Nobody 700

Sunday, June 17, 2007
Nobody # 700

Nobody Asked Me But:

And so it ends – with neither a bang nor a whimper. Once more Tony Soprano struggled, once more he prevailed. Once more, this time for the final time, the audience was left to wonder – how long?

The feds are still trying to make their case. A. J. is still trying to get his act together. Tony and Carmela’s marriage has evolved into a stage of ambivalent love.

From the beginning, ambivalence was always the series theme: love and hate, violence and laughs, bangs and whimpers. Could it have gone out any other way? I don’t think so.

Perfect.<<<

Imagine if you will an administrator sent straight from Hell to Hale. He would do impossibly “evil” things like pick up a set of keys left in the front office by a teacher, hide them in his office all day while the frantic teacher looked for them and then give them back at day’s end telling the teacher that he was “teaching her a lesson in responsibility.” Or perhaps he would call two teachers “his possessions” and tell them to obey his commands or else.

You can drop the imagine part. The man is real and at work at my old school. I keep wanting to drop by some day and tell him that he is an as…, excuse me, I mean idiot, but my wife cautions me to stay out of it. She’s right ---- I guess.<<<<<<

Lead story from last Monday’s NY Times - U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies

“Commanders are arming groups that have promised to fight militants who have been their allies in the past.”

Two comments:

I will believe the promise of an Iraqi religious group whom we deposed from power at the same time that I believe my promise to lose 20 pounds.

Didn’t we arm Saddam twenty-something years ago to fight our battle with Iran? How did that work out? Let’s not set ourselves up again to have our own guns turned against us.<<<

Headline: Powell: “It's time to close Guantanamo”

Reaction: Gee, Colin, it would have been nice had you spoken out “yesterday.” You knew then that everything about the war was wrong. Had you resigned at the time, those very many people who respected and valued your opinion might have gained inspiration from your courage to dissent.<<<

Atheists Books.

Have you noticed that the names of all three authors who have published atheistic books this past year end in s?

Sam Harris - “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and The Future of Reason”
Richard Dawkins - “The God Delusion”
Christopher Hitchens – “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

Is it true that this is no coincidence, but rather a sign that they are all linked to sin and Satan?<<<

On fathers: “He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” Clarence Budington Kelland

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL AND A “WE MISS YOU A LOT DAD” TO THOSE OF US WHOSE FATHERS ARE NO LONGER WITH US!

I went to the dentist Thursday for a cleaning and routine x-rays. After the latter a new dentist came into the room, peered into my mouth and saw $1,200. Now he may be right, or he may be a new hire whose job is to up-sell work and increase profits. Who knows?

But these are the same teeth that Dr. Rosen has been looking at for several years, the same uncomfortable feeling in the one he crowned last year, the same missing chip from the upper front, the same everything. Nothing is new except that now they need expensive work where before they didn’t. As I said, who knows?

If I really need the work, I can’t complain. These teeth have been good to me for almost 73 years. But really being the key word, let’s hear it – all together now – WHO KNOWS!<<<

With recruiting a little slow right now, someone posted a thread on Bruin Report asking for opinions about the best scene in movie history. So, off the top of my head, and in no particular order, here are a few that should make the final cut. I am sure that I am forgetting many so feel free to jump in.

The interactions between Rick and Capt Renault in the closing scene of “Casablanca.”
The bicycle scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
The kiss in the rain scene in “The Quiet Man.”
The panning back scene showing the wounded in Atlanta in “Gone With The Wind.”
The taxi scene in “On The Waterfront.”
The walls of Jericho scene in “It happened One Night.”
The opening scene in “The Godfather,” when people come to pay their respect to Don Corleone.<<<

David Brooks, my favorite conservative columnist, thinks too many people “flee from discussions of substance and try to turn them into discussions of (the safer topic) process.” He wants less talk of technology and methods of communication and more about virtue and justice.

I’ll buy that. First, here are definitions of the words:

Virtue - the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.
Justice - the quality of being honorable or fair.

