Faith Without Values

Faith Without Values – Horror at the Convalescent Facility

When I fell in the gutter on June 27th (this is the second time I have chosen a gutter, if that tells you anything) while walking my dog and talking to a friend with his dog, I thought at first that it was just a bad bruise, but decided to go to emergency to be sure. The x-rays did not show a break, so I was sent to a convalescent facility to recuperate.

The building was a large, sprawling one-story facility, with some really beautiful furniture, and I was told it was at one time a motel for the very rich. I can believe it. The grounds were lovely, with stately oaks offering welcome shade to the occupants, and there was an elaborate inner court with lovely gardens and koi ponds.

The rooms also were lovely, despite hopital beds and tables and wheelchairs. Rooms which had only two beds were still spacious, though I was in a room with three beds, so we felt a little cramped. I was in the middel bed.

My roommates had obviously been together long enough to become friends, and they talked a great deal to each other, while I got some reading done. The woman by the window, it soon became obvious, had a very low IQ, compensated for by an enormous mouth that smiled – no, grinned – constantly. I’ll call her Smiley.

On the other side was a woman who kept a huge paperback Bible on her table, as well as another religious tome of equal size. In quiet moments, she recited verses quietly to herself. I’ll call her the Reader.

Though we had little in common, we occasionally asked after each other’s health and exchanged other pleasantries.

Each of us had a closet of our own at the foot of our beds, with a drawer underneath. Shortly after I moved in, the Reader told me that someone had given her a blue blanket, but that she could not find it, and she asked if it might be in my drawer. I bent over in great pain to open the drawer, but could only see a large white towel, and nothing of mine was in there. I assumed that that was the end of that.


End of Chapter One

Romney Family Dog Story

Chapter I: Romney Family Vacation

This shaggy dog story, courtesy the Boston Globe, begins with the beginning of annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario.

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it. As the oldest son, Tagg Romney, recalls

Think about it. A 12-hour drive and the only time we stop is to get gas. When we stop, you can buy your food and go to the bathroom, but that's the only time we're stopping, so you'd better get it all done at once.

The ride was largely what you'd expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the "white whale."

Tagg commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.

It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free problem-solving & crisis-management.

Chapter II: The Explanation

Hope you didn't forget to turn up your speakers!

Don't Leave Me

After several days of intense pain relieved by Vicodin, I am doing much better today. Also, have had several changes of caregivers here at home, which has taken time from thinking about blogging and emailing.

I still have my scary experiences at one of the two convalescent care homes to which I was sent to write about. Which reminds me—when I retired as a librarian, I volunteered to deliver meals to shut-ins in Berkeley three times a week. Many lived in the poorest parts of town, and my dearest memories are of them. I got 4 of my dogs as a result of promising to take them when their owners either went into rest homes or died.

I went often to visit one dear little lady (whose chihuahua I adopted) who moved into a low level rest home, and I remember how much she looked forward to moving there, and how much she regretted it after she moved. I also remember the lost souls sitting in the halls in wheel chairs, who reached for my hand and begged me to get them out. (I have written before about the punishment of dragging on forever like that with no conrol over how and when one’s life should end.)

My story, on the other hand, is quite different. Hope to get to it tomorrow.

How Much of This Can You Take??

I Mean,

How much MORE of this can you take?????

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

Been thinking about our troops when they come home, if they come home. Let’s ruminate.

The Big Guys will be okay. They will still have the same jobs with high pay, but the little guys with little education and less hope who enlisted at least to earn some self-respect and possibly an education are the ones I am thinking about.

Many of our troops enlisted out of loyalty to those already serving, and that will be an inner badge of courage that can never be taken away. Those who enlisted out of patriotism to their country may find that to be a badge without meaning to them anymore.

Getting to the nittygritty, however, what are their prospects when they come home? Where will the new jobs be? Will they have to compete with the people holding the jobs they want or need, the ones who didn’t go to war with them, the ones who could have enlisted, but didn’t?

