The Politics of Cynicism

Yet another in my occasional political commentaries. If you'd rather not know what I really think, or if the fact that we don't agree means you'll stop being a friend, please click here and look at the sculptures instead.

I'm a cynic. I admit it up front, and it has certain implications for what I believe about politics.

Obama, for example, may be newish on the national stage, but he's been around long enough to have been bought several times over. I just don't think it is possible for anyone to get as far as he has without that being the case. I wish it were otherwise, but my experience with those in power shows otherwise. By the time someone is nationally known, he or she is in the pockets of any number of people and organizations.

The same is true of McCain, of course, only worse. He's been around high level politics much, much longer, and as a result has been tainted that much more. I know he was a "maverick" and authored campaign finance reform legislation, but it simply isn't possible to be that powerful and be clean. Sorry.

One more thing about Obama: I'm going to vote for him. McCain won't get my vote for several reasons, most of which don't matter to this post as my topic is cynicism. I just don't want anyone thinking I'm so cynical I don't vote. I'm not sure how much my vote matters, but I vote.

Back to McCain. There are several things about him that inflame my cynicism particularly seriously. For starters, he's radically changed a several of his positions since he started running for the presidency. (Immigration reform anyone?) And there's his obvious pandering to the Republican base, as with his life begins "at the moment of conception" comment at the Saddleback forum. As if he'd know anything about that.

And now we have his choice of running mate. When it was first announced I was mystified. Who is Sarah Palin and what does she have to do with national politics? But the more I learn, the more I realize just how crafty McCain was in chosing her, at least from the perspective of trying to win the election. Let's examine a few points:

• She's young. McCain himself is positively ancient and has a tough time appealing to younger voters. Plus, Obama is young, and that had to be countered. Palin won't pull hard core Democrats away from Obama, but younger undecided voters now have to think about it a bit more.

• She's female. When the Democrats went for Obama instead of Clinton, McCain must have immediately limited his choices to women. How else might he attract those disaffected Hillary voters to his side, even if they agree with him on nothing else?

• She's a radical republican. McCain wasn't previously such a hard core right winger, but his positions have moved as the campaign progresses. Despite those changes, many in his party don't trust him because he's been wishy-washy in some of his positions in the past, positions that matter to the conservatives. (Abortion, immigration, etc.) Well, Palin has no such issues on her record. (In truth, she's so new to politics she barely has a record, but forget about that.) What we know of her is that she's a lifetime NRA member and staunchly anti-abortion. That's a major bone to throw to the right wing of the Republican party, and they love it, or so it appears based on campaign contributions since the announcement.

Can you sense a pattern here? Palin was chosen specifically to address areas where McCain is weakest, but without thinking about the broader implications of her choice. If I was a conservative republican I'd be offended, not elated. He's hand picked someone who will (hopefully) never be in power just to make far right Republicans feel good. The pandering there is simply vast.

And exactly what happens if McCain gets elected and has a health problem while in office? Palin takes over and... what? It's not her age I quibble with. As it happens, Palin and I are the same age, and I doubt it matters all that much. And it isn't even her total lack of experience. I don't actually think anyone is qualified to be president. It's a silly to think someone could be prepared for that office in a specific way.

No, what I worry about is her personality. I've listened to her speak enough to get a sense of her style, and I just don't think she's right for international politics. I recognize the problem because I suffer from the same thing myself. There's no gravitas in Palin, and she will never be taken seriously at a conference table. She's a self described "hockey mom," and she sounds exactly like one should sound. I'm sorry, but there are any number of qualified women I'd much rather have in the office of the vice president.

And again, I stress that this isn't an attack on Palin. I have the same problem. i will never be in a position of power - be it in public or private life - because my personality just doesn't work for it. You wouldn't want me negotiating with Putin either.

But McCain is so dead set on winning - whatever the cost - that he is willing to put exactly the wrong person into a position where her shortcomings could seriously matter. He's manipulating the American public as directly as he can in order to get himself elected. And since his positions have changed so much recently, I have no idea what he will do if he does win the white house.

In the end, I simply can't trust him, and while Palin might be a nice person to meet - though I am certain she and I differ on many, many issues - I simply cannot justify her in the vice president's role, particularly with McCain being 72 years old.

If people really are tired of politics as usual, then they should be very warry of John McCain. What I see there is just more of the same; manipulation and pandering for the express purpose of getting into power. Obama may be doing some of the same things, but if so he's quite a bit more subtle about it.

