The Jewish Vote

Today is the Jewish New Year. And as they say, l'shanah tovah tikatev v'taihatem. I'll be going to synagogue both days. My father conveniently passed on the second day of Rosh Hashanah so I can always easily find a minyan to recite kaddish on his anniversary day.

Jews certainly will be praying over the next two days, which are the start of an extended period of reflection that ends with Yom Kippur. But they'll also be eating. And they'll also be talking politics.

Jews vote predominately Democratic. There are exceptions of course - the crazy neocons being a prime example - but Jews went 75 percent for Kerry in 2004 and 81 percent for Gore in 2000. The change in percentage from 2000 to 2004 in my view was due to one thing: George Bush proved to be the most pro-Israel president of my lifetime. Clearly, he didn't help Israel for the Jewish vote, which he didn't win and knew he wouldn't win. There were other reasons.

Jews have voted Democratic for as long as I can remember and then some. Historically, the Republicans were the party of Fortune 500 companies and their employees; those companies wouldn't hire Jews until the 1970s. Also the Republican idea that "government is evil" just doesn't resonate with Jewish culture. Neither does the idea that social programs need to be privatized. Finally, the strength of the Evangelicals in the current Republican Party simply scares Jews away. Well that isn't really finally. There are a whole bunch of other reasons including Republicans embracing racists in the 1960s.

There are few states where Jews can have any sort of influence on electoral politics. Their numbers (six million or so last I checked for the US) are simply too small. One of those states where Jews can potentially have an impact is Florida, where they constitute about four percent of the population (about double the national average). In a close election, Jews in Florida can matter. This upcoming election is likely going to be very close in Florida. It's worth noting that had Palm Beach County not had its confusing "butterfly ballot" in 2000, the elderly Jews in that county would not have screwed up their ballots and Al Gore would have won the presidency.

A couple of weeks ago, a music publisher from LA asked me about the Jews in Florida. He was worried about their vote. "How do you think they'll go?" My response was, "About 70 percent." That's my best guess. I bet it will be at that level plus or minus five percent. The other 30 percent will likely not vote for Obama for three reasons: Israel, taxes, and race in that order.

Seventy percent is pretty damn good. But it's about 40,000 votes less than Kerry got. In 2004, Kerry received 80 percent of Florida's Jewish vote, but still came up short by about 400,000 votes. I'm guessing the overall numbers will be closer this time and the Jewish vote may be critical.

How can Obama do better with the Jewish vote? It's a long row to hoe to convince people that Obama will be more pro-Israel than McCain. The best you can do is say it that he'll be more like Bill Clinton than like Jimmy Carter or George Bush the elder. It's impossible to say to wealthy Florida Jews that their taxes will be lower under Obama. You can't make Obama white, either. There needs to be some other approach.

There is a cute effort out there to get young Jewish people to visit their grandparents in Florida and convince them to vote for Obama, The Great Schlep. This will help a little, but not much.

In my view, there are two words that will send a significant number of Jewish votes Obama's way, Sarah Palin. All Obama's camp has to do is go into those Southern Florida Jewish condo clubhouses and show three videos that are all on youtube. First, show the video of Sarah Palin getting blessed by the Kenyan witch hunter who claims that Jews control world finance. This video will send chills down any older Jew's spine. Jews do not vote for Christian whackos who consort with anti-Semites.

Second show the video of her interview with Charlie Gibson. In Jewish culture, nothing is more reviled than ignorance and this video shows Sarah Palin to be a tampteh (it means "dummy" for those who don't know Yiddish). Third show the video of her interview with Katie Couric. The response in those clubhouses just might be, "Oh my what a lallkeh (a porcelain doll or a woman big on appearance and short on brains) . She was a tampteh both times."

After those videos, all you need to do is mention McCain's age and medical history. Then it's time to just let everyone discuss the election and the issue of Sarah Palin.

Would this be negative campaigning? Of course. But it would be a just the facts approach. There wouldn't have to be any commentary or spin. The videos would do the damage just by themselves. A little canvasing and video playing in Jewish condo developments mightl cause thousands of votes to turn Obama's way.

