Do Y'All Know How Bad Things Are in Greece?

Michael Lewis does. He’s the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and, most recently, a great book on the Wall Street meltdown awhile back, The Big Short. He’s got an article in the recent Vanity Fair on the destruction of the Greek economy called "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds."  

I recommend that you read the whole astounding article. Here is an excerpt:

In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers; the truth is surely worse. “Our people went in and couldn’t believe what they found,” a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”


As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.” The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.

The Trojan Horse -- beware of gifts bearing Greeks

I do not wish to suggest that the United States is likely to become like Greece anytime soon. I do suggest that democracies who wish to remain democracies pay some heed to the growth of the public sector. Which is set to explode under the policies of the current President. The last couple of Republican presidents didn’t do us any favors in this regard, either, so there is plenty of blame to go around.

I have nothing against the Greek. I thank him for much of what has become Western Civilization, which is really an excellent civilization. A first-rate civilization, and much of it started with the ancestors of this beautiful people.

But I am telling you, Cool Hot Centrists, there is something in the human condition that inspires its constituents to say to themselves, if we are promised something, we are entitled to it even if the keeping of that promise is devastating not only to our countrymen, but to the world into which our descendants will be born. You see it here in the demands of unions and all groups benefiting from the federal dole, which numbers are alarmingly large (although, thanks to a startlingly principled Republican Congress during the Clinton Administration, and Bill Clinton’s shrewd read of the American gestalt, is smaller than it could be).  You see it in the truly desperate condition of the California state government.

I don’t wish to be wearisome on the topic of our unsatisfactory President, I truly don’t. But Greece is the ultimate endpoint of the European Model of the role of government. It is a model that our President admires, at least if you take his advocacy of the present version – that is, the enacted version – of healthcare reform as evidence. The percentage of our economy accounted for by governmental activity – and that means persons employed by the federal government, and the taxes needed to support them and their benefits – is set to grow markedly under him.

The Democrats also seek to expand the influence of labor unions, as well as their ability to organize employees in businesses where their effect is unlikely to be any less baleful than their effect on the auto industry and local and state governments.

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio said this the other day:  "This election is nothing less than a referendum of our identity as a nation and as a people."  I have misgivings about the Tea Party, but this much they have absolutely right.

Think about it. Just think about it.

Do You Remember the Moment? No, Really, When Was It?

There are a lot of folks out there who still strongly support President Obama. There are also folks out there who thought him an irredeemable fraud from the moment of his nomination and before.

This article is not for them.

It’s for those who supported him and welcomed the Democratic hegemony that trailed him into office and now don’t like either one. It’s even for folks like me who didn’t vote for him but thought there was a fairish chance he would govern practically, somewhat like Bill Clinton; or folks (also a little like me) who found his stylish sophistication a welcome change that carried with the possibility for an enhanced American profile in the world. That, combined with bulletproof Democratic legislative majorities, guaranteed at a minimum that the era of extremely disappointing Republican rule was over.

My question for that rather large and growing cohort of Obama/Democrat apostates is – when did you know? What event finally convinced you that Obama and the Democrats (who were unanimously following his lead) had clearly broken faith with their promise and were not going to turn back to the center?

Here’s my example from the latest Bush administration. I’ll bet I share it with a lot of people who voted for G.W. a couple of times but gradually grew disgusted with his spending, his inattention to the military situation in the Middle East, and his failure to communicate clearly his . . . well, just about everything.

If there is one presidential gift that keeps on giving, it’s Supreme Court justice appointments. When Sandra Day O’Conner retired, President Bush’s base saw that rarest of opportunities to replace a mostly-unfriendly and at best unreliable vote with a much more solid jurist, an asset that could pay ideological dividends to the Republican core for years to come. There were many distinguished candidates, some of them women. But what did Bush do? He walked out of his office, spotted White House counsel Harriet Miers, said “you’ll do,” and walked right back in.

Harriet Miers and President Bush

It may not have been quite that casual – he might have run it by Karl Rove – but the decision couldn’t have been given much more care than that. It was a terrible pick. Miers and her views were unknown. She had crafted a successful but careful career as a Texas lawyer. Abortion, one of the most important issues to the base – no idea where she stood. No judicial experience. She was a woman for a “woman’s seat,” apparently her sole recommendation. Tokenism plus cronyism, sheesh. It was George W.’s equivalent to George H.W.’s reneging on his “read my lips – no new taxes” pledge. The Miers nomination pretty much proved to anyone still prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt that the man simply did not give a damn – or that if he did, he was giving altogether the wrong kind of damn.  The entire right and much of the Cool Hot Center revolted and Bush was humliated into withdrawing her nomination.  A far superior candidate (Samuel Alito) took her place.

Many pundits have speculated on the cause of President Obama’s breathtaking decline. (I hesitate to call it a “fall” – I’m not at all sure the guy won’t make a comeback, and sooner than anyone might think. He’s been formidable and can be again, especially if the Republicans continue their flirtation with Tea Party peckerwoods like Sarah Palin as serious presidential possibilities.) Amazingly, Obama is lazier than either Bush. But if he rallies, look out.) You hear a lot of chatter about the failure of the massive stimulus to create jobs, but I hold with those who believe the discontent runs much deeper – people feel defrauded generally, and they absolutely disbelieve the promises made for the President’s policies.

Yeah, but when did you know that the awfulness of O/Dems’ first year was only going to intensify? When did you know that they simply had to go?

I have a candidate.

I feel for President Obama just a little. (I mean, it’s really a tiny little feeling, itty bitty thing.) He put his legislative agenda in the hands of two of the least appealing political figures of our time: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Pelosi is tough but not smart; Reid is – I don’t know, it just seems like the guy needs more sleep or maybe an adjustment to his spectacles prescription.

First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates appropriate presidential obeisance to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

It was Pelosi who gave us that crystallizing moment on March 9, 2010. Heavens, let’s not take it out of context:

"You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

There it was, in one sentence, in one phrase. And this was not a casual misstatement or an offhand response to a reporter’s question. This appeared in remarks prepared for delivery to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties. Rep. Pelosi is proud of this statement.  She issued a press release and you can still find it on her website.  Now in fairness: If you read the whole statement, you might conclude that her intention here was to say that the blessings of healthcare reform will only be fully appreciated when it is enacted.

But recall that this statement was issued at a time when it had become apparent that legislators themselves in fact did not know what was in the healthcare bill, could not explain its operation, fled from questions about its contents, had to be bribed to vote for it (Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's shocking abandonment of princple was only a couple of months old) and had not, in fact, even bothered to dip into its 2,409 pages to discover the monstrous new bureacracy that would have charge of a huge chunk of the U.S. economy.    (Source: Republican Congressman Kevin Brady’s staff. If the accuracy of this chart has been challenged, I haven’t been able to find it. Brady has said that this is only a partial chart containing only about a third of the plan’s Medusan entanglements. (Actually, he didn’t use the phrase “Medusan entanglements.” That was, uh, me.))

