Author: bfaure

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The Global Warming Deniers

     Polar Bears can rejoice; the world is still trying to come to their rescue.  The meme that was projected by Al Gore’s alarmist documentary An Inconvenient Truth was that the arctic ice packs were diminishing at such an accelerated rate that polar bears were finding themselves abandoned on diminishing ice flows, starving and ultimately threatened with extinction.  It was a heart tugging image that has grown to represent the need for major world action to stall or delay warming by converting modern society in regard to distribution of resources and energy use.  The world did meet and determine aggressive action was necessary.  In 1997 over a hundred countries signed the Kyoto Protocols pleging the first world economies to self induced wrenching change in the use of energy and created a potential spectacular carbon tax process to appropriately ‘educate’ the miscreants.  It positioned the world for a complete change in economic process and decision making and the concept of globalist leadership under the guidance of the United Nations and enlightened politicians like Al Gore seemed to be a inevitable outcome. The science was termed ” indisputable”, “a consensus”, and ” undeniable” and the few sceptics still left were considered heretical, neanderthal, dangerous, and were collectively labelled Global Warming Deniers.

Then, a funny thing happened.  For whatever reason, the earth determined to cool over the last 15 years rather than warm, playing havoc with the idea that increases in carbon dioxide, the naturally occurring gas critical for all plant life, should drive increasing temperatures.  Computer models that drove the science’s undeniable conclusions were found to have the fatal flaw of manipulated information and insider fixes to maintain the “consensus” in the face of increasingly contrarian data.  The number one outcast, the United States of America, whose Senate embarrassed then Vice President Gore with a 95-0 rejection of the Kyoto treaty, and was deemed that greatest contributor to global warming, turned out to reduce its carbon emissions more dramatically then any Kyoto signee, by paradoxically finding huge new sources of carbon fuel in the form of natural gas.  Science, so conveniently pigeon holed by those who wished to ‘control’ the message, unexpectedly showed larger influences of solar discharges and ocean currents on temperature than the man made influences projected by those infamous computer models.   Even  Kyoto believers were left to hedge their bets on their own countries participation, given the draconian effects on their economies, and minimal effects on their actual carbon emission production.

Suddenly, it has begun to look as if the true Deniers are those who continue to blindly accept global warming “truths” in the face of more and more science to the contrary.  Denialism has become owned by the original zealots of global warming theory, who refuse to connect with the new reality as more and more is known about earth climate change and Man’s puny influence upon it.

So why should the polar bears rejoice?  Because the modern Global Warming Denialist turns out to be after a much bigger goal than saving the planet.  The modern Denialist wants the economic change of global warming scientology and the trillions that potentially will come with it to pay for all the social change they hope to make permanent.  The President of the United States has become the Denier In Chief.  President Obama declared in his second inaugural address that:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.

We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries. We must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure, our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

The denialism suggesting that storms, drought, and fires – the elements of eternal damnation are raging and worsening flies in the face of all legitimacy, but being a denialist is not about being legitimate.  To compare the resent rainfall reductions  with the calamity of the 1930’s Dustbowl, the diminishingly  infrequent Category 1 hurricanes compared to the monster storms of the first half of the last century, and the environmentalist’s efforts to reduce logging allowing for overgrowth and decay of forests now more susceptible to fire, doesn’t cross this denialist President’s mind.  And now we find in the nomination process of the new Secretary of State Kerry, that in a world of great danger and diminishing American influence, he promises to be the Secretary of State for Climate Change. With far flung problems in the Islamic world, Russia’s new belligerence, China’s aggressive desire to shape Pacific economies into a Co-prosperity sphere more to their liking,  the projected Secretary Kerry has found his calling in combating “life threatening issue” of climate change.

You might ask yourselves, what drives such denialism?  As always – follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.  The President seeks to complete the leftward lerch of the United States toward a more socialist foundation, and he is spending trillions to do it.  Tax policy based on a country’s producers through leveraging their income can only take you so far.  No, the Big Kahuna is in societal taxes, such as Value Added tax structures and the Carbon based tax invented by Gore.  The theme goes like this – only through drastic means can we save the planet, and only a government will ever be able to decide if the planet has been “saved” enough.  The radical agenda turns out to be denialism to the forces of realism and cumulative data, because the real money will come from globalist owning of economies.

This President and this Secretary of State will try to re-inforce the fantasy of progressive warming catastrophe so as to get their hands on the economic levers that will pay for all the other righteous processes they hope to make permanent.  To save the Polar Bears, we are going to have to demolish our way of life and our freedoms, and those in charge will every thing in their power to help us get there.