I should say that this approach would be antithetical to how the Obama camp is approaching door to door canvasing. The idea is to stay positive and extoll the virtues of Obama. That's all well and good, but it ignores the fact that Obama is losing a significant percentage of votes due to fear not facts. Obama's stay positive approach assumes that voters are driven strictly by rational judgment. Many are. Many aren't. If Obama wants to win Florida, he just might have to appeal more to people's gut instincts than their heads.

Embracing Stupidity

When I was a kid, the Republicans were the party for small businessmen and corporations. They were essentially the Fortune 500 Party. What was good for business was good for America and that was that. With the Nixon presidency, the party grew by embracing the racists in the South who had become disenchanted with Democrats and their egalitarian ways. It became the party of business and Southern crackers. From a political standpoint, the "Southern strategy" garnered the Republicans a critical block of votes; on the other hand embracing stupid racists meant that the collective IQ of the Republican Party went down a notch.

This collection of business people and racists was the new Republican Party until sometime around the Reagan years when two new groups were added, the Reagan Democrats and the Evangelicals. These two new groups, one from the North and the other newly politically active and predominately from exurbia and rural areas, also had a racist tinge. They were also dumber than the original Fortune 500 and small business group and the Republican Party's collective IQ went down yet further.

All of this pandering to the lowest of the low had a profound implication. The Republican Party didn't just become dumber. It became proud of its ignorance. Conservative ideology was turned on its head; it meant a spending free for all mixed with low taxes, Bible thumping, and frequent wars with perceived enemies. What was once a sane group turned outright crazy (OK, you've probably figured out by now that I'm not a Republican.). The old Republican guard in their blue wool suits either became dismayed or tried to pretend that the mess wasn't there.

The Republican Party also finally became very popular. Not only would the Republicans win most presidential elections, but for about a decade they would control Congress.

How did this happen? How did the lunatics take over the insane asylum? There are a lot of theories out there. My own view is that what happened was that social change in this country was very dramatic in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was so dramatic that a lot of people couldn't cope. Blacks suddenly had access to power and money. Women suddenly had to be treated like human beings. Wide-spread birth control changed sexual dynamics dramatically. In response, a good segment of the American public not only dug in its heels but went backward both socially and religiously. Some embraced crazy fundamentalist (I realize that using crazy and fundamentalist together is being redundant) religions. Plus everybody loves low taxes as long as they continue to get their government benefits.

In my view, idiosyncratic I know, there was a parallel between what was happening in Iran and what was happening in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. In both places, a sizable segment of the public was repulsed by modernization. In response, both went backwards. For Iran of course the changes were far more dramatic. They had their Ayatollah. We had our "Ayatollah Lite," Ronald Reagan. He wasn't very bright, but he was charismatic. His cheery disposition hid his backwards nature. The Party of Stupidity turned the US into the Country of Stupidity.

Ronald Reagan was preceded by Jimmy Carter. It's ironic that Carter was essentially drummed out of office by the actions of Iran who held American hostages through the election to ensure that Carter would lose. Carter was a lousy president. But one thing he did not promote was stupidity. Trained as an engineer, he was strongly pro-intellectual and pro-science. That all disappeared with Reagan.

Carter worked on energy independence. Reagan was so vehement in his refusal to do anything about our energy usage that he literally tore the solar panels installed by the Carter administration off the roof of the White House. Carter worked on the US joining the rest of the world in going metric. Reagan killed that idea. There are now only two countries in the world that use English units: the US and Liberia. We now waste our money manufacturing to two different specifications (one that we use and the other that everyone else uses) and have to have two sets of tools to fix anything. We are truly the country of stupidity.

With Reagan the era of blue sky scientific discovery came to an end in this country. National Science Foundation budgets stagnated and the mission of NSF moved from promoting high risk work to tried and true applied research. Efforts to promote alternative energy in other aspects of science and engineering funding were quashed. The role of scientists in governmental decision making was diminished. We started to lose our world-wide lead in supercomputing, nuclear physics and elsewhere.

What was promoted instead to the dismay of the scientific community was "Star Wars," a hypothetical missile defense system that was just plain loopy.

