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1. Years ago an airplane was getting ready to leave the air force base up at Limestone, Maine, and my friend Winky was waiting for the truck to arrive to pump out the aircraft's sewage holding tank. The captain of the airplane was in a hurry, but the truck was late in arriving, and there was so much snow and ice around it took a long time for Winky to hook up the hose to pump out the tank. When the captain of the plane said that he was going to see that that Winky was punished for being so slow, Winky said, "Sir, I have no stripes, it is 20 below zero, I am stationed in Limestone, Maine and I am pumping sewage out of an airplane. What could you do to punish me?"

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2. Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." A recent example was our invasion of Iraq. The media is invaluable when it comes to the promulgation of absurdities, and if you can control what people read in newspapers and hear on the radio and see on television, you pretty well have your country in your pocket. We read that a television station pulled an ad attacking candidate Chellie Pingree after determining that part of it was not factual. We read that the pulled ad was false and misleading. We read that the ad was inaccurate. What is the difference between a lie --- and a statement that is false, inaccurate, misleading and not factual? And what does it matter if Chellie’s boyfriend didn’t get 200 million in bailout money as long as by saying in a television commercial that he did, a few people will be eager to believe it? Goebbels said that the purpose of propaganda is to influence opinion --- it doesn’t have to be true or false. He truly believed in God

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3. Radio friend Carl sent me an email that said I should put two aspirins under my tongue if I were having a heart attack. I always thought the plural of aspirin was aspirin. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Take two aspirins?” I can’t say that I have. Of course I turned to our friend Google and here is a sentence that turned up when I typed in aspirins. It says, “Can you take some asprins before you get a tattoo?” So it appears that in several segments of society the plural of aspirin is formed by a voiceless fortis sibilant phoneme. I mention this because --- if you ever cry out in the night for more than one aspirin for a heart attack I know you certainly want to say it correctly.

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4. Here’s a book review that appeared in my email this morning. It says, “Ekirch argues in The Decline of American Liberalism that the main trend since the American Revolution has been to augment concentration of economic and state power.” My question to you is, if I were to say that the sun was going to rise tomorrow morning would you nominate me for a Nobel Prize in physics? Everyone knows that “The main trend since the American Revolution has been to augment concentration of economic and state power.” Talk about the epitome of platitudes. Even our friends who can’t read realize that money buys legislation. The process snowballs: the more money you can make by buying favorable legislation, the more favorable legislation you can buy. Who can deny it? Isn’t that what the recent Supreme Court to-do was all about? Now any corporate entity or even foreign government can buy as many representatives, senators or presidents as it takes to pass legislation that will make them even more money. Back when Eisenhower had just cleaned up a military industrial complex in Europe, he warned us to watch out for this kind of government lest there come a day when big money would be running things here. Eisenhower’s words have come to pass and a man who writes about it is hailed as a social and economic guru. You hear people say that they hate the government. They say the government is too big. And then, without knowing what they are doing, they vote for it.

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5. You might have seen a letter to the editor that said, “If you can't disprove someones statement blame Bush.” This is true --- the present economic chaos in this country should not be blamed on Bush but the millions of well-meaning, honest people who voted for him. From the letters we read in conservative newspapers, if these voters had a chance to replay 8 of the past 10 years, they would eagerly do so. I once heard one of Bush’s ardent supporters whimsically remark that she hoped he would someday be vindicated by history. Because she is a friend I didn’t say anything, but couldn’t help but think that there are probably a few ancient Germans in South America who are saying the same thing about their flag-waving warrior hero --- who, with the help of millions of well-meaning, honest voters, also brought his country to its knees. Should we blame him any more than the people who voted him into power? By the way, if you’d Google North Dakota you’d read that North Dakota is not experiencing economic meltdown. We read that this is because North Dakota has its own state bank. North Dakota money stays and works in North Dakota and does not get funneled off to the Cayman Islands by banks too big to fail. It won’t cost you a cent to read about the North Dakota State Bank and you might then ask your friends and legislators if they think a Maine State Bank would help Maine.

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6. We read in the newspaper that a "Retired Army veteran ends run across country in Rockland … to honor U.S. service members who have died in Iraq." Who is responsible for the invasion of Iraq and the war that killed all those boys and girls, anyway? That war and the economic chaos and hatred it generated started so long ago we can’t seem to remember. If we voted for that person and his machine, we know that we are just as responsible for the deaths of those young people as he is. So we try not to think about it. We pray that he will be vindicated by history. We do know that the past, present and future cost of that needless war has put us into a deep economic hole. It has destroyed our economy and put people out of work. We do know that over half of our US tax dollars are spent by the US military. But, strangely enough, we don’t hear anybody complaining about the cost of war on news programs and we don’t read about it in the newspapers. When politicians promise to lower taxes, we don’t hear them suggest that we cut back on an out of control war machine ---- it’s not politically expedient to do so. Oh well, anyone who is against starting wars in little countries here and there all around the world probably isn’t a patriotic American anyway.

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7. You should look forward to getting older because as you get older, life gets simpler. I recently called a man in Farmington who said I called him last week and asked him the same question. It is true that you might do the same thing two or three times but it doesn’t worry you because you don’t realize you’ve already done it. And when you get old you have reached the age of impunity: nobody knows or cares if you’ve done anything or not. You probably know that I learned the word “impunity” when I first read about poor old Rip Van Winkle. I quote: “Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench.” When you read Rip Van Winkle, did you see an aged man coming down from the mountains to rejoin his neighbors? Or did you ever do the math? The way I read it, after poor old Rip Van Winkle woke up from his 20-year nap and came back to town to retire as one of town elders, he was 43 years old.

