also think we should be careful not to fall victim to the false left/right dichotomy. I’m just as guilty of this type of thinking as anyone else, as it’s something that’s deeply ingrained in our culture, thanks in part to our two-party system and our corporate media. Framing the issues we face as if it’s a sporting contest of left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican plays well on TV and is designed to dumb down complicated, nuanced issues into something that’s easily consumable and can draw people away from reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. I think this sort of thinking is incredibly limiting, and it should be avoided it at all costs.

I think the language we use is important, because words illustrate our thoughts. One phrase I hear over and over again is “Wall Street greed.” To me, this makes it sound like the problem is simply a few greedy people on Wall Street, and if we could just fix that problem, everything would be fine. Nonsense. Imagine watching a basketball game on TV and hearing the announcers complain that Kobe Bryant was being greedy by scoring so many points by himself and not letting any of the other players have a chance. The reason you’d never hear this is because the goal of any basketball player is to score as many points as possible. Likewise, the goal of Wall Street is to make as much money as possible. Reforming Wall Street is not going to change that. Eliminating it will.

Another phrase we often hear is “The system is broken.” I respectfully disagree. It’s not broken. It works just fine at what it exists to do, which is to serve the people and organizations that have created it. It rewards the scumbags of the world and punishes people who do the “right thing.”

A recent study showed that 94% of the Congressional candidates who raised the most money won their elections. This means that any politician willing to shill for the wealthy has a huge advantage over someone determined to represent the working class. Once elected, those shills are then rewarded accordingly with congressional leadership committee positions, or if they lose, they’re offered lucrative lobbying positions, perpetuating the system. Poll after poll has shown that Americans hate negative ads during political campaigns, and yet politicians who use them almost always defeat politicians who don’t, which rewards unscrupulous politicians at the expense of ethical ones. The corporate advertising world has branched off into politics, and now candidates brand themselves based on demographics and what plays well in focus groups. A politician with principles doesn’t stand a chance.

The problem just isn’t in Washington, but also in the boardroom. A corporate CEO who lays off thousands of workers can give him or herself a fat bonus for “increasing productivity.” If a business moves its factories overseas to where workers are desperate and easy to exploit, its competitors face a choice of either doing the same or going out of business because they can’t compete. The businesses that have the least regard for its workers, its community, and the environment tend to be the most successful ones.

The marriage of business and government has produced a system where bank profits are privatized and losses are socialized, where unlimited corporate spending to influence elections is now considered protected speech but a group of people protesting in a public park is not, and where corporations have the same rights as people but hardly any of the responsibilities. The documentary, The Corporation, looked at the issue of corporate personhood by noting that corporations exist solely to accumulate profit, but if a person’s top motivation in life was to accumulate profit, he or she would be considered a sociopath.

The ideals we value as individuals are punished by the system. The ideals we despise as individuals are rewarded by the system. The system is not broken. It’s insane. There’s no fixing it. It needs to be ditched, and a brand new system needs to take its place. What that new system looks like is up to us.

I propose we do two things. First off, I think we need to have an action, whether it’s a one-time demonstration, a recurring demonstration, or an ongoing occupation. While these meetings have been a lot of fun and have been useful, I think we need to let the community know we exist. By making our presence known, we can also potentially bring in new members and grow as a movement. I think we should set this in motion tonight, since the longer we wait, the more difficulty we might have in getting people to show up now that it’s getting cold out.

Second, I propose we make a long-term goal of developing alternative systems. In our last meeting, people suggested a variety of issues for us to address, including tax code reform, lobbyist reform, ending the Fed, and many others. While I think these are all noble causes, I can’t help feeling this is focusing on the symptoms, not the problem. What all these have in common is they are all issues of power. If we can develop alternative systems so that members of our community no longer rely on these institutions, the institutions will no longer have their power over us. There were some great ideas proposed in the last meeting, including developing our own currency, engaging in barter, switching to a credit union or local bank, and shopping locally. I think these are a great start and more ideas should be explored further. Perhaps we could develop feasible solutions for the community at large. It’s probably not economically practical to expect someone who has been laid off and has a family to feed to shop at Six Rivers instead of Walmart, but perhaps we can create a listing where people in the community can trade their skills or talents for local products or services. Perhaps we can develop a food bank that uses only locally-sourced food. Perhaps we can develop community action networks to help people fight off foreclosures, or work with existing ones. I think the possibilities are endless.