The Republican Party likes to deride intellectuals. They go on and on about how snobby and smug they are. I think that they are mostly thinking about English college professors when they go off on one of their "I hate intellectuals" riffs. But they've thrown out the baby with the bath water. In their hatred of all things intellectual, they've not only made English professors miserable (and as far as I'm concerned maybe that's not a bad idea); they've ruined our scientific and engineering competitiveness.

We've lost our scientific edge in much of biology because George W. Bush made use of stem cells difficult. We've further lost our lead in supercomputing and nuclear physics. Our state universities, which provided our country with top notch scientific research and a top notch science and engineering workforce, have been increasingly squeezed financially. Educationally we have stagnated and tests of undergraduates suggest they know less than they did twenty years ago.

When a country is run by a party that embraces fundamentalist religion and is profoundly anti-intellectual (the two do go hand in hand, you know) you have nowhere to go but down. And that's what we've been doing for the last seven years.

This election the Republicans had a chance to redefine themselves for the better. Instead of continuing to embrace stupidity, they could have started to rebuild their party in a way that was far less parochial. Their leader, John McCain, was poised to do just that. But then he choked. Instead he let stupidity reign supreme.

He selected as VP a sweetheart of the ignorant, anti-intellectual wing of the party, someone who makes George W. Bush seem like Einstein (and don't forget that George W. Bush makes Ronald Reagan seem like Einstein; we keep going lower and lower). The Republicans are now, instead of trying to run on the future, retreating to the culture wars of the 1990s. They seem happy that their VP candidate is ignorant. Hell, this group would probably happily elect the Beverly Hillbillies to the White House. They even love the new VP candidate's ignorant redneck husband.

The Democrats did the equivalent stupid thing in 1972 with McGovern. They went out on a limb to support their extremists. It didn't work. This won't work either. One day the Republicans will come to their senses. They'll stop embracing stupidity. But I'm not holding my breath as to when it will happen.

Uncle Stuey's Completely Unbiased - How Could It Not Be So - Analysis of The Great Debate

It actually happened. A real presidential debate. And it was as serious as serious could be with very few gimmicks. Imagine that. If I would have used one word to describe the campaign so far, it would have been "circus." In contrast, this debate was the most non-circus-like and most serious presidential debate that maybe I've ever seen.

Both candidates were incredibly wonky with fact after fact and neither could connect with the public at a visceral level. There weren't any memorable zingers or sound bytes from either side, just a blurry of numbers with a tone of uber-seriousness.

If you like Obama, you'll feel good about what happened, but wish he could have shown more emotion. If you like McCain, you'll feel good about what happened, but wish he could have relaxed and shown some folksy humor. If you are undecided (and how you can be undecided at this point in time is beyond me), I'm guessing you found it incredibly boring.

I'm biased certainly (imagine that!), but I felt that Obama controlled the tone. He stood tall and spoke with authority. McCain barely rose above the lectern (didn't know he was that short) and looked tired and a bit whiny. I'd give the style points to Obama, but a Republican judge might disagree. Without the key "sound byte," there was no knockout punch.

My view is that all Obama had to do was draw and he would move one step closer to winning. He did a little more than that. McCain is going to have pull another stunt to try and win this thing. Given what has happened to Palin (stunt #1) in the last few weeks and the grandstanding on the bailout (stunt #2), I'd say that any future stunts won't be successful either. As far as I'm concerned, this race - barring something like the capture of Osama - is over.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 24

On Language: Scottish

My father never learned English well. He didn't have to. In a town like Milwaukee, you could get by with German and Polish most of the time with some Yiddish thrown in. He did read the local newspaper every day, though. It was important to him to stay informed, a trait that I found in just about every Jewish male immigrant. The overriding idea was to be watchful of any changes in this country; America was a great place, but you never knew. Some anti-Semite could get elected and everything would change. You might have to leave overnight. It's why you always kept your passport current and some gold coins and cash hidden somewhere.

Part of that fear was reinforced by the times and the state my father and his fellow immigrant Sheboyganites/Milwaukeeans were in. The McCarthy Era, with its arrest of many Jews and the murder of the Rosenbergs, put fear into every Jewish immigrant. Add in the fact that McCarthy was from Wisconsin and the fear of being falsely arrested for being a communist or having communist ties was likely a little higher than it was elsewhere.