Now we are ready to talk. I will make this a regular theme as part of this and future Nobodies. For today, let’s start with the recent Supreme Court decision, Ledbetter vs. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

Lily Ledbetter had worked for 19 years at the company’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., and was paid substantially less than men doing work at the same level. That she didn’t realize it for all that time is because Goodyear’s pay rates were not transparent. After a debate so heated that Justice Ruth Ginsberg read her dissent in court, the “Supremes” ruled by their usual 5-4 margin that Ledbetter’s suit was not “timely,” i.e. not filed within Alabama’s 180-day limit that dated from the original transgression.

Their decision was neither virtuous nor just. True, they ruled in accordance with the letter of the law but in so doing ignored their responsibility to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, both of which guarantee due process (fairness) not only in the administration of the law but in the law itself.

This is where the unholy four, five when Justice Kennedy joins them, so often fall short of virtue. By defining their role as being arbitrators only of the law and not of the overriding due process requirements upon which the law rests, they forfeit their right to be called Justices.<<<

Did you know: There are 268,000 millionaires in LA County and, no, I am not one of them.<<<

My book-loving Barbara enjoys softer mysteries that are usually categorized by the unflattering name of “cozies.” I much prefer this newer term “delicate but deadly.”<<<

On Senator Clinton's recent comment: "I believe we are safer than we were," I say, “Hillary, knock off the weed, it’s clouding your judgment.”<<<

I love these two pictures taken from this week’s Time Magizine of a young Bill Gates. The first is a 1977 mug shot of Bill after being arrested in New Mexico for speeding. In the second, Geniuses at Work, Gates, 13, is with his friend Paul Allen. The two would skip college, pass Go, found Microsoft and be worth $70 billion+ today. (Gates $50B+ and Allen, who sold off his part of Microsoft in the early 90s, between $15B and $20B)<<<

WOW! 700 Nobodies. When I wrote that first one 11 years ago, I had no idea that I would write 699 more and still be going strong. Thanks to all of you for reading those for which you had the time.

Numbers 1 and 2 are lost somewhere in cyberspace, so I thought I would show those of you who were not “present at the creation”

April 21, 1996
Nobody # 3

Nobody Asked Me But:

Teaching hatred and prejudice should be considered a form of child abuse. Certainly the long-term psychological harm rivals that of sexual abuse. Why not remove children from such an environment?

Add on: At the very least, parents and/or siblings of legal age should be held criminally and financially responsible for harm done by those they have taught, not wisely, but so well.<<<

The four great tragedies about the Simpson-Brown murders were:
(1) the victims themselves,
(2) the effect on the families, especially the children,
(3) the fact that the killer was found innocent and
(4) all the money that has been made off the brutal killings, most specifically the book money paid to the various lawyers and jurors.

There still needs to be some kind of limits placed on the right of defense lawyers to introduce implausible theories for the sole purpose of confusing jurors and, thereby, introducing a "reasonable" doubt. Yes, they need to give their client the best possible defense, but they, too, should be sworn to seek justice.<<<

Add on: perhaps no alternative theories should be allowed unless supported by some substantial degree of hard or circumstantial evidence. Of course, a definition of substantial would have to be agreed to, but that is not an impossible task. It would certainly be a step towards a search for truth as opposed to "get my client off at all costs.<<<

What Dan Rostenkowski did was both unethical and wrong. However, I have a tough time believing he should spend jail time for crimes no different than many, if not most, of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. While the law and rules are not new, the punishment almost seems a kind of legal ex post facto. Isn't it better to start fresh and announce, "this is the line drawn in the sand. Anyone who crosses it from this point on gets neither sympathy nor pardon."<<<

Some choices are truly Hobsen's with excruciating pain on either side. This said, I would have had no choice but to do what David Kaczynski did. Even the flesh of my flesh cannot be protected when the lives of innocents are at stake.<<<

One of the joys and responsibilities of a society is to help its members when disaster strikes. Remember the tradition of barn raising in early America when a fire or storm would strike a neighbor. Why then is Congress so reluctant to pass a disaster law so that we all share the financial responsibility when natural disasters occur. Everyone should be responsible enough to do that which is in their power to protect themselves, but when the destruction exceeds the ability of its victims to handle it, society, through the government, should have an already-in-place safety net much the way FDIC protects those who save their money.<<<

Life IS too short to drink cheap wine, so, like us last night, try a bottle of 1973 Freemark Abbey Cabernet. Incredible<<<