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Rants December 12, 2010

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1. The email that came this morning said that for $15 I could adopt a wolf but I think I’m going to pass on it. For an extra $30 I could buy a day-old calf. I wouldn’t worry if the grandchildren were to pet it --- unless you can come up with some good old story about children being chased through the forest by a pack of calves. Yes, I think I’ll go with the calf. Three years from now a lot of people might get upset if they hear I’ve eaten my wolf.

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2. This morning I read that the US has around 5 percent of the world’s population but around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. We lead the world when it comes to producing prisoners because there is so much money to be made by putting people in jail and keeping them there as long as possible. To help things along, handguns are legal but our biggest cash crop isn’t. As a result, one of our most lucrative and venerated businesses is locking up people who were caught raising or selling a common weed. So, thinks I to myself --- I’ll bet I could write a funny story that would have as its thesis: We’ve sent every other business abroad. Why don’t we don’t also outsource our prisons? As I was chuckling to myself and preparing to document this absurd bit of wit, I Googled “outsource our prisons” and discovered that the governor of California is already talking about it.

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3. One morning my wife Marsha bought the Sunday newspaper. Although it cost a dollar fifty she says she bought it for the grocery store coupons inside which more than offset the cost. While walking past the breakfast table I made the mistake of glancing at a WikiLeaks headline and the AP photo of some of the WikiLeaks man’s European supporters --- because now I have to put my two cents in. To begin with, I wouldn’t have even heard of WikiLeaks had I not called a friend in Holland who immediately asked me if I’d heard of WikiLeaks. Since then I have learned that, unless you are making money off our various and sundry wars, the WikiLeaks man is a world-wide hero. WikiLeaks has given people all over the world a look at the naughty things that have been done by our military industrial complex to maximize obscene profits. So now the policies of the US business community are firmly opposed by not only the relatives of entire families killed by our mindless bombs, but by most of the people on the planet. For quite a few years now, every time I read that a house full of children was only “collateral damage” it reminded me of a mindless little boy who would poke a stick into a nest of hornets. When the insurgents came out and I couldn’t get close, I’d stand back and throw rocks at the hole where they lived. As long as I’d throw rocks, things would be pretty exciting. But when I’d leave them alone for awhile, they’d go back home and forget about me. And that is a concept that can be understood by a nine-year-old boy. WikiLeaks is also easy to understand. There is a difference between trying to bring down the US government and trying to keep the US government from blowing up women and children wherever and whenever a few fat cats can make a profit by doing so. Did you laugh the first time you read that Joe McCarthy and his friends kept Charlie Chaplin from returning to the United States because Charlie Chaplin jeopardized our national security? Although it sounds silly now, during the McCarthy craze Leonard Bernstein, Artie Shaw, Zero Mostel and Pete Seeger were also accused of jeopardizing our national security. You don’t need to wait 50 years to laugh when you are told that WikiLeaks jeopardizes our national security: the whole world now knows that what WikiLeaks jeopardizes is business as usual.

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4. A friend of mine named Joe who stopped in for supper the other night told me about some 9-year-old violin prodigy. Only nine years old but Joe says that this kid can play difficult violin concertos with the best of them. Of course, to get that good in such a short time, you can imagine that the kid’s nine years have been rather focused. It’s my understanding that next year his mother plans to teach him how to walk and feed himself.

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5. "Hospital officials said that the decline in patients was mainly because of the economy" Anyone who reads newspapers knows that isn't true. We have a system that is geared toward making money rather than providing health services. Among six of the top industrialized nations, residents of the United States receive the poorest quality of care, yet pay the most for it. You and I know sick people who are among the 750,000 Americans who go abroad for quality affordable medical treatment every year. Same doctors --- trained in Boston and Rochester --- with progressive country prices. One man, who went to a hospital in India with his girlfriend just to keep her company, said while they were in India they also both had a complete dental check-up. A second bed was placed in the hospital room and he stayed there. Some companies even pay for their employees to go abroad for necessary treatment because the treatment there is just as good but cheaper.

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6. Not too long ago a reader wrote on a newspaper blog: "We need to bring back prison farms, where the prisoners grow their own food - saving taxpayers money" Requiring prisoners to raise their own food? There's a liberal comment if you ever saw one. Because there is so much money to be made by providing every imaginable service for prisoners, corporate America would lobby hard against anything that cut profits and saved taxpayers money. When was the last time you saw corporate America do anything to save you money? Big business has even privatized as many prisons as possible because privately owned prisons cost you more to run than prisons run by the government. If you get your kicks seeing prisoners sweat out there in the hot sun as they spread manure, feed chickens and weed gardens, you’d probably enjoy living under a socialist government.