My mother for instance loved to read Russian novels and would go to the Milwaukee Public Library as a new immigrant to get copies of Tolstoy et al. in Russian. With the rise of McCarthyism she stopped. She was worried that someone would trace her library usage, claim she was a communist, arrest her and deport her. But I digress.

There was another reason my father didn't spend much time learning English. My mother was there for him. She came to this country at the fairly young age of 20, and unlike my father had taken English classes in her gymnasium in Germany. Her teacher there was Scottish and one of the funnier things about my mother was that she was convinced she spoke English with a Scottish accent. I probably have a recording of her voice somewhere. Her accent was strictly and thickly Eastern European. Because she didn't speak Yiddish until she was 12 or so, there was little in the way of a Jewish lilt (which I actually have, particularly when I'm tired). But Scottish? No way.

My father too had a funny thing about Scottish accents. By coincidence, his first and only English instructor in the US was Scottish. He would get so frustrated trying to understand this instructor's non-American accent that he gave up. From then on until his dying day, if he didn't understand what someone was saying in English - no matter what the accent - he would say in Yiddish to whomever could help him, sometimes me, "He's speaking Scottish. What the hell is he saying?" You had to be my dad's interpreter. Sometimes when someone with a broad American Southern accent would speak to my father and he'd come out with his "He's speaking Scottish" thing, I'd break into such hysterical laughter that I couldn't translate. I couldn't help it. It was just so funny to me.*

My mother's English wasn't particularly good, but it was heads and shoulders above my father's English. It meant that my mother was in charge of dealing with Americans, from bankers to potential buyers, in their family business. This was a good division of labor for another reason. My father was never comfortable around people. He had the temperament and analytical skills of an engineer although he did like to go out dancing and loved to tell stories. My mother, on the other hand, was a social creature.

My mother also often tried to improve her English and would take classes. This was especially true in the 1960s and 1970s when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State. There was a time in Kissinger's rise to prominence when he took lessons on how to reduce his heavily Germanic accent. After those lessons, he did sound significantly different. My mother noticed the change and it spurred her to go to a Catholic college and take several classes with some nuns. My mother tried hard, but her accent was virtually immutable. Plus I don't think that those nuns were likely as talented as the expensive instructor that the Nixon team got for Kissinger.

When I think of my parents and my family, I can't help but think of their catch phrases and mangled pronunciations. For instance my father would always pronounce the word hardware, hard-wear-ee. This was a man who worked on construction for all of his years in America and had accounts at several hard-wear-ee stores in town. As a kid, I would try to correct him, but he'd get indignant. "Stupid American language," he would say. "If the 'e' is there you should pronounce it." He wasn't going to cowtow to convention. For him, the silent "e" was an insult to his intelligence.

When my father was impressed with someone's salesmanship he would say, "He could sell the New Yorker Bridge." Often, I would try to tell him that it was the Brooklyn Bridge. He wasn't impressed with my efforts at helping him here, either. His usual response was, "Brooklyn is in New York, right?" That would be the end of the discussion.

When my grandfather was pleasantly surprised by something he would mix German and English together and say, "mein goodness." This was about the extent of his use of any English catch phrase to express emotion. If he was angry, he'd usually shout out in Russian, "yob tvoyu mat" which means f*ck your mother. This would be usually accompanied by taking a phone book and slamming it down on the ground. It was a phrase my father used as well, but his most common invective was "somovabitch." I never tried to correct him when he said that.

I'll end with my mom, who battled her weight all of her adult years. She would say to me, "Before I had you, I could eat anything I wanted and never gained a thing." Not that she was blaming me mind you. She had quite the sweet tooth, really couldn't resist any fruit or piece of chocolate or cake. She would always say, "Just give me a 'vinchee' piece." The word 'vinchee' meant tiny, but it's not a word that I know in Yiddish. It might be a Polish or Russian word, but I think she just might have made it up.

Both my mother and father used the worth "fruitalize" instead of "fertilize" as in "it's time to fruitalize the lawn" or "fish bones make great fruitalizer for trees." I always thought that this manufactured word made a lot of sense and I use it every now and then in homage to my parents. Who knows? I might start a word revolution. Maybe one day "fruitalize" will become an official English word and I'll be able to use it in Scrabble.

