Winner-take-some
Like the gubernatorial recall election of 2003, another shameless power grab by California Republicans may be leading to an unintended outbreak of progressive democracy in America. GOP legislators in the Golden State are proposing a statewide ballot initiative for later this year that would split the state's 55 electoral college votes, the largest of such in the nation, among the 53 congressional districts. (Two extra to the winner.) In other words, "winner-take-all" would be replaced with 53 separate races, and Republicans could conceivably make off with at least 20 of this so-called "blue state's" electoral votes, the electoral equivalent of winning Ohio. Two other states, Maine and Nebraska, already allocate electoral votes according to congressional district.
Democrats, naturally, are crying foul, in their grand tradition of blaming others for their own failure in wooing voters. Dem consultant Chris Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House and for the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, called the plan "an effort to rig the system in order to fix the election." And Lehane knows from system rigging. He called Ralph Nader's entry into the 2004 presidential election "another vainglorious effort to promote himself at the expense of the best interests of the country," as his party sued in state after state to keep Nader's name off the ballot, and in 2000, helped to establish the private debate commission, in cahoots with Republicans, that kept the independent candidate Nader, not only from participation in the nationally-televised debates, but out of the debate hall altogether.
The logical eventuality of splintered vote allocation is the collapse of the Electoral College, the principal protection of the Republi-crats concentration of power. What Lehane and Democrats fear most in California, but won't 'fess to publicly, for fear of sowing further dissent, is not the 20-something electoral votes potentially lost to Republicans, but the five or more they might lose to an energized Green Party from the left. Less than a month after citizen hero Cindy Sheehan threatened a congressional challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her home district in San Francisco, don't bet that Democrats aren't feeling the heat from a neglected constituency, even as they continue to claim abuse from the executive branch of government, while simultaneously ignoring the firm
Constitutional options at their disposal; and still they
sell out the people at almost every turn.
Two weeks ago, the Greens met at a national forum in Reading, Pennsylvania, and may have discovered their candidate for 2008--
former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. (
Warning: Sound link.) McKinney was shunned by corporate Democrats in her state's primary election in 2006, but would figure to pull a lot of support from the symbolically-popular campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in '08, and with political courage to boot. A McKinney/Nader Green ticket in '08?
A lonely night for insomniacs
Love you, Tom. Rest in peace. We'll miss your boundless curiosity and your twisted sense of humor.
A fan convention for cool people
St. Louis plays host this week to an inviting event: the 37th annual convention of the Society For American Baseball Research (SABR). The organization has a large number of dues-paying members that will be in attendance, but non-members are welcome also for many of the events at the five-day festival that concludes Sunday. Joe Garagiola will be this year's keynote speaker Saturday afternoon, and there have already been panel conversations with groups of former St. Louis Browns and St. Louis Cardinals players.
A busy schedule, and the fact that I just heard about the convention yesterday, precludes my attendance, but trusted baseball and St. Louis media sources have provided a breadth of information about
their varied gathering of speakers. Researchers delivering presentations this year include the author of "A Well-Paid Slave," about the life and legal trials of Curt Flood, and the author of a second book I enjoyed earlier this year-- "Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History."
Other presentations with provocative titles include "Should the pitcher bat 9th?" "How valuable is strike one?" "What are these weird marks?: Decoding Other People's Scorecards," "Wrigley Field Los Angeles: One Shining Season in the Major League Sun," and "'They must think we're a bunch of (censored)': Gussie Busch, Paternalism, and the Collapse of the Cardinals Dynasty."
The two presentations, though, for which I've read specific reviews, are the ones by broadcaster George Michael, former host of TV's "Sports Machine," and former MLB pitcher Mike Marshall.
Michael grew up selling scorecards at St. Louis' Sportsman Park, and can apparently take almost any baseball action photograph from history, and track the year, date, and inning of the play, maybe even the umpire. He recently had a picture of Ty Cobb spiking a Browns catcher in the crotch, and sourced it to the precise afternoon in 1913, the inning, the catcher, and the umpire, and determined that the play was an attempted steal of home, and that Cobb was safe, though the ball beat him.
