The Objective

2003-09-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

so it's anniversary time. i'm not generally a commemorator or given to lavish displays that spring from annual recurrences. and when it comes to the WTC destruction, i lean toward the solemn and private acknowledgement of the horror, the pain and the incomprehensibility of it. i normally wouldn't write about it and especially not for international consumption on the web.

but watching a rebroadcast of PBS' Nova examining the damage to each building and how the damage caused both buildings to collapse, i came to understand a more personal side of the tragedy that i feel might reflect the larger transformation brought about by the attacks. i don't personally know anyone who was killed or injured in those buildings. i don't know anyone whose life was significantly disrupted via a job loss or relocation. so even though i live in Manhattan and love this city as a living thing, the only personal reaction i had to the fall of the towers was the violation i felt as a new yorker that the murderers had carved a scar into the face of my city; that any attack on my city is an attack on me. i still feel that way and always will, even if i should leave this place. it's a part of me and i'm a part of it. we are one inseperable and a part of me crumbled under the weight of those collapsing columns of steel.

the longer-lasting effect that i became acutely aware of last night, though i've sensed it for some time, is that moral relativism doesn't work for me and i have realised it is fundementally wrong. i was raised to be tolerant of all people and to respect them and their choices even as they might oppose mine. i learned to always have a "yes, but..." mentality that excused all but the most despicable and inhuman behavior. petty criminals were an expression of a lack of hope. most anti-social behavior had a reasonable explanantion if only i would think long enough about it or look hard enough for it. essentially, everything had an excuse, and it was always my duty to seek it so i might understand an issue completely. i was in every modern sense a liberal.

september 11, 2001 changed that forever. as i listened to the left-leaning elements of our national commentariat suggest that somehow the US had invited this sort of attack by being arrogant or by supporting Israel or by virtue of our capitalist imperialism, as they offered all manner of twisted justifications for mass murder and flew their flag in support of the thinking that spawned nearly 3000 deaths, i knew i could no longer share the same intellectual space as these apologists. that day and in the days that followed, i proudly and almost defiantly became a moral absolutist. there is absolute right and there is absolute wrong. while the US may not always be absolutely right, what those craven monsters did that day is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. and to conjure syllogistic arguments to try and disspell the fact that they were absolutely wrong is absolutely wrong itself. there is no defense, no explanantion, no excuse that could ever give their actions any tinge of justice, rectitude or propriety. to even suggest a defense is contemptible because it shows sympathy for blood-thirsty fascists who would just as soon kill the apologists as the rest of us. it is akin to a jew apologising for hitler. it demonstrates self-hatred and a desire to perpetuate their own suffering as well as the suffering of the rest of us. it is damnable and absolutely wrong.

one of my favorite studies as a history major was WWII because of its stark contrast between right and wrong. it was the highest theater possible with the largest stakes possible. the world was at play and if Hitler had succeeded, it would have become a dark, dark place filled with brutality, oppression and death. those who disagreed with the state, as defined by Hitler and his minions, would have been exterminated in ever-greater numbers if his tyrrany had not been stopped. imagine the whole of Russia becoming one massive extermination camp for the "mongrel" Slavs, Gyspsies, Turks, and all other non-Germanic people in that area. And what of the Middle East? not only would there be no Israel and no Jews, there would be no Arabs, no Saudi Arabia, no Syria, no Egypt, nothing but a region of oil wells to sate the imperial German appetite.

today the world is at play again and there is a stark distinction between right and wrong. i would ask the apologists what exactly is the difference between the Third Reich and the Caliphate? both represent the absolute oppression of dissent and the abolition of any personal freedom. In both, the individual is necessarily completely subservient to the whims of those in control and has no redress to any injustice perpetuated against them. they both demand unquestioned authority. to be sure, the apologists would not live a day more than the expression of their opposition to state policy, not that they would even get a national broadcast of that opposition. their right to speak their minds would not exist in the Caliphate where their martyrs would imprison them. doesn't that strike any of them as absolutely wrong?

i hope that the apologists and those who think the US and its government are the malefactors of the global community and exporters of evil will be able to take the same journey of discovery that i did. i understand that compassion and understanding are insuperable in our dealings with other people and other nations. however, compassion and understanding only help us when they are used to as tools for building bonds between people. those tools fail when we use them to explain away hatred. the war we are fighting is absolutely right because it opposes the absolute wrong of the fascists hiding behind religion who thirst for our destruction. absolving their hatred with the sick medicine of feigned understanding wrongs us all. the cause of what is right will always need reinforcement lest it succumb to the cancer of what is wrong. i have chosen to align myself with what's right; to do otherwise would be indefensibly and absolutely wrong.

2003-08-14T13:27:00.000-04:00

I don't know Fred Kaplan, probably never will. But his writing at Slate shows a real lack of thought that makes me think I don't ever want to meet him.

Conisder this passage:

"It has been well known since last fall that the Bush administration was actively seeking intelligence that would show Iraq had two things: weapons of mass destruction and a connection with al-Qaida. When the CIA and DIA failed to come up with the goods, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a handful of his top aides formed their own intelligence network to search more carefully. If the word had gone out, to friends far and wide, that Rumsfeld was looking for this sort of evidence, is it not conceivable that someone with an interest in seeing Saddam overthrown—and there were many parties who had such an interest—might have "staged" a phone conversation that they knew the National Security Agency would intercept?

Maybe this is far-fetched."