In closing, I’m incredibly excited about this group’s potential. I think we have a great opportunity here. I know of no one who’s is happy with the way everything is in the world, in the country, and in their communities. So here’s our opportunity to make things better.

I probably would've also said "thanks" or something at the end.  Or waited for the crowd to hoist me on their shoulders and parade me around.  Or dodged the rotten tomatoes being thrown at me.  Who knows?

In Closing

I'm looking forward to a nice, mellow week.  I might even get a few things done around the house. Or not.

Now, here it is, your moment of Tucker deer stealing our apples:

Rob

Marco Rubio and I Discuss Social Security and Medicare

Hello everyone.

I'd planned on working on my book today instead of blogging, but then I stumbled across something that I thought deserved to be blogged about. So let's get right to it...

Politics

The something worth blogging about is this quote from the junior US senator from Florida, Marco Rubio:



In case you can't see the video and don't want to click on the above link, here's the quote:

"[Social Security and Medicare] actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job."

Let's dissect this one sentence at a time, shall we?  It will be like Senator Rubio and I are having a nice, reasonable back-and-forth discussion:

"[Social Security and Medicare] actually weakened us as a people."

Hmm. How does one define "weaken"? According to Think Progress:

"Prior to Medicare’s enactment in 1965, 'about one-half of America’s seniors did not have hospital insurance,' 'more than one in four elderly were estimated to go without medical care due to cost concerns,' and one in three seniors were living in poverty. Today, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care and only about 14 percent of seniors are below the poverty line."

I don't know. Maybe he's right. Maybe living in heated homes and not working has turned today's seniors into a bunch of weaklings, as opposed to the "good old days" when old people (who weren't wealthy) were tough because they were forced to work until they dropped dead, and if they could no longer work or work wasn't available, begging on the street corner out in the elements instead of relaxing indoors is what toughened them up.

"You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another."

Aren't Social Security and Medicare "institutions in society"?  "Social" and "society" even share the same root word, for crying out loud.

"If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them."

You sure did, and you still do today. That is, if you can afford to do so. If not, they're screwed. But I'm sure Marco Rubio will gladly tell you that's your fault.

"If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them."

How often does that really happen? I just can't see shelling out $50,000 to pay for my my neighbor's quadruple bypass surgery, even if I had enough money, though I'd probably pitch in five bucks (depending on which neighbor it was) if someone started a collection.  I guess the solution is to live somewhere where you have 10,000 neighbors willing to pitch in a few bucks apiece.

"You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to."

Everyone saves for their retirement every time they work and payroll taxes are taken out of their paychecks. In addition, my wife and I contributed to a 401k until we became self-employed. Unfortunately, we lost about half of it because Wall Street and the banks tanked the economy. I suppose that's my fault, as well.  I should've known back in 2005 that collaterized debt obligations were going to tank the economy, even though I'd never heard of them.  Personal responsibility, and all.

But more to the point, are we really supposed to believe people don't think they need to save for their future?  Perhaps the problem is not that Social Security and Medicare made people think they no longer need to save money, but that people simply don't have enough money to save, because most people aren't millionaire senators like Marco Rubio.

"We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues."

But if you're part of a poor (or shitty) community, family, home, church, or synagogue, then what?

"But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities."

Um, the government is not assuming squat. We each pay into Social Security and Medicare. It's our money, not the government's.  All the government has been doing is spending the surplus we used to have.

"All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job."

They problem is that we don't worry enough?  Great, let's get back to the "good old days" when people used to worry about how they'd support themselves when they were too old to work, or whether or not they'd be able to pay for that life-saving medical procedure.

Also, is he really trying to suggest no one worries about saving money anymore?  Maybe not people like Marco Rubio, who simply forms political committees, gets big contributions from rich people and corporations, and then uses the funds to pay his personal expenses--including government-backed student loans--instead of working for a living.

I guess that's what happens when you're a puppet for the wealthy.

In closing

As long as politicians keep making asinine comments like these, you can bet I'll be back soon.

Rob

Facebook Friends and Enemies of Enemies

Hello everyone.