So when Rep. Pelosi said that we have to pass it to find out what’s in it – you know, “away from the fog of controversy” caused by people asking to know what’s in it – she broadcast O/Dems’ fundamental contempt for the deliberative process. It showed their arrogance and indeed, the arrogance of contemporary liberalism, which is no more attractive or justifiable than the arrogance of the right personified in the bad old days by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove (who have in recent years somewhat repented of that attitude). It was disrespectful. And it was myopic – the O/Dems simply saw things wrong. They misread the results of the election. They misread the interest and attention span of the American public. The congressional Democrats misread the nature of Obama’s appeal (so did Obama). And they misread history and the experience of every country (and state – let’s not forget the failing Romneycare in MA) that has ever nationalized healthcare. And, of course, they didn’t even misread the law they passed – the horrors hidden in its labyrinthine prose (and folks, I know a little something about labyrinthine prose) are still being excavated, because they never read it at all.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) (top); Reptilicus (political affiliation unknown)

That was the moment for me. The contempt, the arrogance, the misunderstanding, the regular-style ignorance, and the intentional ignorance – folks, this is how the entrenched political elite thinks. Some Republicans, too. 

Get out the brooms.  And keep them close at hand for 2012.

Nancy Pelosi, President Obama's deluded handmaiden, has done us the favor of explaining the Tea Party in seventeen words.

The Invasion of Mexico

Now that I have your attention . . .

(1) I do not favor the invasion of Mexico under the present circumstances or any that are likely to obtain in the next several years, at least.

(2) I like Mexico. I like and admire Mexicans and am very much attracted to Mexican-American culture (art, architecture, chow). I have great empathy for people who leave their native land and language at great risk to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. I am hopeful that Americans can find a reasonable and fair way to solve the problems caused by illegal immigration and the illegals who are already here. I am not heartset against some form of legalization as part of a stern program to regulate our border, which may or may not include a English language requirement, a physical impediment to crossing, and a constitutional redefinition of citizenship. I’m open.

(3) You will not read anything in this article critical of President Obama. The problem to be considered here is not one for which he is responsible, and one he has only marginally worsened. (Oops.) Nor will this post express any views on Arizona's initiatives or those of some of its law enforcement officers.

Sunset on the Rio Grande

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, consider:

What should be the United States' response to the appearance of one or more hostile and aggressive Mexican states on its border?

I'm talking about drug crime. I’m talking about bordering Mexican political subdivisions effectively controlled by criminals whose explicit aim (and present activity) is the invasion of the United States – controlled, that is, by terrorists.

The slaughter in Mexico is horrific and escalating. The speculation surrounding the recent discovery of mass graves is that the victims were hopeful emigrants who refused to join the cartels' program of drug importation into the United States. But if the murder of Mexican citizens on Mexican soil were the only problem, the United States could have little to say about it.

Your Cool Hot Center's concern is the effective control of one or more of those Mexican states – Baja California Norte, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon (barely), and Tamaulipas, west to east -- by drug cartels. Unlike organized crime in the United States, the cartels kill and threaten local law enforcement officials and unfriendly politicians without fear of retribution. Corruption in local police departments and the army is rampant. Officers frequently switch sides and serve to enforce the cartels' control. Elections -- hard to believe the drug lords do not have a voice there as well. The cartels operate their own armies that are well-armed, disciplined, and vicious.  They already control large portions of the Mexican countryside.

I do not know what Mexico or its states are doing to combat the cartels. I believe it is safe to say it is not working.

So:  If it is not already here, the day may soon be upon us when the United States is bordered by Mexican states that are directly or effectively controlled by terrorist organizations against which the Mexican national government is impotent. The terror they practice is aimed at the uninterrupted flow of illegal drugs into the United States.  The national border will not inhibit their inclination to corrupt political subdivisions within the U.S. itself, and it is beyond doubt that they will import their more violent techniques along with the drugs. Hell, they already do so.

The threat is explicitly terroristic. It is not conventional crime, although abetted by murder, torture, and kidnapping. It extends beyond the immediate violence needed to maintain control (and to compete effectively with other cartels) to the sustaining of the American urban ghetto, whose hopelessness and resistance to change is fueled by drugs forced across our borders by the cartels.  It extends to the ruin of lives up and down the American social scale.

So ask yourself: In terms of the death they deal and continue to threaten, their political threat to America, and the effectiveness of their organizations in this quadrant of the globe, how would you rank: (a) al-Qaeda, and (b) Mexican drug cartels?  If you had to think about it, add this parameter:  Choice (b) operate at the largely unprotected border with the United States, and threaten to control the bordering states.

I do not minimize the of Islamist extremism here or worldwide. It is substantial and must be fought. I do feel that the immediate threat to the U.S. mainland represented by al-Qaeda since 9/11 has shown itself to be, in general, spasmodic, amateurish, and so far rather easily deflected. I merely suggest that an explicitly hostile political subdivision on our border engaged in active importation of crime to the United States, enforced by paramilitias, can scarcely be regarded as a lesser threat than an international conspiracy headquartered in the Middle East.  The cartels are effective, successful, and operate actively 24/7 against the United States. The cartels and the drugs they supply have been responsible for the deaths of many more American civilians than al-Qaeda, even counting 9/11, as well as for the massive societal cancers already mentioned.  We felt that the al-Qaeda threat in 2001 justified a massive invasion on the other side of the world. (Come on now, most of us, me included, applauded and continue to applaud the routing of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, if not its admittedly more questionable extension into Iran.)   And speaking of al-Qaeda, what ideological principle would prevent an alliance between it and the cartels? 

And consider our continued ostracism of poor old ruined Cuba, 90 miles away, nowhere near the threat to the U.S. of the drug cartels.

How, then, should the United States respond to a hostile terrorist regime established directly on its border?

A guerrilla war fought by U.S. troops on Mexican soil -- probably at least partly in municipalities -- is unthinkable. U.S. public opinion; world opinion; nominally friendly U.S.-Mexico relations; the explosion in Mexican refugees; the threat to U.S. border residents; the impossibility of judging success and the resultant strong possibility of failure should the cartels simply retreat into the vastness of Mexico. This wouldn't be Black Jack Pershing commanding the 1916-17 Punitive Expedition into Mexico in search of Pancho Villa and his militia (who actually did attack Columbus, New Mexico; The Punitive Expedition, incidentally, failed). (Fun fact: During this period, approximately 140,000 U.S Army and National Guard troops patrolled the Mexican border.) The mind reels.

