Blogging with Grandkids on My Lap

There’s nothing quite so difficult
So you’ll need to forgive me for being AWOL.
by Charlie Leck

I missed 5 days last week – 5 days during which I did not post a blog. It’s the quickest way to lose one’s regular readers and I worried about that. I’m actually trying to find a stand in, to do my blog when I need to go through periods like that.

But, the grandkids were in town. There were lots of things they wanted to do. They know the way into my study and they like being near me.

And how can you resist a kid like this one, when she calls out to you?

Thank the Lord. So, I’ll just have to give up some reading time and some keyboard time. You’d do the same. Just looking at them and seeing how beautiful they are, tears me away from this desk and this computer monitor. The journey to the stars can wait. We’ve got to go over to that lovely Excelsior community park on Lake Minnetonka.

The Republicans Are Coming!

Hide the valuables, Martha!
Batten down the hatches!
by Charlie Leck

America’s slick, icky and tricky party is coming to town. By God, I hope we have something left in the state when they leave. Protect the women and children, Martha, and hide the valuables!
This is the party of Tricky Dick Nixon – the party now symbolized by a Texas cattle branding iron featuring the famous Double-U. This is the party of thugs and bullies – ranging from Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (with their devious war in Iraq), to Ronald Reagan (and his infamous war in Grenada). These are the guys who would rather mug you than hug you. They made a two bit office complex and hotel in the nation’s capitol famous as the “Watergate.” And now a Nuke-U-Liar President has made the party famous as the ‘put-some-spin on-it-party of the big fat liars.’

This is the party of Karl Rove. And Bob Haldeman. And, Alberto Gonazales. And John Ashcroft. Oh yes, also of Senators Stevens (Alaska) and Craig (Idaho). This is the party of the totally embarrassing Jerome Corsi, who has recently written a swiftboat book about Barack Obama that is filled with downright falsehoods. But, Republicans think lying is okay if it leads to political victory. These are crazy people folks. Their ethical standards are preposterous. Their greed is gargantuan.

This is the party that will nominate JOHN MCCAIN for the Presidency when they are here in town. Did you hear me? This crazy group will nominate John McCain! Is this an insult to us, or what? Watch this video and meet the real John McCain and see how certainly the Republican Party is going to remain the ‘tricky-icky’ party.

You want to hear a description, FROM A REPUBLICAN, of the current Republican Party and how tricky and icky it has gotten. Listen to Ron Paul, a true conservative Republican, describe where the Republican Party has dared to go.

You think that’s crazy? It doesn’t begin to express the craziness – the absolute looniness of this political party. Try listening to McCain’s chart-topping theme song!

You think John McCain shoots straight with the American people? If you do, you’re as crazy as all these crack-pots who are gathering here in a couple weeks. Listen to how unstraight MCain shoots.

Over this past weekend, McCain defined the term ‘rich’ as making 5 million dollar per year. Well, I used to be rich. Now I’m just middle class. [See LA Times story about McCain’s remark.]

To understand just how crazy John McCain is, watch this video where it is very difficult to understand just where he stands. It clearly tells us, early on, that we’ll be in and out of Iraq in no time and now tells us we may need to be there for 100 years. He clearly says he disagrees with the majority of the American people and would not give them a referendum on the issue of the war. I’m not kidding, watch the video.

One thing that is difficult to believe, but if you watch and listen to John McCain carefully you soon learn it is true, is that Senator McCain is goofier than President Bush. Goofier! Here’s the real John McCain. Or, if you want to talk about real craziness, watch this video of McCain’s whirling, dizzying brain. John McCain is not only a little loopy, but he is down-right dangerous. Our worst fears may come true if this man is given the reins of government and the power of the military.

20 August 2008 edit and revision: Turns out this is faked. I apologize. I have removed this link because its not factual and didn't happen that way. Incorrect material is grayed... To see the unaltered footage go to this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj7HbqwZwRM&feature=related

Here’s the vulgar and thoroughly undistinguished John McCain, talking to a NY Times reporter on one of his campaign flights. This is a young lady, very much like any one of my four daughters, and he is using the ‘F’ word and other obscenities in his conversation with her. There’s no way we want a man with this temper and this mouth in the White House.

Steve Weissman’s extraordinary article in TruthOut argues just how much more dangerous John McCain is than George W. Bush.