Marshall's presentation on the mechanics of pitching
was teased in the Post-Dispatch today. The National League's 1974 Cy Young Award winner has a doctorate in exercise physiology, and believes he has invented a pitching motion, abandoning the overhand standard, that will completely eliminate arm stress and injuries, while maximizing the speed of each pitch. He calls the Major League establishment "the flat-earth society, " and his proteges, such as former Devil Ray Jeff Sparks, say they've been constantly forced by pitching coaches to tinker and readjust their Marshall-developed motions at the professional level.
Marshall pitched in the bigs from 1967 to 1981, and still owns a handful of Major League pitching endurance records for relievers, including most games pitched in a season (106!), and consecutive games (13). He believes no kid should pitch competitively until their arm x-rays reveal the biological progression of a 13-year-old, and even then, should be limited to one inning per game, two games per week, and two months per season. A pitcher has to be at least 19 years old to enroll in his training school.
Fascinating, huh?! The seminar was already held this afternoon, but I doubt we've heard the last of Marshall.
More on the Marshall Plan.
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Lately, during my 15 minute breaks at work, I've been going out to my car to listen to the radio. I work in a music-free environment so these melodic interludes help to break up the routine of the day. A trip to the bathroom each break, and the elapsed time of the journey to and from the car leaves it so that I really only get to enjoy one full song per break. Kind of like a lapdance...(pause for effect)... my brother tells me. Sometimes the best I can do is an Elton John song or one of the new R&B hits on the urban station, but it will be tough to top the happy timing of today's tunes: for the first break, "What a Fool Believes," by the Doobies, and for the second, "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)," by the Four Tops. Those are a couple beauties, man. I needed 'em on a slow-moving Friday.
The mustache world's red carpet weekend
Polls at the American Mustache Institute are still open to determine who has the Greatest Sports Mustache of All-Time. It's part of the St. Louis-based organization's
'Stache Bash event in the Gateway City August 4th. Retired Cardinal Al Hrabosky, Rollie Fingers, and the late Dale Earnhardt are among the finalists.
Are you concerned that former firstbaseman Keith Hernandez isn't a finalist? Rest easy. A write-in campaign for "Mex"
is afoot. But isn't his advertising endorsement of "Just For Men" the competitive equivalent of injecting steroids?
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I've been trying to root for Barry Bonds this year for the first time in my life, but
it's not easy.
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Upon this weekend's theatrical film release, a sports site
lists the 10 greatest "Simpsons" sports moments. Clips included.
Our greatest senator
I read an on-line piece this morning on Salon about
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold that I think encapsulates everything that so many Democrats don't understand about the power of the people. The well-meaning author, while attempting to praise the Senator's idealism and moral virtue, winds up marginalizing our greatest champion of reform in the Senate. I think it's especially condescending to American midwestern values, which by the way, would carry more political sway in the west and the south, I'd argue, than those of the nation's northeast, if allowed to push the party's agenda.
The writer, Edward McClellan, seems to believe, like so many, that the so-called pragmatists in the center play the key role in shaping the nation's future, while the contributions of crusaders like Feingold, even as they represent popular ideas of the people, are limited in their broad appeal nationally. McClellan has a skewed since of history, as well, when he opines that, at the turn of the last century, Feingold would have been a Bull Moose Republican, when in fact, he would have led in either Robert La Follette's Progressive Party or in the Socialist movement. They were the real catalysts for positive change during that period.
In the last paragraph, McClellan offers that Feingold's "last honest man" role is better suited to a senator, than to a presidential candidate, but the occasion of this profile-- Feingold's proposals this week to censure the president-- are case in point of why he's wrong. As a senator, Feingold's efforts are deemed to be those of just one voice in a hundred, and his censure proposals can be dismissed, as they have been, with a wave of the hand by the leader of Feingold's party in that chamber.
