Election Eve Reflections

I voted yesterday. It took two trips and two hours, but we did it. I had my elderly and infirm mother who had refused an absentee ballot, because voting had never been a test of physical endurance before, along. When we pulled up to the polling place on Saturday, the wait was 45 minutes. We tried the line for a while but then decided to try on Sunday. On Sunday we, along with hundreds of others, opened up the polling place. This time, however, we were prepared. With the expedient of a folding seat cane, she weathered the crowd, the heat, and the multi hour wait. After it was all over, she pulled me aside and said, "You know why I did this? Because it was so close. Otherwise I wouldn't have waited." I don't think I could have been prouder of her.

The hubster, of course, was another story. Decades ago, as nearly newlyweds, we took a grand tour of Europe. We started out in London, then took a train to Folkstone where we boarded a ferry to Calais. Obviously, this was before the Chunnel. All was fine, except that there was nowhere to stow our bags under lock and key, necessitating that we, as New Yorkers, keep our eyes on the luggage. Using one excuse or another, the hub managed to find a pretext to leave. Thus, I spent the whole trip chained to one spot. Little did I know at the time, but I have been minding the luggage ever since. So yesterday, true to form, he kept ducking off the line to have a cigarette, leaving me immured in that wall of humanity. I forgave him, because he is pathologically sensitive to crowds, but only just.

So as I was inching along, husband flown, mother semi-conscious, I had ample opportunity to entertain myself by watching the masses. First, I played "the who are they voting for" game. Some were obvious New College hippie types. As my daughter once described it, "Mom, they don't wear shoes there!" Obvious Obama voters. But after that, it was hard to tell. Except that as the wait dragged on, by dint of eavesdropping on their whispered conversation, I gleaned that the two separate voters in front of me were in the McCain camp. There was a sense of urgency to their desire to vote, as if like the candidate they did not believe all was lost. One confided to the other that many of her Democrat friend were voting for McCain. That is anecdotal. Other than that I could not tell.

No one discussed politics. No one jostled in line. Other people's children were indulged; other people's elderly, cosseted. It's as if we all understood that although we might differ mightily on politics, we respected the right of each and every one of us to our own perspective. We were united as Americans in an orderly, venerable tradition of expressing our wishes via the ballot box. America, great country! So if Obama wins tomorrow, I will give him a fair shot. We always seem to get the leader we need. And as my brave mother says, "No hay mal, que por bien no venga." There is no evil that does not result in good, indeed!

Children's Reading Day in Sarasota: A Public Service Announcement

This comment was left on a post about the Sarasota Reading Festival. The Friends of the Selby Library and The Children's Garden has put together a reading fest for children!

To all those Sarasota folks, our Children's Garden is taking charge of a Children's Reading Day! Free admission, illustrators, authors, vendors, etc. Nov. 23 10a-5p. www.childrensreadingday.org

You, go!

Don't Say We Weren't Warned

Melek makes a reasoned and empassioned plea in Cubanology, asking the most basic of questions: "What has happened to our standards for Commander in Chief?" Not long ago, Dick Morris made the point that because of his associations, Obama were he not the elected official would not pass an FBI investigation to serve in the White House. But all of that is prelude.

On Tuesday, the American people may well elect a candidate because they desire a change in the policies of the past 8 years and instead get a president who has sworn to "fundamentally change" the United States. How many know that with a Democrat supermajority in congress, they are offerring a "carte blanche" to a transformation of government as we know it? When the inevitable rude awakening comes, they can not pretend they were not warned. Obama, although cloaked in the language of moderation and wearing the breastplate of media collusion, has provided enough clues to his vision of America.

Obama's America is not a nation where even the poor are considerably better off than they are almost anywhere else on Earth, where it is possible by dint of ability, hard work, and a little help to go from Chicago's South Side to its Hyde Park. It is a nation replete with misery and suffering. A nation crying out for economic redistribution, where wealth is going to "trickle up."