These are the loopy people who are coming to our town very shortly for their national convention. They’ll be waving flags and claiming exclusive patriotism. There is nothing more dangerous than a person who believes he is exclusively patriotic!

The New York Times boasted like a Minnesotan about the Twin Cities and laid out suggestions for what delegates might like to do in their spare time. I think these very distinguished journals are going in the wrong direction and barking up the wrong trees.

There’s no doubt that our town has 3 of the finest art museums in the nation – (1) the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, (2) The Walker Art Center, and (3) The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. We’ve also got the Guthrie Theater, which is generally considered the finest repertoire theater in the nation, if not in the world. Just be aware, you GOPers, that most of the people involved in these organizations have very liberal leanings and support things like a woman’s right to choose and freedom of sexual preference. Most of them rightfully believe you have booted education in America into the gutter. You may be uncomfortable in those places.

The University of Minnesota stands right between our two major cities. The place is riddled with intellectuals, poets and free-thinkers, however, and you’d be awfully uncomfortable over there.

I could send you to a number of outstanding spots of cultural and historic interest. The University of Minnesota’s Landscape Arboretum is west of Minneapolis and you could spend hours and hours in a delightfully peaceful environment. However, you’ll find squadrons of tree-huggers out there, lazing their days away and you might not want to confront them either.

There are literally hundreds of great ideas for you. For instance, you could spend a Saturday evening at the Fitzgerald Theater, taking in the Prairie Home Companion Show, starring Garrison Keillor; however, he’d probably just make you furious by reminding you to be fair to the down-trodden and unfortunate. Keillor is the author of a number of terrific books, but you’d probably most enjoy Homegrown Democrat.

Here you are! I have a couple of suggestions that are right up your alley – far better than the ones the NY Times gave you. A short ways south of St. Paul there’s a gambling casino called Treasure Island. And, in downtown Minneapolis there are a couple of strip joints along Washington Avenue where you can view nearly naked women to your heart’s content. You won’t be asked to think a drop in either of these places and you can just let your real self hang out.

I’m probably wasting my breath telling you that there is an extraordinary cathedral in St. Paul and another in Minneapolis. Oh well, just in case you need to make an emergency confession you ought to keep them in mind. St. Paul’s Cathedral is right up at the top of the hill overlooking the Xcel Energy Center where you’re having your convention.

Welcome to Minnesota, the home of progressive thinking and basic fairness.

Silly, Ridiculous, Evangelical Preachers

God's wonder is in the simplest of things. This photo,
by Cynthia Leck, was taken on 17 August 2008, at
the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. It is the view of
a tree and the sky above its leaves and branches, and is taken through
a teleidescopes -- a cross between a telescope and a kaleidescope.

They make things complex when they are simple
and they make things simple when they are complex!
by Charlie Leck

I’m so tired of silly, evangelical preachers of the gospel who have no idea what they’re talking about. They wouldn’t know Christ if he were to walk up next to them and whack them over the head with the ultimate truth; that is, that God is only, and nothing more, and nothing less than Love and that is everything and all things and nothing more matters.

No further spin is necessary. It is simple. It is complex.

[Read about Joel Osteen’s wife… and about Bishop Sheen… and weep for Christ!]

It’s just not enough to be faithful is it? We need giant cathedrals and jewels and miters and incense and massive stained glass windows. It’s all the stuff he didn’t want and didn’t think we needed.

Goodnight, Janet Philhower

On the very left of the front row, stands Janet Philhower in our official eighth grade photograph.Next to her is Joyce Roesing, the most beautiful girl I ever knew through my first 8 years of school.Next to Joyce is Marion Smith, with whom I was madly in love as a fifth grader.I’m to the far right of the second row, looking goofy, with a big wave of hair gooed in place.There are so many kids in this picture with whom I wish I had stayed in touch. I adored so many ofthese girls and would have happily fallen in love with almost any of them; yet most of themterrified me so that I barely spoke to them. Now, on a winter’s evening, I’d build a big fire, put outa few bottles of wonderful wine and sit talking to them until the sun rose in the eastern sky.

I said goodbye 50 years ago and should get
kicked in the ass for the way I ignored her!
by Charlie Leck

This fifty-years reunion crap is tough! For those of you who’ve gone through it, I congratulate you for making it and, if you enjoyed it, I congratulate you for taking pleasure from it also. My two, older brothers go on and on about their reunions. They had a wonderful time. They probably didn’t have to do any of the organizing work. It’s kind of eating me alive. I’m going to help the organizing committee put together a reunion booklet and, so, I get some current photographs and little notices about my classmates. There are some laughs and warming smiles all right; but there are an awful lot of gasps and sorrowful moans, too.