Feingold's greatest failing, thus far, is that he hasn't taken the plunge in pursuing the nation's highest office, and, by all accounts, the reason he hasn't is that he feels he would have no chance in his party's nominating process. The deck is stacked, he realizes, in favor of the establishment candidate. This is exactly
why Ralph Nader has served the American people so admirably by his cyclical re-entry into presidential politics, and why he could never stage that protest, as many have insincerely argued, within the Democratic party structure. If you run as a reformer within the party, you become marginalized by the establishment party and press, and you're finished in February.
McClellan believes that the senate "can always use a pain in the ass," but who's been a bigger pain for establishment Dems than Nader? Now that Feingold has established his independence in the U.S. Senate, and he has scored the greatest electoral count in Wisconsin history (in '04) to back up his political vision, what's keeping him in the Democratic party? It's only holding him back.
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The overhyped story of the week is the YouTube Democratic debate on CNN. The audience's questions for the candidates (via the popular video website) might have been "unpredictable" to those on the podium, but those candidates could still rely on a mainstream cable news network to do the filtering. The only noticable difference I could come up with between the new format, and the old "audience in the town hall meeting" questions is that the YouTube inquisitors were apparently auditioning for "American Idol" or "Last Comic Standing." An exchange of meaningful ideas during a live presidential debate will return only when the duopoly's "Commission on Presidential Debates," led by the former heads of the two dominant parties, begins allowing third party candidates their own podiums on the stages of nationally televised debates.
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Alas, my blogging schedule will continue to be irregular during the next couple weeks, as I'm still in my temporary residence, and have a lot of running around to do each day in closing on my new place. This past weekend, my dad and I installed the ceramic tile in the condominium unit, and my hard work still aches. That's a tough business, physically. All the tile and equipment had to be hauled up three flights of stairs. (I was in charge of the grunt work.) I suggested we install the tiles in unit 4, instead of 6, and save some wear and tear in the climbing, but Dad explained the flaw in my logic. When I'm blogging from the new place after August 6th, you'll read and feel the difference.
The polarizer
The "vast right-wing conspiracy" continues to work overtime in boosting its choice to lead the Democratic ticket in 2008-- Hillary Clinton. A Pentagon official, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, responded in writing Monday to questions Clinton raised back in May about how the Pentagon planned to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. Said Edelman, "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia." He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."
The intent of Edelman's preposterous statements, you see, is to lift Clinton's profile and standing among the opposition, the anti-war left, which understandably doubts Clinton's anti-war bona-fides. The radical right-wing wants desperately for Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. Edelman's statements about "reinforcing enemy propaganda" are so baffoonish that they could apply just as mistakenly to any one of the large number of elected representatives who have spoken out against the war in recent weeks. Hell, there was "public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq" for 18 straight hours on the Senate floor Tuesday night. The voting congressional members who have publicly opposed our current policy are as politically-diverse as Russ Feingold, Richard Lugar, Barack Obama, John Warner, Chuck Hagel, Pete Dominici, Lindsey Graham, and Dennis Kucinich.
But who does Edelman choose to single out? He chooses a person whose husband first raised the false specter of Saddam Hussein holding weapons of mass destruction, a person who voted to give the president the power to go to war in 2002, who has refused to concede that error, and who has said publicly (in March) that, under her leadership, we would have a "remaining military as well as political mission in Iraq," and that a large number of troops would have to stay because of our "remaining vital national security interests in Iraq." (Read:
oil.)
Hillary Clinton is the preferred target of the right-wing hate squad, not because she's the biggest threat to their ideals and principles, but because she's perceived as the easiest Democrat to beat in the general election in '08.
A poll released just today by the New York Times and CBS News casts Clinton as a front-runner, but finds that a whopping 40 percent of all voters surveyed view her unfavorably. (No other Democrat registered higher than 28 percent.) That means that two out of every five voters have already made up their minds about her, and don't like what they would be getting in a second Clinton White House.
Conversely, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, whom this blog has endorsed in the 2008 Democratic primaries, continues to poll most formidably,
head-to-head, against each of the leading Republican candidates.