What about their qualifications? They have all seen HORROR close-up, and that will never leave them. It will be with them waking or sleeping. Those who have been in actual combat will have special skills, killing and cruelty, but they are not in much demand, and besides we have football players and other civilians here who will compete.

Many of our troops will bear the obvious badges of honor that we all can see, such as grievous head and facial wounds and missing or prosthetic limbs. Adjustment to civilian jobs may be difficult or impossible for them, and our present leaders apparently don’t have them on their front burners.

Welcome home, guys and gals!

Ethics on the battlefield

Ethics on the battlefield

Sarah Sewall, director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, most recently wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago Edition of the new U.S. Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Ethical lapses among military personnel in Iraq pose a grave danger not simply to U.S. military professionalism but also to the operation itself. According to a newly released Army field survey, significant numbers of U.S. troops directly undermine their mission by mistreating civilians. Ironically, the same person who inscribed high ethical standards into new U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine -- Gen. David H. Petraeus -- inherited this compromised force. While the Army and Marine Corps can address future education and training for U.S. forces, is it too late to fix the problem in Iraq?

Intuitively and anecdotally, we understand the corrosive effects of irregular warfare. An unseen enemy that won't respect the laws of war tempts the opposing force to abandon its professional ethic. Now for the first time, we have hard data that scopes the extent and nature of the problem.

Read the rest of Sewall's column from the San Francisco Chronicle
(Sunday, July 1, 2007)

Bring Back the Citizen-Soldier

After hearing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., explain his program to keep veterans off the streets, I couldn't help but think of Rome.

During the middle republic, military legions consisted of landowners, who, although required to supply their own equipment, weapons and armor, did not suffer the ravages of battle worrying about homelessness upon their return.

A recent Newsweek story puts the number of homeless Iraq war veterans between 500 and 1,000, a shameful, shocking red flag considering that, unlike the Vietnam era, the homelessness is taking root not just before the war ends, but in the midst of a surge. This wave of homelessness indicates many things -- misguided and myopic government spending, lack of insight among policymakers, decaying social infrastructure, toxic levels of a "suck-it-up" mind-set among soldiers -- but most of all, it indicates the extent to which civilians have grown divorced from the military. The days of military service as public service have largely ended, and our mentality is a far cry from Rome's plough-and-sword system.

Today, we non-military citizens tend to think of the military as "over there," a view that is inaccurate, dangerous and unkind. Inaccurate, because the military is not a monolith; it is people. Dangerous, because it encourages apathy among civilians, military disdain for civilians and a level of military autonomy that, history teaches, can lead to chaos. Unkind, because it allows us to look the other way when warriors come home emotionally, physically and spiritually scarred by acts carried out in our collective name.

Many Americans don't want anything to do with the military, and that is a problem. Mandatory conscription would quickly eliminate the "us versus them" gap, but any attempt at making service mandatory would probably incite outrage.

Read the rest of H. Savala Nolan's column from the San Francisco Chronicle
(Sunday, July 1, 2007)

LittleBill Is Back!

Hi, everybody, I got home on Tuesday and am so glad to be Back. I will require all day help for a number of weeks, and there are a ton of papers and bills to take care of, so things will be slow for a while.

I have some very interesting things to write about my stay first in the rest home and then in a recovery home. I got new furniture for my “office,” but will have to learn the computer again, as well as rearranging the office. LittleBill has walked all over my keyboard and is now on my lap helping correct the mistakes he made.

Have also written a couple of political things while I was there.

Thanks to everyone for your cards, calls, emails, and comments. I have missed all of you tremendously.

Love to all.

Behind the Scenes with Neo-Cons

Tuesday is as good day as any to demonstrate bipartisanship, so. . . .

Columnist Johann Hari recently infiltrated an annual National Review-sponsored cruise so that he could discover What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening. Seminars were designed to exhume the conservative corpse and discover its cause of death on the black night of 7 November, 2006.