It gets worse. The Constitution is a "flawed" document. This I can partially understand, as this same qualified a slave as three fifths of a man. But the framers of this document were prescient enough to produce what has served as the backbone of a free and prosperous people for centuries. (How many Republics did it take France?) Messr. Obama complains that the founding fathers concentrated on negative liberties. Well, I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but as a Cuban American, it seems to me that there is something to be said for limiting the powers of government, any government, be it ever so well intentioned.

But even if we grant him the point, on what ground does he presume to attempt an end run around a document that most Americans consider sacrosanct? Is it only his own vision that he relies on? And what informs that vision? Here is where the these influences and associations become particularly troublesome. With the lack of any real record, it is difficult to say what exactly inhabits his dreams. Therein lies the crux of the problem.

So what can be gleaned from the subtext of all that he has said? He wants to "spread the wealth" and "fundamentally change" the country and the world. He would meet as equals with the most despised of totalitarian rulers, and Jesse Jackson assures us disregard the "Zionists." Regime officials in Cuba are already bruiting it about that the embargo will be lifted. Doubtless, in each instance, it will all seem terribly reasonable. Despite the rationale behind the prohibition of using the armed forces in the country, he proposes a civilian armed force within its borders. He pins energy policy on what are at the moment pipe dreams, technology that will take decades to mature and would destroy whole industries, seemingly without a qualm; seeks to raise taxes in the midst of a major economic downturn, characterizing as "selfish" those who would like to keep more than thirty percent of what they earn (factor in payroll, state, and local taxes); and looks down upon those who "cling" to their guns and their God; a man who punishes the few intrepid souls in the media who have the audacity to ask difficult questions or endorse the other candidate and mocks the dreams of a humble plumber for the same.

Make no mistake about it: this is a fight over the soul of America. I cannot help but think that a vote for Obama is a vote to change those values of independence, self-reliance, and self-determination that made this country and its people great. Now unlike my more liberal brethren, I believe that you are entitled to your own opinions. I further believe that two people may differ for valid reasons. I also acknowledge that I may be wrong. A President Obama may go down in the annals of history as another Lincoln. I hope I am. I do know, however, that in Greek tragedy, the Gods always punish hubris. I pray that we may not wind up as the chorus, witness and victim to the downfall of greatness.

Sunday Seasons Pass

Cross Currents. Should the seemingly unthinkable occur and the Grand Obamameister go down flaming in defeat, there will be many to ascribe it to the "Bradley Effect." However, as Wynton Hall reminds us here, there is such a thing as the "Spiral of Silence." Basically, people just want to be cool, making the secret Union ballot all the more important.

***

Escaping Gas. Read this in a variety of places, but this article lays it out clearly. Scientists are somewhat baffled by the seemingly spontaneous generation of methane. Upshot, while there is no denying that man's activities must have an impact, there are natural processes at work here. Speaking of which, snow in October?

H/T George

***

Melting Ice. Iceland, that is. In the midst of our own financial chaos and election year hubbub, the story of Iceland's near collapse has gone little noticed. I was curious, however. This entry from The Weekly Standard delves into how one government's response nearly brought down a country and became a self-perpetuating rationale for a government takeover. Food for thought.

***

Trembling Earth. From Fox News, we have the possible discovery of King Solomon's mines, the real ones. Forget Stewart Granger and Patrick Swayze. The mines, located in Jordan, were also a source of copper, not gold and diamonds. Another wonderful myth bites the dust.

***

Falling Temperatures. Six months after being launched, the Hard Rock Park, a rock-roll themed amusement venue is for sale. They ain't bringin' in the bucks. Management blames the economy, I like to think nobody but the boomers think them all that "groovy," and the boomers at their advanced age risk whiplash riding the "Life in the Fast Lane" roller coaster. Story here.

Thought for the Day: A Query

How many of those voting for Obama realize that they are voting to "fundamentally transform" America?

I'll let Hugh Hewitt comment:

When Obama declared last night that it was five days until he "fundamentally transformed" America, he let slip just as candid a moment as when he told Joe about his plans to "spread the wealth," and as when Joe Biden told us to "Mark my words."