The email tells me he is gone – passed on – no longer with us – dead!

“Really? Shit! Whitey?”

Other kids are probably not as emotional as I am, I guess, but a tear runs down my cheek and drops on my fingers as they play across the keyboard.

It shouldn’t have any effect, you know. I made no attempt to see him in the last five decades. I’ve only thought about him the few times I’ve picked up the yearbook and browsed through it, seeing the words he scrawled by his photograph. Yet, here’s how it is with all this. You haven’t seen him grow old. You remember him as he looked standing by his locker in the hallway with two or three silly, sophomoric girls panting at him and hanging on his every word as if he was the Dali Lama. Up here in this remarkable organ that contains more memories than I could ever jam into this massive computer that, off to my right, purrs softly in the early morning, I remember a guy who can’t possibly be among the twinkling stars.

So, too, has Frank McMullen made the glorious journey and I shake my head at the utter impossibility of it. He got that chemistry stuff so easily and he tried to drag me along with him, coaxing me to try harder and promising me that it would just, in one surprising moment, become so clear and simple. It never did! Yet, I remember his promise like it was yesterday. There are too many of them among the stars to scroll their names out here – too many memories that will choke me unmercifully!

As my eyes fly down the list, provided by a sympathetic staff at the current school, I stop on the name of Janet Philhower.

“Don’t pretend,” I tell myself. “Don’t mock her memory by shedding a tear.”

Yet, I do.

“For Christ’s sake, man, I’ve known her since I first wore long pants. She was a goofy girl who looked on with lonely eyes when all the other kids chose up sides for a game of kick-ball. She went to the corner of the rec-room in the church basement and watched forlornly from a distance as the rest of us laughed over the ping-pong and pool tables, or banged out nothing on the old, upright piano.”

Everything about her was good and sweet, but she was just one of those kids who couldn’t seem to let loose and join in, so we left her out.

Janet, out there among the stars, can you hear me? I wish I’d waved a hand to you and beckoned you in. I wish I’d gently slapped your back and been kinder to you. But, what does a young, shitty kid or dumb teenager know about friendship and thoughtfulness? You are there in the photos I’ve been looking at recently, from days even before we first entered Chester Public School. I walked up the little hill, along Main Street, with you plenty of times. Hardly a word passed between us because I was a stumbling, bumbling idiot – and not because you weren’t a special and good and lovely kid. Can you hear me, Janet Philhower? I think you were sweet and pretty and great to be with – and I was wrong to ignore you as I did.

There, I said it. I’ll go back to bed now and rise only when the light has broken through the dark night. I take one last, long glance out among the stars and I think I see you there, twinkling at me. Good night, Janet Philhower!

A Plea for Help from Georgia

The President of the University of Georgia, in Tbilisi,
writes, asking us to "do what you can to bring this
insanity to an end."
by Charlie Leck

Edward R. Raupp is the Chancellor of the most distinguished university in the nation of Georgia… it may be the only university. He wrote, asking that we do what we can to help.

Geez, Ed, what can I do? I mean "I" with a capital "I." You know, me… little, old me, out here in little rural Minnesota?

I've tried to get hold of Senators and Congressman. They have all kinds of electronic traps that catch me and hold me off.

Ed's message and all his contact information follows… if you have pull… if you can get through to the big-wigs, who should be speaking up about this crap the Russians are pulling, get this message in front of them. Problem is, as I said in my previous blog, our nation sure doesn't have a lot of room to talk.

Dear Family and Friends,
1. I'm OK.
2. I got back to Tbilisi last night on a
Georgian Airlines 737 with 20 pax, including French and US diplomats.
3. Most people from Gori, including my host family, have fled and are staying with
friends and relatives elsewhere in Georgia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan.
4. We should all understand that Georgians are not Russians. Vladimir Putin has no
inhibitions about slaughtering Georgians (or Chechens, for that matter, who also
are not ethnic Russians).
5. What Putin has done is consistent with what Hitler did to "rescue the Sudeten Germans." In the past, Russian soldiers have massacred Czechs, Hungarians, Chechens, and Georgians, among others. It took the world six years to stand up to Hitler. How long will it be before the world says "Enough!" to Putin? 6. Don't worry about me. I've been in worse spots. Rather, do what you can to bring this insanity to an end. The world should never forget -nor should it ever forgive - the Russian Genocide of August 2008.
With love from Georgia,
Ed