I have excerpted from the forest some of the more coherent trees which Hari relates.

Dinesh D'Souza:

It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'? The left won by demanding America's humiliation.. . . of course politics is about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers.

Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbled from beneath low-hanging jowls:

The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them.

Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, says,

The American public isn't concluding we're losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They're looking at the cold, hard facts. I wish it was true that, because we're a superpower, we can't lose. But it's not.

The ageing historian Bernard Lewis - who was deputed to stiffen Dick Cheney's spine in the run-up to the war - declares,

The election in the US is being seen by the bin Ladenists as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next.

Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley are adversaries on the topic of Bush and his Iraquagmire. Podhoretz, looking in Buckley's direction, says,

I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too. . . . There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria … This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better. . . . There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning.

pertaining to Islamophobia and Iraq, Buckley confides in an interview,

. . . . what animated the conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone. . . .I think the prudent Reagan would have figured here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind that we are now engaged in… I think he would have attempted to find some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict. . . . found a strongman to replace Saddam. . .

James O'Beirne is husband to National Review's Kate O'Beirne and was Rumsfeld's Pentagon personnel director who staffed Iraqi occupational authority based upon personal loyalty to Bush:

The civilized countries should invade all the oil-owning places in the Middle East and run them properly. We won't take the money ourselves, but we'll manage it so the money isn't going to terrorists.

Mark Steyn, author of America Alone bemoans a fact that Muslims are procreating faster than

European races . . . who are too self-absorbed to breed . . . large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015. . . Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia.

Here endeth my weekly duty to the spirit of bipartisanship. I've done my best to provide fairness, balance and equal time.

Watchin' NASCAR. . .

Hi all my adoring fans in NASCar-Land.

I'm taking a moment from the last practice before Sunday's race to let you all know that I'm doing okay. I've been lying here on my bed of pain after falling and braking my hip with internal fractures a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, my surgeon was able to put it together again with a screw of some sort. (They say it was just strength of character and from heavy-duty drugs that pulled me through.)

Hey mark, don't let that son of a bitch do that to you again! Next him just knock him the hell out of the race.

Sorry, I've got distracted by an accident. Where was I?

Oh Yes, They say I will rise from my bed of pain, any day now, just in time to get back home to a new table set up for my computer, and catch up with all of you.

Hugs & Kisses

Appraising George Bush

Some people have said, in appraising George Bush, that he is a “nice guy”. Being a party clown does not qualify a person for membership in any intellectually motivated groups.

If he were a man with any moral capacity at all, he would drop to his knees before his God, take full responsibility for the dreadful hubris which has driven him to sacrifice so many human lives, and beg for forgiveness.

Victory through size and strength alone is hollow and meaningless.

Settlement through mutual acknowledgement of personal and national error and overeach is the only possible basis for peace. Each side deserves recognition without condescension of its values, needs, and rights.

Courage is exemplified by public acknowledgement of a true leader to those whom he has harmed, both his “enemies” and his adherents.

Endurance Test

How long can you watch this historical review?

Hope You're Healing, Little Bill!

Hope it won't hurt you too much to risk a chuckle!

Open Thread for Little Bill

I have bad news to share. Little Bill has fallen while on a dog walk yesterday. She's recovering and expects to be back soon. In the mean time she wishes that none of her readers forget to stop by and leave a comment once in a while. And she has three words she wanted me to leave you with:

Impeach the Beasts!

Stem Cell Research

When Bush gave his victory speech about why he chose to veto the stem cell reseach legislation again on the basis of his personal religious beliefs, he was surrounded, as usual, by adoring invited fans who clapped approvingly at his decision.

It might have been more balanced in this great Democracy of ours if he had included the loved ones of those who have died of diseases that stem cell research might have saved, and who, therefore, were not able to be present.

6/20/07

Beyond Hope

This is just about the best article I have ever read about environmentalism and activism. One of the most interesting and well-thought-out you will ever read. It should remind each and every one of us that we have responsibility.