Meanderings: Spare My Feelings, Please

I'm standing on line for coffee at me local bookstore, when I hear the velvet tones of the "One" issuing from a cell phone behind me. It wasn't difficult to figure out the story, as OB had been in town the previous day. Apparently, Mom and/or Deb had been at the rally with the trusty cell phone and were now in the midst of reviewing their cinematography. They were so thrilled that it did not occur to them that someone, me, standing within earshot might not feel the same way. I turned and took in the duo, both tall, blond and somewhat horsey. From Mom's striped tailored shirt to her pressed khakis to her modish loafers, her appearance spoke money. A**, I thought to my self, you're the one that's gonna pay not me. Enjoy it. I couldn't decide if it was real money, in which case she could afford to donate to her favorite politician in the form of increased taxes. I suspected it was wannabe. Wonder how she's gonna feel in a few years.

Henry over at Babalu has been quoted as saying that he has been interested in politics since he was five. Some have mocked him. I understand. In Cuban American households, politics is the mother's milk of discussion. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my father's lap with the Daily News in front of us. I just focused on the pictures, as I did the evening my uncle was forcefully kidnapped from Anguilla Cay, causing an international incident.

The point is that as a voracious reader and watcher of news, I find myself at loose ends. To describe the loathsome transformation that has overtaken the media as bias is the mother of all understatements. There is no limit to the scurrilous, the mean, the petty when it comes to this election. I've been giving Newsweek and Time a wide berth for some time now. Just reading the table of contents is repulsive. I don't read the tabloids. And I made the mistake of picking up Harper's the other day, figuring I would read the nonpolitical stories. I never made it past the editor's letter in which the most civil description of John McCain was that he was "senile."

I have been reduced to watching Fox and only Fox News these days. Their evening line up has been incredible recently. On the web, I float between Babalu and Drudge with the occasional visit to Townhall or NRO. Although reassured that there are still those who have not become pod people, I am saddened. This is not what I want.

I don't read or watch to have my opinions reinforced; I read and watch to learn about people, events, places to which I have no access. I learn to form my own judgements. And I am old enough to remember a time when I was a loyal subscriber of Newsweek, when I could even read the New York Times, the paper with a record at this point. Although to be perfectly frank, I only read the Sunday edition. The layout has always sucked. They no longer write for me. By becoming shills for the Obama campaign, they have lost a reader. Maybe, they don't care. Maybe they only want Democrat readers. Have the business brains given a thought to the effect on diminishing circulation? As it is, some of them already look like circulars.

I have been so turned off by the flouting of journalistic ethics, the patronizing ethos that I am so stupid that I must be instructed by those who never broke a sweat in their lives on whom to vote for president. It is beyond repulsive. I don't know who will win this election. However, it is the press that has lost; and in losing the press, the country has lost. How the mass of citizenry is to make educated decisions is beyond me.

Today's Quote

Goes to the Governator:

"John McCain served longer in a POW camp than his opponent has in the United States Senate"

In the Cuba News: All Embargo All the Time

As we all know the yearly ritual of the UN vote against the embargo ended in the same result. This year, though, Perez Roque was particularly impassioned as he waxed eloquent, pointing out that the embargo is older than Obama. Also older than Obama is the oppression of the Cuban people by the Cuban Capos not mentioned by the same Perez Roque nor condemned by the UN. But that's nothing new.

Today's headlines, however, present an interesting proposition. Not content with the UN results, the "Latin American Leaders" at the IberoAmerican Summit in San Salvador on Friday also urged the repeal of the embargo because it hurts the Cuban people. Frankly, their concern for the wellbeing of the Cuban people has been less inspiring than conspiring.

On the very same page is a story about the Cuban regime owing Sherritt $393 million. Prospect of repayment looks shaky, although the debt will be "restructured." Sure is a lot of that restructuring going around. Sherritt is a familiar name here. As the story indicates in something of an understatement, Sherritt International is one of the "pioneers of foreign investment" in the country. Recently, they were in the headlines when they pulled out of a deal to develop Cuba's purportedly boundless offshore oil deposits.

Connect the dots. As at least one presidential candidate knows, it sure is easy to give away other people's money.