I'm kinda glad the month of August is almost over. It's been in the 80s-90s every day this month, and while that might not seem too bad compared to what people in, say, Texas have been dealing with, we've had only one incredibly brief moment of rain in the past six weeks or so, when it sprinkled for all of three minutes. The rest has been nothing but sunshine. I love sunshine as much as the next person, probably even more so, but the problem is our well is beginning to dry up, and we've lost some of our garden crops as a result. It doesn't help that our neighbor waters his lawn pretty much every single day, and I'm sure he's pulling from the same aquifer we are. Thanks a lot, jackass.

I just want us to have a nice, big rainstorm for a day or two to recharge our water supply and give the plants a good drink, and then we can go back to the sunny weather. I guess I should get used to this as we continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere and the climate continues to change.

It's funny how whenever we get a big winter storm or cold-spell, you often hear inane phrases such as, "So much for global warming," but when Texas has summertime highs in the 100s for two months straight, you don't hear a peep about climate change. People can be really ignorant sometimes.

Rob Happenings

I've been on Facebook for the past five years or so, and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. On one hand, it's quite a time-waster, and it was a big part of the reason I took a hiatus from this blog. I felt Facebook gave me my Internet communication/interaction fix, even though I had to sift through a bunch of crap, such as people inviting me to join them in a game I had no intention of ever playing, or people talking about things I had absolutely no interest in, such as who got voted off American Idol, or what grades their kid got in school. On the other hand, Facebook has put me in touch with old friends, some that I haven't seen since elementary school, as well as putting me in touch with new friends I've never met in person, and overall I think that's pretty cool.

One thing Facebook does is offer "friend suggestions," which, for those of you not in the know, is a list of people Facebook suggests to "friend," meaning you can follow them and they you. Most of the friend suggestions are people who share mutual friends with you. Today, I looked at my friend suggestions and was amazed at the number of people on the list who I was once friends with, which meant that they "unfriended" me at some point.

These are almost all people from high school or before, which means they're people I haven't seen in at least 20 years or so, and my only contact with them has been on Facebook, never in person. So you'd think it wouldn't bother me that these people "unfriended" me, particularly since I generally don't care what people think about me in real life.  But I can't help it--it does bother me. I don't know if it's the nature of Facebook itself in that "friendships" or lack thereof are official and available for others to see, so if someone "unfriends" you, it means they made a conscious decision to do so, and it's hard to not take something like that personally.  Or maybe it's just that it tends to be people I knew from high school, and so whenever I'm confronted with evidence of being "unfriended," I find myself reverting back to my high school mentality, when the most important thing in the world was to be liked and accepted, even by people I might not necessarily like.

I really don't want to care, but I can't help it. It's all very strange to me.

And those who "unfriended me" pretty much across the board held political and/or religious views that were in opposition to my leftist, anti-authoritarian, atheist views, and some even debated me about articles or comments I'd posted. On Facebook I'm pretty open about and willing to express how I see things, so I can only assume my viewpoints and my willingness to share them was ultimately their reason for "unfriending" me. I don't understand this. How weak must a person's views be in the first place if he or she can't handle being exposed to differing ones?

Of course, some people think that discussing politics or religion in a public setting is considered rude and shouldn't be done, but I think that's a bunch of crap. These are issues that affect our lives, so of course we should talk about it.

What a great segue to the next section:

Politics

According to a leaked cable, Senator John McCain promised to help Muammar Gaddafi acquire US weapons when the two met a year ago at a meeting that also included Senators Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins.  A quote from the cable really stood out to me: "Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends."

Ugh. When are "our leaders" going to learn? Here's a (somewhat) brief history lesson of failed alliances based on common enemies:

During the 1950s, the people of Iran elected a guy named Mohammad Mosaddegh to be its first Prime Minister, and his government took over production of the country's oil. Up until that time the British essentially thought they had a right to pump the oil out of the ground and keep for themselves. In response to this the CIA staged a coup to overthrow the democratically-elected government and installed the Shah, a brutal dictator who imprisoned and tortured thousands of his political opponents during his almost 30 year reign. The Iranian people finally determined they'd had enough and ousted the Shah in 1979, kidnapping 52 Americans in the process.