 

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The Second Inauguration

Tomorrow brings one of the great traditions in the ongoing experiment of American democracy, the swearing in of the executive leader of the country to an oath binding them to the formative and enduring principles of the nation.  From General Washington’s first ceremony in 1789 in New York City, to the elevation of the Senator from Illinois in 2009 to the position of President, the ceremony has survived war, weather, national schism, and depression to create a brief coming together of the nation’s leaders and people to celebrate the uniting force of the Constitution’s means of political peaceful succession.

It has produced unique moments of history. William Henry Harrison in 1841, attempting to overcome the caricature that at 69 he was too old for the job, delivered a two hour 8000 word stem-winder of a speech in miserably cold and rainy weather that proved his physical endurance to all present, but managed to inject the pneumonia that lead to his death within a month.  President Lincoln in 1865 created in brevity what Harrison could only dream about in his extended comments, a masterpiece of poetic majesty that has set the standard for all to follow.  The oath of office has been typically delivered by the Chief Justice of the United States, with Chief Justice John Marshall administering 9 oaths from 1801 to 1833, making Marshall the shepard of  Presidents from the founding moments of the nation  through its infancy and adolescence.  The Capitol has been the traditional home of the ceremony, with both the East and more recently the West Porticos creating the backdrop of the immense prestige of the moment.

President Obama’s first inaugural of 2009 in retrospect foreshadowed the many contradistinctions of this still ill-defined figure.  The candidate Obama had campaigned on the concepts of a “purple” nation, grown beyond the political divisions of “red” and “blue” states to work together to address the nation’s challenges.  Many predicted a speech of elevated and poetic muse to focus the nation, in keeping with the assumed intellectual brilliance of the individual that had just been elected.  His campaign rhetoric had been delivered in epic forums, the most spectacular, the Denver convention acceptance speech, delivered with the backdrop of Olympian columns in front of tens of thousands of adorational listeners, moved to tears by the moment more than the rhetoric.

Instead, the speech exposed the nation to many of the Obamian impulses that developed as his signature.  The use of a teleprompter creating a rather flat delivery, as if the speech was to be read rather than delivered.  The petty trashing of those that had come before him to the responsibilities of the office, as if his mere presence would change the fractious nature of politics. The disturbing repetitive use of cliches and tired language in the speech that created an atmosphere of superficiality and lack of depth of understanding or commitment to real solutions, with clumsy text like “rising tides”, “gathering storms”, “nagging fears”, and “icy currents”.  Claims regarding rock bed personal principles of a new era of responsibility that stood in absolute contradistinction to later actions – “a recognition on the part of every American that those of us who manage our nation’s dollars will be held to account”. The lack of definitive framing of core convictions that would suggest a road map to the nation’s triumph over adversity.

The enormity of accomplishment of the nation overcoming its past in electing a person of color to the highest office lead to a celebration of great intensity in 2009 and resulted in the glossing over of the many flaws of this individual as an executive and constructive leader over the coming years.  The re-election in 2012, while affirming the nation’s victory over prejudice, has re-enforced the collective impulse to forgive amateurish skill sets in this President that are leading to some real calamities.  The ‘responsibility’ President has presided over the greatest spiral of unsupported spending and growth of government in history.  An ongoing tendency to distance himself from the process of political compromise and paint his opponents in ever starker language of division has created an acid environment that threatens the country’s growing need for consensus in overcoming formidable economic challenges.  A thin skin and righteousness about his own supposed superior intellect leaves little room for other intellectual arguments and a healthy diversity of political creativity. A disturbing disdain for the fundamentals of the Constitution to which he has sworn to uphold, has projected itself in neglecting budgetary responsibilities, processes of appointment, and a blatant  avoidance in the enforcement of current laws already approved through the democratic process.

The second inauguration of a President always celebrates the triumph of vision of the first administration of the individual, but notably injects the inevitable waning of persuasive influence of the President as the lame duck status of the political entity is immediate with the oath of office.  President Obama is unique in his view of his position in history and capacities of his office.  Tomorrow I suspect the words he will emote will simply re-enforce my view of him as a detached figure from his nation’s challenges, who seeks to bend the narrative of history to his liking, without outlining a constructive vision and process to the nation’s future that includes all Americans and the unique story of our success.

Nothing would please me more than to turn out to be wrong regarding this man, but I’m not about to hold my breath. The country gets a chance tomorrow to celebrate a great theme of history, but I don’t expect to hear the rhythms and call to unity and greatness that once echoed from that storied spot on the Capitol’s West portico:

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

“To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

“So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

John F Kennedy  1.20.1961

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A New Age Quarterback

As hard as it was to watch my vaunted Green Bay Packers crumple like a paper  mache’ balloon last night, one could not help but recognize that a major shift in how the storied game of football is going to be played was on display.  Colin Kaepernick schooled a proud defense on what a new age quarterback is capable of.  Kaepernick was the central force in a 45-31 rout of the Packers by the San Francisco 49’ers, passing for 263 yards and two touchdowns and running for an astonishing 181 yards and two touchdowns.