Thought for the Day: A Query

LAPD Commissioner Bratton has endorsed Obama. When I worked for the government, we were not allowed to publicly support any candidate, even to the extent of bumper stickers, although the liberals invariably flouted that one. I used to joke about our lack of rights. So how come he gets to endorse Obama? I am presuming that the people who pay his salary include Republicans among their number.

The Barackomercial

I confess I watched the beginning. The hubster- with the fascination of the train wreck- insisted. I on the other hand make it a policy not to place myself in the sway of the Chicago Svengali, preferring to read his pronouncements, lest I get infected. Anyhow, I made it through the beginning in the heartland deco study and the first two stories before an impending fit of apoplexy made me race to the computer and the solace of the Babalu radio show.

Now, I don't want to seem heartless, but I am always suspicious of these hard luck cases. To wit, I'm thinking to myself that the first family whose distress was touted was maybe in no position to buy a suburban home. "But they have four children," the hubster remonstrates. "Yeah, and...," I reply. He was speaking to someone whose bed was the sofa of a three room rental apartment until we could actually afford the house in the suburbs. "And what about the vehicle?" I ask. Something tells me that's a 30 something thousand Ford SUV or mini van. I mean no disrespect, but life is full of hard choices.

Then there were the poor old folks who had their home paid off and were struggling to pay her medical bills. Now with an elderly and infirm geriatric relative in the family, this is something I know much of. I know how prescription drug costs can kill an entire lifetime's worth of work. I also know other things. For instance, joining a Medicare HMO or PPO basically renders most medicine free or cheap and cushions the donut hole. By the way, please remember that the Democrats voted against the Medicare prescription bill because it wasn't Good Enough! In the meantime, senior citizens watched their resources dwindle or had to decide between food or medicine. Back to the infomercial, even if these nice folk live in an area where one is not available, they can contact the drug companies who have very good programs for the economically challenged patient. Remember those commercials? Well, they're true. And if all you have is your home, there is always Medicaid. I hope that other than make hay of their distress, the Obama camp put these nice people in touch with resources. There is much that needs reform, but programs to help these people exist.

By that point, I took off, so I didn't see the others. I had expected to see people starving because they didn't have the resources, people trapped in areas with failing schools. What I saw were people who had other choices to improve their lives, whether they knew about them or not.

Over Hill and Tale

The ending of this article which posits San Juan Hill as emblematic of US-Cuba relations could have been written by the regime. Oh, wait, it probably was, at least indirectly. I'll dispense with the usual explanations, except to say that the comparison is oversimiplified and not quite accurate. Still, there is truth there, particularly the notion that the perspective of American History is different than that of even preCastro Cuba.

Like many of my generation, the Cuban history I know is a mix of American textbooks, familial retelling, and research. That's why the earliest chapters of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten which focus on the family and its ties to Santiago proves valuable. Mr. Gjelten attempts to convey the Cuban view of the American intervention and its results within the context of telling the story of los Bacardi. Doubtless a delight for students of history and Bacardiphiles, I've been unable to finish it in the one week time frame decreed by my local public library, even with fines. Still from what I've managed to read in the interim, it strikes me as an important book.

Translation: I can't vouch for his treatment of the brothers Castro. I leave you with this excerpt from the author's website:

Over many tellings, the Cuba story has hardened around a few stale themes—Havana in its debauched heyday or Fidel Castro and his dour revolution—and it has lost much of its vitality and wholeness. This book originated in my search for a new narrative, with new Cuban characters and a plot that does justice to this island that produced the conga line and “Guantanamera” as well as Che Guevara’s five-year-plans. I have tried to give a nuanced view of the nation’s experience over the last century and a half. Cuban history was not preordained. There were choices made and paths not taken, and the men and women who were excluded and then exiled deserve to have their contributions recognized, if only to understand why so many became so angry. The Bacardi saga serves all these purposes.


The New York Times reviewed it here.

Tony Hillerman: RIP

For me, the best writers are not necessarily those who make profound statements about the nature of life. I've lived long enough to forgo any instruction on the topic. The most enjoyable writers are those who create a microcosm, their own small world in addition to vibrant characters.