The Reagan administration then sold weapons to the Iranians in exchange for a release of the hostages, and they then used the profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, who fought against the socialist Sandinistas by using tactics such as murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping.  Somehow I think there are better ways to win over the "hearts and minds" of the people you're supposedly trying to liberate.

Meanwhile, despite illegally selling them weapons, the Reagan administration didn't want the Iranians to get too powerful, so they armed their neighbor to keep them in check.  This neighbor?  Iraq, led by a guy you may have heard of named Saddam Hussein.  The two countries ended up fighting an eight-year-long war that left over a million dead.  Later the US ended up fighting Iraq in two separate wars that caused another million deaths.  

While all this was going on, we were nearing the end of the Cold War, thanks in part to the Soviets being stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan. The Soviets might have had an easier time if they hadn't been fighting the CIA-trained Mujahideen, which included a guy by the name of Osama bin Laden. I wonder what happened to that guy?

Also worth mentioning: Manuel Noriega worked for the CIA until he fell out of favor with the powers that be, and they determined our military needed to invade Panama and capture him in 1989.

And of course, there's Muammar Gaddafi, who was "an important ally in the war on terrorism" until last year, and is now being ousted by rebels supported by our military, and may even be dead by the time you read this.  Someone else will take his place in Libya, and if history is any indication, we'll probably end up going to war with them in a decade or two.

To the best of my knowledge, every war (or military skirmish not officially called a war) we've fought during my lifetime--and there have been plenty--has been against countries or groups we'd previously armed and/or supported, or else were directly caused by us arming and/or supporting someone.  It's all because we've had politicians who believed the mantra, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  Perhaps, a more appropriate mantra should be, "The enemy of my enemy will soon be my enemy, too."

Of course, a cynical conspiracy theorist would probably say all of this is no accident, that our government is arming our potential military rivals on purpose so we'll have to fight them later, and this is all a way to justify invading resource-rich countries and spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on our military.  I'm not ready to believe that yet, but then again, if some people are willing to kill a stranger for the $20 in their wallet, is it really a stretch to think someone might be willing to let strangers kill each other on the other side of the world to secure a billion dollar military contract?

In Closing 

Let's end on a positive note.  Here it is, your moment of Tucker:

Rob

Book Steps and Scary Rick Perry

Hello everyone

Well, I had been doing a good job at blogging every two days or so, but now it looks like it's been five days since my last post. Still, it's better than over two year long hiatus I took up until recently, so there.

Rob Happenings

There's not much to report on the Rob Happenings front.  I guess the biggest news is that I edited the first 50 51 pages of my book and sent it out to a few friends to look over, and maybe tell me what they think.  This may not seem like a big deal, but to me it is.  Only Cathy has seen what I've written up until now, so to have someone else, even friends, look over what I've been working on for over a year now is leaving me quite anxious.  I haven't yet heard anything back from any of them, which means they either think it's pretty awful and aren't saying anything, or they just haven't gotten around to looking at it yet.  I'm obviously hoping for the latter, and since it's only been a few days since I sent it out, that's probably the case.  Plus, Cathy said she thinks it's great, but then again she's my wife, and she's supposed to be supportive and all that.  So yeah, nerves.

I guess I should get used to it, though.  If all goes to plan, lots of people will end up reading what I wrote, and some will no doubt hate it, and that's how it goes.  As long as they pay full price for the book, I guess I won't care what they think.  That's not true, of course.  Any negative criticism will no doubt drive me up the wall, because that's how I am.  Oh well.

I'm considering posting the first few pages of the book here, on Rob Dow's World, but it's not yet ready for public consumption at this point.  A few friends, including ones with English degrees, reading it?  Sure.  The general public?  Not quite yet.  But it will probably happen soon, so stay tuned.

Politics

Unsurprisingly, Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided to run for president.  A while back, I had an online conversation/debate with someone over Sarah Palin, and the guy claimed that I was "scared" of Sarah Palin.  I had a hard time comprehending how that was supposed to be a compliment to Sarah Palin, but then I realized the other guy had a sports team mentality about politics.  His team was the Republicans, and he wrongly assumed I had the same mentality, and that my team was the Democrats.  To him, it was like a sports team drafting a good player, and the rival team being afraid of losing.  I've never understood that kind of thinking.  I don't give a shit which party wins--I just care about the policies they enact, and how they affect me.  If anything, my team is me and my family and friends and neighbors.  But I suppose in a way he was right, because the idea of a President Sarah Palin does scare the hell out of me.