Hmmm....maybe it's far-fetched....but then again, it's not as if the world had the testimony of the UNSCOM inspectors who left in 1998 that there were still WMD in Iraq, or any sort of resistance from Hussein for new inspections, or 17 disregarded UN resolutions to go to war over, so I suppose we needed to fabricate evidence, or at least let people know we were looking for evidence that we wouldn't bother coroborating. PS The Niger yellowcake letter WAS NOT referred to in the SOTU address, rather Brit intel regarding other sources was. The forged Niger letter was never used as justification for US policy.

Later, Kaplan goes even further out on an intellectual plank:

"There is another possibility, perhaps equally far-fetched: that the officers were real but they were making things up, on orders, on the assumption that U.S. agents were listening in. Consider this: If Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, why did he behave as if he did? Deterrence might be a reason. If the United States thought he had these weapons, maybe it wouldn't invade. "

But couldn't even someone as delusional as Hussein have seen the value in simply opening ALL records and ALL sites to inspectors, thereby nullifying ANY logic for an attack by the US???? We wouldn't have invaded if he had simply complied with the conditions of the surrender he signed ending the first Gulf War. Why flout the UN and go to the extra step of maintaining the ruse that you have WMD to prevent a US invasion when compliance could have short-circuited any talk of invasion pre-emptively? Even for Hussein, this seems wildly illogical.

2003-08-06T17:13:00.000-04:00

time to update some recent thoughts:

read, nay skimmed, some of Andrew Sullivan's recent blogging about the Catholic Church and its recent confirmation of its opposition to gay marriage and gays in general. first, I agree with the basic premise that the Church is backward and its wink, wink, nudge, nudge meddling in American politics is something no American would tolerate from say the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Coptics. Dropping hints about how to outlaw gay marriage nationaly (Constitutional amendment of course...genius!) is pretty venal and should be as unacceptable today as it would have been in the 20s when WASPs in this country thought the Vatican was trying to insert itself into American politics via the Italians, Irish and other downtrodden immigrants. Is it that easy now for the Pope to maniuplate the discourse of this country? Damn you Joe and John Kennedy for helping to make this possible.

Anyway, getting back to Sullivan. He's whining about how hard all this is for him as a gay Catholic. Should I feel sorry for someone who knows he's not accepted by the Church when he whines about more confirmation of this fact? Leaving aside the larger spiritual question of wanting/needing to follow the teachings of a group, any group, who say they've got the direct translation of any "god's" word and know how that "god" wants us to live our lives, why would a gay man, repeatedly told by the Church that he is not welcome in their religion, want to continue to pursue that religion? I mean, does Sullivan really need to eat a wafer and drink some wine served by a man in silk robes in a building built on riches acquired through the hard work of its parishners to feel like he's being true to his version of god??? He's basically a smart guy, and he doesn't seem to tolerate nonsense in most discussions. So why put up with the Church's bigotry, fight it and crave it's acceptance. Screw the church, Andrew. If you want to believe in God, do it on your own terms. Even if you really believe in the strictures of Catholicism, why do you accept that your god created you so you couldn't worship him? Or so you could only worship him with the permission of a group of men who think it's acceptable to do to unconsenting boys what is unacceptable for you to do with other consenting men?

Next up, the Pentagon's proposal of futures market for predicting Middle East stability and the likliehood of terrorism. Granted, the objections that ultimately caused the Pentagon brass to drop the idea were childish, blinkerd and ill-informed. But so what if the Pentagon can't do it? All the people who do support such an idea are acting as if it's lost forever, but if the military can't get a budget for it, fine. Let's get some private interests involved. I mean, if there's a Hollywood Stock Exchange funded privately, why can't there be an Intelligence Stock Exchange based on the Pentagon's proposal. This one seems so obvious...why am I sitting here typing instead putting this into motion...just a little more typing, then I'm off the see that this becomes real....

Was anyone surprised that "Gigli" was more flacid than jello? Seriously...could anyone have taken the question of its (utter lack of) success seriously? Even the posters made it look bad. There's no chemistry in the friggin' posters!!!! How could there be any in the movie??!!! And relatedly, when will Ben Affleck, Freddie Prinze Jr and Keanu Reeves team up to do a remake of "Deliverance"? Only without staging it...and where they each get to play Ned Beatty's part...and Keanu, via CG of course, gets to be the hillbillie rapist...even with himself...just imagine how many people would pay to see that!

2003-07-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

some real kernels of truth in this essay

it is consterning that some people in this country, whatever their political affiliation, want to decry the export of democracy and autonomy. aren't those the greatest gifts we can give to the world? this was the first nation on earth created out of a principle and not derived from a common provincial heritage. our survival proved to the rest of the world that such a principled nationhood could exist and thrive. our rise to the status of superpower demonstrated the strength of the democratic ideal and that disparite groups of people could unite behind the common ideal of freedom.

and freedom's natural enemy is tyranny, whether practiced by the facistis of italy or the politboro of the soviets or the butcher of baghdad or the facists hiding behind the koran. so long as tyranny and its pratictioners exist, freedom must assert itself. and that ultimately works to the benefit of all people, not just neocons in the white house today. freedom to decide the course of one's own life is ultimate empowerment. to know that your decisions matter and will determine the quality of your own life directly ennobles us all.

how can anyone quibble over casus belli when the oppressed have been freed? shouldn't we all be rallying around the idea that a system of self-determination is budding in the only part of the world previously unfertilised? we are changing history for the better. there needn't be any rationalisation beyond that.

2003-07-24T17:13:00.000-04:00

.......