Tony Hillerman was just such an author. It was Hillerman who introduced me to the Four Corners region in the Southwest. What little I know of Navajo customs, crafts, and politics, I learned from his mysteries. Over the years, I have followed the career of his Joe Leaphorn through his wife's illness and death, through retirement, and any number of solved cases; as I have followed Jim Chee, a young man wrestling with his identity, torn between his heritage and the modern world.

Invariably Hillerman's books were well-plotted; his characters rich; and his setting, alive. If you like mysteries and haven't read one, treat yourself one Friday afternoon. As for me, I have lost some friends. Rest in Peace.

Thought for the Day

Brent Crude hit $59.00 a barrel today. Does that mean global oil consumption has fallen to less than half? So much for speculators not being a major driver of meteoric oil prices.

Today's Absolutely Must Read

If you have not listened to the audio of the quote below, you really must do it. Just click on the headline at Drudge. It's not just one quote. I have repeatedly maintained that there is a difference between reform and reformation, and I don't think Americans are signing on for juryrigging the Constitution. In this column, Bill Whittle zeroes in on what is so terribly wrong in this election in three "circles of shame," each with at least one quotable quote:

On Obama's philosophy as explained in the audio-
We have, in our storied history, elected Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives and moderates. We have fought, and will continue to fight, pitched battles about how best to govern this nation. But we have never, ever in our 232-year history, elected a president who so completely and openly opposed the idea of limited government, the absolute cornerstone of makes the United States of America unique and exceptional.

On the discovery of the audio by a citizen-
I do not blame Barack Obama for believing in wealth distribution. That’s his right as an American. I do blame him for lying about what he believes. But his entire life has been applying for the next job at the expense of the current one. He’s at the end of the line now.

I do, however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: It only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation.

On the repercussions of the audio-
This discovery will hurt Obama much more than Joe the Plumber.

What will be left of my friend, and my friend’s family, I wonder, when the press is finished with them?

Quote of the Day: This is What They are about to Elect

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Barack Obama in a 2001 radio call-in interview. Boldface mine.
Borrowed from post on MichelleMalkin.com

Sunday Through the Ages

Over the Hill. On Foxnews, we learn that middle-aged white women are driving up the suicide rate. Cause is as yet unknown. I have an idea that it may have to do with our appearance-driven, youth-venerating society compounding hormonal changes. But, heck, what do I know? Article here.

At the Top. On a brighter note, Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker builds an examination of late bloomers around the story of writer Ben Fountain. A "late bloomer," his recognition came at age 48 after 18 years of trying. With repeated references to Cezanne as well as Fountain, Gladwell makes the point that late bloomers rely heavily for funds and support on those around them. So that's it. He says a lot more, so read it if you're in a New Yorker mood.

Out of the Past. A biologist at the Grand Canyon has lost his life to plague, apparently the same one that wiped out a goodly portion of the European population in the Middle Ages. The means of transmission is thought to be from rodent to mountain lion to biologist, who seems to have contracted the disease while autopsying the cat. Just in case you thought the plague was eradicated. Read all about it here.

By the Numbers. In honor of our financial meltdown, I offer, courtesy of Fox Business News, what not do with the "10 Dumbest Ways to Go into Debt." And finally, to finish off on a high note, I present the RealClearSports' "10 Most Infamous World Series Moments." Go, Rays, go! (They are still playing, aren't they?)

Special Sunday Morning Election Edition

Class Warfare. Try this somewhat withering piece by Sam Schulman on why the Bill Ayers association has been so summarily dismissed. It does make sense. After all, it is mind-boggling that these two unrepentant types have been absorbed seamlessly into the upper echelons of the Chicago mainstream machine.

The Politics of Diversity. Class is just part of the reason Joe has been so savaged, as Carl Platt Liebau makes clear here. Joe- to the Democrats and the left- is incomprehensible. As she sees it, just as Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin served as exemplars that nanny state philosophy is not the only valid one for African Americans and women and had to be destroyed, Joe presented a working man who wanted to make his own decisions. How dare he! The audacity!