The Packers were supposed to be the team with the quintessential quarterback type in Aaron Rodgers.  The NFL has changed the rules of the game to create a quarterback league, in which a bright, strong armed quarterback is allowed to dissect the defense like a surgeon, with his body and the passing lanes he is throwing to protected to rev up the scoring game for the fans.  For twenty years, the Marinos, Favres, Bradys, Mannings, Brees and Rodgers prototypes have been what every team has prayed to be lucky enough to find.  To protect this commodity, the NFL assured that their survival would be paramount, and assured the quarterback would be as immune as possible to hits around the knees, the head, and from any over exuberant force.  This has resulted in high scores and extended lives to quarterbacks.  Brett Favre was the epitome of this, playing at a high level for twenty years and setting the record for the most consecutive games played by any position player at over 290 straight games.  Rodgers has been the heir to Favre’s throne, durable, smarter, more mobile, and every bit as strong armed.  Last night, however, his prototype was yesterday’s news.

Colin Kaepernick performed the position of quarterback in a way that will convert the league to a new way of thinking.  Smart enough not to panic with his initial mistake throwing an early interception for a touchdown, Kaepernick made quality safe throws, and punished the Packer’s with a devastating display of quickness and running dexterity.  The original mold breaker was Michael Vick, with his 4.4 speed and runner first mentality, but the game will be permanently changed by a Kaepernick that can throw as well as he can run.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the golden age of the NFL was dominated by running backs like Jim Brown, Jim Taylor, OJ Simpson, Franco Harris, and Walter Payton.  The sorry truth of the glamour of the running back was that the position battered the physical and mental health of these players. Given the exceptional monetary investment in star players, teams have figured out that the beating these players take wore them out by age 30, and has made an “experienced” running back a worthless addition to the team.  The modern running back is around at most five to eight years, before they are replaced with younger legs, and clearer minds. The glamorous running back has been replaced by the glamorous quarterback, protected by the rules and capable of making the team’s extended financial investment a more secure bet.

Now, with Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III we see the new model, the running quarterback that can throw.  The combination can be a devastating offensive tool, but the reality is that the rules to protect quarterbacks were based on the consideration that they would be primarily pocket passers and would attempt to run only rarely, sliding to a safe landing, with no hit of significance allowed.  What is to now become of the defense’s willingness to “pull back” now that the quarterback is willing to project down the field with his legs?  I think we already have the answer in RG III, who didn’t get through his first year without a devastating injury.  As beautiful as it was to watch Kaepernick, it is almost a certainty, that he will face a hit that will eliminate his “elusiveness”. It happened to Vick. It happened to RG III.  And it will happen to Kaepernick.

When the quarterbacks of the future determine to leave the cocoon of the passing pocket routinely, defenses are not going to take it without responding.  As spectacular as the new age quarterback is to watch take over a game, I’m afraid his moment of glory as a game changer in the NFL is going to be short lived.  We will see if teams are going to be willing to invest in the quarterback position, when quarterbacks have the playing life that turns out to be as short as the glamorous running backs they replaced in the klieg lights of NFL stardom.  To Colin Kaepernick, I salute you.  It was a beautiful performance of athleticism. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the moment of glory is going to be brief, and the end, eventually, hard to watch.

 

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The New World Order – 1991 gives way to The New World Disorder – 2013

      The circumstances of revolutionary events brought with the celebration of the new year January 1st, 1991 a sense of a new pragmatism in solving problems.   The concept of a “new world order”, was presented, in which the world, now fundamentally connected by the progressing information revolution, would settle its differences on a rational political, scientific,  and economic basis, shepherded by the two in tune-super powers, the Untied States and the Soviet Union, and with the peaceful assistance of the emerging economic super powers of Germany and Japan.  The progressive collapse of power of the Soviet Union following the dissolution of Soviet dominated eastern Europe and its post World War II Warsaw Pact military arm, however, made the reality on the ground of a U.S. superpower dominant in a multi-polar world.

Like all considerations for an ideal cooperative spirit, there was some tidying up to do.  The U.S. had used the new world order concept to achieve a spectacular alliance comprised of such disparate participants as Syria and Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, to eject Saddam Hussien’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait. After an unprecedented “smart bomb” air campaign, 100 hours of on the ground power in February was sufficient to get the job done, and the United States looked to link this spectacular triumph at the Madrid Conference to finally achieve a comprehensive world solution to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.

It turned out of course the world was not ready for leaving behind its calamitous martial past for a more cooperative future.   The final dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 left the United States without a state foil, and the many countries reliant on the USSR for support without a “protector” on the world stage.  The result of collapse of a bipolar checks and balances has left the world with twenty years of a new reality, economic instability and bloody local conflicts, and 2013 will likely see the culmination of all that has been wrought in A New World Disorder.

