Leaving

Leaving

My entire life now fits into four checked bags weighing 50 pounds each (exactly 50 lbs.), a carry-on bag, and another small shoulder pack. I have three laptop computers, a 300 gig external hard-drive, a digital camera, and a 20 gig iPod. I am bringing several dictionaries: Spanish, Spanish/English, French/English, Arabic/English, and Portuguese/English. A few books: a dual language Quran; my holy book, The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins; and a few Spanish novels.

As I recite the list of my material possessions I realize how much stuff I still have after breaking down my apartment in Seattle a little over one month ago. As it turns out, the heavy cast iron skillet will have to wait until someone comes to visit and can Sherpa this over for me. It will be a huge relief to clear customs with all of this swag.

Although it is sunny and warm here in Chicago, I will be wearing a lot of clothes when I board my flight at O’Hare. A heavy shirt, a leather sport jacket, and a really heavy winter coat will weigh me down so that I can spare some extra weight in my checked baggage. This was a very complicated and technical packing job. I am leaving with everything I planned on taking. I have left behind a few boxes of books that I hope people will bring over for me. Tops among the books that I will miss is my very dog-eared Cambridge Complete Shakespeare.

By this time tomorrow I will be in a cab in Valencia, Spain looking for the apartment I have rented for the first couple of weeks. After dropping the bags off, the first stop will probably be for a café con leche. That will mark the starting point for my life in Spain. I hope to see you in Valencia.

A Day in the Life

In order to ensure confidentiality I will use the following legend:

Dad: #1
Daughter one: A
Daughter two: B
Son: C
Dog: Dog

I visited one of my oldest friends over the weekend. I got a taste for the family life. I’ll try to chronicle it as well as I can. Hanging out with his great kids was sometimes fairly hectic and always thoroughly entertaining. The day was a little like juggling chain saws but with a few juice boxes thrown into the mix.

Saturday Morning:

We all get up early. I take the dog out and let him run loose in front of the house. It’s quite cold outside and the dog is as anxious to get back inside as I am. I drink a cup of coffee and read a magazine on the couch. It is all quite relaxing until my friend comes downstairs and announces that the Saturday express will be rolling out in ten minutes. I’ll have to take a shower when we get back. I put my coffee in a travel mug and jump on board as we pull out. The pace for the rest of the day is like a high-speed chase scene in a thriller. Just for fun I lean out the window and shoot a pistol at cars behind us.

#1 doesn’t wear his seat belt so an alarm beeps for about twenty seconds every time we get in the car. This becomes a running joke for the entire weekend. I start off with a mildly sarcastic observation, “Don’t worry, it turns off after annoying the living crap out of everyone.” At one point I get the kids on my side and we all make annoying noises of our own until it stops beeping. #1 is immune to the “fight fire with fire” approach. Besides not wearing a seatbelt, #1 also engages in other at-risk behavior while driving. He text messages and talks on his cell phone, reads from a pile of mail cluttered on the dash board, changes CD’s in the stereo, turns around to discipline the children, and drives like a NASCAR veteran who is delivering a transplant organ. He is, without a doubt, the best driver I have ever known.

His knowledge of side streets and short cuts would put any mapping software to shame. He is like a shark that cannot stop moving. If the light turns red he will turn right and find an alternate route. His mood is cheerful and never once does he display symptoms that in any way approach road rage. In this world, driving is preferable to idling, even if the short cut takes longer. Driving becomes a sort of game, a game that #1 always seems to win.

The traffic everywhere out in suburbia is heavy and intense. People drive fast because they have such great distances to cover, anything less than full speed means spending even more time behind the wheel. We spend enough time in the car on this day to use more than one tank of gas. #1 also has a great new car. I’ve never been a fan of cars but if you live in this environment a top-notch vehicle is probably a requirement. His kids know the lyrics to all of the songs in the CD player from spending so much time being shuttled back and forth to activities. The kids fight over the music but they often find common ground and then they all sing along together in the back seat. They are like the Van Trapp family from The Sound of Music but in athletic gear.

I get the kids to play games in the car as we drive. We try to find nail parlors. There are enough to keep us busy. B gets extra credit for finding a nail place that is also a tanning salon. That wasn’t in the rules but it just seems right to give extra credit for a nail place that also offers another beauty treatment. I also suggest that whenever anyone talks they must do so to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner. C performs well at this game but the others veto the exercise.

Our first stop this morning is a soccer game for B. #1 screeches to a halt and B falls out of the car and scurries to the field where her game is scheduled. Next we drop off A at an adjacent field for her soccer practice. #1 then finds a parking spot as close as possible to the B’s field. #1, C, and I take along a football to keep us entertained during B’s game. Game over, back to the car, pick up A from practice, and on to the bookstore.

Frequent trips to the bookstore are obviously an integral part of life for the kids as they are all familiar with the store’s layout. As we pass through the doors A, B, and C scatter to their respective enclaves of literature. A reads university-level stuff, B favors thick tomes of fantasy literature, and C reads smart aleck-in-training texts: joke books, riddles, and graphic novels. Within minutes we are at the checkout counter and on our way again.