2003-07-24T13:03:00.000-04:00

july was always the kindest month, feathered like a marionette but viscous like green tea. the sun seems to retreat only from itself but presses it advantage by doing so. trees become both trading partners to it as well as a practical maginot line...you know, the kind that can actually deter and repel. beneath the leaves i float aloft on a breeze of chartered inspiration. free to explore jagged visuals that snake among the heat waves that would fry them. ever use carbon dioxide as cooking oil....you'll never even feel the burn, but how crisp you might get...

jumping off to pause from my inactivity really helps. not only is a mind a terrible thing to waste but a terrible paste for the random infatuations that pass through its web everyday. maybe i'll get to tangle myself in it and free myself of this lasisitude.

2003-07-24T12:55:00.000-04:00

i am thinking that by publicising the pictures of the chemical weapons brothers, the US isn't only trying to prove that the Hussein legacy is dead. isn't it also a terrific thumb in the eye of the ace of spades himself that might help flush him out? not that i think he really cares about anyone but himself all that deeply, but those bruised, lifeless faces represent a part of his own image in arab history. that may rankle him to the point where slips and exposes himself somehow.

consider the pictures to be "duel-use"....

2003-07-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

so i'm quilting the other night (no better way to pass a warm july evening while heavily medicated with oxycontin and tequila) and i realise, "just because someone said lizard skin is hard to work with doesn't make it so!" i mean, sure it's a little tough and little gamy at first, but once you rub some horse conditioner on it, it softens up nicely and becomes a scalier, rougher version of cat leather. no big deal!

anyway, i'm quilting (stoned out of mind and totally ignorant of the fact that i'm basically quilting my own leg into it...more on that later) and on the tele comes an advert for grill attachment that can be reversed to smooth or grooved for assorted types of grilling. this gets me to thinking, how many people or what percentage of the audience seeing this commercial or any other that promotes grills, grill accessories or any other specialised cooking apparatus will be imagining how well those products will grill, char or otherwise barbecue human meat? i mean, somebody's gonna tink it right? not even for themselves necessarily, just out of basic curiousity. granted it won't be a very high percentage or number, but those people are out there....

2003-07-23T15:52:00.000-04:00

for one moment let us consider the plight of the common sparrow....at least the ones trapped inside a human body. they flit from here to there, singing mating songs, searching for food (what do they eat...nuts? berries? you know what i'm saying....). from food to sex and back again. that's all they do. i met one of these recently. a real cute bird as ringo would say. i flipped into the upright position and exclaimed "GEEEAARR!" upon visual contact. at least i screamed "LET"S FUCK!!" in my own head. she looked like she heard me. i washed away the caked-on birthday candles i accumulated on the fourth and made my play. first, a friendly squirt of the hose, followed by a little chirp-chirp and the spreading of her wings. me flying. for a long time, or as long as it takes to replay the first two episodes of the current "Real World" from start to finish, taking time to rewind and replay the fights. getting back to my landing, i cruised into base altitude, light of payload. not because it had been delivered. no, it wasn't sent.

pity the sparrow. she'd never even got her food.

2003-07-23T15:40:00.000-04:00

when you see a homeless person on the streets hunched over a mailbox, do you think that person is probably crunching his/her intestines to push the shit out? i do...

2003-06-24T15:11:00.000-04:00

let me tell ya why i like summer, hot weather and humidity....because everything gets sticky and sticky goes well with democracy and whiskey...'nuff said!

2003-06-24T15:09:00.000-04:00

forgot to add to the end of that post: "how can ace be one and eleven?? huh? what kind of god would allow that??"

2003-06-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

ok, since i'm probably the only one reading any of this anyway, i may as well let some of my thoughts on religion fly out into the ether. mostly these are questions regarding the logical underpinnings of the dominant western religions mostly, but also faith and ritualised spirituality in a general sense as well. in no particular order....

starting from the universally accepted premise (accepted by religious people anyway) that a god, call it allah, yahweh or tim, created everything, the heavens and the earth and the dairy queen breezer, why would that god create two or more types of people and charge each group with killing the other? why create arab muslims then tell them, "go kill anything or anyone that doesn't seem to agree with how to worship me!" why create american christians and tell them, "homosexuals are evil! now that i have created them, i want all of them to die and it's your job to do my will! i'm busy catching up on friends on the tivo."

why create the devil, give him the option to rebel and when he does, cast him away and ascribe all the bad things that ever happen to his evil machinations? honestly, if god craves absolute obedience, why even give us free will in the first place? wouldn't it have been happier (and a lot less busy) if it had just created mindless slaves to live in complete obeyance to its commandments?

why have a son and send him to earth to die? wny not just sit down with everyone and explain to them how they've lost their way and how to mend that situation? god can everywhere at once right? so let it meet one on one with everyone and tell them how things need to change? why go through the cryptic and obviously difficult to decipher move of sending this son to earth, not have everyone recognise jesus as his son and let the romans kill him before the message got out to everyone? and if jesus is holy and eternal, like god, why not send him back? "no, no, jesus, let my creations fight and kill each other to figure out what your purpose was....no need to waste you on those miscreants anymore. besides, i get lonely up here, what with that holy ghost haunting me and all."

why have only one son? why can't god have a family? if god is concerned with protecting the sacred ritual of marriage for a man and a woman to provide for procreation, why doesn't it have a spouse? god is a single parent, no two ways about it. dan quayle and a lot of other self-righteous people had a problem when a fictional television character did it, but it's ok for god. after all, he's the boss; he calls the shots.

