Red State/Blue State

On The Roosevelt’s The best part, for me, remains the section on FDR. He was a loveable man. No wonder so many men & women pledged their lives, their full measure of devotion, to his care & well-being. His faithful cousin, his secretary Missy Lehand, Harry Hopkins, Louis Howe, Harold Ickes, his old love Lucy Mercer, his children who literally supported him as he spoke to the nation and helped care for him, .. The other two Roosevelt’s, Teddy & Eleanor, were not easy people to know. Even in documentary form, their restless energy comes through in leaps and bounds. They are to be admired, respected, and even revered. But to be loved, that task belongs to Franklin. His smile and sunny, engaging personality, his commanding presence compounded with the touching vulnerability of a man bound for life to a chair, all of that commands not just deep and abiding respect but love. There is love for a man so willing to be pushed and pulled without admitting defeat. Th...

On the war word: So what? Who cares if we say the word war ? Does it really matter? What should matter is whether we are placing so much of our emphasis on the military might of the United States that all else, education of our youth, our future infrastructure, our economic welfare, is perpetually tied to the military industrial complex. How does that happen? Our enemies have kicked sand in our faces and  then ran. But they could be David to our Goliath if we continue to allow the enemy to define us as they have for the past fifty years. If we limit our military actions, if we insist that the Arab states begin to police and govern their own regions, then perhaps we will change the dynamics of the situation. If we reframe the question, instead, and ask, “Why are you bent on destroying the lives of innocent Muslims as well as Christians?’, Why do you continue to operate as dishonorable and ignoble thugs instead of honorable men and warriors?, Why do you dish...

James Baker was the man who was purported to negotiate with someone who said of him, ‘You needed to see both his hands on the table, or else you couldn't trust him.”   Even a slippery eel such as Baker had to admit that the reason they didn’t go into Baghdad in the First Gulf War was because, as he put it, “…you see what happened. We knew it would be a mess!” (I predict he’ll have to walk that one back, but sometimes the truth slips out).   George W. Bush once said, truthfully, during the 2004 presidential campaign, when asked about the war on terror, “It’s not something…you can’t actually ‘win’ it”. Of course, he had to retract that truth gaffe immediately, but it was out there.   That was the most truthful statement I ever heard from the man. You can’t traditionally win a war on terror. You can subdue, you can contain, but you can’t declare victory over a group of jihadists or extremist guerilla fighters.   In Somalia and Yemen, there’s been some con...

Why would any group choose to behead someone? In the 21 st Century,  the words barbarians and beheadings should both be viewed as arcane language. Instead, we see South and Central American drug cartels plus groups of extremists fighting in the Middle East using beheadings as a frequent and popular method of murder. For those of us living in the relative shelter and peace of the Continental United States, it’s hard to fathom the black hole of hatred and darkness seen and used by these people. Why do they behead people? One clue concerning the Islamic extremists leads us to the time of Mohammed. Even in the prophet’s time, (570 AD to 632 AD), he was condemned for an act of violence which left seven-hundred Jewish men beheaded at the siege of Banu Qurayza. In certain parts of Italy and in the U.S., the Mafia and drug cartels of South America use beheadings to serve as warnings to those who would stand in their way. Sadly, we probably have not reached the end of this appall...

Can we have Peace in the Modern era? What would it take to bring about world peace? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the elusive quality of peace. Specifically, after the beheading of a journalist named James Foley, I wondered why a group of people would resort to such a barbarous and medieval act. In the name of religion, it’s sad to admit that many of our most barbarous acts of violence take place under the auspices of religious fervor. Why can’t some bunch of zealots start a Jihad for Peaceful Co-existence? It just doesn’t happen this way. Peace has the distinction of being all things to all people. The ever-changing definition reveals the subjective nature of peace.   My ruminations have led to the idea that human nature can never realize the concept of a world at peace. Our peace is not the same peace sought by those who live in different parts of the globe. Our foreign allies must struggle with a different definition of world peace. The type of peace we all know...

One way to suggest the type of president that Obama is may be explained by the advertising world. There's a different way that Mad Men may look at the Presidents. The Ad Men of Manhattan would look at the last half century or so of Presidents and attach labels to them based on their appeal to the American Public. They would be “Hot and Cold”. The list is as follows:   Kennedy: The first Television President...was Cool. Definitely Kennedy was cool. He was ultra-cool, a younger man’s president with young children. He appealed to women and knew the power of the new and all-powerful age of television. Indeed, he won the debate with Nixon through the appeal of his cooler look, as compared to Nixon’s “hot & sweaty” appearance. The adage- “Never Let ‘em see you sweat” was born with that debate. And through Kennedy’s tragic and untimely death, his image was further cemented in the public’s mind of a young man, never aging and alway...

  Thanks to Thomas Pynchon, I became aware of the definition of Entropy while reading, “The Crying of Lot 49”. While watching the roll-out of Obamacare, entropy immediately came to mind. A definition of the term  is clearly needed here.   I wish I could provide it, but the science is far too complex for my tiny mind. The best description I can bring forth is that entropy defines the energy within any given system.   We know from the law of thermodynamics that over time, in any given system, the energy will decrease. Eventually, this will lead to the death of the system, but to quote from the scientific analysis of thermodynamics, “interesting things continue to happen at increasingly low levels of energy.”   That sounds like a deliberately provocative statement. Of course interesting things may happen…but the fact that they may happen at increasingly low levels of energy makes me think of dying.   There is something about the waning energy ...