I feel the same way about Rick Perry.  The more I learn about this guy, the more afraid I am of the idea of him being president.  I'm not sure what's worse--that 30,000 people attended his public prayer session, or that they were oblivious about being used by Perry to position himself in the media spotlight ahead of his presidential campaign announcement.  Meanwhile, 100,000 people showed up in a different part of town for free school supplies for their kids (the organizers expected 25,000), because the schools weren't able to provide them thanks in part to Mr. so-called Christian's policies of cutting funding to schools and programs designed to help poor people.

I'm also disturbed about how Perry embraces the anti-science movement.  Although I'm not a fan of the way this mom coached her son into asking questions, the real story here is how Perry responded, calling evolution "a theory that’s out there," despite the fact that evolution is not really a controversial subject within the scientific community, and we've even seen evolution take place in our lifetime. And yes, evolution is "just a theory," but so is gravity. In science, "theory" means "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena," as opposed to everyday usage of the word, meaning "a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation."  It bothers me that I have to even explain this distinction.  It should be something most people know, but that assumes we have a decent educational system, which of course we don't.  See my earlier comment about cutting education funding.

Speaking of education, Perry also has pushed abstinence-only sex education on Texas school kids, despite plenty of evidence it doesn't prevent teens from having sex and doesn't cut down on teen pregnancies.  When confronted with this evidence and the fact that Texas has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, Perry refused to admit reality and insisted that it worked, to the point that people in the audience were actually laughing at him.

Perry is portrayed as some sort of fiscal genius for "creating jobs" in Texas during a recession, but if you look at the fine print, you realize that jobs he supposedly created were almost all part-time minimum wage jobs (which Texas leads the nation in) with no health benefits, and that the while the job rate is growing, the population rate is growing even faster.

And do you like never-ending war?  Expect plenty of it with Rick Perry, not that the current president is much better in that regard.

Oh, and apparently he's got a complete messiah complex going on.

I could go on and on, and I just might in another post.  But for now, you get the idea.

And Now, a Musical Interlude

I'm usually not into music this poppy, but I can't get this Kings of Leon song out of my head, and so now you will have it stuck in yours.



Although, am I the only one who thinks the video is a kinda country-ized ripoff of this one? Probably.

In Closing

According to blogger, I've had over 1,000 page views this past month.  Of course, many of those are probably the same people, including myself, visiting this blog more than once.  Although I do appreciate the comments that people have left so far, I'd love to see more.  In fact, since I started blogging again, I've gotten more spam comments than real comments, and that's even including my own responses to other comments.  So don't be afraid.  Leave a comment.  It's just not fair if I have to do all the work, no?

Rob

I'm Still B-a-a-a-ck!

Hello everyone!

Look, another post! Yay me!

If you're one of the very few people who peruse this blog on a semi-regular basis, you may have noticed some changes recently. Aside from the fact that there have actually been new posts recently, I've also changed/updated the links to the right of your screen. But the biggest change is I'm now featuring ads. Yes, I've become a capitalist pig.

Actually, that's not true. I simply prefer eating to starving, so since the book I'm working on is nowhere near being ready for publishing at this time, well, like I said, I prefer eating to starving. But for those of you who really hate those ads, I'd be glad to remove them if you're willing to just send me money instead. And by send money, I mean real money, not some Nigerian bogus email scam, either.

The ad thing is interesting, though. It's one of those things where the more times people click on them, the more chance of me getting paid by them. The thing is, I'm prohibited from encouraging you to do such a thing, which totally makes sense because that would be fraud. So under no circumstances am I encouraging you to click on those ads, okay?

Moving on.

Personal

Part of the reason I'm writing is that I'm leaving tomorrow for Portland, and the Willamette Writer's Conference. I'm not sure what my schedule will be like (most likely, very full) and what sort of internet options I'll have, but it's likely I won't post again until, at the earliest, Monday evening when I get back. I point this out so that anyone who's reading this won't get it in their head I've already given up on blogging again. No way! I'm here to stay, whether you like it or not, because this is fun!