and who created the holy ghost? if it's god, why isn't the holy ghost considered to be god's other son? is the holy ghost supposed to be some kind of cousin to jesus? and is the holy ghost on a shorter leash because of lucifer's malfeasance? does the holy ghost have free will? or is it just some kind of disembodied puppet/mime that god couldn't live without?

and why create anything at all? god is supposed to be complete and all powerful. why does it need to come up with plants, trees, human beings, ants, bacteria, the grand canyon....? surely it wasn't lonely. so what, he thought it would a lark to create a little universe he could play with? if so, why keep these unruly, unobservant human beings who constatntly defy its will (so we're told) around any longer than one day? why not start over and make sure we get it right?

why create women, then make them so sexy and alluring that the mere sight of their hair will drive men into libidinous insanity, forcing men to force women to cover themselves so as not to disturb the social order? and why make men so weak that they can't help but fall prey to these irresistable harpies? does any of this make any sense?

how do religious people not face these questions? and if they do, how do they reconcile the obvious answers with their faith(s)? how can a man acting as a mullah or priest or rabbi consider himself to be a humble servant to a supreme being that ultimately makes no sense when simple logic is applied to it? having faith is a commendable quality, but how about simply having faith that if you're a good person and live in harmony with others that you will increase your chances of living a happy life and having things work out for you? how about simply believing, based on the everyday experience of human existance, that not everyday is bad, and that things work out for the better if you direct your thoughts that way and work on improving the conditions of your life? why does anyone have to invest their faith in an entity or supposition of will that is responsible for everything? is it merely the psychological comfort of circumscribing a deity that is so like us that it could almost be one of us (no stranger on the bus comments please)?

if anyone reads this and would like to try and educate me, please feel free to contact me at seanmahar@hotmail.com. i would love hear some sensible answers, but frankly i don't think they exist. and neither does god. any god.

2003-04-25T21:09:00.000-04:00

just a quick update to my anti-obesity bit from before...

anyone who doesn't know me doesn't know how fat i used to be...age 16, height 5'8", weight 230lbs.

so i feel free to comment on obesity...and that won't ever change...(now - age 32, height 5'10", weight 150lbs.)

2003-04-25T09:42:00.000-04:00

let's talk about fat baby...let's talk about you and me and all four of us...

Caught this dead-on post regarding the news that obesity (in addition to killing us with heart disease, clogged arteries etc.) has been linked to a heightened risk of cancer, wherein the author (whose adorable childhood picture adorns the top of the page) wonders aloud whether Michael Moore will examine this subject as obesity kills more Americans every year than handguns (should we call it "Pasta Bowling for Columbine"? Maybe "Roger and Me and My Chins"...no, wait, "The Big, Fat Truth"). Obviously Mr. Moore is not likely to aim his camera at himself if he's not berating or harranguing, so don't expect him to tackle this anytime soon. Or ever really.

Contrast this news about obesity with the lawsuit filed recently by a man who believes his weight (or more succinctly, his size) caused McDonald's to rescind their job offer to him. Seems this gentleman (not so gentle with food apparently) was offered a job as a cook, which he accepted, and needed to be fitted for uniform. Weighing 420 lbs., having a waist sized 52 and neck consuming 22 inches of material might have been more than Ronald McDonald could wrap his arms around and following the original job offer, he never heard from the franchise again. His suit is being filed under the aegis of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and essentially contends that his obesity is an affliction and as such, entitles him to have McDonald's make every resonable concesion to allow him to his job.

OK, let's look at this a couple ways. 1) How in the world can obesity be considered a disability? Paralysis, ALS, even something like chronic migraines; these are all legitimate disabilities where a disease or accident has rendered some daily functions or abilities outside of the individual's capacity. Though they may still be able to perform the functions of their jobs, they have some limitations that the rest of us without these diabilities do not have to overcome. Obesity is a completely, yes completely, voluntary state, where the only disability is in controlling oneself. Paralysis, by current medical standards, is incurable. ALS is incurable. Migraines can be controlled, but are as yet incurable. Obesity can be cured as soon as the individual puts down the fork, and stops using food as a drug to soothe the pain of their lives. 2) Why would McDonald's, or more precisely the local franchisee, want to hire a 420 lb. cook in the first place? Sure he might eat into the profits, but I think his health would an issue. He's be standing in front a grill for hours at a time. Isn't anyone worried about him passing out? 3) Why would someone with such an obvious weight problem want to work at a fast food restaurant anyway??? This guy should be getting a job at a health club or Weight Watchers or sushi restaurant if he wants be around food. Madness, I tell you.

2003-04-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

Baby trading just got more expensive...

2003-04-23T11:18:00.000-04:00

ok, every day, i'll try to post...new day, new plan, new outlook, new things to say (hopefully)

under the "Is It Really News?" category - the crawl on all the moring news shows yesterday (and even into this morning for some of them) carried a blurb about Laci Peterson's mother "vowing to seek justice" for the deaths of her daughter and grandson (named Connor incidentally...is that news?). OK, I know that this story has racy elements of betrayal, holiday news cycles and even an abortion angle (does charging Scott Peterson with two charges of murder legitimize the pro-life stance???? see below...) and that whether or not the story of a hum-drum murder (sorry, it is...does anyone think this murder affects anyone outside of the two families and associated friends?) in So-Cal is actually newsworthy outside of its locality, is anyone in the family vowing to seek justice really "news"? I mean, isn't that par for the course? It would be news if the mother said "We have no interest in finding and prosecuting the heinous and evil person who murdered my duaghter and grandson. He or she should feel free to roam the Earth knowing we will not come to collect payment for this crime." See...that's different, that's unexpected, that is news.