*Many years later when I moved to Chapel Hill, there was a sweet lady who lived across the street with the thickest of Southern accents. She had married into a Southern Jewish family - her husband had passed a year before I moved there - and one day she said to me, "Ahm goin' to a Bahrrr-Mee-Itz-Vuh. Do ya know what a Bahrrr-Mee-Itz-Vuh is?" I immediately thought, "Oh my, she's speaking Scottish," and realized just how frustrated my father would have been listening to her. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing like I usually did when I tried to translate Southern accents for my dad. "Yes, I know what a Bar Mitzvah is," I said. "I'm Jewish." That lady would become good friends with my mother. Despite cultural differences, they were both shrewd business people and saw eye to eye on many things.

One liner of the day

AP Headline "McCain Suspends Campaign"
Any chance we can make that permanent?

It's Officially a Giveaway

When the government stepped in and bailed out Bear Stearns earlier this year, the rhetoric from right wingers and the Wall Street Journal was that no, this wasn't a bailout at all. It was simply a government assisted sale from which, eventually, the US taxpayer would benefit handsomely. Then the government bailed out AIG, and the rhetoric softened a bit. Yes it was a bailout. But again, this transaction was a good deal for the US taxpayer in the long run.

The new proposed bailout of the entire financial industry was initially trumpeted by the powers that be as another US taxpayer investment, but this week in congressional testimony, the head of the Fed, Bernanke, changed the rhetoric. He admitted that the 700 billion dollar bailout would result in major losses for the US taxpayer. How much? No one knows. Why should we do it then? Without this money, the losses to the US economy caused by a frozen credit market would be worse.

It's official now. We'll be giving 700 billion dollars to Wall Street. We won't get a lot of it back. I don't quite understand why we shouldn't.

Wall Street has a ton of mortgage securities for sale. There is only one buyer who could possibly take them. By the laws of the marketplace, that one buyer should shrewdly demand fire sale prices. That one buyer, the US government, should do what cash rich Warren Buffet does when someone is hurting; he swoops down and grabs a share of the assets for next to nothing or charges ridiculously high interest or both. But no, the US government doesn't want to do that. Instead of investing like Warren Buffet, it seems determined to invest like Alfred E. Newman.

The logic for overpaying for these junk assets is that if we paid a fair price, Wall Street wouldn't get the cash infusion it needs to reopen the credit markets. But there is another way for Wall Street to get capital. Instead of a giveaway, why don't we buy Wall Street's lousy securities for what they are worth - next to nothing - and then simply loan Wall Street the real cash it needs? We did this with Chrysler many years ago. They paid their loan back ahead of schedule if I remember correctly.

I imagine that the argument against this approach is that by loaning the money, we increase the cost of Wall Street lending since they effectively have to add on a surcharge to cover their loans. True. But the cost of money right now is ridiculously cheap. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have interest rates rise back up to levels that existed in the 1970s and 1980s just so long as they stay below double digits.

Others have come up with the idea of an equity share instead of a loan. That sounds fine with me as well. The argument against government taking a portion of equity (which is what they did with AIG) is that this effectively nationalizes our banking industry. I think that this argument is stretching things, but even if it isn't, the current non-nationalized system hasn't been very effective now has it?

What the government is proposing to do is give a handful of financial firms a bailout that will end up costing easily more than twice as much as the amount given to the entire tax base this year as a stimulus package. They're proposing to print a ridiculous amount of money - literally give it away - in the name of saving our marketplace economy. Supposedly, these people will behave responsibly with all this free cash. This requires a huge leap of faith. In fact, I'm not buying.

It's telling that when Paulson was asked at the congressional hearings about limiting executive pay, he said that this was a bad idea. If executive pay was capped, he said many firms would simply refuse to participate in the bailout. Let me think about the logic of this. A company is tanking and needs cash badly, yet the person in charge won't take a government handout because he'll receive a salary of "only" a few million dollars if he does? This is the kind of person we want to give hundred of billions of dollars? He's going to behave responsibly and in the best interest of the nation and the US taxpayer?