Education Policy. I never thought I'd live to see the day. It is a horrendously sad state of affairs, when I have to link to Phyllis Schlafly, not because I think that Ayers will be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, but because this is the only bit I have found that concentrates on the effect Bill Ayers is having now. He is an irrelevancy and a wannabe. When confronted by O'Reilly's show, he demanded his private property rights and called the "pigs." His effect on young minds who don't know he is a poseur is an altogether different matter. He is more dangerous now that he ever was with his half-assed bomb making. Read it.

Market Economy. In my experience during election years, the market tends to run inversely proportional to the fortunes of the Democrat candidate. This year with all of the mayhem, it was hard to spot. Still, lately I was "suspicioning" that the market was reacting to the polls. Then here comes Charlie Gasparino on the first page of the NY Post. Those of us who follow the market know Gasparino as an ace financial reporter. Particularly scary in this article is the contention that Obama's ideology is trumping the advice of his own supporters. Savvy investors seem to be voting with their feet.

Next Election. Michael Medved here taps into my greatest fears about an Obama presidency, namely that much of the damage will be irreversible. As he phrases it, presidents may come and go, but "entitlements go on forever." His is not reform but re-formation. Read the column.

Come back for the regular Sunday edition later.

Literary Interlude: My Wood

And now I am myself again. How about something calming? Earlier this week, I posted on the "entitlement generation." Much of this campaign has been about economics, so I thought you might enjoy this one about the effects of property on the character.

My Wood

A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt in part with the difficulties of the English in India. Feeling that they would have had no difficulties in India themselves, the Americans read the book freely. The more they read it the better it made them feel, and a cheque to the author was the result. I bought a wood with the cheque. It is not a large wood--it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? Don't let's touch economics; the effect of private ownership upon the community as a whole is another question--a more important question, perhaps, but another one. Let's keep to psychology. If you own things, what's their effect on you? What's the effect on me of my wood?

In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property produces men of weight, and it was a man of weight who failed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. He was not wicked, that unfortunate millionaire in the parable, he was only stout; he he struck out in front, not to mention behind, and as he wedged himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flanks, he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle and being woven into the robe of God. The Gospels all through couple stoutness and slowness. They point out what is perfectly obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, that furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps, and the whole tangle of them makes you think twice before you accept an invitation to dinner or go for a bathe in the Jordan. Sometimes the Gospels proceed further and say with Tolsoty that property is sinful; they approach the difficult ground of asceticism here, where I cannot follow them. But as to the immediate effects of property on people, they just show straightforward logic. It produces men of weight. Men of weight cannot, by definition, move like the lightning from the East unto the West, and the ascent of a fourteen-stone bishop into a pulpit is thus the exact antithesis of the coming of the Son of Man. My wood makes me feel heavy.

In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.

The other day I heard a twig snap in it. I was annoyed at first, for I thought that someone was blackberrying, and depreciating the value of the undergrowth. On coming nearer, I saw it was not a man who had trodden on the twig and snapped it, but a bird, and I felt pleased. My bird. The bird was not equally pleased. Ignoring the relation between us, it took fright as soon as it saw the shape of my face, and flew straight over the boundary hedge into a field, the property of Mrs. Henessy, where it sat down with a loud squawk. It had become Mrs. Henessy's bird. Something seemed grossly amiss here, something that would not have occurred had the wood been larger. I could not afford to buy Mrs. Henessy out, I dared not murder her, and limitations of this sort beset me on every side. Ahab did not want that vineyard--he only needed it to round off his property, preparatory to plotting a new curve--and all the land around my wood has become necessary to me in order to round off the wood. A boundary protects. But--poor little thing--the boundary ought in its turn to be protected. Noises on the edge of it. Children throw stones. A little more, and then a little more, until we reach the sea. Happy Canute! Happier Alexander! And after all, why should even the world be the limit of possession? A rocket containing a Union Jack, will, it is hoped, be shortly fired at the moon. Mars. Sirius. Beyond which . . . . But these immensities ended by saddening me. I could not suppose that my wood was the destined nucleus of universal dominion--it is so very small and contains no mineral wealth beyond the blackberries. Nor was I comforted when Mrs. Henessy's bird took alarm for the second time and flew clean away from us all, under the belief that it belonged to itself.