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I wish I could get more excited about Tuesday night's sleepover on the floor of the United States Senate. Unfortunately, however, that chamber already voted earlier this year to continue funding the war so it doesn't figure how attempting to extend debate in order to pass another non-binding resolution accomplishes much of anything. Harry Reid could hold his colleagues there all summer, but as long as the Pentagon gets its checks, the bloodshed in Iraq will continue.
This doesn't imply, however, that a gaggle of Republican Senators didn't act completely hypocritical. Lugar, Dominici, Warner, and George Voinovich all played the mainstream news media for fools this week. (Granted, not that difficult to do.) Each of them could be found on your television Sunday morning, scoring "maverick" points with the punditocracy "taking on the president" on the chat shows. But when it came time to defy Bush on the Senate floor, they each turned tail.
Felix and Oscar
I'm about half-way through my summer stay at my friend Rob Semelroth's place as I await the completion of my new home, scheduled now for August 6th. There have been no major problems in cohabitation thus far. Rob hasn't been "on my case" every hour of every day about my hedonistic lifestyle, and I pretty much come and go as I please. If you know Rob, you know that a large portion of his day is spent counting the yellow stripes in the middle of the highway. A veteran of both the Boston and New York City Marathons, he's out of his house at least two hours of each day practicing his left foot/right foot technique for these types of well-publicized races. (But what is he actually running
from? Am I right, people?)
Obviously, I'm grateful to Rob for his hospitality and for the money I'm saving during my stay with him, though it doesn't seem like it will be quite as much as I originally anticipated, after finding out exactly how much I'm forced to contribute financially to his interminable collection of duvet covers. He has duvets for the beds, duvets for the couch and for all the chairs, duvets for the coffee tables and for each of the kitchen appliances. It's pretty ridiculous really--
extravagant is probably the best word. The week-to-week changes in window treatments are also setting me back a pretty penny, though it's difficult to quibble with the results.
I'm trying to find projects during my stay that will keep me from spending too much money. After years of Rob mooching off my HBO, I have one month to earn back my losses through his Netflix membership, and I proposed to him that he go to the library with me this weekend so that we could get books to read together in the evenings. We did succeed in getting him his very own library card yesterday, but he walked out of the new Des Moines Central Library without even checking out a book. I think that's because it's harder to find those large-print publications suitable for reading while on the treadmill. Did I mention Rob runs a lot?
I believe that my stay has been a rewarding one for Rob. To my memory, his place has never been so clean for such an extended period of time, and in exchange for taking his three-year collection of empty cans and bottles back to the grocery store for deposit last night, he allowed me to keep the accumulated $11.40 for my trouble. The refund would have been about $20, but Hy-Vee stores don't sell or take back the tallboys of King Cobra Malt Liquor.
Even pro-war campaigns face reality of broken system
John McCain's presidential campaign is gaining little traction. The Republican Senator's authorship of the Iraq War's so-called "surge" strategy, along with the candidate's support for immigration reform and extended amnesty for illegals, unpopular among those on the right-wing, has cut deeply into his grass-roots backing. Once the darling of the establishment press, the "maverick" McCain is now widely perceived as having pandered to the radical right on the war issue, while those voters, obviously, view his rightward turn in pursuit of a higher office as simply inauthentic. (Hillary, Inc. advisors, take note.) Poor money management and the negative perceptions of sagging poll numbers have reportedly left McCain's campaign operating in the red, and forced his team to consider accepting public financing to continue the White House bid.
The public financing system began in the 1970s in the wake of the Watergate
criminal enterprise. (This blog is henceforth going to refrain from using the weasel word "scandal" when describing issues and events that could more accurately be termed "crimes.") The financing program set strict state-by-state fundraising limits on campaigns until such point each cycle that the political party in question selects its candidate at a national convention. In exchange for those limits, the public financing commission grants matching funds from the U.S. Treasury to the campaign.
What has happened during the three decades since Watergate, however, is that the level of private and corporate fundraising has increased to such a high level that nearly all the leading candidates simply choose to opt out of the public offering, eliminating the ceiling on campaign fundraising.