Dr. Edward R. Raupp, Chancellor
The University of Georgia
77 Kostava Street, V Building
Tbilisi 0175, Georgia (Republic)

Mobile tel. +995 99 19 87 17

edraupp@gmail.com
edraupp@ug.edu.ge
Web site: http://www.ug.edu.ge/
English: http://www.ug.edu.ge/eng/index.php http://edraupp.googlepages.com/home

I'm still dialing, Ed, but everyone seems to have their shields up!

Is this what they mean by Hemming and Hawing?

"Practice What You Preach"
by Charlie Leck

Another war has broken out! This is no time to be thinking about high school reunions, but I've lately been spending plenty of time with my old graduation yearbook from fifty years ago. One little item may be relevant here, as Russian armies push violently into the small, sovereign nation of Georgia. Freddy Kamm, one of my buddies in high school, wrote something of interest across the space that contained his senior photograph. Knowing that I had mused some about going into the ministry after college, this good friend wrote: "I leave you with a word of advice: Practice what you preach!"

Here and now, fifty years later, I pass it along to President Bush as he tries to figure out what to say to his Russian fishing buddy, Vladamir Putin.

There is a lot of hemming and hawing* going on in the White House as they try to figure out what to say to the Russians and just how to say it. It is difficult for them to castigate the Russians for invading a sovereign nation. How, if you are President Bush, do you tell them that it's an outrageous thing to do? How do you condemn them as international thugs? How do you express deep concern about the bombing and strafing of innocent civilians? How do you tell them to pack up and leave?

Listen carefully as the administration chooses its words.

It appears that the Russians are lying to the world about what they're doing and why they're doing it. Lying, mind you! That ought to be a direct charge that Bush will level against the Russians. Oops! Practice what you preach!

Saying anything more, on my part, would be overkill. And, perhaps, stating the all too obvious!

"Hemming and hawing speaking hesitantly and inarticulately, with numerous pauses and interjections." (Urban Dictionary)

Next: "Goodnight, Janet Philhower!"

Media Matters Because the Press is No Longer Liberal

The stuff Obama must overcome seems so unfair!
by Charlie Leck

I hope, by now, all of my regular readers have also become regular visitors to the Media Matters website and that they also make some kind of donation to the Media Matters project. This is one of the nation’s most important ventures – an exhaustive attempt to keep the press on the straight and narrow.

Remember the days when everyone claimed the press was controlled by liberals? Folks, it’s just not true anymore – not even at the NY Times and not even in Public Broadcasting, which have become extremely balanced. The majority of media coverage now – both print and broadcasting – is clearly center and right of center. If you are a student of Media Matters, you get that figured out quite quickly.

I rarely print an entire blog written by someone else, but this is an occasion when I shall.

Jamison Foser’s blog of 8 August 2008 is extremely important and I hope you’ll read it through. It will frighten you somewhat and it will give you reason to pause and begin thinking about what an uphill battle Senator Obama has in front of him on his attempted journey to the White House.

Does Obama look too presidential to be President? Is he too thin to be President? Are his speeches too good for him to be President? Are his crowds too big for him to be President? Is he too well educated to be President? Too popular? Too well respected? Too fit? Honest to God, these are all ideas various nuts in the media are floating these days!

If you want to see the blog in its original setting, click here. Otherwise, the following is from Jamison Foser.

Obama coverage finds dark lining around silver clouds
by Jamison Foser

Looking at recent media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama, it's hard not to be a bit amused at the contortions reporters have gone through to portray the Democratic presidential candidate in a negative light. News organizations that know Sen. John McCain's campaign is lying about Obama adopt those lies as the framework for their coverage. Reports on campaign polling obsess over Obama's inability to garner the support of more than 50 percent of the public -- all the while McCain struggles to stay above 40. And, increasingly, reporters and pundits have taken to describing Obama's seemingly positive qualities as fraught with electoral peril.

None of this is particularly surprising. Two years ago, I wrote:

No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in.

The eagerness with which the media have spread some truly bizarre criticisms of
Obama confirms this theory. Just think about some of the things Obama has seen the media portray as weaknesses. He's too popular and respected. He's too well-educated. His great speeches are attended by many enthusiastic people -- just like Hitler!