On a side note, to any tweakers who might be reading this and considering stealing our stuff while I'm gone, Cathy will still be here watching the house. And if that's not enough, our cute little guard dog, Tucker (pictured to the left) will be here, and if you get out of line, he'll bark and maybe lick you to death. So stay away!

Tucker came to live with us last December, and it seems like he's been a part of our household forever. Dogs rule!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the conference. It should be really informative and lots of fun.

Politics

The more I read about the "debt ceiling" deal, the more disappointed I am, though I can't say I'm surprised. If you haven't been following it, this Mother Jones article spells it out way better than I could or would care to do, even if I had all the free time in the world. But it basically boils down to this: our government requires a certain amount of money for all the things it does, and it gets that money through revenue, usually in the form of taxes. The taxes are paid by individuals who make a profit when they work (or if they own "investments" that pay off dividends, or if they sell them for a profit, etc.), as well as by corporations when they make profit from sales. The thing is, about 90% of all the revenue comes from individual taxes from working: either income or payroll, and about only 4% comes from businesses (the remaining 6% is ad valorem, which can be either personal or business). The reason why so little comes from businesses is because there are so many tax loopholes available to corporations.

The point is that the vast majority of money the government takes in to run itself comes from people working. And guess what? The unemployment rate has been the highest it has been since the Great Depression. Why is that? Well, let's take a history trip, shall we?

There was a time, not too long ago, when banks used to just lend people money to buy things, such as houses. The bank would hold the deed on the house until it was paid off, and that's how they made profit. It was a decent deal: the bank made money, and people were able to buy things without having to come up with a bunch of cash up front. But at some point the banks decided that wasn't enough anymore. So they lobbied Congress for deregulation, and soon they were able to keep merging until they were bigger and bigger, and there were fewer and fewer of them. But that still wasn't enough. So they decided they'd rather just sell their mortgages to investment firms, which paid off less, but gave them cash much sooner. This meant that they could lend to more often, and they would make more and more profit. They even wanted to loan to people who really couldn't afford to buy houses, so they created a scam program called a sub-prime mortgage, where at first the payments would be significantly lower, but then after a couple years the payments would go up, and this usually happened after the bank had sold the mortgage to some sucker investor down the line. The banks and mortgage companies became really good at hiding the higher payment amount in a bunch of legalese on the mortgage forms, and they often trained their mortgage officers to focus on the lower payment amount and downplay the later higher amount, sometimes to the point of engaging in fraud.

It used to be that banks didn't want to make loans that people might not be able to pay them off, because they'd lose money. But now that they were passing the mortgages on to someone else, it wasn't their problem, right?

But that became a problem as well because people generally aren't big on investing in risky mortgages. So some dipshits on Wall Street created a scam program that used a lot of fancy numbers and was really complicated, and it basically allowed them to take a bunch of those risky investments and slice them and dice them and bundle them with a few token good ones, and then give the whole thing a safe rating. Then they were able to sell the risky mortgages to people and to organizations as a "can't miss investment." Guess what pensions for cops, firefighters, and teachers all over the country ended up tied up in?

When the bottom inevitably fell out, as it did in 2007, the market crashed, and the banks supposedly had no more money to lend businesses. This meant rampant unemployment.

But don't worry! Congress gave those same scam artists hundreds of billions of our tax dollars after they extorted asked for it, and now Wall Street and the banks are doing just fine! Granted, unemployment is still rampant, and people are getting foreclosed on like crazy, even people who don't owe money on their homes? Not Wall Street or the banks' problem!

Anyway, because of all this tons of people aren't working, and this means less people are paying taxes, which means the government is taking in less money and has to borrow more to keep things running as they are. Congress every so often votes on the "debt ceiling," or how much the government is allowed to borrow.

Well, so recently it was time to vote on another increase. But some of the bipartisan morons geniuses in Washington wanted to make some changes to ensure they wouldn't have to vote on this again. So what did they decide to do?

1. Raise taxes on millionaires and the Wall Street fraudsters who were responsible for the mess we're in?
2. Make cuts to the military and/or insist we end the endless, pointless wars we're fighting (what are we up to, now, 5 countries? 6?)?
3. Do away with subsidies to corporations such as oil companies and go after corporate tax cheats?
4. Some combination of the above?
5. Cut funding for graduate school financial aid and form a super-secret committee to chop away at popular programs designed to help poor people?