The simple solution to this problem would be to just eliminate the opt-out and have 100% public financing for elections, funded, perhaps, by a voluntary check-off on 1040 tax forms. Who could be opposed to such a practical solution? A hint: they're the same people who report the national and local news, and then, not coincidentally, never devote time and resource to this issue, having the most to lose financially. Public financing and free airtime for candidates on the "public" airwaves of television and radio would create greater voter choice, trust, and participation in the electoral process, but this is, of course, what our corporate paymasters fear the most-- an empowered populace alert to the crimes perpetrated against it.
According to a media analyst in the
New York Times on Friday, television stations in Iowa will, between them, likely collect between $7 and $15 million in broadcasting revenue during the upcoming caucus season-- from Republican candidates
alone-- and thus far, Democratic candidates have outraised their GOP kin on the money-collection circuit
. I learned during my time in radio as a commercial scheduler that the flood of campaign cash during the caucus season in the state can virtually double station advertising revenue for that period. The rates for the candidate's 30- and 60-second ads can be set at any price level, provided only that it's the same for every candidate. This system directly funnels your campaign cash contributions into the coffers of these private media companies who, in turn, pay absolutely zero rent back to us to occupy their position on the public broadcasting spectrum.
Citizen McCain abandoned the mantel of radical election reform that most resonated with voters in 2000 for a turn as President Bush's lackey in our nation's war for corporate oil profits, and now the chickens are home to roost.
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Book recommendation: Evan Carton, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a much-needed biography of 19th Century radical abolitionist John Brown, entitled "Patriotic Treason," rescuing a courageous and moral American hero from the cellar of historic misinformation preaching that he was mentally unbalanced and sociopathic. What strikes me about Brown's story-- his armed militia attempt on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and failed plan to arm fugitive slaves-- is that the issues that plagued Brown's human liberation efforts in 1859 are the issues still with us today. A large number of Americans-- then as now-- falsely believe that political compromise is the great attribute of a democratic nation. It was a slaveholding Kentucky congressman, Henry Clay, with the support of a delegation of capitulating representatives from the north, that authored the Missouri Compromise in 1850, allowing territorial expansion of slavery into the west and writing into law the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced authorities in the north to capture runaway slaves and return them to their southern masters.
Carton argues that historians' dislike of Brown is linked to "the general predisposition of mainstream historians of the (Civil) war to serve as agents of national reconciliation by taking a dispassionate and equalizing view of the claims, motives, interests, and miscalculations of both the north and south." A true hero cannot exist in such a narrative. Reckless villains fit much better. Brown didn't believe in compromise. He believed that the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence were synonymous.
Henry David Thoreau believed that Brown's raid represented the lifting of a great stain, and that it served as the greatest possible catalyst for change. He called it "the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!"
Brown believed that the people of the 1850s needed a shock, "They have compromised so long that they think principles of right and wrong have no more any power on this earth." True patriots like Brown, says Carton, lead by both the force of their example and the shame of their suppression.
Moeller TV Listings 7/13/07
You have to live in the broadcast or cable television vicinity of Fox Sports Midwest or Philadelphia's CW 57, but if you do, the Cardinals, tonight at 6 central, take on the Phillies in the first contest for both teams following the All-Star Break. A loss by the Phils would mark the 10,000th loss in franchise history, making them the first professional sports team anywhere in the world to lose a total number of games in the five digits.
The Good Phight fansite has a lot of interesting statistics on this topic. For example, had you noticed or ever suspected that the current decade (the 2000s) has been the Phillies' best-- according to winning percentage-- since the 1910s? I hadn't either.
What could be more fitting, for futility's sake, than losing your 10,000th game to Kip Wells?
Saving the best for last
Are you like me? Did you stay up late last night waiting for just a glimpse of baseball's greatest hitter, Albert Pujols, in a pinch-hitting role for the National League All-Star team? If so, then you're surely disappointed today after Pujols' own regular-season manager, Tony LaRussa, left him on the bench for a potential "utility" role in case the game had gone extra innings. Because God forbid we have to utilize the All-Star Game's catcher "re-entry" rule or send a relief pitcher up to bat for himself in the 11th inning. Instead, the 11th inning never arrived, or even the 10th, as the world got to see all-world outfielder, Aaron Rowand, fly meekly to right with the bases loaded for the game's final out in another NL defeat, 5-4.