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8. We recently talked about the power of trickle-up economics. I suggested that a lot of drug dealers might eagerly trade the risk of jail for a job that pays a living wage. If it costs $50,000 a year to keep a drug dealer in jail, not counting what it cost to build the prison, and minimum wage were $24 or so an hour, would it be cheaper for society to legislate a minimum wage of $24 an hour and thereby go a long way towards eliminating petty crime? If people on minimum wage were earning $900 or so a week, they’d be spending money at your place of business like crazy. Everybody would be buying things and going on vacations. You’d think you were living in some country in Northern Europe. There’d be a tremendous trickle-up effect, unless you were the chief of police your business would be booming, and you and everyone else would prosper. If you are a business owner you might tell me that you couldn’t break even if you paid your employees at least $24 an hour. But think about this. If everyone were making at least $24 an hour, your business would be doing so well that you could afford to pay your employees at least $24 an hour. The owner of a small business might argue that it would be impossible to pay employees $24 an hour and wonder how it could ever be done. It could be done the same impossible way gasoline got from 30 cents a gallon to $2.80 a gallon --- ten cents at a time.

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9. Before any election the newspapers are filled with “He said.” “She said.” Squabbling about “he said” “she said” is irrelevant and diversionary because there is only one issue in any election. The issue is: Who gets to spend the taxpayers money? Do I get to spend the money on things I think are important? Or --- do you get to spend the money on things you think are important? In other words, who get the cash? --- You and your friends --- or me and my friends? At present we have two major players in Maine. One party, that in days of yore boasted of its “fiscal responsibility” used to call the other party the “tax and spend” folks. There was nothing the “fiscally responsible” people hated more than wasting money on road repair or improving municipal buildings --- unless they were getting a kickback on the construction contracts. Remember that “fiscally responsible” still only means that they get to distribute your tax dollars among themselves and their friends. The so-called “tax and spend” folks now call the others the “borrow and bomb” crowd. The “borrow and bomb” crowd recently broke new ground when it came to fiscal irresponsibility because by borrowing to pay for their bombing they could boast that they’d lowered taxes for their friends. As a bonus, as usual, after they’d picked the country clean, the administration that followed could be blamed for the inevitable economic recession that followed. One of the sad things about political campaigns is the inevitable prevarication that is a prerequisite to success: if you are one of those unique adults who can remember anything you’re seen and read over the past 10 years, can you really believe that a beneficent someone will lower the taxes of a peon who earns under 10 million a year? Have you ever stopped to consider the social and economic chaos that would follow if they actually did? Remember that a candidate who promises to eliminate wasteful government spending is really saying that your tax dollars will be diverted towards his friends. So. How do you vote in elections? I always ask myself, “What’s in it for me?”

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10. You have heard me say that I was never in my entire life able to work a regular job. When I was a little kid I went out with a crew to rake blueberries, and by 10 o’clock I gave it up and walked home. When I was 21 I worked in the Stromberg Carlson factory in Rochester, New York making Edsel radios, and at noon I passed out on the floor. When I taught school I was asleep on my desk before the last kid was on the bus to go home. So exhaustion is nothing new with me. Each day at one o’clock in the afternoon I am still suddenly overcome by exhaustion. I can’t move. I can’t think. If I try to do something I blunder. I make mistakes. I lose pages of script. I cut myself if I’m working with tools and I snap off some expensive steel part if I’m driving my tractor. Late in my middle age my doctor determined that my thyroid was dead or weak and gave me pills that are supposed to keep me in an upright position for most of the day. But I must be in the placebo group because what they tell me are thyroid pills don’t seem to make a bit of difference. They say that exercise gives you more energy than you’ve ever had before, but I can ride my bicycle 8 miles before 7 am and then hop around at exercise class from 8 until 9. And at 1 in the afternoon, I’m still exhausted. So, because I don’t have to punch a time clock, I often go to bed for a nap. Not that I awake refreshed, because even after a nap I’m still worthless until 5 the next morning. Which brings me to my point. There is no question in my mind but that coffee was invented by people who haven’t figured out a way to sleep all afternoon.

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11. When I was a little boy, one of the first multisyllabic words I heard was propaganda. It was a word you heard all the time. Back when I was a little boy, our country was fighting a war against fascism. And one of the most important tools of war was propaganda, so children heard adults talking about propaganda all the time. You don’t hear talk about fascism much, so nowadays some people might not know what fascism is. So Fascism is much like streptococcus bacilli: most of us wouldn’t even know it if it jumped up and bit us. But the Encyclopedia Britannica defines fascism as a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, militarism and authoritarianism. On the other hand, even little children know what propaganda is. When asked one day in school to define propaganda, a little boy stood up and said, “Our goose laid a dozen eggs, but none of them hatched because we didn’t have the proper gander.”

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12. Robert in Bath sent me a letter that says: Last winter a so-called transient from the Brunswick, Bath area, allegedly robbed a Key Bank in Farmington. They showed the video on TV news of him getting money from a blond bank teller. Today he walked into the Twin Bridges Regional Jail located on the line between Woolwich and Wiscasset and turned himself in. That can happen when it is cold in Maine.

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