If you answered 1, 2, 3, or 4, congratulations on being reasonable, but you're wrong. In fact, our government's so-called "spending crisis" was so out of control, Congress decided to remedy this by increasing military spending by $50 billion.

See, it's only a "spending crisis" if it goes toward programs designed to help poor people.

If you've been paying attention recently, you shouldn't be surprised about any of this. But you should be pissed off.

In Closing

As I noted earlier, I likely won't be blogging until sometime next week. See you then!

Rob

I'm B-a-a-a-ck!

Hello everyone!

Yes, I'm pulling this blog out of the mothballs. I'm not sure if anyone follows this anymore, but that wasn't really the point when I started doing this in the first place, so if I'm merely writing to myself, that will just have to do.

So it's been a long time, no? Let's bring you up to speed on what's been happening. In the interest of making this blog more accessible, I'm going to start subdividing it into sections such as "Personal", "Political", etc. That way you can feel free to skip on past stuff you might not be interested in.

Personal

Well, a lot has changed over the past two and a half years, and to be honest I had to go back and look to see what was going on when I last left off. I suppose I should start by explaining why I stopped blogging, but I don't really have a good reason. I just wasn't into it, I guess. And at first, it was no big deal--I just hadn't blogged for a while, but then weeks turned into months, and the idea of starting up again turned into a big ordeal (at least in my mind), so it just didn't happen. But I never stopped writing. More on that later. But then I realized I missed blogging, so I just figured I'd start up again, and I think it's going quite well so far, if I do say so myself.

So when we last left off, we were still in the Noughties (not counting the quick plug for Out There Photography), and I had just returned from a fun-filled trip to Maui and was convinced I caught the swine flu (remember that?), but it turned out I just had a regular old flu. I had also promised a big post about our trip, but this is where I'm going to have to officially break my promise. It's not that I don't want to talk about it--it's just that it's been almost two and a half years! I just don't remember all the details. But I can summarize it thusly: We flew to Maui. We stayed in a nice condo a short block from the ocean. We played in the water a lot. We went snorkeling. We drove the "Road to Hana" and explored the wet side of the island. We visited the Maui Brewing Company's pub and tried some of their delicious coconut porter. We had fun. What more do you need to know?

Moving on. So. A few weeks after we got back from Hawaii, our landlords decided to drop a bombshell and tell us they were going to renovate our place, so we needed to be out in 30 days. We had been living there for three years, and had no idea this was going to happen. Ah, the fun of being a renter. Anyway, we scrambled and found a place that seemed great at first: it was right in town so it was within walking distance of both Cathy's work and mine (at least mine for a while--more on that later), and close to a whole lot. Well, it turns out "close to stuff" has a few drawbacks when that stuff includes a homeless shelter/clinic and a university. We stayed there for about eight months (and accumulated lots of stories, which I'll share here in the future) before finding another place, this time still in a good location but farther away from drunken frat boys and homeless people.

Just to be clear: I'm not dissing homeless people. Most of the ones we encountered were no different from people who sleep indoors on a regular basis. But some of them were different, in a mentally ill way. So whenever we'd encounter a homeless person (which was often), we were never quite sure whether or not the person would be mentally ill, and thus unpredictable and possibly dangerous, and so that uncertainty was naturally a huge stress factor for us. When you can't relax in your own home, when you're not sure if the noise outside is someone digging through your recycling for bottles and cans to redeem or someone trying to figure out a way into your house, it's time to move.

So we did. And that place was good for a while, but then life happened, and we moved to Idaho, and that's where we're at now. More on that later.

Back to Eugene. I got a job at Lane Community College doing academic advising. I had been working there in various positions since 2005, and I became a student there in 2004, so it seemed more like a new position than a new job. The new position was great for a while. I loved the people in the department I worked for, and they treated me really well. I enjoyed working with the students, and I truly felt as if I was making a difference. People would come to me because they needed help, and I was usually able to help them, and when I couldn't, I could usually point them in the right direction. It was incredibly rewarding.