Forget just the latest in a long string of "miscommunications" between Tony LaRussa and his players. Forget that Pujols is motivated almost entirely by pride, or that he was the Cardinals' only representative on the NL roster, or that he has all but personally driven LaRussa to Cooperstown with his prolific power numbers and unparalleled field leadership. No, the greatest tragedy is that baseball fans of every shade and stripe were denied a tremendous thrill -- the matchup between one of the game's top relievers, Francisco Rodriguez, and perhaps its most historically-significant active slugger, Pujols, in a situation in which an out or base hit determined home field for Game 1, and if necessary, Game 7 of the World Series. Instead of a classic
baseball moment, we got simply another
Tony LaRussa moment-- another out of left field piece of internal logic and game strategy that only one human being in the world fully comprehends. More fans tuned in to watch this baseball exhibition contest than did each of the four games of the NBA Finals this year, but what they witnessed was an anti-climax worthy of the Pro Bowl.
As a Cardinals fan, I'm just exhausted. LaRussa feuds with Ozzie Smith. He feuds with Scott Rolen. He feuds with Jim Edmonds. He complains about the St. Louis media, seemingly oblivious to how good he has it in a one newspaper town. He warns of vast hidden conspiracies of former players and managers. As perhaps the greatest affront, to Cardinals fans directly, he defiantly returns Kip Wells and his 5.92 ERA to the pitching rotation to start the opening game of the second half of the season.
I've never been comfortable with the question of whether or not LaRussa should be let go by the Cardinals. The choice is never about whether to fire a manager, it's about who would be a better manager. If you're going to replace the current skipper with Jim Riggleman, Jerry Narron, or some of the other middling white guys who get umpteen managerial chances in Major League Baseball-- then I'm against it. If you're going to make an inspired managerial choice, such as former Cardinals field leader, NL MVP, and long-time Whitey Herzog and Bobby Cox protegee, Terry Pendleton, than lets bring it on. It's no longer any fun to watch a "superstar" manager attempt to stay three moves out in front of the competition and perpetuate his alleged "genius." My greatest fear for the current club is that the real reason LaRussa didn't play Pujols last night was because he felt the Cardinals had already been represented in the All-Star game-- by him.
The next logical step
If you continue to kill other people's children over a long period of time, those people will eventually stop being polite towards you. This is a simple concept to understand. A few months ago, the woman who spearheaded the widespread citizen movement against the Iraq War in the United States, Cindy Sheehan, announced that she was retiring from that movement, having become frustrated with a Democratic-led Congress that has, thus far, defied an electoral mandate to stop the bloody conflict.
Now Sheehan is back, announcing that she will challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her congressional seat in 2008 if the San Francisco Democrat and her caucus don't bring impeachment charges against President Bush before the "Peace Mom's" caravan march from Texas reaches Washington D.C. July 23rd.
Threats and timelines of our own, such as this, have sadly become quite necessary, with the inability of Democrats to end the war being so remarkably perplexing. A USA Today/Gallup Poll today shows opposition to the war reaching a new record high. Bush's approval rating has bottomed out again, this time at 29%. More than 70 percent of Americans believe we should withdraw from Iraq before April, and only one in five Americans believes the increase in U.S. forces in Iraq since January has made the situation there better. Meanwhile, the author of this so-called military "surge" in the region, John McCain, has seen his presidential support even among Republicans
wither in the heat of summer.
The presidential candidate of the Democratic establishment, Hillary Clinton, is planning to introduce legislation that would revoke the war authority that Congress originally surrendered to the president in 2002, saying that "the American public and our troops in the field are entitled to a new debate about this war." Wrong. We're entitled to action, not more focus group-driven and hollow debate. The debate has already been waged, and it's now being waged only between the American people and their unrepresentative government. Congressional Democrats have seen their approval rating fall to an almost equally-abysmal 30 percent.