Onto the abortion thing, abortion rights supporters are questioning the logic of charging Peterson with two counts of murder because, they say, it means the unborn fetus has legal standing as a victim of murder and that this concept could have the ripple effect of making other fetuses murder victims and abortion doctors murderers. Somehow, it has escaped their vision that Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. I'm no expert on abortion law in these United States, but I'm fairly certain there's no state that allows abortion past the first trimester unless there's a threat to the health of the mother. So, anyone cuasing an otherwise healthy fetus and/or its mother to die at that late date in the pregnancy would be charged with murder. Right? Maybe I'm missing something (I did qualify myself as no expert), but it doesn't seem to me that this second charge of murder is at all out of line or practice with abortion law as we knew it before the charge. It doesn't sound like a new precedent or an assault on abortion rights in California or anywhere else for that matter. The bottom line is that was (as far as we know) a healthy fetus that was likely to be born within a few weeks of Laci's disappearance, that it likely could have survived outside the womb and it was a viable life. Whoever killed Laci killed the child simultaneously and therefore is responsible for two murders.

2003-04-22T16:44:00.000-04:00

ok, every three months i'll post...yeah, new plan, new season...

I'm sure it's been said before, but why don't the people upset about Bechtel and Halliburton's subsidiaries getting "secret" contracts for restoring oil infrastructure in Iraq ever complain about the venal business entanglements the French, Russians and Germans tried so diligently to protect before the US-led invasion? Do you think Michael Moore will make a public proclamation like"Shame on you, Mr. Chirac! Shame on you and TotalFinalElf for propping up a murderer!" Naahhh...TotalFinalElf doesn't roll off the tongue like fictition....

After watching the Yankees go 16-3 to start the season, I started to think maybe money can buy wins in Major League Baseball...then I watched the Mets...money can't buy class or organisational pride...

Is anyone else thinking the news networks and the network news need to focus more on what happening in Baghdad and less on the former POWs arriving back in the US? I'm happy these people escaped death and that their families will have the chance to hold them and shower them with love (unlike Laci Peterson's parents), but once they're free of captivity and back at Rammstein, isn't it time for that story to fall off the radar? Journalistically, is it any better to trumpet this fluffy, human-interest filler than it is for Al Jazeera to make hay of the grief of Palestinian parents whose sons and daughters blow themselves up in the name of Allah? They seem to be one and the same to me. For the record, jingoism isn't ina dn of itself wrong in my mind (being proud does have some positive aspects), but don't be jingoistic in the news business...go to the analysis or opinion pages people...

2003-01-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

Do the foot prints of the former World Trade Center have to remain inviolate for there to be proper memorialising of the vicitms? Most people seem to think the answer is an obvious yes. I'm not convinced. The whole argument that it's "sacred ground" is so specious, but no one appears willing to say it. People have died on just about every inch of Manhattan, whether by natural cause, violent attacks or accidents. So, should we say that all of Manhattan is "sacred ground", closed to any future development? Just because some one died in a place doesn't change the essential composition of it. The ground within the slurry walls is no different today than it was forty years ago, or four hundred years ago for that matter. It's just this archaic thinking that somehow the "souls" of the dead are attached to that land by what happened. Well, does that mean we all believe in ghosts? If we build on the site, are we doomed to live out the movie "Poltergeist"? Is there any rational thought going on here?

It seems to me that not one American soldier killed in action in Vietnam died in Washington DC on the grounds of the Vietnam Memorial, and that memorial is widely regarded as one the finest war memorials we have. And no dead soldier's family ever insisted that there be a memorial in Denang or any obscure part of the jungle where their son died. So why can't we build as normal on the footprints of the towers and still have a solemn memorial built into the overall design of the new WTC? If the footprints remain undeveloped, how exactly does that help the victims' families remember their fallen loved ones? And how does it remind people what happened and what those victims meant to the world in a more impactful way than the Vietnam Memorial does? In other words, what does leaving a blank space on the ground achieve that couldn't be done more efficaciously another way?

I'm not saying I know what sort of memorial would properly assuage everyone's need to have their losses remarked, but I challenge the thinking that there is such a thing a "sacred ground". Earth is earth. Lower Manhattan doesn't remember the victims of terrorist slaughter any more than it remembers the woodland creatures that once roamed over it. Nor the tribes of indigenous inhabitants who occupied that land for centuries before the Dutch started moving in. We haven't had a problem rumaging over their land and their once "sacred ground". Is it more "sacred" now that people we could actually have known or who lived in the same manner we do died there?

Last thought: just in case anyone is worried about that ground being the final resting place for the dead, 1) most of the debris, yes including body parts, has been removed and 2) anything left has long since been ground to dust by the machinery that has been operating on top of the site for the last year-and-a-half. There's nothing left to protect. Just some prehistoric mythology about souls and their supposed connection to the physical body.

2002-07-17T13:33:00.000-04:00

More excellent work at Slate...

2002-07-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

Came across an article where Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont uses The Nation as a mouthpiece (not the first or last time I assure you) to sound out about rallying the Dems, particularly the left, to the cause of corporate reform and how the outrage over Enron and the rest can be harnassed to wage an assault on all kinds of right wing causes like taxes, trade and business expansion into other countries. Most of the diatribe is typical posturing that has its own justifications, but the last paragraph shows where the debate between the left and right on this issue isn't even confronting reality. Sanders says : "What we should be saying is that this whole debate is about a culture of corporate greed that has wrecked our communities, robbed our retirees and lowered the standards for ethical business behavior to a level that disgusts average Americans."