Mountain Living - Water Part IV

So we're finally getting somewhere on the water situation, but just where isn't entirely clear yet. The water purification people we've been talking to just called me back with a $6000 proposal for purification equipment. It's a lot of stuff, and I'm not yet sure we'd need it all, but it's huge. They're sending me the details so we can review them next week.

We could truck in a LOT of water for that much money, but then again, trucked in water will only get more expensive, and this is a worst case system, built to bullet proof the water against most anything. We have a lot of research to do and questions to get answered before we say "yes" to this, as you might expect.

As it happens we also got the bill for all the well work today, Another $1800. Ouch.

I've said it before: those of you on city water should consider yourselves very, very lucky.

Today I'm avoiding wor... er... the heat

It's 93 degrees at my house in the shade right now. I should be out carving stone, but I just can't bring myself to go do that. I'd just be a pool of goo on the driveway long before i was done.

But such is life. Instead I am hiding in the relatively cool house, trying to stay cool with the dogs, while the day passes by. It's supposed to be much cooler tomorrow, so perhaps I'll be working on a stone then.

For those of you looking to kill some time, I can recommend this blog:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

There are some very funny things here, and clearly the world is full of people who should not be allowed to bake cakes.

Busy busy busy...

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been stuck doing many things, few of them relating to things will appear here.

However, I intend to spend some hours today working on a new stone for the show in September, and I've been preparing new information for my website about that show. That's all good.

Oh, on the downside, still no news on the water test samples I sent out 1.5 weeks ago. Whenever I hear about that you'll know it here.

So, stop reading this and go do something productive. I am.

Mountain Living - Too Much Fruit

Yes, that's a bathtub full of pears.

We have this not-so-little problem of a fruit loving Siberian Husky and no other place to keep the mounds of fruit we've harvested away from him.

Truthfully, the problem is a bit bigger than that. Or property has about seven very old pear trees on it and as with all farming, they all ripen at once. (Actually, with pears, they don't ripen on the tree. They only ripen after you harvest them. They started falling off the trees a couple of weeks ago, but only yesterday did Anne finish - mostly - the harvest.) It was a good pear year.

And that isn't all of them. There's a box full that isn't pictured, and we've already canned 15 quarts of pear sauce. (IMHO pear sauce is much better than apple sauce. If you get the chance, try some.) If we'd actually harvested them all at the same time and just put them directly into the tub in the guest bath, it would have been full. To the brim.

Now we wait. They must ripen a bit before we make more pear sauce. And as with all fruit they will nearly all ripen at the same time, so we'll be canning another four gallons of the stuff all too soon. Assuming we have that many jars.

Aside: why is it called "canning" if you put whatever you're preserving into jars? Dumb name.

We've already had the apricot inundation for 2008, and we only have a couple of small trees. The plum inundation is probably still coming, but I haven't checked. That'll be followed by the apple inundation, but those we mostly ignore. They're small granny smith type green apples that the deer love but we don't like so much. Of course none of that includes what Anne is growing in the garden.

Wish us luck getting all those pears processed!

Nerd Check

So we were somewhere on our way back from Illinois on the recent trip when I saw an interestingly shaped cloud in the sky. I pondered it, pointed it out to my wife, and only then realized I had a camera in my cell phone and might be able to take a picture of it. To make a longer story shorter, I got one picture before it changed shape too much. Here it is. Does it remind you of something?



No? Well, as I say, it was changing shape and I wasted a lot of time. But perhaps if I show you the thing it's supposed to look like (to me, anyway). Imagine this flipped over. You might see it in the cloud then.


Perhaps you recognize that? No? Well, FOX did cancel the show way too soon. I only learned about it well after it was off the air, and even after the movie came out. Any clues yet?

The TV show was called Firefly, and both the movie and the spaceship pictured above were named Serenity. The cloud looked something like the ship if you used your imagination. (And if you're a nerd like me.) The show and the movie were quite good. Go rent them or buy them on DVD if you can. They're well written and fun.

Finally, just because I found it on the net, here's a better picture of Serenity:



She's a pretty ship. Now, go watch Firefly. Please. I promise not to mention it again. For a while.

Art News - New Carving Toy

The other day one of my birthday presents arrived.

it's a powered air purifying respirator. In other words it's something I can wear while carving stone to keep the dust out of my lungs, the rock chips out of my eyes, and it won't fog up while this is going on.

For years I've worn a bug nose respirator and safety glasses, but it's a lousy combination. The respirator works fine, but it gets hot. Then it happens that rock chips and dust get around the safety glasses, particularly when I'm using a die grinder. To avoid that I could wear goggles, but those just fog up and become a hindrance almost immediately.