After lunch and a few minutes of down time, B, C, and I go for a bike ride. Back home and then on to C’s football game at the same huge complex where we went for soccer in the morning. We drop off C for his pre-game practice and then head out to the mega-store to pick up some sort of weird toy that C needs for a birthday party he has after his game. Evidently, C was given rather explicit instructions by the birthday boy on the present he is supposed to offer up. It is some kind of robot Leggo-esque thingie. I ask C if we can get a Barbie instead. NO. Kids have no sense of humor when it comes to robot Leggo-esque thingies.

Shopping for a birthday present while C is practicing is the kind of multi-tasking that seems to be required for survival in this harsh environment. We get back to the field for the start of C’s game. Watching nine-year-old kids play football is more cute than anything. It's as if they don't possess enough gravitational pull to actually make tackles.  His team wins 2-0 on a safety. I overhear one of the kids exclaim, “We slaughtered them!”

Back home and C takes a shower (or maybe not). He changes into his costume (Scream character) as A wraps the gift. #1 drives C to the party while I start to cook dinner. The logistics of this day are something along the lines of a space shuttle launch.

Cooking for kids means that you have to find out what they will and will not eat and then tricking them into eating it anyway. They give you their dietary restrictions and then you find loopholes. B says that she doesn’t like cheese on her pasta so I incorporate Parmesan into the sauce. B finds this to be acceptable. I think that the kids are a little fussy about their food and then I remember that many of my friends are vegetarians, some are even vegans. There is nothing fussier than being a vegan.

At the party C won a certificate exclaiming that he had the scariest costume. I tell #1 that no matter what happens to C in this life they can never take that away from him. I never won scariest costume and look what happened to me. I think everything started to go downhill for me the day I didn't win that damn award.

Bush Loses War in Iraq

This is a headline that could have been in newspapers every day since we first invaded Iraq. I have always been of the opinion that any war in Iraq would be un-winnable unless we were willing to overwhelm and completely disarm the nation. We all know today that Iraq is a nation of 25 million inhabitants deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines, something the neo-con architects of the war did not seem to take into consideration. The war would be over in a matter of months, we would be greeted as liberators, the reconstruction would pay for itself through oil revenues, and Iraq would quickly morph into a bulwark against terrorism and a beachhead of democracy in the region. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Did Bush lose the war from the very beginning?

Or perhaps Bush lost the war when he stood by and allowed the looters to destroy the infrastructure of the Iraq government? Remember Rumsfeld’s asinine statement about how free people are free to loot? We didn’t allow free people to loot the oil ministry; that’s just a little too free for a freedom lover like Uncle Donald?

I think that you get the idea. I am already tired of this rhetorical device because Bush has made far too many mistakes in the prosecution of this war for me to give each one a paragraph. I have been watching the President make the round of campaign stops before the election. At each speaking opportunity, Bush claims that the Democrats do not have a plan in Iraq, that the Democrats’ only plan is to “cut and run.”

I have read just about everything that I can get my hands on concerning the war in Iraq and if Bush has any kind of plan he is keeping it super-duper top secret. The only plan that I can see is that he will stay in Iraq long enough to get past these elections and then make some sort of half-assed excuse to withdraw. Our troops do not have the overwhelming numbers that would be required to defeat the insurgents and stop the internecine fighting that is spiraling out of control.

Bush claims that if the Democrats regain power their plan will be to take our troops out of Iraq, which will lead to civil war and chaos. This may be true but how would anyone be able to tell the difference? A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict. October was 4th deadliest month so far for U.S. soldiers. I don’t know what your definition of “improvement” is but the 4th deadliest month in 3 ½ years is not mine.

I think that what is really tearing this country apart is the fanatical loyalty shown to Bush by his base. If the Bushies were able to display the slightest degree of critical thinking they would have challenged many of the President’s decisions concerning the war; the biggest one was the refusal to fire the Secretary of Defense after the initial round of miserable failures in Iraq. This blind loyalty was never more in evidence than immediately after 9/11. There weren’t too many people losing money in the far right pundit industry. It got so bad that even a complete ass hat like Dennis Miller got a conservative talk show.

But when neo-con tools like Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, pro-war cheerleaders and former Bush groupies, finally begin to speak out against the President, there may be some cracks in the wall. As the old saying goes, even the most cowardly hound will chase a fleeing rabbit. The rabbit isn’t running away just yet but it seems to be getting its feet in the right direction. Of course, Fox News will continue to stand by the White House on the war, even if that means going against the top generals who are calling for Rumsfeld to resign. Ratings are dropping for other right-wing mouthpieces and it may be time for a lot of them to soften their views and question Bush if they want to salvage their careers.

The fact is that Bush enjoys almost complete control of the country and has been able to prosecute this war any way he has seen fit. He must take responsibility for the utter failure of his Iraq policy. The current talking point in neo-con circles is that the blame for our failure can be placed on the dissenters, as if this country is unable to win a war unless we have 100% consensus. This is a democracy; we will not have a full consensus on anything. It is not the Iraqi insurgency that is in its final throes, as Vice President Cheney pointed out some time ago, but I hope that the end is in sight of America’s willingness to be lead much further down a path of endless war and occupation.