"Corporate greed has wrecked our communities"?! Can anyone, Rep Sanders included, show me one community that has been "wrecked" by what happened at Enron, WorldCom, Adelphi, Tyco, Global Crossing? How does cooking the books wreck a community? I can see the tangential argument that when those companies get caught and are forced to restate their earnings, expenses, etc and start laying people off that a community can be affected. But this isn't like GM moving plants out of Flint and leaving low-skill, low-wage employees with nowhere to turn for good work. An energy trader like Enron employs mostly college graduates who have skillsets that can be used in dozens of other industries. They will find other work and it will be essentially commenserate with what they were doing before. None of their upper middle class communities are going to suffer or perish.

"Robbed our retirees"?! Two things: 1) People who have lost money in the last two years and are actually lower than where they started are in a bad place and definitely got into the market too late. However, if you got into the market before 1998, chances are you're still ahead of where you started and you haven't "lost" anything. More to the point, if you hadn't invested in stocks you wouldn't have earned what you had to lose in the first place. Everyone's got sour grapes about their losses now, but no one was complaining about corporate greed driving up the value of their portfolios to and three years ago. 2) If you are a retiree or were planning on retiring soon and were counting on your stock portfolio to fund retirement, you made serious miscalculation based on greed. Every single financial advisor/broker/planner in the world will tell you to move out of stocks as you get older to consolidate your gains and remove them from the risk of being lost. As you near retirement, your portfolio should more and more secure, not less. Stocks are risky and anyone who thought they were immune was delusional. They were greedy and wanted the history and nature of stocks and the market to magically vanish for them so they could retire in comfort, living off the stock gains being delivered by the corporate greed people like Rep Sanders are decrying.

I understand the use of rhetoric to engage the troops and energise them for a legislative battle. But isn't there enough foul play and insider tomfoolery to do that without making hyperbolic claims about our communities? It reminds of a Simpsons episode (so many things do) where Rev. Lovejoy's wife keeps repeating "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!!" We all know that kids need to be protected and we can all decide how best to do it without some shrill holier-than-thou fundamentalist reminding us. We also know that some greedy people pulled some scams and essentially robbed their fellow shareholders (imortant to note that they didn't fleece the public at large). We know that we need to something to safeguard against such things for the future. But we certainly don't need the political moralists of either side blowing the situation out of proportion and obscuring what really happened. In the end, it will only obscure the real solutions.

(PS if the left really wants to expose a culture of corporate greed and how it's really robbing us of our financial freedom, they should go after gov't contractors who inflate their costs because they know the gov't will pay. Think of the $900 toilet seat. That's just one example and there are more examples every day. That's a culture of corporate greed with pernicious effects on all of us, not just stock holders.)

2002-07-17T12:57:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting, non-invasive and legislatively efficient way of reforming executive compensation that would at least partially solve the whole stock options debate. Essentially, it says repeal the law that made all cash compensation over $1 million taxable (it had been tax-deductable). That would gives corporations the incentive to pay their execs in cash (mostly) which would provide greater transparency for investors. They would be able to see a CEO earning $10 million a year, rather than $1 million in base salary and some obscure amount in options, grants and restricted stock that always change their value. Generally, I think this would be a fine idea that would address most of the concerns people have about what happened at WorldCom, Enron and such where execs inflated earnings to artificially boost the stock price. However, it wouldn't necessarily prevent a CEO, CFO, director or other exec from collecting a fat salary and doing next to nothing to run the company in the right direction. I don't think I have an answer that bridges the compensation/mutual benefit gap between a cash salary and options, but this one isn't complete either. It would be a good first step, though. And I particularly like the idea of using less legislation rather than more. More legislation leads to more interpretation of it which leads to different sets of loopholes and ultimately leads to more legislation.

And here's an idea from Russia that the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Louis Farrakhan and other religious dignitaries should really start to think about. The article discusses Nestle's purchase of a Russian water bottling concern, but that's not the funny part. It seems this bottler, called Saint Springs, actually has the imprimatur of the Russian Orthodox Church on all of its bottles. In exchange, the Church receives a portion of the sales and uses it renovate and update their facilities (at least according to the article; no pun intended, but god only knows what they're really doing with that money). Think about the Pope endorsing something Italian silk ties to raise money for the legal defense and settlement of all the molestation cases the Church is battling. No more fire sales of Church properties to pay all the bills!

I am not joking, by the way. I really think that instead of just preaching to the choir, the Pope, Dalai Lama and all their bretheren should start selling to the choir. Instead of begging for contributions from parishoners, they could endorse quality products that promote their doctrine and keep a healthy cash flow to fund missionary work and other holy duties. It really makes sense when you think about it. Seriously, are the Catholics that have stuck through all the scandals and violence of the Church's history really going to stop believing and renounce just because the Pope recommends they try a certain bottled water or drive a certain car (presumably the maker of the Popemobiles would be in line for this endorsement)? And think about the anterior benefits: companies competing for the holy father's seal of approval would have to bring their business practices in line with Catholic dogma so more companies would at the very least be operating in a more socially conscious manner. The companies' stock would never suffer because they couls always say their books were blessed by god's personal representative on Earth. I mean, this would just work out for everybody.