John J. Pershing and Pancho Villa in less fractious times, two years before the Punitive Expedition

I'd be interested, however, in other possibilities:

(1) Surgical air strikes, in and out. The targets would be drug-lord compounds and any identifiable locations of cartel militias. Cartels gots airplanes, but are bomber- and fighter-deficient. Probably not a lot of sophisticated anti-aircraft hardware. Any incursion of this type would require a widespread recognition of the threat among U.S. citizens nationwide, superb intelligence, and exquisitely nuanced diplomacy with Mexico, if not its government’s explicit endorsement and cooperation.

(2) Joint U.S.-Mexican military operations.

What about escalation and retaliation? Hey, I don't have all the answers. (None, in fact.) One can foresee, however, that even precision attacks aimed solely at drug operations and operators would devastate the Mexican tourism industry to the extent it relies on American travelers. And, of course, there are large numbers of Americans working and living in Mexico – not to mention American assets generally – that would be at a severely heightened risk.

Don’t care for a solution that includes military operations in Mexico? Can’t blame you.   But what should we do?  How have solutions worked for the last 50 years as this threat has grown? I’m not under any illusions that treating the drug cartels as a terrorist political threat to be dealt with militarily and diplomatically rather than as an unusually nasty organized criminal enterprise will end that threat. But somewhere along the line, surely this powerful nation will have to convey the message that a sustained attack by a secret or not-so-secret government on its borders is unacceptable. It might – and if anyone asks, you didn’t hear it from me – require us to take actions that would cause other countries to criticize us.

Can Mexico do a better job of fighting this threat within its borders? I’ve considered whether Italy, a country with which Mexico shares a strong Roman Catholic tradition of public morality, might be a useful model for our neighbor. Italy is still shot through with numerous organized crime families, but there is some feeling that the tide is turning there. Progress has come at the price of the assassination of fearless prosecutors like Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both murdered at the order of now-imprisoned boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina. Public disgust at the authorities' corruption and inaction led to a massive crackdown, the positive results of which continue to date. A difference, of course, would be that the cartels do not share Italian organized crime's (admittedly selective) concept of "honor," which may somewhat limit the mafiosi’s willingness to slaughter civilians in large numbers. The unarmed Mexican populace is understandably cowed in a way that Italian citizens apparently are not. Still, if Mexico is to suppress what amounts to a criminal insurrection in large parts of the countryside – it cannot eradicate it, just as we have not eradicated organized crime in the U.S. – it must start with incorruptible and brave political and military leaders, legislators, prosecutors, judges, and juries. And I would think the Church might offer a few words in support.

The late Giovanni Falcone; Salvatore Riina

On our side of the Rio Grande, we must deal with the demand side -- America's hunger for illegal drugs. I have seen it written that the thing the drug lords fear the most is legalization. (The link goes to an article discussing legalization in Mexico, not the United States. The writer, Johann Hari, believes that Mexican legalization would put an end to the cartels, but does not consider how it would affect export to the United States.)  It is hard to imagine that this would be an acceptable solution in the U.S. I don't know the percentages of cartel profits accounted for by marijuana, cocaine, heroin, meth, and other chemicals. While the legalization of marijuana is a subject of debate here, legalization of the others is not.

That leaves enforcement and border patrols and fences and tough sheriffs and Arizona legislation and flaccid national political leadership for the past half century and here, gentle Centrists, I must leave you. I’ll throw this out: I ponder whether the current policy of prosecuting from the top down -- getting casual users and freshman criminals to give up the higher-ups -- is going about it wrong. If we start jailing more severely and imposing jumbo fines for even small-quantity possession and party use (and fining parents and legal guardians when Colin and Emily get busted with blow after prom) and putting the brakes on plea bargaining, I wonder whether we might see a withering of that demand and greater difficulty of the cartels in recruiting the foot soldiers in the drug invasion. (Might have to build a few dozen more prisons – Infrastructure! Jobs!)  Legislation more vigorously regulating the massive flow of legally-purchased U.S. arms to Mexico would also seem to be in order.  Don't forget all those little airfields that should immediately come under stricter federal control, and new ones forbidden.  And, of course, there's the border itself. If that isn't a national identifier worthy of federal military protection, then nothing is.

Perhaps the invasion of Mexico starts at home.

*     *     *

Follow Your Cool Hot Center on Twitter:  @CoolHotCenter



An Imposter in the Garden

The Memsahib and I have been delighted with the backyard paradise installed by Cutters Lawn and Landscape.  I've written about Leon, the Test Fish and my deep ambivalence over some pioneering water striders.

Today, the Mem and I were out back doing a fish count.  All were accounted for except Halloween, a tiny deep red fish with black fins.  (Dear, I've seen her since.)   We were remarking over our pleasure that our garden had become a favored destination of hoards of bumblebees.  We noted the handwringing that goes on over bees' lost of habitat in recent decades, and speculations over whether cell-phone towers and other wavy transmitters were disorienting those salutary insects.  We were pleased, as only homeowners who install fake habitats can be, that we have been able, in our modest way, to tip the balance back their way just a little.

I was watching the bumblebees clouding around our blue salvia, when I noticed one that looked a little different.  At first, I thought it was just a large bumblebee, but upon closer inspection I saw that if it was, it wasn't like any of the others.  It was identically black and yellow-gold, and its wings were completely invisible as it flew, but it had -- well, it had a hairy ass.

I realized after watching it for a few minutes that it wasn't a bee at all.  It had the coiled proboscis of a butterfly or moth.  Because it hovered and floated expertly, at first I thought it was a moth of the sphinx variety, but it had the stick-like club-end antennae of a butterfly. 

Of course, I had to know what it was.

I'd like to pause here to say a few words in praise of Google.  There has recently been some speculation that Google, and the Internet in general, is making us dumber, robbing us of the ability to engage in leisurely reading and thinking necessary for learning.  (See this recent article in The Atlantic.)  Maybe so.  I judge that it's making me smarter.  I know my insect and especially my butterfly-and-moth books inside and out and I've never seen anything like this.  Since I had no idea what I was looking for, I despaired of  devising search terms that would yield useful hits.  "moth black yellow" seemed pretty useless to me, and then I hit on it:  "bumblebee mimic moth." 

I had the answer in seconds:  It is a snowberry clearwing moth

Looking like this on our salvia:

It is indeed a variety of sphinx moth, perhaps better known as hummingbird moths, closely related to the moths (underwings and hawkmoths) that one sees only at night, looking like ghostly hummingbirds (and about the same size), especially favoring petunias and the like. 

I regret to report that their larva can be hell on tomatoes. 

Anyway, we welcome this fake bumblebee to our fake paradise, close on the banks of our fake pond.

Now, if I only knew what a snowberry is.

Farewell, AOL, But I Doubt It

I got my first and only personal email account somewhere a little less than 20 years ago -- LowWacker@aol.com, named for a parody band I had with Lou Nigra and Ed Kassel, Lower Wacker Overdrive, that took its name from Lower Wacker Drive that ran there by the Chicago River.  I even continue to pay the 23.90 per month so I can have dialup capability.