The mistake was likely the idea that the world’s societally under developed nations would accept the concept of ‘Roman citizen’ to the United States as Rome (no matter how understanding this Rome would be).  The two pronounced examples of the collapse of the theorem was the presentation of the Palestinian Israeli conflict solvable in a negotiated fashion.  The aforementioned Madrid conference of 1991 saw Israel and Palestinian representatives seated at the same table, and following secret direct Palestinian Israeli talks, the infamous Oslo accords.  No handshake between former avowed enemies  was going to break the radicalization of the conflict now that balanced super power restraint was absent, and the radicals abhorrent of the idea of rational progress and enamored with the idea of Islamic triumphalism saw their historic opening.  From the duplicitous Arafat’s own Intifada to Bin Laden’s orgiastic terror tidal wave to Hussein’s Iraqi Armageddon in the desert, the lack of world order mechanisms to suppress the worst was absent.  No comprehensive grand alliance or respect for UN resolutions, so much a tenet of the new world order, were available to the second George Bush to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003.  Rather, the cumulative world response to the horrors of 09/11 were empty rhetoric, allies who sought to undermine the U.S. , and a feeble and friable ‘coalition of the willing’.   The equally spectacular destruction of Hussien’s forces and eventual capture and eradication of Hussein and ultimately Bin Laden, has led to none of the hopes of the post-conflict new order theoreticians like Francis Fukuyama, Strobe Talbot, and Brent Skowcroft.

The world as it now exists is a far cry from the hopes and aspirations of the forward thinking leaders of post cold War 1991.  The United States in its role as the modern Rome is the Rome of 379 AD, and  President Obama the modern re-incarnation of Emperor Theodosius I.  Theodosis sought to put  Rome’s outlying responsibilities into the hands of forces who saw each abdication of responsibility as another indication of Rome’s terminal illness.  Internally directed by progressively weakened infrastructure, finances, and collapse of will for the burdens of global direction,  our Theodosis has put forth the oxymoronic concept of “leading from behind”  and the gaping hole that is left is being rapidly filled with the modern Visigoths, Islamic radicals.  The premature withdrawal of U.S. forces by Obama from Iraq, has left the hard won stability of 2007 in tatters, and the radicals again on the rise.  The carefully orchestrated leadership of the first President Bush to achieve a peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact is in stark contrast to the epic fail of the Obama administration to shepard the Arab Spring, leading to the catastrophic handling of Libya epitomized by Benghazi, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the calamitous  destruction in Syria.   The over 50,000 casualties in Syria with no end in site is the pie’ce de resistance of the end of the dream of the new world order concept to solve the world’s disharmony.  A United States true to its need to lead from behind has no influence on the conflict.  Russia, living the fallacy of former capacities in backing the Assad regime, can only watch its death troughs.  The egos and pride of the regional powers of Turkey and Iran are progressively, personally and dangerously tied to the outcome, and Israel watches from its border as the calamity will inevitably involve them.

The result of twenty years of  ineffective diplomatic and collective will accompanying a United States in decline has lead to the vortex of global danger in the Syrian conflict, and 2013 may see the world unable to control its inevitable conclusions. Theodosis I proved to be the last Emperor of Rome as a unified confederation, and the world was hurled into a thousand years of turmoil and rejection of the concept of citizen and civilization.  The pull of history to revisit itself is strong, and the seeds for real chaos is out there.  Watch Syria in 2013. The world’s rational impulses may be put to ultimate test in the 5000 year home of the land of Sargon.

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The Fiscal Cliff – Hohum…

The leaders of this nation – a nation very probably until recently the greatest exemplar of what can be accomplished through self governance – are busy in Washington DC trying to solve the enormous quandary of how to avoid the “fiscal cliff”.  The quandary has been created by a nation fundamentally addicted to spending on itself, avoiding the bill, and seeking the least painful alternatives to keeping on doing what it is doing to itself.  We the People stand by in worried anticipation of what  is to come from the least economically perceptive President in history, a Senate that has not met its fundamental constitutional requirement of passing a budget in four years, and a legislative house that can not even get its own members to promote a possible solution.  And We the People elected them.