2002-07-15T13:06:00.000-04:00

So far today the big corporate reform news is Coke is going to begin reporting its stock option compensation as an expense, which will take a nasty bite (around $200 million if it were being done for the current fiscal year) out of their profits. Very noble on the part of Coke's management and an intelligent first strike. Someone was going to take the lead on this one and Coke (with the help of Warren Buffett, one its directors) wisely figured they would benefit greatly by being the first really bug all-American company to step forward and take one for the American corporate team.

But that's almost beside the point in this article from today's Times. Nestled about halfway down is a tasty little tidbit concerning reputed Democratic Presidential candidate for 2004, Joseph Lieberman. Seems back in 1994, when the current set of accounting rules were being assembled, Sen Lieberman led the fight against the group who put those rules together, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, because they wanted to include a rule that options be counted as an expense. Lieberman first sponsored a Senate resolution opposing the Board's plan (approved 88-9 which says that a lot of our Senators today voted with that resolution) and then threatened to introduce legislation that would have put the Board out of business. Fortunately for Lieberman he isn't running for re-election this year, but if he runs for President, this will not serve him well. He's going to be on the wrong side of the issue and worse, even farther on that side than G-dub. Personally, I don't see a solid reason that the country would need a Joe Lieberman anyway, but this will give a lot of voters a solid reason why we don't need him.

Second tasty morsel from that article for those who would have Harvey Pitt ousted from the SEC, then SEC chairman Arthur Leavitt lobbied the Board to drop the rule, which wound up carrying the day (and which he now acknowledges as a mistake). Does this mean John McCain will start calling for Leavitt's career at the SEC to be expunged for the sake of investor confidence?

2002-07-13T12:49:00.000-04:00

Thinking back to the story (below, the Law and Order thing) about the boy who was killed for stealing a dollar from some junkies, I got to wondering just how pervasive the attribution of evil deeds to demons and such really is. In that article, one of the killers' relatives says that there was the devil in that boy and I get the feeling that it wasn't a figure of speech to her. Chances are this woman and at the very least thousands of people like her vote and are guided on some level by the same kind of anachronistic mythologising. god bless America that we can even survive and have a functioning government.

2002-07-13T12:23:00.000-04:00

Ready for some good old fashioned anti-Microsoft paranoia?

Seriously, this guy (Robert Cringely) really knows the industry and the players very well, but he always sees MSFT rubbing its hands and salivating over its new plan to dominate the world. I agree that Gates plays to win (so does Ballmer) and that he likely has a swollen sense of his self-importance (wouldn't you if you were the richest man on earth?) so I tend to agree with Cringely that MSFT is always looking for new ways to retain its position of singularity atop the technology industry. But after five years of reading about each new MSFT initiative and how this is the one that's going to enslave us all to MSFT's hegemony. Maybe one day he'll actually be right, but MSFT is too big, has too much bureaucracy and is too clumsy to execute anything well enough to accomplish what Cringely foresees.

2002-07-13T07:36:00.000-04:00

My god, Ronald Reagan must be turning over in his grave at the thought of what's going on in Washington these days. Now that it's official we have a national deficit again after four years of surpluses, it looks llike the party of fiscal irresponsibility is going to be the GOP instead of the "tax-and-spend" Dems. All the fiscal security built up during the Eigthies when Reagan and his team showed the liberals how to manage an economy are is now ost on the current generation of Republican leadership.

Wait, Reagan was actually the one who increased spending more (at that time) than any President before him. And it was Reagan who cut taxes while increasing spending thereby producing most of the national debt we're still saddled witth today as well the mmassive budget deficits that crippled our growth in the early Nineties. So actually, Bush and his team are just following a tried and true script for a two-term presidency, huh? Increase defense spending, increase spending across the board and blame Congress if it gets out of hand (see the OMB hack's dig at Congress to take on their projections and keep the tax plan while increasing spending) and keep the country running on borrowed money. Well, damn if it didn't work for Reagan.

Meanwhile the Dems are still vilified in the nations breadbasket as the big government types who want to take our tax dollars and waste them on a bloated Washington bureaucracy. Note to self: when President, always blame others for what I'm doing no matter how obvious the evidence is to the contrary...

2002-07-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

A nice summation of G-dub's double-dealing with corporate ethics and responsibility

2002-07-12T13:51:00.000-04:00

A tasty morsel from Paul Krugman's op-ed in the Times today...

"Mr. Bush claims that he was "vetted" by the S.E.C. In fact, the agency's investigation was peculiarly perfunctory. It somehow decided that Mr. Bush's perfectly timed stock sale did not reflect inside information without interviewing him, or any other members of Harken's board. Maybe top officials at the S.E.C. felt they already knew enough about Mr. Bush: his father, the president, had appointed a good friend as S.E.C. chairman. And the general counsel, who would normally make decisions about legal action, had previously been George W. Bush's personal lawyer — he negotiated the purchase of the Texas Rangers. I am not making this up."

OK, maybe there was something more to the investigation than what Krugman suggests (this is after all only an opinion piece), but the part about general counsel is a bit galling. Since it isn't mentioned here, I'm sincerely hoping, for the sake of my generally optimistic nature, that the reason he didn't make any decision to prosecute G-dub is because he recused himself. Please, please, please, let him have recused himself.

2002-07-12T13:18:00.000-04:00

This is totally a Law and Order episode. Mark my words...

2002-07-12T13:09:00.000-04:00

Forgot to mention in that last post McCain's direct assault on CEO compensation with his proposal to compell corporations to state stock options as an expense. If you think stocks look overvalued now, just wait until Dow components like Microsoft and GE have reduce their profit forecasts by hundreds of millions of dollars. Is everyone ready to go back to 1994(or earlier)-level valuations?