Over the years, AOL has improved its email.

With each successive improvement, normal email functionality has deteriorated.

With the latest major overhaul, it has finally become unbearable to use.

Perhaps you other few AOL email users have not had my experience.  Let's see, what has the lastest round of improvements given me:

   --   Addresses no longer autocomplete.

   --  When signing into email, it now always reads "0 New Messages," even though I may have a couple dozen.

   --   If you don't have your recipient's email memorized, you click "TO:" and after much too long a time, you get a list of every email address you have ever sent to.  You may click "TO," "CC," or "BCC."  And then click "send" and it will place the addresses in your email fields.  But it takes a long time.

   --   There does not appear to be any way to delete old or unused email addresses from this list.

   --   There is no way to go quickly in this list to emails beginning with a particular letter.

   --   When replying, the cursors skips between the text to the address box after a few seconds,  the result being that if you start typing your reply, you find that you are typing your message in front of the address of your recipient.  Absolutely no, zero, point to this function.  It alone renders the damned thing useless.  If you are replying, your addressee is already established.  There is seldom any reason at all to want your cursor to wander up to the address box.

   ---  You can no longer drag and drop emails into folders -- it's all check-the-box-and-go-to-the-menu-for-still-more-mouse-clicks.

Who thought all of these things were good ideas?  Did they try them out with people who are still using this crummy system?

So I say farewell, old email address, although I don't think you will.  The next round of improvements should eliminate the ability to send and receive emails via AOL altogether.

For blog-related items, my email remains CoolHotCenter@gmail.com.  Personal email should go to StevenJonLawson@gmail.com. 

Keep in touch.

Jack Horkheimer, RIP

I used to love it when "The Star Hustler" would pop up on PBS.  I have heard that he changed his brand to "The Star Gazer" in more recent years because when people would do internet searches for "star hustler" they would come up with mainly porn sites.

That bad hairpiece, the somewhat fey delivery, the cheesy special effects, all were insignificant distractions from the intense enthusiasm for the night sky Horkeimer conveyed in those five-minute shows.

Keep lookiing up, Jack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JEMWN8SKJg

Jack Horkheimer, RIP

Six Paragraphs of Sheer Brilliance . . .

.  .  .  from my favorite leftist, Camille Paglia.  She calls for the "sweeping revalorization of the trades."  I'm not sure what trades will prepare practitioners for the balance of this century, or what the century requires.  But she's got the right idea on the deepening uselessness of a college education over the past few decades, arising largely from meaningless "post-structuralist" rubbish in the liberal arts and the neglected cultivation of habits of thought in those costly four-year nurseries.  Only take you a minute to read.

PART 2: President Obama, What We Mean by "Intelligence," and What He Means by "Hope"

In  Part 1 of this article, appearing a few posts ago, -- Your Cool Hot Center had hoped to persuade you that our very smart President's policymaking proceeds from abstract thinking, from the application of theory, not deductions from observations of the world as it is.  Put another way, he governs by deduction -- reasoning from the general (theory and ideology) to the particular (legislation, regulation, and policy) rather than by induction (observing facts and reasoning upwards to the theory or general belief, from which policy then proceeds). 

The theories from which the President proceeds are predominantly found in the writings of the academic left.  The theories are highly idealistic and prescriptive, even utopian; they arise mostly a priori from the ways that liberals would like the world to be.  Some of them are highly sophisticated and subtle and have gained a wide following among faculty and students.  A lot of those students are now stalwarts of this administration and the Democratic Party.  The influence of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, about which I've briefly written before, is central. 

People who have the ability to think abstractly, and who do it well, are regarded as intelligent.  (I myself regard them in that way.)  In formulating his policies, President Obama has relied on academics who think this way and share the President's preference for abstraction. 

And that's the point I want to make here: "high intelligence" -- the ability to think abstractly and reason from creative a priori assumptions -- is a very valuable and, I think, a pretty rare thing.  It is a critical part, if not the beginning, of almost all scientific and cultural advance.  It can be inspired; it can be laboriously thought out.   But we only know if that smart brain work has reached the right result when reasoning from abstract assumptions is tested by experiment. Brilliant or difficult thoughts may turn out to be false when they're tested against actual observation.  

This is a great way to run science.   It's a great way to run a university where all that brainy work product can get debated and tested and exposed and tried and, with any luck, let loose only when it's ripe.

It's a damned bad way to run a country.  

Barack Obama is the first one to try it as his fundamental basis of governing.  An exception might be Franklin Roosevelt and his Keynesian spending on public employment, but Roosevelt faced crises that make those identified by today's political leaders (not just Dems) look ridiculous.  And it didn't work. (Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was not published until 1936, but his ideas were widely circulated -- including direct presentation to Roosevelt -- in years prior.) 

To President Obama, the United States is his laboratory. He's got a fistful of theories from the academics he admires and he's trying them out.   He has no particular reason to believe they'll work.  But that's what the theory says, that's what the smart guys believe should be tried to achieve social justice and world peace, so that's what he's going to do.

And if we lab rats don't like what it's doing to our health care, our bank accounts, our standing abroad, and our freedom generally -- well, we just don't understand the theory.  Too dumb.  You can feel the President's impatience, his dismissiveness, when challenged.  As though there's little point in dealing with present reality when his whole point is that he is the author of a new reality, arriving any day now.

That this smart guy is failing with these theories will, I think, somewhat change the way the public perceives "intelligence" generally.  It may still admire the brilliant men and women of the academy, business, the arts, but it will no longer think of their gift in quite the same way.  The IQ required for the creation of lovely theories and the corralling of abstract concepts into something understandable is not the kind of "intelligence" required to get a fractured, diverse, freedom-loving people all headed in the same direction, and in identifying and solving real problems.  Not the problems imagined by social theorists (and, regrettably, sometimes by agenda- and grant-driven scientists), but the ones that really exist for folks generally. 

That kind of leadership requires some empathy for one's constituents and some understanding of their real concerns, not the pretend crises ginned up by social scientists and promoted by the journalists who graduated from their liberal arts programs. 

Which is not to say that effective leaders are not smart.  They are.  But consider this list of modern-era presidents I believe most people would regard as effective, whether or not they agreed with the agenda:  .  Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson.    (So I'm excluding both Bushes, Carter, Obama, Kennedy (too short a tenure), and Nixon's on the bubble.)  You may think these guys were inspired, or you may think they were just politically crafty operators, or you may think they were lucky --  but a list of the top three virtues of any one of them would not include "unusually high intelligence."   Because we don't think of their particular gift of practical leadership in that way. 

Again, my point:  Obama changes this.  In the future we are going to be much more skeptical of the claims for intelligence of persons whose smarts appear mainly derived from book-larnin', and elevate our regard for the cerebral circuitry of men and women who have actually slugged it out, actually gotten a big batch of humans to change things, accomplish something.