Overpopulation Solutions as I See Them

Overpopulation Solutions as I See Them

It is both encouraging and alarming that there are so many letters and articles these days about overpopulation—encouraging because of growing awareness of the problem, and alarming to realize that it may already be too late, that human beings are breeding themselves to extinction and taking the rest of the world’s creatures with us.

War, hunger, illiteracy, disease, violence, mental illness, and hatred between groups and nations are not discrete problems. Overpopulation is the BIG problem. It is worldwide, and it is a web in which we are all enmeshed.

Let’s start with some irrefutable facts:

1. The earth is of unchanging size.
2. The earth’s resources are finite, and rapidly being depleted, especially by the developed and developing nations, the United States leading the pack.
3. Human beings, like all creatures, do not live forever. We die at different ages from different causes—some old, some young, some ill, some healthy—but we will all die.

Envision two cows in a corral with barely enough food to keep one alive. Obviously, one will die. Almost certainly both will eat some of the food, so both will die.

Some humans live in big corrals with plenty of food for the body, the mind, and the soul. But millions are living in tiny corrals with little or nothing to sustain them. And as the numbers of each increase, they draw ever closer to each other. Folks, it just ain’t gonna work.

There is only one possible solution. Humans will have to start dying faster than they are being born. Following are my suggestions for partial solutions, written for this nation, but imperative in some form for all:

1. In the future the number ofchildren per family should be limited to one for all those on public support and two for all others, irrespective of religious belief or personal wealth, and it should be strictly enforced. Birth contnrol should range all the way from abstinence to abortion and sterilization. The method should be the prerogative of the woman, and it should be fully funded by the government for those who cannot afford it.

2. The Hippocratic Oath (first do no harm) should be rethought, both for the benefit of the people involved and for their caregivers. The evolution of scientific knowledge with regard to prolonging life can frequently result in more harm than good.

3. Babies born with no chance for any quality of life should be allowed to die mercifully at birth, at the request of their parents, and with their consent.

4. All adults should be made aware of and sign a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (or similar legal document) stating how they should be cared for in case of catastrophic injury or illness. In the case of children, or adults who have left no instructions and are beyond the ability to do so, their families or their surrogates should be allowed to make the decision for them, rather than having them drag on forever unable to make the decision for themselves.

5. Suicide should be relieved of its stigma, and the humane means of accomplishing it made available to those who want to choose that course for any reason, physical, mental, or emotional.

And then, of course, there is the final solution, of unending war, pestilence, starvation, and violence of every sort, marching over the face of the earth as I write—the option-of-choice of the compassionate religious right.

6/16/07

Laughter is the Best Medicine, Sicko!

For many of us, it's the only medicine!

Click on the above item and you'll see the trailer; afterwards, you'll see more options at the bottom of the frame!

Good night, good luck and good health to you! Otherwise. . . .

Sandy Claws

T'was six in the morning and I was in bed,
When I heard a commotion that filled me with dread.

There came the growl of a cat, which my cats never do,
So I rushed to the bathroom to see what was new.

In the tub the black cats whirled like water in a sink,
Or skateboarders racing in a skateboard rink.

And what to my half- awake horrified eyes should appear
In the tub in my house with my cats was a mouse, poor dear.

First I grabbed Mercury, threw her out, slammed the door
Then back for LittleBill to finish the chore.

He couldn't believe it was something I?d do,
So he wrapped around my hand and started to chew.

I finally got him out, went back to the tub,
Where the little mouse was OK, not even a rub

I rushed to the storeroom for the have-a-heart trap,
Which he thankfully entered. It was a snap.

To the backyard I took him and set him free.
My blood is cleaned up, so don?t worry about me.

So it's sweet dreams for me when I go to bed.

One more little creature still alive, not dead.

6/11/07ARW

The Bard on the Bush

All's Well
That Ends
Well?

"Thou art a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality."

All's well that ends well? Sort of
begs the question, in my opinion.

We are living out a tragedy,
not a comedy.