And don't tell me that Democrats have had their hands tied to administration policy on Iraq. Ending the war never required a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto. All our representatives in Washington had to do during this term was nothing at all. By simply refusing to send any war appropriations bill whatsoever to the White House, our troops would have been forced to stand down in Iraq by now. Since we saw a sharp increase in war spending instead, and because Democrats are still unwilling to spend even the slightest political capital to stop the bloodshed or begin impeachment proceedings against the irresistable force they view as the impediment to progress, the party can expect to see not only an increase in the opposition to incumbency in their state primaries during the winter of 2008, but also, a much larger group of betrayed and disaffected voters abandoning the Dems for third party options like Sheehan, Ralph Nader, or "none of the above"on election day in November.
The Hills
I returned late last night from the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, after a weekend of fun and merriment with family at Moeller-Jam 2007 at South Dakota's Custer State Park. The four day adventure included a one-day stop at Deadwood Gulch to gaze upon Nuttall's #10 Saloon, the Homestake Mine, the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and "Calamity Jane" Cannary, the site of the original Gem Saloon, Star and Bullock hardware store, Chinese Alley, and other
1876 locations recalled in the HBO television series "Deadwood."
What we found-- my brother and me-- in
2007 Deadwood was an interesting mix of history preserved and commerce pursued in a manner befitting the naked ambition of the village's earliest inhabitants. The town today is overrun with retirees drawn in by souvenir hunting and legalized gambling and motorcycle-straddling wannabe-outlaws riding through from nearby Sturgis. I had hoped we would find it overrun instead with college English professors intent on tapping
David Milch's artistic muse.
The gentleman who led our "Boot Hill" trolley tour of the aforementioned sites was a 12-year veteran of his work, an author of a small book on the town's history, and a tremendous informational asset, as one might expect. He provided some candid comments and praise for the faithfulness, if not sheer accuracy, of Milch's dramatic series. We dined Thursday evening at the Deadwood Social Club on the second floor of the modern reincarnation of the #10 Saloon, continuing to mind our own business when we heard gunshots from the street below, a "Wild West" re-enactment offered every few hours during the daylight of summer in Historic Deadwood. As the Social Club specialized in Italian cuisine, Aaron and I both dined on fettucine, and now likewise, will be sure to sample the roasted beef and rye whiskey the next time we're in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
In other Black Hills vacation news, Friday night and the reunion itinerary offered a chuckwagon cookout for most of the 100+ Moellers in attendance. The servings were plentiful, the steaks tender and juicy, but the hour-in-length sing-a-long wagon ride to the grilling pit was twice as long as reasonably expected. The exorbitant price of the Blue Bell Lodge's chuckwagon experience might be deemed slightly more affordable if you factor in the complimentary handkerchiefs and cowboy hats.
Saturday evening featured the eating, drinking, communal fellowship, picture-taking, card-playing, and entertainment program consistent with so many of these type of family reunions-- only better. The next Moeller reunion is coming in Summer 2010, quite possibly at San Diego, California. See if you can marry into the family between now and then.
Vacation
I know I've been hit and miss lately anyway, but "Moeller-palooza," the family reunion of the descendents of Peter and Anna Moeller, draws me away to the Black Hills of South Dakota beginning tomorrow. I take great pride in having first recommended this location for the tri-annual reunion, as I am a loon for HBO's "Deadwood" series, and I'll miss all of you, but won't be returning to my computer keyboard until late Monday. I'll post a detailed travelogue upon my return. Keep the freak flag flyin' till then.
This Land is Our Land
The Fourth of July always brings to my mind the travels of youth-- motor trips spanning across this immense country, through each of the 48 contingent states, up to and even beyond our political borders. Ours is a land of extraordinarily diverse topography and culture, and of people raised and inspired by the most breathtaking of ideals. Our shared history remains stubbornly animated in these thousands of varied locales; and by traveling to them, we're constantly and vividly reminded that the history is still alive. The issues that define and divide us today-- from immigration to religious and social freedom to the waging of peace-- are the issues that always have.