*   *   *

One last thing.

When the Obama presidency is viewed as largely experimental, we gain a better understanding of what he means by "hope."  He has used that phrase a lot, most notably in the title of his (?) book, The Audacity of Hope.  Now, when he used that phrase, he was addressing a population that, by and large, did not feel itself in a "hopeless" condition.  (Oh, there were the Bush Derangement Syndrome people whose frantic loathing of the former president may have made them think they were without hope.  Those people don't count.)


So when he used that word, he could not have meant that he was offering hope where none existed.  I think he meant -- and I'm not making a joke here -- that he had in mind to try out all these pet theories of the academic left that no politician who cared about reelection would ever attempt, and hoped that the marvelous advantages that they predicted would come to pass.  (You may recall my theory that President Obama doesn't care so very much about re-election.)

We're Barack Obama's experiment.  He's "hoping" it will work.  (In fact, we'd all better "hope.")   That he's performing it on what is, for all its present problems, still the most successful and prosperous and free political system the world has ever seen -- that's the "audacity" part.

Intelligence is a wonderful thing and it is wonderful that we have a President who possesses it.   After I published Part 1 I heard from a several people who disagreed with my premise that Barack Obama is smart.   How could anybody so smart advance such dumb policies?    Well, again -- that's my point:   People we regard as intelligent have as a characteristic that they speculate  a lot -- there's a lot of what ifs  in their thinking.   Thinking that the President is dumb because his policies are having bad results or are poorly explained to the people they affect underestimates the guy and misidentifies the source of his problem. 

Barack Obama is a gifted, intelligent person steeped in the speculations of other intelligent people.   But we are now seeing the tragedy of his inexperience and, it must be said, his laziness.  His thinking is starved by his not knowing -- or, perhaps less charitably, by his willful ignoring.  (It's widely noted how prickly he gets when he's questioned about facts.)   He doesn't care.  The results of the leftist policies he has gotten the truly pathetic Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to bully through Congress will be the new facts, his experimental data.  He hopes his experiments give the results the people he admires have predicted.

Think back.  Remember your most arrogant and ideological (which is to say, theory-bound) professor.  Now imagine him or her as President.

Michael Gerson Has Written the Article I've Been Wanting to Write

The Cool Hot Center has been warning Republicans against a too rapid and too close embrace of the Tea Party.  There is a lot to like about insurgent conservatism, and a lot to admire about the Tea Party.  But the Tea Party has -- perhaps unavoidably -- found itself sheltering some extremists, crackpots, reactionaries, and the odd racist here and there.  Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post, "Why the Tea Party is Toxic for the GOP", sums it all up.  

The Republican Party in 2010 is not so different from the party that the voters rejected in 2008.   The Democrats are clever to remind people of that.  Can anyone identify the Republicans' position -- as a party -- on any major topic?  Even health care?  Is it repeal?   Do they propose a replacement?  What exactly do they propose to do about immigration?   Michael Steele, Republican chairman, is a weak leader -- let's face it, he's been a complete flop -- during a time when Republicans should be riding high by preempting the Tea Partiers with vigorous and creative proposals.  Instead, it's hanging around outside the Tea Party hoping some of its energy will rub off on it.

If the Republicans represented a vital alternative to the Obama-marginalized Democrats, the Tea Party would have no reason to exist.  It does not, so the Tea Party has rushed in to fill the void and, regrettably, brought with it some knuckleheads.  Some of those knuckleheads are prominent, and that is not good news for the Republicans in November.

Left to Right: Jerry Mahoney, master ventriloquist Paul Winchell,

and Jerry's pal Knucklehead Smiff

I'm looking forward to November, but if Republicans are licking their chops they need to think again.  People do not want peckerwoods running the United States.  Michael Gerson nails it in today's column.

NOTE:  A couple of folks have asked when Part 2 of my article on the effect of the President's intelligence on his style of governing will appear.  ANSWER:   Couple days.  Thanks for asking.

Breaking News: This Guy Agrees with Me

In several posts I have suggested that Barack Obama does not care much about being re-elected in 2012.

Toby Hamden agrees with me in this article in the Telegraph (UK).  (Astonishingly, he neglects to cite to my trailblazing posts.)

We disagree somewhat on Obama's thinking.  I have written that Obama cares only about the approval of his social-justice-redistributionist academic and leftist journalist constituency, the only people he respects.  These people will lionize him and hire him even if he goes down to defeat in 2012.   Electoral failure in the future cannot rob him of his schoolchild's title of Our First Black President, for which he will be (justifiably) noted forever, no matter how lousy a president he turned out to be.

Hamden takes a different view, speculating that Obama is thinking ahead to becoming a figure on the world stage in a "post-American" era.  In fact, these positions are not so far apart.  Hamden writes:

"Obama does not suffer from self-doubt.  He has long seemed so convinced of his own virtue that to question his motives is illogical.  Increasingly, his pronouncements carry the tone of one who believes those who disagree are stupid or bigoted.

*   *   *

"In Berlin in 2008, Obama cast himself as a 'citizen of the world.'  He has dismissed the bedrock notion of American exceptionalism by describing it  .  .  .  as little more than narrow patriotism.  Elite opinion among liberal Ivy League types -- of which Obama is the embodiment -- holds that we are already living in a post-American world."

That's right.  He is looking forward to the time when he need move only among -- and answer only to -- liberal opinion leaders.  However, I don't think he will become a respected world leader.  Oh, he'll be greeted politely by those who are already delighted at the weakening of the United States that began several administrations ago (Republicans most assuredly included) and that he has greatly accelerated.  He is not respected -- he seems almost to be regarded as a faintly comical figure -- among leaders of Western democracies. 

He is, in short, Jimmy Carter.

Unlike Carter and Bill Clinton, however, Obama will never travel to hostile countries to free incarcerated Americans in hostile lands.  He'll never pound nails into a Habitat for Humanity home; he'll never co-chair disaster relief efforts with George W. Bush.   That's a far too, too  .  .  .  practical a use of his grand and mostly self-imagined moral authority.  Let the politicians do stuff like that. 

I see for Obama a rather sad old age.  Oh, he'll do fine in the decade or so after he leaves office, serving on the Harvard faculty (good luck finding him in a classroom -- this is not an industrious man), chairing left-of-center foundations (again, mostly honorarily), speechifying vaporously around the world, with that odd head-swing of his as he pivots from teleprompter to teleprompter.  But in the long run, after the history books acknowledge his historical significance, the next paragraphs will note his failed promise.  He will not be influential, as Bill Clinton has been (aided to some degree, in his case, by the visibility and talents of Mrs. Clinton, but mainly because of his political intelligence and resonance with voters).   For future generations he won't be much more than a picture on a plate. 