In the third place, property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it. Yet he isn't sure what. A restlessness comes over him, a vague sense that he has a personality to express-- the same sense which, without any vagueness, leads the artist to an act of creation. Sometimes I think I will cut down such trees as remain in the wood, at other times I want to fill up the gaps between them with new trees. Both impulses are pretentious an empty. They are not honest movements towards money-making or beauty. They spring from a foolish desire to express myself and from an inability to enjoy what I have got. Creation, property, enjoyment form a sinister trinity in the human mind. Creation and enjoyment are both very, very good, yet they are often unattainable without a material basis, and at such moments property pushes itself in as a substitute, saying, "Accept me instead--I'm good enough for all there." It is not enough. It is, as Shakespeare said of lust, "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame": it is "Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." Yet we don't know how to shun it. It is forced on us by our economic system as the alternative to starvation. It is also forced on us by an internal defect in the soul, by the feeling that in property may lie the germs of self-development and of exquisite or heroic deeds. Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are sill entangled with the desire for ownership, where (in the words of Dante) "Possession is one with loss."

And this brings us to our fourth and final point: the blackberries.

Blackberries are not plentiful in this meager grove, but they are easily seen from the public footpath which traverses it, and all too easily gathered. Foxgloves, too--people will pull up the foxgloves, and ladies of an educational tendency even grub for toadstools to show them on the Monday in class. Other ladies, less educated, roll down the bracken in the arms of their gentlemen friends. There is paper, there are tins. Pray, does my wood belong to me or doesn't it? And, if it does, should I not own it best by allowing no one else to walk there? There is a wood near Lyme Regis, also cursed by a public footpath, where the owner has not hesitated on this point. He has built high stone walls each side of the path, and has spanned it by bridges, so that the public circulate like termites while he gorges on the blackberries unseen. He really does own his wood, this able chap. Dives in Hell did pretty well, but the gulf dividing him from Lazarus could be traversed by vision, and nothing traverses it here. And perhaps I shall come to this in time. I shall wall in and fence out until I really taste the sweets of property. Enormously stout, endlessly avaricious, pseudo-creative, intensely selfish, I shall weave upon my forehead the quadruple crown of possession until those nasty Bolshies come and take it off again and thrust me aside into the outer darkness.

EM Forster

Shame on the New York Times

The old gray lady has finally come out of the closet, although her ample rump has been peeking out of the garderobe for quite a while now. The New York Times has made it official by endorsing Obama in an editorial liberally laced with oil of vitriol. For added emphasis, the endorsement was not on the editorial page but on page 1.

That Obama is the chosen one is fine by me. I would expect no less. But I am fed up with mealy-mouthed individuals and entities donning the cloak of self-righteousness to complain about McCain's "negative campaigning." If the media, starting with the Times itself had been doing its job vetting the candidate, had they made clear to the public what all of BO's rhetorical flourishes meant, the McCain campaign would not have been forced to do it. But they have all fallen in love with the candidate. Had Senator McCain been as unscrupulous as they are accusing him of being, he could have made great hay out of the Rev. Wright angle.

Where is the indignation and the outrage at all of the "code words" for old the Obama camp has been hurling McCain's way or the sneers directed at "Joe the Plumber" by the same? And to scathingly dismiss Palin as completely unfit for the office, at the same time they endorse a man without a single qualification other than his ability to campaign reeks of the whited sepulchre.

What makes me see red, however, is the treatment they have ladled on Senator McCain, a man who has done more for this country than the entire lot of them at the New York Times, and to do so in the service of a man who has spent his whole life seeking out those who hate this country even as he was availing himself of everything it had to offer, who has not one legislative achievement on his record is vile. They are the dirty ones.

Journalism Lite

Today's absolute must read comes from Orson Scott Card, very well-known for such sci-fi classics as Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. In a column decrying the lack of honesty on the part of the media, he demonstrates the political fallout of media inaccuracy and selectivity. Its hard to find an excerpt; the whole thing is so on target:

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.