Some of the most memorable moments of my life have been the moments when I've found myself standing in a spot of great historical significance in regards to these lofty ambitions. I felt myself powerfully moved, not just by the sweeping grandeur of time, but by our connection today to that long ago time and place. As a people, we've experienced both thunderous progress and profound loss, sometimes simultaneously.
To mark the holiday, I wanted to single out a handful of places in the United States where I've experienced the swell of patriotism-- places that helped to make me the damnable idealist that I am today:
1) Little Bighorn National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana:
The site where General George Custer and the 7th Cavalry met their fate in 1876 at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors stands as monument to United States military folly, the national shame of our repeated attempts to colonize the globe and, under guise of spreading democracy and civility, lay claim to its natural resources. Burial markers still dot the landscape at the Little Bighorn. As the breeze rustles the high prairie grass, allow plenty of time to recall the extended history of American imperialism.
2) Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York City:
My German ancestors came through Castle Garden in New York's Battery Park in the 1860s, but twelve million more of us passed through the subsequent port of New York harbor, Ellis Island, as immigrants between 1892 and 1954, arriving from countries such as Ireland, Russia, and Italy. Let us never forget that too many were turned away as well-- often as victimized "alien radicals" during the "Red Scare," or because of such heinous restriction laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the National Origins Act (an ethnic quota system), or by the sinister use of literacy tests. If you're in the Big Apple, hop on the boat to Ellis Island and take the self-guided audio tour. The sounds and stories haunt and inspire.
3) The French Quarter (Vieux Carre), New Orleans, Louisiana:
Simply put, this is America's greatest urban history center and our greatest monument to the cherished legacy of race-mixing in the Land of the Free. Slave and free Africans, French Creoles, Spanish, Haitian, Italian and German immigrants each exacted an extraordinary influence on New Orleans' central cultural district, and America's greatest gift to the world (aside from the Constitution), jazz music, was born in nearby Storyville in 1900. Screw Vegas, and make New Orleans' French Quarter your next exotic and carnal travel destination.
4) Glacier National Park, West Glacier, Montana:
Infrastructural neglect by the U.S. Federal Government put the French Quarter at peril before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, but time will likely run out first for Glacier National Park along the Alberta and British Columbia borders of northwest Montana. Thanks to greenhouse-like warming of the planet, scientists expect that the remaining 27 glaciers in the park will have melted away by 2030. The vast expanse of the park and the natural beauty of jagged, majestic mountains and swooping valleys reminds us how fortunate we are to live in paradise on Earth, and it affirms our core values of both natural conservation and public ownership.
And 5) the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois:
America's greatest president is entombed beneath granite and steel, along with his wife and children, at his hometown in central Illinois. The city of Springfield has lots of Lincoln sites to offer, such as the Presidential Library, museum, and tours of Honest Abe's home and law office, but for me, the solemnity of his final resting place at Oak Ridge Cemetery allowed for the most sobering reflection upon the life of an extraordinary leader-- the man who, in the face of vicious and violent political opposition and the widespread corruption of wealth, emancipated us all.
Two endorsements
At one o'clock, on Saturday, July 21st, an all-star basketball game honoring the late Barry Stevens will be held at Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa. Stevens died of a heart attack in February. He played for the Iowa State Cyclones from 1981-1985, and left the school as its all-time leading scorer. The game is being organized by Jeff Grayer-- Stevens' former teammate, friend, and business partner, a fellow Flint, Michigan native, and the only man to subsequently surpass Barry on that ISU scoring list. Stevens and Grayer were my favorite basketball players when I was a kid.
Another of Stevens' former teammates, Jeff Hornacek, will participate in the contest, along with other former and current basketball stars, Jamaal Tinsley and Mateen Cleaves. Tickets are $20 for adults ($10 for 15 and under). Call 810-533-5478. Coordinate with me first.
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Lifelong pal David Levenhagen just got his blog up and running over at
davelevenhagen.blogspot.com. Expect plenty of cross-promotion between these two sites in the coming days. For example, Dave tells me privately that he plans to respond-- at last-- to the rumor that he once let his hair grow out for two months in the hope of attaining "that happenin' Tony LaRussa look." Don't miss it.