And the guy whose profligacy they're still paying for.

It's really too bad.  I didn't vote for the guy, but there was promise there.   Turns out he's just another pol who confused the title with the task.

I'm Going to Write a Book . . .

.  .  .   about (i) my worldwide pursuit of food to delight the senses, (ii) my quest for spiritual fulfillment, and (iii) my pursuit of that one lifelong passion.

I'm going to call it "Eat - Eat - Eat ."

Wherein Mr. Cube Sympathizes with Mr.Fishburne Over His Daughter's Hardcore Sex Video

Distinguished actor Mr. Laurence Fishburne is upset.

Mr. Fishburne

His daughter, Miss Montana Fishburne, 18, has decided that she wants to become famous, right now.  In aid of that ambition she has made a hard-core sex video which she hopes will get her noticed.  It is titled "Montana Fishburne."

"I view making this movie as an important first step in my career," Miss Fishburne said, almost single-handedly making the argument for raising the voting age back to 21, or maybe 28 or 29. "I've watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape by Vivid [well-known distributor of homemade celebrity porn and distributor of "Montana Fishburne"].  I'm hoping the same magic will work for me. I'm impatient about getting well-known and having more opportunities and this seemed like a great way to get started on it."

Miss Fishburne

One can hardly blame Mr. Fishburne for his unhappiness over his daughter's chosen path to fame. At least he has the support of his friends, including his former co-star in "Boyz n the Hood," famed rapper-actor-producer Mr. Ice Cube, a founding member of influential rap group N.W.A.  "Once your kids get to a certain age you can't control what they do," Mr. Cube recently stated.   "You can only hope that they do the right thing, do what you taught them, and sometimes they don't."  He concluded:    "Kids just do what they do."

Mr. Cube

Well put, Mr. Cube!  Indeed they do.   And sometimes, a young woman will have apparently been taught that her only value is to be found in her use as a oversized dehumanized sex tool.   But where on earth would a girl like Miss Fishburne have aquired such a notion?

As I was mulling this puzzle, I found myself humming Mr. Cube's catchy hit, "It's a Man's World" from his album "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted":

     Women they're good for nothing no maybe one thing
     To serve needs to my ding-a-ling
     I'm a man who loves the one-night stand
     Cause after I do ya
     Huh I never knew ya
     Cause to kick it man it gives me the fits
     They wanna lay with they nose under your armpits
     Ice Cube won't wait so give it up cow
     After we do it you can go home now

Girls these days.  You try to instill some self-respect, but what the heck's a dad to do?   It's a real problem.  I was considering this very issue, recalling Mr. Cube's comforting words to his friend Mr. Fishburne, and pretty soon my toe started tappin', and next thing I knew I was transported back to the first time I heard Mr. Cube's moody lyrical meditation, "Get Off My D____ and Tell Yo B_____ to Come Here," a crossover favorite from the remix on the EP "Kill at Will":

     N_____ still tripping off the s____ I said last year
    About a b_____ is b_____ is a hoe is a slut
    Then I got rich but I'll never switch
     I'm not saying this to dis each and every fan
     Women you can ride but man be a man
     Cause if you're hangin there I'm a tell you loud and clear
     Get off my my d____ n _____ and tell yo b______ to come here

I mean, a guy becomes a father to a precious little girl, and he can't help but dread the day when she comes of age.  All he can do is hope that the influences he has brought to bear in her life will lead her down the path to self-respect and give her the strength to be the unique and valuable individual you raised her to be -- just like Mr. Cube said. 

But sometimes, as Mr. Cube also noted, young women just do what they do.  (All the time, actually, when you stop to parse that sentiment.)   It's great that Mr. Fishburne has the support of chums who are major artists like Mr. Cube, who "rocks the house," as the kids say these days, with memorable ditties like the irresistibly danceable "Dirty Mack" from his album "The Predator":
 
     There's a new girl on my street
     And I'ma introduce her to my meat
     Told my homeboy I was scoping hoping
     To crack them legs wide open
     Ready to break that thang in half, get it in with the shaft
     Take a bath and I'm out, yeah, better keep the Trojan
     And if the sex was good, still be the hoe's friend

I have just got to download that one to my ringtone.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, wondering where a young AA woman might have gotten the idea that society values women solely for their willingness to engage in wide-release exhibitionistic sexual displays aimed solely at fueling male potency fantasies.  It's too bad Mr. Fishburne didn't have Mr. Cube's advice earlier on, as Mr. Cube is himself a strong family man.
 

When your Pop is a musician, I'd imagine that moral instruction begins with the earliest of lullabies, like maybe some of Mr. Cube's tuneful elegies on young womanhood, like "If I Was F_______ You" or "X-B_______," or "Givin' Up the N______ Dug Out."

In the end, we can all sympathize with Mr. Fishburne.   All you can do with today's precocious young lady is to expose her  to the best that modern culture has to offer and hope that she internalizes the values that will inspire her to choose a path other than to become a faceless adolescent spank dream.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go skag some t____rs, burn me some fl____z, and, if the mood strikes me, maybe even r____ some qu______ out. 

*     *     *

Follow Your Cool Hot Center on Twitter:  @CoolHotCenter



President Obama, What We Mean by "Intelligence," and What He Means by "Hope" -- PART 1

Whew.  A pretty grand heading, that.  My usual course in these entries is to mosey through bloggish reflections and eventually say what I want to say.  I thought you might be grateful if I got to the damned point.  So: 

(1) President Obama's high intelligence is connected to his being the first President whose policies are dominated -- not just influenced, but almost completely swamped -- by concept, theory, and ideology, and scarcely at all by political observation (or, put less kindly, by facts).

(2) His presidency will subtly alter the popular view of "intelligence," if not its clinical definition.

(3) Understanding the President's intelligence helps us understand what he means by "hope."

*     *     *

I regard Barack Obama as an extremely intelligent person.  More, I regard him as the most intelligent President we have had since -- I don't know.  Long time.  

The objective evidence of this is considerable.  Although I have seen suggestions that some of his publications are not entirely his own, one does not become the President of the Harvard Law Review from his beginnings without some serious smarts.  His genuine eloquence from the podium is widely acknowledged.  It is true that personal charm -- or skillful BS -- has a lot to do with conveying the impression of intelligence.  There is also the uncertain effect of informal affirmative action.  But I'm a believer.  The guy is brainy.  He's sold me, anyway.

Barack Obama as President of Harvard Law Review (holding copy)

It's one of the reasons I wasn't all that bent when he was elected.  I heard the warnings of the Hannities and O'Reillys and their ilk, and I believed them, but I was hopeful that, like other ideologues elected to high office or appointed to the bench, he would govern more from the middle, even if somewhat left of the middle.  I thought that, like the Clintons, he would apply the political shrewdness he had shown in his political rise.   He certainly portrayed himself as willing to cast off the extreme partisanship that had characterized political discourse in recent decades.  Alas, the electorate's revulsion over Republican rule resulted in bulletproof Democratic legislative majorities, and any need he may have felt to rein in his impulses dissolved.  We should have listened to Sean and Bill and their ilk.