But it was also incredibly exhausting. My whole job was based on the concept of giving: I was giving advice, giving encouragement, giving information, and it often left me feeling drained at the end of the day. Add to that the fact that we were chronically understaffed--as is any publicly-funded institution these days--and students would have to sometimes wait hours to see me, which often pissed them off to no end (not that I blame them), so I sometimes felt like I was in a pressure-cooker. And I interacted with people all day long, to the point that I sometimes found myself hating being around people, even people I really liked.

But as I said, it was incredibly rewarding, so on balance I didn't really mind the negative aspects of the job itself. The problem was that it was part-time work, which meant no health insurance and pay that wasn't enough to support us. For a while that wasn't much of an issue, though, because Cathy's job had great insurance and paid enough that she could almost singlehandedly support us. However, she hated her job for a variety of reasons that I won't get into on a public blog, but because my job was part-time, with no health insurance, she felt obligated to continue on in a job she hated. And that sucked.

One bonus about my job being part-time was that it allowed me time to write, and although I wasn't writing for this blog, I did start work on a novel, which I'm still working on today. More on that later, as well.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, life happened, and Cathy's father passed away unexpectedly. He was the sole caregiver for Cathy's mom, who has dementia, and I'm sure the incredible amount stress of caring for her is what caused his heart attack. Apparently, this sort of thing is quite common. People who have dementia often outlive their partners, because the stress of caring for them is so debilitating. I've come to have an incredible amount of respect for anyone who works as a caregiver, especially the ones that work at the facility Cathy's mom is at. I know I couldn't do it.

So to make a long story short, Cathy quit her stupid job, and then we took a five week long trip around the southern part of the country (one of the perks of working part-time is you can take five weeks off, unpaid, of course), and did some soul-searching. When we came back to Oregon, we decided we didn't want to what we were doing anymore, so we packed up our stuff and headed up to North Idaho. The idea was we would use this opportunity to follow our dreams and shit like that. Cathy is doing the Out There Photography gig (with my help), and I'm doing the writing thing (with her help).

It's definitely a change of pace. Here we have a nice house on ten acres that Cathy grew up on, and we're near Cathy's mom, and all that good stuff. Cathy and I first met when we were both living and working in Sandpoint in North Idaho, so it's not exactly a new experience for us, but now we're about 45 minutes away from Sandpoint, and a lot more rural than before.

I've got to say that taking care of ten acres is hard work! But I like it, though. We've got a big garden, and you can't beat the taste of vegetables and herbs that you grew yourself. We just picked a couple of gallons of service berries right from our property. I hadn't ever even heard of them before we moved here, but it turns out they're pretty tasty.

On the homebrewing front, I now have a dedicated beer fridge and a kegging system, which means no more cleaning bottles!

And as I said, I'm writing a novel. I've tried writing before, and it was hard to keep it going. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to write a book while I was in school. But now I'm doing it for real, and it's going well. I've got about 30,000 words written, or 90 pages of MS Word in double spaced, 12 pt font, and the ideas keep coming, so yay me! I know how the story is going to end, and I have a pretty good idea of what's going to lead up to the end, so it's just a matter of getting it down on e-paper now. When I come across something interesting, I usually find myself wondering how I could incorporate it into the book. It's a different sort of state of mind for me...

But I've become a fan of self-sufficiency, and that's a lot of what this move represents. And it's hard to leave family and friends, but we still see them from time to time, and we have other family as well as old and new friends up here. And of course we stay in touch on the innerwebs.

I'm rambling as I sometimes do. But isn't that what blogging is all about?

Anyway, that's the gist of the personal stuff. There's still a lot of blanks to be filled in, but that will probably happen in future blog postings.

Political

I kinda used up all my writing fuel in the personal section (in my defense, I was covering two and a half event-filled years), so this will be brief. I will say that the whole "debt ceiling debate" was an absolute farce. It's just another manufactured crisis to justify dismantling programs designed to help the poor and middle-class. When these programs inevitably go away, it will be interesting to see what happens. I'm afraid we're in for a rough ride in the near future, which is why I've been big on the whole self-sufficiency thing lately.

In Closing

Well, this has been fun. I just might have to do it again soon. In the meantime, I plan on cleaning up the blog a bit over the next few weeks, adjusting some of the links, getting rid of old/broken ones and replacing them with new ones, and maybe changing the colors and/or style. Or maybe I'll just leave it as is. Who knows?

Anyway, see you again soon!

Rob