2002-07-12T13:05:00.000-04:00

Here's another worthwhile piece from the Times partially confirming what I said yesterday about Bush stepping into a following role instead being able to take the lead on corporate reform. Check the bit in the middle where sputters about Sept. 11 shifting prioroties. You can almost hear the subtext screaming out "Can't we focus on something where I look good?!!" I wonder if the people around him ever wish he'd been President before the electronic age when his words wouldn't be so scrutinized? They should.

2002-07-12T12:29:00.000-04:00

day three of the experiment with on-line commentary...

Just read this about a slight shift in social and political discussion in Saudi Arabia. The link may require you to sign up for a free membership at the Times website, so if you don't want to register, I understand. The really interesting part of it was the mention of 15 girls dying in school fire because religious officials wouldn't allow male rescuers into the building because the girls didn't have their bodies completely covered...so that's how Allah would want it, huh? Better they should die than tempt those rapacious and uncontrollable rescuers. You can see it right? Once they get the girls out of the building, the rescuers would of course be overcome with lust for these now partially uncovered, but perhaps badly burnt young girls who were merely trying to study the words and wisdom of the Prophet. They would rip the rest of the injured girls' clothes off and couple with them in carnal frenzy worthy of jackals feasting on pig intestines. Well, that's what the religious officials had to be thinking right?!!

Those of you who know me know I'm an atheist (devout and confirmed) and that I don't have a lot of warmth for religion of any kind. This though should give all of us pause about human beings interpreting anything we might call "God" or "Allah" or whatever. Even if you believe in something spiritually larger than yourself, let your interpretations of it rule your life and your life only.

2002-07-11T17:44:00.000-04:00

The servers were down yesterday at Blogger, so the birth of my blog was delayed a day, but I am now the proud pappy of my on-line journal. I'm pretty stoked. I was so jealous of all those on-line columnists and their professional blogs...elitist bastards! But whose elite now, huh?!!

OK, is anyone paying attention at the White House to what G-dub is saying about his stock transactions a little more than a decade ago? In both absolute and relative terms, the whole issue is pretty paltry and lacks the oomph that Enron, Worldcom, et al have as corporate scandals. It isn't even as shady as Martha Stewart's financial hanky panky. All G-dub ever had to say was "I was investigated by the SEC and they found nothing improper." Which he did say. But then when pressed about the loan he received from Harken, he apparently had brain freeze and fell back to something he read about Bernie Ebber's days at Worldcom and says "Hey it was common practice. Everybody did it."

Whoops!! Sounds like the reformed hippie dad who lectures his kids about the dangers of drug use but defends his past by basically admiting he was a follower and did whatever all his friends were doing, whether he thought it right or wrong. So, now instead of being able to retain the moral high ground he's staked out for himself against corporate piracy and use it push his corporate reform legislation, G-dub has to be a follower again while let the tougher Senate Democratic bill for reform steps into the lead. Nobody's going to care that what G-dub did was declared acceptable and that he's been cleared of any impropriety for ten years. All the people are going to see now is that he's just another corporate swindler who got away with cheating shareholders. Dum!

And if this story continue to get more traction as G-dub keeps tripping himself up, Democrats will of course press this advantage to scare the G-dub money-raising machine (more prolific in his early presidency than Clinton was in his) away from Senate and House races this fall. Dub-ble dum!

But we spectators of the sprt of politics, the best result of all this may be the strenngthening of Ralph Nader's hand for another run at the presidency in '04. I mean, this is his bread-and-butter issue, corporate malfeasance. If the Dems are smart (no I'm not accusing them of any such thing) they better working on ways of co-opting some of his platform now so they can marginalise him over the next two years.

2002-07-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

For my first post, let me welcome what is surely the handful of you my friends who have been gracious enough to click through from the e-mail I sent and are curious to see what I may have to say. As this blog grows and hopefully thrives, I'll be posting thoughts on whatever comes up: politics (surprise), popular culture, sports, business, special events in my life...anything I think I would like to share with the rest of the world. It will definitely be free-form and organic, but I will endeavor to keep it as focused and communicative as possible to give you all something interesting and thoughtful to read everyday.

So, my thought for the day is did anyone else hear the sports cognescenti bitchin' about how the baseball All-Star game is decling in popularity and how the league needs to do something to make the game mean something again? If they want to make the damn mean something and really see those guys show up and compete, give them financial incentives. I know MLB gets extra revenue from selling the broadcast rights to the game, above and beyond what they get for the regular season, so why dodn't they dedicate an extra $15-20 million to use as bait for players to actually participate (for those of you who don't follow the sport, many of the fan-elected all-stars decline to participate because they want the extra time off to rest/see their families/do an intensive 'roid cycle) and give bonuses for hits, home runs, strike outs, being on the winning team, etc. I guarantee for more money most of these guys will show up and give the fans a competitive game which boost ratings and make the game more profitable for the league. That means more money for incentives, which means I can work harder, so I can make more money, so I can do more coke, so I can work harder...

Anyway, just a thought. Either that or they can create an "Extreme" All-Star game with players riding dirt bikes between bases, or they could use skateboards and do tricks between bases. And they could add some Fear Factor elements like putting somebody's kids in a tank that fills up with water until the dad hits a home run or challenge a runner to steal a base by releasing a cadre of scorpions between the bases. That would definitely jazz things up a bit and no doubt it would boost ratings. Hell, even I'd watch it.