So I find myself asking -- how can such a smart guy be advancing such dumb policies, and saying such dumb things, and worse, things that he knows to be untrue whose untruth is easily shown and widely noted?

Ah, Steverino, you say, you believe yourself to be a smart guy and therefore you believe that any ideas that conflict with your own could only be the result of dumb thinking.  I have considered this possibility and, since it's my website, I reject it.

No, actually, I don't reject it.  I do think that the center and right and Tea Partiers, putting aside their occasionally obnoxious rhetoric and methods, are correct in their rejection of almost everything this administration has advanced. 

But my point in this post is not to prove that Barack Obama is a fraud.  He is, but the fraud is not that he has falsely conveyed an impression of intelligence.  I concede that his braininess is established.  What I want to explore is what we mean when we say that someone is "intelligent."  The President is very intelligent, but I don't want him anywhere near a position of civil authority.

Why is this?  I think it has something to do with how we understand -- what we mean by -- "intelligence."

I am fortunate in having had the opportunity to attend and teach at some of the most highly-regarded educational institutions in the United States.  I found myself frequently awed by the raw intellect of many of the men and women who taught and attended there (and simultaneously wondered what I was doing there).  Some were touched by genius.  But I recall a remark made by William F. Buckley in a debate at Harvard:  "I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty." 

The measurement and meaning of intelligence is a vast topic and not one in which I have any technical background.  But there is a lay understanding of what we mean when we say someone is "highly intelligent," is there not?  And in general, don't we admire those people?  On the other hand, a lot of highly intelligent people -- not all, maybe not even most -- have some characteristics that correlate with their intelligence that are not so attractive:  dreaminess; neglect of the person; arrogance; difficulty in communicating; and -- here we go -- an preference for the abstract to the concrete.

What has all of this to do with the President?  He recently made a statement which summed up for me the reasons I have come to find the course of his Presidency so disturbing.  At a speech at the American University School of International Service a couple of weeks ago, he reportedly said:  "Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith."  Even allowing the President some rhetorical license here, it's a very revealing remark, and a silly one.  Being an American has almost everything to do with birth.  The very first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads:  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."  

While the President knows this, he doesn't really feel its truth.  He far prefers the comfort of the abstract thought that America is not a chunk of real estate with borders, but rather a bundle of concepts that have something to do with freedom and equality and abundance and other fine things everyone should experience.  And if you value those things, if you have faith in those Americanish things, well, then you must be an American.  

It is similar to what John F. Kennedy meant when he said "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- that is, all people who love freedom are, in a sense, citizens of Berlin who had been confined by the Berlin Wall.   President Kennedy was speaking conceptually, and in his hands it was a powerful metaphor and a signal moment of the Cold War.

But President Obama wasn't just offering an attractive metaphor like Kennedy was.  He didn't just say that people who have faith in American values are Americans, a pleasant but not terribly helpful thought in the current border controversy.  He said that being born here had nothing to do with being an American.  Unlike President Kennedy's graceful formulation, President Obama's treats the metaphor as reality by expressly rejecting the fact that where you are born has anything to do with being an American. 

This is how he thinks.  Not troubled by rules, constitutions, statutes, traditions, voting.  Very impressed by academic concepts like income redistribution, enforced leveling of social status, racial preference, downplaying Islamist terror, the merits of international kowtowing, and, in general, "social justice" in all of its uncertain outcomes.  (I've commented on this unfortunate mindset here and here and here.)

Thus:  The President, like lots of intelligent people, and especially like those we regard as the very most intelligent, is more comfortable with the abstract than with the concrete, with theories than with the uncertainty of their real world application.

PART 2 of these speculations will appear in a few days.

You Want Laconic? I Got Laconic

Everett Hitch, who is telling our story, has just been hired to keep the peace in the old Western town of Resolution.  In those days, the guard used to sit on a chair somewhat elevated from the saloon floor.  He's the sidekick of the novel's main character, icy legendary gunfighter Virgil Cole, who has not yet put in an appearance, but his presence is still felt.  Everett is  keeping an eye on one desperate-looking character in particular.

     "Hey Lookout," the Weasel said.  "What's your name?"
     "Hitch," I said.  "Everett Hitch."
     He was wearing a dark shirt with vertical stripes, buttoned up tight at the collar.  The buttons were big.
     "Any good with that shotgun?" the Weasel said.
     The room was quiet now, and everyone was watching.  The Weasel liked that.  He lounged back a little in his chair, his bowler hat tipped forward over his forehead.  The gun he carried was a Colt, probably a .44, probably single-action.  He had cut the holster down for a fast draw.  And wore it tied to his thigh.  Probably the local gunny.
     "Don't need to be all that good with a double-barreled eight-gauge," I said.
     "And I bet you ain't," the Weasel said.
     "Wouldn't make much difference to you," I said.
     "Why's that?" the Weasel said.
     "I was to give you both barrels, from here," I said, "blow your head off and part of your upper body."
     He was enjoying this less.
     "Yep, probably kill some folks near you, too," I said.  "With the scatter."
     I cocked both barrels.  The sound of them cocking was very loud in the room.  Virgil Cole always used to say, You gotta kill someone, do it quick.  Don't look like you got pushed into it.  Look like you couldn't wait to do it.  It was as if I could hear his voice as I looked at the men in front of me:  Sometimes you got to kill one person early, to save killing four or five later. 
     I leveled the shotgun straight at the Weasel.

Folks, that is about as chatty and poetic as Robert B. Parker's Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch westerns ever get.  Parker published four before his unexpected death in January:  Appaloosa, Resolution, Brimstone, and Blue-Eyed Devil.   

It's summer.  It's hot.  You want a quick, effortless read that still entertains you.  You're not all that fond of commas.  You might like a little killing in your books.  But you thought you had outgrown westerns.  Or you never liked them.  Or you never read one but thought you wouldn't like one if you did. 

Fair enough.  But if you don't mind a little gunplay, give one of these a try.  Probably best to start with the first in the series, Appaloosa (which was made into a movie you didn't see with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen), as the subsequent volumes refer to some of the history established there.  Like Elmore Leonard novels, there's a certain sameness to the writing and the characters and the stories, but all three are classic.  And a pleasant break from the awful prose in much of today's "literary" fiction, and almost all pop fiction.  If you'd prefer more familiar territory, you might try Parker's first western, Gunman's Rhapsody, which retells the story of the Earps, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons in Tombstone.