The Fiscal Cliff is an inevitable point of destiny for incoherent and incompetent leadership.  Presented as an endgame so terrible that a nation spending on average 1.2 trillion dollars more than it takes in every year, it was assumed the shock of rigid cuts and higher taxes for everyone would prod such leaders into finally facing up to their responsibilities.  The cliff automatically would drive tax rates back to their 2001 status and force the gluttonous spending to unfunded levels still twice any deficit spending in the country’s history, but hey, at least in direction of more sane budgeting.  In fact the CBO estimated the fiscal cliff would increase the nation’s federal revenues 19 percent while reducing the nation’s spending by 0.25%, resulting in a deficit reduction of 560 billion dollars, with luck under the stratospheric trillion dollar mark it has been functioning at for four years.  That doesn’t sound so bad until the estimation as to the effect on the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is figured in.  The removal of hundreds of billions from the private sector through taxes to reduce but not remove the deficit , while reining in government spending so ludicrously called “stimulus” spending, would reduce the nation’s GDP a whopping 4%. Say hello, recession.

Very likely, the elected leaders in Washington struggle to see the enormity of their profligate spending and cavalier tax policies on the rest of us.  It is understandably difficult when your healthcare follows different rules then the rest of us, you are guaranteed a pension unlike the rest of us, and you can position yourself for inflation-protected cost of living increases, at the expense of the rest of us.  Jazz Shaw of HotAir.com puts our predicament into easy conceptualization in what he calls U.S Budget for Dummies:

  • U.S. Tax Revenue   $  2,170,000,000,000
  • Federal Budget         $  3,820,000,000,000
  • New Debt                  $  1,650,000,000,000
  • National Debt         $ 14,271,000,000,000
  • Recent Budget Cuts      $ 38,500,000,000

Lets now remove 8 zeroes and pretend its a household budget:

  • Annual Family Income                                  $21, 700
  • Annual Money the family spent                  $38,200
  • New debt on the credit card                       $ 16,500
  • Outstanding balance on the credit card  $142,710
  • Recent household Budget cuts                            $38.50

As has been identified correctly before, the US government is unlike the family household in a very critical way.  It can print money and lend it back to itself to keep on going with the above economics for some time, where as the family household would likely be at a fiscal cliff of some sorts.

And so we approaching what will be the first of many fiscal cliffs.  After the President achieves the successful re-framing of the nation’s economic  ills as not the challenge of the national household but rather the failure of its most productive members to give sufficiently, taxes will become even more progressive, but not more productive in reducing our debt.  The brief holiday for leaders in throwing the rational budget of the United States overboard will soon be overshadowed by the looming generational cliff of unfunded future spending.  Somewhere in the first quarter of 2013 the government will come up against the  movable line in the sand known as the debt ceiling, having exceeded trillions of dollars of wiggle room in only a year and a half.  We the People can obviously absorb bad economic policy, but can a country in which half its participants look to the government for their daily milk, do without milk if the government is forced to shut down?  Not likely.

Let’s just hope the nation is girded for what is to come.

In the mean time, pass the milk and cookies.

 

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A Final Christmas Beauty

As Christmas 2012 draws to a close, the Lord has granted us the vision of a white Christmas, the magic of a clear, starlit night, and the crisp cold of a true winter’s evening.  The night calls out for a clarion of eternal beauty, a little gift of perfection to mark this Christmas.  One is found in the oldest North American Christmas carol known to still be performed today.  The Huron Carol  or Jesus Ahatonhia was written in 1643 in the region now ascribed to Canada by Jean De Brebeuf, a Jesuit Missionary then living with one of the native aborginal peoples of the Canada of the 17th century, the Huron tribe.

A celebration of Christ’s birth, it rings in the beautiful clarity of three languages -Huron, French, and English – to bring a special sanctity to the miracle of the Christ child. As this beautiful night closes, a special prayer for health good tidings and best wishes to all my family, friends, and fellow ramparteers through the words and music of Jean Brebeuf.  Merry Christmas.

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The Lyrical Heart of Christmas

An eternal sign of the base value of the Christmas tome, the birth of Jesus, and the feelings it emotes, are the varied and universal efforts to reflect it in song and lyric through the ages.  From the direct expressions of the Christian hymnal such as Away, in the Manger to more obtuse, secular expressions, like White Christmas, the expressions of the zen of the moment, the family collected, the sense of peace and contentment, the rejection of conflict and the superficial, and the miracle of the Message, ring true through the centuries.  The uniqueness of Christianity through its story of origin, a moment of supreme peace and love, communicates a universal truth through all cultures.  No matter what our beliefs, we resonate with the feelings expressed by the one holiday celebrating ultimate goodness we are capable of as human.