This new device runs on a battery for 8 hours at a stretch. It's got a fan that pumps a minimum of 4 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of filtered air into a full face mask. That means that as I sweat it evaporates and is exhausted out the vents, so I can continue to see.

Yesterday I used it for nearly three hours and it worked very well. Today I got stuck on a different task and didn't do any carving, but there's always tomorrow. (And there'd better be a tomorrow for this. I'm running out of time before the upcoming show.)

Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested in this development. If anyone wants to know more, email me and ask about it. I can send or post more details on what I got and why. I did a fair bit of research before making the purchase.

Vacation Drive: Illinois and The End

Illinois is changing. It's going from yet more corn fields to suburban sprawl at a horrifying rate. No, I don't really like driving through corn fields, but it takes very little time to get from Rock Island on the western edge of the state to the "greater Chicago metropolitan area". About 6 seconds, I'd guess.

What isn't suburbia is still flat and boring, but it is the end goal of these trips. Family lives there, so we go there.

Illinois was home to the worst drivers of the trip, without a doubt. The freeways around Chicago might as well not have speed limits, since none of the locals follow them. 20 or 25 MPH over the limit seems just fine.

And in the 20 years since we moved away from this part of the planet it hasn't gotten any prettier. As mentioned above, the Chicagoland area has become one giant suburban unit - a huge shopping center - from near the Wisconsin boarder all the way down to Joliet. It may go farther south too, and I have no idea how far east it goes. What I know is the farm fields and wooded streets that used to exist are now all built up.

The farmers are (or were) selling out - and getting out - to let contractors build cookie-cutter tract homes by the thousands, and at least three new strip malls per square mile at a minimum. It's actually rather depressing.

One thing they get in the midwest that we don't get at home is lightning storms. True, we get some on occasion, and the most recent did set half of California on fire, but even that storm wasn't all that impressive as lightning goes. They get real lightning out there on the prairie. The kind you watch from your open garage as it advances, bolts hitting the ground all around you. I miss those, and lightning bugs, but I don't miss much else from the that part of the world.

Our path through Illinois along route 88 is about 190 miles long, ending at someone's parent's home - whose depends on the specific trip. Here we rest for a while before turning around and driving back in time to get someone to work - or other commitments - on time.

If you ever take this trip you'll probably have very different opinions about the sites and places along the way. Someone out there must like Nebraska or Salt Lake City, for example, even if we don't. I hope these descriptions have armed you for the drive. Bring a camera for the scenic spots. We forgot to do that this time and I wish we'd remembered.

We find we like this long drive in some ways. It's a few days in each other's company with nothing to do but sit in companionable silence or talk about whatever. We stop every two hours or so, change drivers, and walk the dogs. These little stops are about 15 minutes long each, and they slow us down a bit, but they - and the shared driving - also make it possible for us to go 15 or more hours a day and cover a lot of ground safely.

This time around we noted that traffic was way down. Even truck traffic was reduced. We generally do this trip in the winter - over the holidays - and we expected more traffic in the summer. It wasn't there, and we've seen I-80 carry more traffic in late December. I guess the economy is hitting people pretty hard so they're staying home.

And that's it for the trip description. Sorry, but I'm not to the point were I'm going to document family stuff on the net. For many reasons I think that would be silly.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Iowa

The only thing good about Iowa is that there's less of it than Nebraska.

Yet another state of nothing but corn. 300 miles of corn.

True, the ground rolls a bit more than it does in Nebraska, but there's still nothing to see. And the humidity in the summer... I needed gills whenever we got out of the car. We ran the A/C just to dehydrate the air a bit before we breathed it in.

I'm a westerner at heart. If my liking of Wyoming and California and even parts of Nevada didn't make the point, my dislike of Iowa and Nebraska should drive it home.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End

Vacation Drive: Nebraska

Nebraska: 450 miles of nothing. Flatness without end. Dullness personified. Boredom on asphalt.

Yes, Nebraska is dull. Deadly dull. it really is 450 miles of torment.

There is nothing to see but corn, and nothing to do but suffer through it.

The westernmost 75 miles or so gets slightly more interesting, but only because the corn goes away and it's range land instead.

If there are nice parts of Nebraska they aren't along I-80, and the way we do these trips we will never see them. In truth I have a hard time imagining what any supposed nice parts of Nebraska could be like.

Posts in the series:

• California and The Start
  
• Nevada
  
• Utah
• Wyoming
• Nebraska
• Iowa
• Illinois and The End