He's too fit.

Yes: The Wall Street Journal would have you believe that Barack Obama faces an uphill electoral climb because he may be "Too Fit to Be President." Journal reporter Amy Chozick devoted more than 1,300 words to exploring this pressing topic:

[I]n a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

Just for good measure, the Journal included a graphic depicting Obama, McCain, and five presidents. For four of the five presidents, along with McCain, the Journal respectfully chose photos in which the men were wearing suits (though Taft was without his jacket.) In the photo the Journal chose for Bill Clinton, he was in mid-jog, in shorts, T-shirt, and a baseball cap; Obama was in exercise garb, with a basketball in his hand.

Chozick apparently had some trouble finding people to support the crackpot premise that Obama's physical fitness might cause voters to question his fitness for office,
so she turned to trolling Internet message boards in desperate search of someone -- anyone -- she could quote. As the blog Sadly, No! revealed, Chozick posted a Yahoo! Message Board thread on July 15, asking, "Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his 'no excess body fat'? Please let me know. Thanks!"

About three-and-a-half hours later, Chozick got her first response -- a post ridiculing her for her focus on "totally meaningless drivel." Nearly an hour after that, Chozick finally got the response she was looking for. A user posting under the name "onlinebeerbellygirl" wrote, "Yes I think He [sic] is to [sic] skinny to be President. ... I won't vote for any beanpole guy." Chozick quoted the post in her article -- one of only two quotes agreeing with the premise of the article. She did not, however, disclose that the quote had come only after she started a thread encouraging people to make such comments. After she got caught, the Journal acknowledged: "The article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the
comment."

There may be more to it than that. A post in a subsequent Yahoo! Message Board discussion thread devoted to Chozick's article noted that "[n]either Chozick nor 'onlinebeerbellygirl' has made any other posts on Yahoo before or since, and both profiles appear to have been created on 7/15, the day Chozick started the topics. It certainly looks like Amy Chozick constructed the whole thing."

Another post wondered: "Do WSJ reporters make up fake IDs and make up fake quotes?" Chozick's original thread has been deleted (a cached copy is available here).
Even more curiously, a search of the Yahoo! message boards for "onlinebeerbellygirl" comes up empty. Whether "onlinebeerbellygirl" ever really existed at all or was a Chozick invention, running a 1,300-word article suggesting Obama is too skinny to be president, based upon a random Internet message board post, is insane. As Slate.com's Tim Noah noted, "In the vastness of cyberspace, you can always find somebody who will say whatever you want."

You might think that The Wall Street Journal's speculation that Obama's failure to be overweight might cost him the presidency was so inane and baseless that no other journalist could possibly repeat this nonsense. You might think that, if you haven't been reading Maureen Dowd. Sure enough, Dowd raced to quote the Journal article in her Sunday New York Times column:

In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters -- who loved
their heroine's admission that she was on Weight Watchers -- were put off by Obama's svelte, zero-body-fat figure.

"He needs to put some meat on his bones," said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: "I won't vote for any beanpole guy." It's a good thing The New York Times keeps Maureen Dowd around. How else would their readers be exposed to crackpot theories found in ethically questionable Wall Street Journal articles?

But the most cynical assault on Obama has been the suggestion that he's "too presidential." That's what much of the media criticism of Obama's recent trip abroad boiled down to, James Rainey explained in the Los Angeles Times:

The candidate's crowning demonstrations of hubris, according to those building a case, came during his extended trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe. Recall the pundits demanding the freshman Illinois senator prove he could be presidential in the foreign arena? So he appeared at ease with world leaders, talked animatedly with beaming American troops and drew huge civilian crowds. Then the pundits -- who had been taking a round of bashing for supposedly going easy on Obama -- told Obama he needed to beware of appearing too presidential.

What makes this criticism so distasteful is that throughout the primaries, the media kept saying various candidates looked "presidential" or "like a president." The pundits rarely explained what it means to "look[] like a president," but those candidates had at least two things in common: They were white, and they were men. I don't remember Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) being described that way. So, after excluding Barack Obama from their lists of candidates who "look presidential," the media have moved on to suggesting he looks too presidential.

Too popular. Too well-educated. Too fit. Too presidential. The guy doesn't stand a chance. No wonder media coverage of poll results that show Obama beating McCain makes it sound like McCain is winning.

—J.F.

NEXT: “Goodnight Janet Philhower”