The Great American Songbook has so many beautiful expressions of the intertwined beauty and sanctity of Christmas. As noted above, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas reflected his need to express an ideal hallmark image of Christmas through snow on treetops and sleigh bells – completely foreign to a Jewish songwriter living in Beverly Hills, California. Yet, an instantaneous solemnity pours over the listener when the simple cardboard images are linked to the perfect musical overlay.  Hugh Martin’s edgy classic, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, speaks to the need to find release from the pressures and chaos of a modern society to drive separation in the family, to try and capture the innocence and relief of the Christmas moment. ” Let your heart be light/ from now on/ our troubles will be out of sight” and “Faithful friends who are dear to us/ gather near to us, once more” suggest the obstacles we face are not permanent if we hold to our core strengths.  Hugh Regney’s 1962 beautiful tome, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” directly appeals to the Gospel’s good news of the birth as it resonates from the night wind to the lamb to the shepard boy and finally king, the good news universally understood by all, regardless of their position in creation, or in life.  Edward Pola in his 1963 hit for Andy Williams returned to the concept of gathering in “Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”  where “there’ll be much mistletoeing and heart’s will be glowing when loved one’s are near.”

All these wonderful songs, both classic and contemporary, bring to mind the innate need to return and celebrate the simple goodness of the Christmas story with loved ones.  Through the many years, I have cherished the event of Christmas, in the years where I have succeeded on getting home and those like this one where I have not, the songs and their crafted lyrics continue to bring meaning and good feeling.  The homecoming expressed by the nameless military family in the picture above, was precisely what Kim Gannon had in mind when he wrote his 1943 classic “I’ll be Home for Christmas” . The song was an instant success for Bing Crosby and has received many beautiful treatments over the years, but I like the stripped down version performed by  modern Canadian pop singer, Michael Buble’, who gets the yearning and the want just right.  To each of you who can be home, for those of us who can’t, and to the thousands of service men and women who are separated from their families by conflict and obligation and selflessly represent us all – a very heartfelt Christmas wish from Kim Gannon, Michael Buble’ – and myself.

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Lincoln

The historian in me couldn’t resist seeing the most recent cinematic effort to portray history, what I hoped to be a  compelling presentation of one of my historical heroes, Abraham Lincoln.  Historical dramas are the stuff of Hollywood.  History offers spectacle and tension that epic moments are rife with, but, to the challenge of the screenwriter, the outcome is known to the audience.  The tendency of the writer therefore is to bend history by inserting plot devices, conversations that never occurred, people that didn’t exist, to heighten the peril faced by the protagonists.  History frequently takes a beating in a drama well told for effect.

Steven Spielberg faced just such a challenge in his current movie, Lincoln .  The sweep and scale of the Civil War and Lincoln’s pivotal role in it has received more scholarly attention than perhaps any time in American history, and the role of  President Lincoln has reached mythical status.  The many faces of mythic Lincoln , Lincoln the Western Logsplitter, Lincoln the Emancipator, Lincoln the War Leader, and Lincoln the Shakespearean Martyr, play to our current image of this enigmatic historical figure.  Spielberg was determined to humanize the Olympic stature of Lincoln, and decided to focus therefore on the interactions of Lincoln the man in a very small sliver of the Civil War saga, the role of the President in achieving the passage of the bill promoting a 13th amendment to the U.S Constitution, abolishing slavery and enforced servitude.

The movie therefore attempts to show us Lincoln , the human, at a moment requiring masterful political abilities.  Necessarily, the typical background for animated a historical drama, dramatic action scenes, are riskily absent from this movie.  The movie instead maintains a laser focus on the artillery like bombardment that Lincoln faced every day of his Presidency in the form of an overwhelming  plethora of pressures.  The scope of crushing forces attempting to suffocate his will are told to brutal effect.  The President faces as a result of his actions to attempt to preserve the union a daily butcher’s bill of hundreds if not thousands of casualties that touch those immediately around him, in a war seemingly without end..  As if the God wanted to assure the personal understanding of such loss, He takes Lincoln’s little boy Will to fatal illness, plunging his already unstable wife Mary into a spiral of depression, self absorption, and irrational acts.  He faces a majority in legislature that wants to destroy the South for its irretrievable sins of slavery and secession, making the elements of a potential re-union all but insurmountable, and a minority Democrat party that was never willing to make the elimination of slavery a priority of peace.  He faces war profiteers, two faced cabinet men, deserters, and a thousand years of racial prejudice in daily battle.

All of these forces lead to the Lincoln we see in the image above –  weary, aged, and introspective.  The daily deluge seems impossible to tolerate, yet this man faces them with a grim determination that is absent from today’s politician, with an innate belief in the founding principles of the nation and an unalterable conviction in the role of Divine Providence.  It takes a great actor to portray the human condition as it exists in a character, and Daniel Day Lewis achieves this in one of the great performances of our generation.  Frankly, Lewis saves the movie from itself, as the scenes project a certain redundancy in Lincoln’s daily stresses and challenges, and script’s need to put constantly profound statements in the President’s mouth to propel the story forward.  Perhaps for the first time, we see Lincoln the man, struggling with himself and his family, as he faces the need to finish the job he played a pivotal role in starting.  This is no cartoon hero Lincoln.  This is a man who seeks an end that will in some way provide some justice to the horrific, incalculable losses.  Daniel Day Lewis brings this very special man to life in a unforgettable way.