There's also a fair dose of humor in the books.  For my money, the humor works much better in the westerns than it does in Parker's Spenser novels for which he is best known.  In the Spenser series, the joking seems arch and smartypants.  Here it flows more naturally from the cadences and habits of the characters' speech and the situations in which they find themselves.  But don't mistake me:  These books are not primarily yukfests.

So have a look.  Short chapters.  Short sentences.  Short lifespans.

And after awhile you will find yourself talking like Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.  Yep.

Oh My Lord God Almighty -- It Just Dawned on Me That the BP Blowout Could Save Obama's Bacon -- or, It Takes a Spillage

I woke up one recent morning with a start, possessed of one of those intuitions that you only get when you’re still half-asleep. You know, that brief period in the semidark when you’re beginning to think clearly but all of the assumptions that encrust your daily life haven’t yet reattached themselves to your judgment and your mind works about as freely as it ever does.

And while I lay there, cursing the poodles for whining to be let out for some leakage of their own, I realized that there is at least a fair chance that the BP Blowout could save the Obama Presidency.

There are several preliminary matters to consider:

     • The accident was not his fault, any more than Katrina was Bush’s fault.

     • Like Bush’s response to Katrina, Obama’s response to the Blowout has been diffident and tepid. But rescuing people from catastrophic floods is something that governments have known how to do, and the Bush administration did not distinguish itself. Obama’s dithering does not upset us to the same degree, because governments are not expected to know how to fix blowouts, and nobody at all knows how to solve this problem.

     • The right and the left are taking shots at Obama over the Blowout because they’re mad at him about other things. With good reason, by their lights, but their criticism of him over the Blowout looks like piling on, because of (1) and (2). (But I must say, all the golfing and partying does betray a certain tone-deafness in this guy.)

OK, so preliminarily, we start out with a certain shakiness in the current unhappiness with the Obama administration over the handling of the Blowout. Add to the weakness of the charges against Obama on this score the following:

     • The Blowout has crowded off the front pages – or at least to below the fold – bipartisan and public dismay with the poor policy decisions for which President Obama and the congressional democrats are responsible. When was the last time you heard anything about the health care bill? The latest OMB, CBO, and HHS cost projections? Employers cutting group plans? They’d curl your hair if it ever uncurled after watching children running screaming from tar balls advancing on their favorite vacation beach.

     • Similarly, the public preoccupation with the Blowout disguises the Administration’s continued implementation of its extreme statist agenda through agency regulations, which has only accellerated in recent months.

     • The nomination of liberal Supreme Court Justices was one of conservatives' greatest fears during the presidential campaign, and in recent years nominations have been flash points for highly partisan debate.  But the confirmation process of mediocre ideological-cipher-but-demonstrably-rather-left-of-center Elena Kagan  has excited relatively little media interest.

     • The Republicans are displaying their customary lack of strategic vision in their reaction to the Blowout and the Administration's handling of it.  Their efforts to direct attention to the longer-lasting damage the White House is visiting on the nation through bad policy are lukewarm and diffuse.  Neither the Republicans nor the Tea Party Express have any bright ideas on what to do about the Blowout, and they (and the right in general) are perceived by the public as supportive of Big Oil and, in particular, drilling for crude offshore and in other exotic places.

     • Sooner or later – surely before Election Season 2012 rolls around – the Blowout will have been mostly solved and the cleanup will be well underway. I also suspect we will find, as we did with the Amoco Cadiz and the Exxon Valdez, that, horrendous as the damage was, the sea and shores will heal more quickly than predicted. And just as Obama generated bad feelings with his early failure to do anything about the Blowout, he will get credit for the greatly improving situation. He will have earned neither the obloquy nor the credit, but no matter – the credit will come his way during a time when he will be looking to trade on it for re-election.

So I don’t think the Blowout will be Obama’s Katrina. I think it may well be closer akin to his Operation Desert Storm, a distraction from his failures and weaknesses whose eventual less-fatal-than-imagined resolution will relieve the public to such an extent that it will credit the President simply for standing nearby.

I concede: The foregoing speculation gives President Obama credit for some political foresightedness – he can’t continue to make appalling high-profile policy blunders between White House parties and hope no one will notice.

But as I rest my head on the pillow at the end of a long day, poodles crated for the night after their final wringing-out, the Memsahib switches to the news and I see that Attorney General Holder is suing Arizona for enforcing federal immigration laws, that President Obama has sailed way past President Bush in number of golf rounds played (including almost a dozen since the Blowout), and that they let Joe Biden out to make another speech. The day falls away and slumber's approach is hastened by the sweetdream thought that President Obama’s post-Presidential memoir will be titled My Term.

Wherein We Name the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster, and About Time

This oil spill thing needs a name.  Consider:

• Chernobyl.
• Katrina.
• Exxon Valdez.
• 9/11.
• Three-Mile Island.
• Love Canal.
• Pearl Harbor
• Mt. St. Helens.
• Amoco Cadiz
• Hiroshima.
• Krakatoa.
• Pompeii

Each of those words or phrases succinctly calls forth from memory a recognizable event -- a disastrous event -- and all of its associations.  At present we have nothing similarly dramatic for – what are we calling it? “The BP Oil Spill.” “The Gulf Oil Disaster.” I haven’t heard anything that I would consider either memorable enough, specific enough, dramatic enough, or short enough to serve as a repeated reference to what has happened.

"Gulf Oil Spill" seems to have gained some currency.  I don't like it or any of its variations, mainly because what has happened is not a spill.  Spills go from higher places to lower places -- gravity is what makes a spill a spill.  This effluvia does just the opposite, shooting upward.  "Spills" are also singular events, bounded in time and volume.  This one -- no.   "Gulf Oil Spill" also fails to remind us of the villain here (there are many, I know, but one over-villain).  And what about when we have an actual spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or some other Gulf? 

Comparing the present disaster  to those in my list, we can see that this particular event is not associated with a uniquely named spot on the globe. Oceanographic cartographers may have a name for that location, but I can’t seem to find one.

How about the name of the rig itself?  The Exxon Valdez and Amoco Cadiz were oil disasters associated with the name of the ships.  Here, "Deepwater Horizon," the name of the rig that asploded, has a nice ring to it.  But it's too late to adopt that as a name for this event.  Too hard to sell.

I propose one that is short, alliterative, descriptive, colorful, and memorable:

    

  The BP Blowout

“Blowout” is a great violent word, almost onomatopoetic, calling up images of both the explosion itself and of the crude billowing out of the ruined pipe.  “BP” gives it instant context.

So henceforth, that’s what I’m going to call it. 

In the nick of time, I might add.

The Cool Hot Center grants you a worldwide perpetual royalty-free right and license to use the phrase as well.  When you do, people will know instantly what you're talking about, and you'll sound very much more hip than people who are still calling it the dreary old "Gulf Oil Spill."
 
And pass it along to all your friends and news directors and copy editors of your acquaintance.  Let's get this thing rolling, people.