Divide and Rule

The following is nothing but personal opinion. No surprise there, everyone who reads this knows that I’m not a journalist. The problem these days is that so much for what many Americans take to be news is simply opinion with probably less factual basis than the tripe you find here. A study by The Heritage Foundation, an article in The Weekly Standard, or a broadcast on Fox News are simply opinion-editorial pieces bought and paid for by those with the most to gain from advancing those views.

The Republicans have certainly succeeded in doing one thing during these six years that they have controlled all three branches of government: They have divided the country evenly and bitterly in two. Probably not since the Civil War has there been such an ideological chasm between Americans. Of course, Democrats but surely take some of the blame for this split, but the game plan of the Democrats hasn’t relied on demonizing their opponents.

It is apparent that Democrats represent a greater threat to America than Al Qaeda if you believe the conservative spin. Take a quick look at conservative book titles currently in the news:

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Godless: The Church of Liberalism
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism
Bankrupt: Why the Democrats are the party of moral and intellectual bankruptcy

It isn’t enough that conservatives have controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches of government since Bush’s election in 2000, they also seem intent on demonizing the minority party.

There doesn’t seem to be a single environmental regulation that conservatives can accept. Anyone who believes that we should be doing more to protect the environment is called an eco-terrorist, an environmental whacko, or at least anti-business. Most conservatives mock anything to do with global warming at a time when almost every reputable scientists agrees that we are adversely changing the world’s climate. In spite of the fact that there is almost a complete scientific consensus on the matter, conservatives continue to label global warming a hoax and a myth—so much for the conservative notion of erring on the side of caution. The conservative stance on the environment not only flies in the face of an almost complete scientific consensus, it completely disregards common sense. I have a hard time finding a downside to using less fossil fuel, building more mass transit, and developing alternative energy sources like solar power.

Evolution, a cornerstone of biology, is another target of conservative mockery. In their effort to cater to the religious right, Republicans desperately try to portray evolution as if its basis is somehow controversial. The president says that the jury is still out on evolution which is a clever way of not denying the validity of some of the greatest achievements in science since Darwin, while still holding hands with the religious wing of the party that seems to be so threatened by these advances.

Republicans seem unable and unwilling to acknowledge that their views do not represent those of the entire American populace. There seems to be little room for compromise or accommodation in their platform.

Their “You’re either with us or against us” stance is never more evident than their approach to the war in Iraq. They say that if the Democrats have their way Iraq will devolve into chaos. My question to them is how will we tell the difference from the Iraq that they have created? 105 U.S. soldiers died in October, the fourth deadliest month since the invasion. Things are predicted to get even worse if we follow Bush’s master plan—whatever the hell that is. With the way things are going in Iraq, most Americans have said that they are against the president. Bush’s record in Iraq is worse than A-Rod’s batting average in the playoffs. It’s time to make a trade.

News?

Another chickenhawk attack. 

Ah yes, the outrage du jour that passes for political debate in America. John Kerry’s comments that young people should study hard or they’ll be stuck in Iraq has received more TV coverage than the actual war in Iraq. A news cycle sent from heaven for an administration that has botched an entire war and now wants to cash in on a botched joke. Conservatives, most who never bothered to serve in our nation’s armed forces, have jumped all over this statement, claiming that it is an insult to the troops. They demand an apology. Even if Kerry’s remarks warranted an apology—and they don’t—I would vote Republican if he were to give in to the cowardly neo-con hacks at the White House, Fox News, and CNN.

The fact of the matter is that the present make-up of today’s military does reflect young men and women who probably have few other alternatives other than joining the military. Whether or not anyone in power is willing to admit to it, we have an army of economic conscripts. Conservatives are always happy to point out the patriotism of our men and women in the military—and they are patriotic—but what does that say for the young men and women who don’t enlist? Are they unpatriotic, un-American?

Anyone who thinks that America’s military represents a cross section of economic classes has obviously never served in the “all volunteer” armed forces. After being in Iraq longer than we fought in WWII, enlistment standards are being continuously lowered to meet quotas. Even the officer corps is filling its ranks with lower qualified candidates. Don't take my word on it, ask a recruiter like I did. I would love to know how many Ivy League graduates join the military after graduation. I don’t think that rich kids have the same definition of patriotism as lower income citizens. That's a luxury most men and women in uniform don't have.

The news readers and politicians cashing in on the Kerry statement are, for the most part, non-veterans themselves. Serving in the military doesn’t mean that you are more patriotic than those who have chosen not to, it doesn’t give you any sort of moral high ground from which to assault your detractors, but I think that it gives you immunity from the legions of chicken-hawks on the Right who impugn your status as a citizen.

The most ridiculous thing about this whole affair is that anyone is even talking about it at all at a time when it is evident to almost everyone that our invasion of Iraq has been a failure. This has been one of the bloodiest months so far in the 3 ½ years since we invaded, or liberated, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

This is from today’s New York Times:

A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

And all we can talk about is a statement made by a man who is not currently even running for office? This is probably a new low in American politics. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.


Here is a great take on this non-issue.