As history, unfortunately, the movie takes some huge assumptions that cheapen the learning lessons of the film.  Focusing on the politics of the Amendment abolishing slavery, the movie gives only thready information as to how men and woman at that time could hold such divergent views as to humanity.  Rather than careful interpretations as to the intensity of people’s convictions at the time, we see men throwing bedrock philosophies overboard for a few dollars or a patronage position. African Americans on the President’s house staff in the movie are projected as fully politically aware and engaged, yet Frederick Douglas, a huge intellectual force effecting Lincoln’s way of thinking is essentially no where to be found.   Thaddeus Stevens, a powerful abolitionist in the House, is given the key role in achieving the desired end of the bill, though there is no historical narrative that suggests that was the case.  The South projects in the movie essentially only as a little seen foreign force, and the peace delegation injected in the movie comes off as cartoonish and delusional.

As educational and formative entertainment, it doesn’t seem to me the movie quite works as successfully as Spielberg’s other historical drama, Saving Private Ryan. The special performance of Daniel Day Lewis, however,  in making the epic Lincoln  someone we could recognize and understand as a human being, is enough to make the effort to see the movie through a worthy one.  So little of our nation’s formative narrative is placed in front of our population nowadays that even a flawed attempt by Spielberg is a valued one.  Maybe this we lead to some better efforts to combat the nation’s ignorance on how we got here, and where we are going.

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Honey Smooth

The Tommy Dorsey Band was one of the epic forces in American popular music in the 1940’s setting a standard for sophisticated big band sound. Lush arrangements were highlighted by band singers that would accentuate the interaction between voice and instrument creating an American Sound that would dominate the era. Most famous of the singers propelling out of the Dorsey ensemble was the thin Italian kid from Hoboken, Frank Sinatra. His big talent soon proved too much for the multi-voice ensemble known as the Pied Pipers that provided the harmonies for the band, and he struck out on his own to eventual legendary solo status. The Pied Pipers however had another gem in the harmonic mix, and though not as well known as her male counterpart Sinatra, Jo Stafford had a terrific way with song lyrics and a voice that was effortless and perfect in pitch. The girls all wanted to meet Frank Sinatra, but the boys all wanted to marry beautiful Jo Stafford. Her voice was characterized by Johnny Mercer, the great songwriter, as honey smooth, and it was all that and more.

Jo Stafford grew up in California at a time when the state was truly the paradise of possibility.  A voice as sunny warm as the climate, she soon was recognized as the lead voice by her sisters that had formed one of the many family ensembles popular in the era. Jo liked the way her voice blend as a mid register clarity and soon became part of the Pied Pipers, initially a eight member group creating an orchestral sound.  Paul Weston, a member and arranger for Tommy Dorsey, heard the Pipers and offered to arrange for them, bring them into the sight line of the premier band leader of the day, Tommy Dorsey.  Dorsey struggled with the concept of such a big ensemble, finally convincing them to reduce to four voices with Stafford in the lead, and a new projection of the band was born.  Sinatra was the hired singer, and the Pied Pipers were accompaniment, but when Sinatra left, the talents of Stafford started to project, and she became a recognizable star in her own right.  In the video below, Stafford’s voice seamlessly blends with her male counterparts, but the honey smooth delivery sparkles like sun on morning dew:

As World War II drew to a close, Jo Stafford left the Pied Pipers and became a noted solo artist.  Understated and a balladeer, she was moderately successful economically but to the artists and song writers in the business, she was considered royalty. Extremely popular with the millions of soldiers created by the WWII cauldron for her tireless work in troop support, she held a special place in the hearts of servicemen and had a permanent place on their record players and her popularity grew and grew.  Both she and Sinatra became recording artists for Capitol records, where she had success, but when her now husband Weston moved her to Columbia Records she flourished in the 1950’s, becoming the first Columbia artist to sell 25 million records, epitomized by her 1957 number one hit, You Belong to Me:

Now a big star, Stafford had the universal recognition that led to both movie and TV opportunities, including her own TV show.  At the height of her popularity in the early sixties, she determined to retire and raise her family, and despite pressures by many in the industry, essentially kept her word.  Perhaps she saw the trends that music was taking away from melodious sound into the more jarring energy of the sixties.  The extended retirement is probably one of the reasons Stafford’s beautiful voice is time trapped in our memories as a big band singer, but she could evoke deep emotion and understood lyrics in the manner of the best interpreters of the American Songbook.  Jo Stafford died in 2008, as a snapshot of a time, but Johnny Mercer’s summation of Stafford’s talent as honey smooth remains definitive.  We finish with a period piece of music, the 19th century Shenandoah, made epically timeless by Jo Stafford’s beautiful way with great music.