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7. You have read about the good old days in imperial Rome when gladiators fought animals and each other before 50,000 spectators. Let us exude a collective nostalgic sigh as we recall the day 5,000 people died while providing glorious entertainment in the Coliseum. For not much has changed. Today you can turn on the television and see two men pounding each other bloody in a cage. You can see actors dispatching each other with guns, knives, bombs, cars, poison and their bare hands. When a basketball player is knocked to the ground, you are able to enjoy replays from several angles as he limps from the floor. Injuries are common in football and, for those wishing to handicap the next game, a segment of the sports section details the injury of each player so betters will know when he is expected to walk again. We are not surprised to read that memory loss and dementia is on the increase among retired professional football players. Our insatiable need for violence is manifested daily in on-line letters to the editor. Here are some samples from a recent morning. “You do [thus and so] and you get your face punched.” Reply to the post: “Where does the line form and is it ok to bring brass knuckles?” Were the most evil man alive tied to a post, would you stand in line to punch him in the face with brass knuckles? --- Over 90 readers gave a thumbs up on this reply. Others, perhaps still tingling from the warmth of a burning cross, wrote, “Hang him from a tree.” And, “help him over a railing with a bed sheet tied round his neck.” One of our Maine neighbors, who is more of a voyeur than an activist, wrote, “…drop them all off about two miles from the shore … and see how many make it, for the ones that make it have a firing squad ready to take them out as they make it to shore.” Can you now wonder how a young and upcoming Hitler ever managed to recruit so many eager thugs? Should you possess the intestinal fortitude to read more of these letters on your own you might notice that I’ve only mentioned the pleasant ones written by liberals.

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8. One more book has been written about the Fundamentalist threat to American Democracy. If you want to know anything about it, you can bring it up on Google because I’m not going to say anything about it here. My point is that the author claims that this Fundamentalist Fellowship on C Street in Washington is a mostly faceless organization whose goal is to convert the world to what he calls “a trickle-down Christianity.” You and I should not be concerned about a fundamentalist trickle-down Christianity. If Reagan and Bush taught us anything, it is that trickle down doesn’t work.

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9. From time to time I get an email that makes me laugh before I open it. This one was from Wal-Mart and it said: “Tell Congress: keep our food safe.” Inside the email it says, “Our current laws just aren't enough to make sure your food is kept safe in every stage of the supply chain. It's time to keep our food manufacturers accountable.” Now that is a strange email indeed to get from Wal-Mart because yesterday I sat at my desk with a bottle of Light Reduced Calorie Syrup in front of me and tried to find out where it was made. All it says on the back is, “Distributed by Wal-Mart Stores.” And today here in front of me is a box of raisins, a jar of mustard and a box of rice. Were these boxes filled in a coal mine in Africa, a power plant in the Ukraine or in a refurbished prison in California? You might have read somewhere that 80 percent of the Low Low Low priced goods in Wal-Mart come from China. Back in the good old days before companies like Wal-Mart were telling Congress what they wanted to print on your boxes of food, you knew if your peas were coming from South Carolina or Cambodia, but now there is no way to tell. --- All it says on your boxes of food is “Distributed by Wal-Mart Stores.” There are some things you can’t find on Google and where your food is grown and packaged could be one of them. Something else you won’t find in a cursory search are the names of the innumerable companies that are producing supplies for the US military 24-7.

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10. Here’s something curious. The other day my wife Marsha said something about putting down the lid on the toilet before flushing to keep germs from being catapulted into the bathroom. I think she saw someone talking about it on a morning television show. If you were to Google to find out more, you might be surprised to learn that many people shut down the toilet seat cover to keep their pets from drinking out of the bowl. --- Which I’m sure you think is as strange as I do. Because --- we are probably talking about a pet who would enjoy nothing more than eating a dead rat on your bed. So if your furry little friend, that you always kiss when he or she jumps up on your lap, might have just come in from eating a dead rat found in an open sewer, why should you deprive your pet of a refreshing cold drink in the bathroom? When you think of all the other strange and wonderful places your pets have stuck their cold, little noses, isn’t your toilet bowl one of the more palatable options?

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11. I am moved to say something about putting down the lid on the toilet before flushing. The other morning some folks on television said that putting down the seat before flushing kept germs from blowing all around the room, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. To begin with, you have no idea what a wonderful invention that piece of bathroom porcelain is unless you were brought up in a home without one. When I was a little kid you didn’t worry about germs flying out; you worried about falling in. And you always used the smaller hole over on the right hand side lest you should need to be extricated. So worrying about germs that might be catapulted into the room during a flush has never been one of my priorities. But --- since it has been called to my attention, I have religiously shut down the cover before flushing and can now only perceive my accomplishment by the sound of rushing water. I have gone into some little detail here only to illustrate that bit by bit, every day, we lose one more of life’s little pleasures.

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