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Theater of the Absurd

Welcome to the Theater of the Absurd that has become the narrative of crumbling western institutions.  Like the audience of Waiting for Godot, those of us who are observers in the audience don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or simply maintain a dumbfounded muteness at the inactions and confusions on the stage.   In Beckett’s play, Vladimir and Estragon vainly wait for an acquaintance named Godot to arrive, blithely unaware as to whether they would even recognize him if he were to appear.   So go the stumbling, bumbling leaders in charge of running the western assemblies who presumptively stand vanguard over two thousand five hundred years of western civilization’s most shining achievement, the elevation of each individual to a creature of value.  We individuals, having bought the tickets for this absurdest drama, are frozen in the audience, the theater doors bared to any conceivable escape.  We can only look back and wonder why we thought buying the tickets was such a good idea in the first place.

In our pitiful play, Greece is our Vladimir and the United States our Estragon. Greece, the citadel of western civilization, as a free willed country, is now at a point past death.  Having involuted its entire economy into a vehicle for self digestion, the bill for the lavish feast is long past due.  The puppets that are the face of the Greek assemblies agonize over the steadily increasing vise the international community, and in particular, the European Union, place on their ability to ingest themselves.  And everybody is upset at the forlorn Greek taxpayer, a steadily diminishing segment of society that has realized that paying taxes is over rated, when the taxes simply go to those who demand more taxes from those foolish enough to pay.   The fact that enormous financial burdens of the state have overwhelmed its ability to obtain receipts to pay for it all is looked upon hilariously as a specific character flaw of the Greeks.

The current supportive plan of the European Union is a ponzi scheme that should lead to our old friend Charles Ponzi to be nominated for a Nobel Prize in Economics posthumously.  The Greek government forces the selling of short term bonds meant to pay their explosive debts, to insolvent Greek banks that long ago had their available capital washed away in debt restructuring, who in turn are held up by loans from the European Union countries, particularly Germany, at interest rates that everybody knows the Greeks will never be able to pay back.  This, of course will lead to the wonderful absurdest moment in Act II, where the German Chancellor Merkel will get to explain to the German people in her bid for re-election, how investing Germany’s hard earned capital sustained through taxes on the German taxpayer, needs to be invested in an enterprise with no hope of return on investment from the incapable Greek taxpayer, and that this scheme needs to go on indefinitely.  I suspect that will certainly produce some nervous guffaws from the audience.  Luckily, a potential villain has surfaced.  It turns out that the only surviving economy in Greece is the large group of small business owners, the individual mom and pop shops that make up 30% of business in Greece, far exceeding the percentage in any more civilized western socialist democracy.  It turns out these little businesses have learned to survive by under-reporting their meager receipts, in order to avoid the oppressive taxes that would destroy their businesses.  To European Unionocrats, this is an intolerable situation, that demands the coalescing of these businesses into a more manageable and cooperative bureaucracy.  Thus furthering the destruction of individual incentive and enterprise.  Who would have guessed?

Ah, but wait. The play, seemingly wandering about without answers, holds for us even more surrealist directions. We are beginning to hear from Estragon, in the form of the United States.  Here is where the play will abound in absurdities.   The recent election has confirmed the public’s confidence in the economic musings of a former Hawaiian prep school pothead, positioned to lead the once great American economic miracle into the rocks.  Facing the “fiscal cliff” of enforced tax raises and dramatic directionless spending cuts guaranteed to throw the country back into recession, the former Cannabis connoisseur has determined the way to deal with the crisis is- no really- “stimulus” spending.  You see, how this works is, the government overspends thereby needing more tax receipts thereby raising taxes thereby reducing economic performance thereby reducing receipts thereby needing economic stimulus through more spending.  Estragon would be proud of such logic as he took off his bowler and stared inquisitively into it, seeing nothing.  The legislative bodies sit by and wonder if cannabidiol has made logic invisible to the man who woke up one day and discovered himself Leader of the Free World.  Certainly it can’t it can’t get more absurd than that.

The end game for a play which has no end is the lonely waiting for someone who will never come, a sustained and constructive policy to get the West out of this mess. The United States will unfortunately ignore its ridiculously prevalent bounties of personal incentive, creativity, innate  thriftiness, and natural resources, and instead propel forward to economic decline, spiraling debt, and progressive paralysis.  Europe will tumble into Act III, where suicide is contemplated but the characters of the play lack the energy and incentive to follow through.

Western Civilization, whose two thousand five hundred year brilliant journey is now in the hands of such characters, is best eulogized by Samuel Beckett’s most memorable line in the play regarding the frailty and brevity of such existence:

They give birth astride a grave,  the light gleams an instant, then it is night once more.