The idea of throwing billions of dollars into a pot in the name of capitalism has been tried before. It wasn't that long ago. Think back to Russia sometime around 1990. Tens of billions of dollars poured into Russia in an effort to prop up its fledgling capitalistic Democracy. The money was not used wisely. Instead it was funneled into the hands of a few criminals who ended up being the oligarchs of today's Russian economy.

I would argue that the proposal of this government to prop up Wall Street with hundreds of billions of dollars the US taxpayer will never see again is highly analogous to Russia in 1990. There is little difference between the ethics of the Russian oligarchs and the current titans of Wall Street. They will happily scoop up this money for their own needs.

Yes, we need these titans and we need Wall Street to work. But those titans shouldn't be getting a handout. They should get loans and/or give up equity just like every other business that needs cash. If they need 700 billion dollars to keep our economy afloat that's fine. But they shouldn't be allowed to steal it.

I'm Voting for Sarah

I've been making calls for the Obama campaign mostly canvassing to see who is voting for Obama. There is a certain kind of person I've been running into that is more than a bit scary. They say, "I'm voting for Sarah" or "I'm voting for Palin." It's as if John McCain isn't even on the ballot.

These are Evangelical voters. For them, John McCain is not attractive in the least. But Sarah. Ah Sarah. She's one of us. She understands us. I wouldn't be surprised if they are praying not only for a Republican victory, but that McCain drops dead of a heart attack the day after the election and their chosen one can take over.

This election has been turned into a culture war for many. For me, the central cultural issue isn't abortion or gay rights or what's on TV or any of that here and now stuff. The Evangelicals are concerned about these issues sure. But ultimately, they are convinced that the End Time is near. That's what they are really about. They are getting ready to go to heaven.

For me, the ultimate cultural dividing issue is the expected date of the end of the world. If you're thinking the world will end any day now, you want one kind of government, a government suffused with an urgency to do all the things necessary to get us back to Jesus. If you're someone who doesn't think about the end of the world or thinks that it will end with the heat death of the universe billions of years into the future, your focus on government may be about fixing that damn pot hole you run over on your drive to work every day.

I've been around end timers in my own religion. The Lubavitcher sect of Orthodox Judaism was fixated on their leader of longstanding in the late 20th century, Rabbi Schneerson. I grew up around that sect. Quite a few Lubavitchers were convinced that their leader was the Messiah. They expected that upon his death the world as we know it would end and we would enter the kingdom of heaven. When Rabbi Schneerson died in the late 1990s, they waited. Some are still waiting.

End Time politics is awful politics. When your life is about the world to come and not the here and now you screw up the here and now. In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox have been fouling up Israeli politics for a couple of decades. They control about ten percent of the vote and since any major party needs a coalition to achieve a majority, they get to be king makers. It's because of these crazy people that Israel keeps up the nonsense of building settlements in the West Bank. According to the ultra-Orthodox the West Bank is by biblical precedent Jewish land. They too, like the Evangelicals, are preparing for the world to come.

When someone tells me that they are "voting for Sarah" what they are telling me is that they don't really give a damn about this country. They are instead practicing End Time politics. End Time politics isn't about smooth roads, good schools and good health care. Those are minor pursuits. It's about governing for the heaven ahead. It's about voting for someone who understands that Jesus is coming any day now and we have to be ready. The Evangelicals are waiting expectantly. Somehow that waiting never gets translated into disappointment. Instead they choose to cherish their delusions.

***********

Addendum. This video at the 7:30 mark shows Sarah Palin being blessed for votes in the gubernatorial election by some whacko preacher.



About this incident, Sarah Palin said in June of this year, "And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not 'oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,' no, he just prayed for it. He said 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step.' And that’s exactly what happened."

I Do Not Do No Rock And Roll No More

I've had a very uneasy relationship with rock music since I was about 12 and discovered the blues. After that discovery, rock just seemed like a poor, watered down, whitened version of the real thing. There were rock bands who played the blues well like the Allman Brothers. There were rock bands who played the blues poorly, but watered it down in a way that white suburban kids could handle it like Eric Clapton in whatever band he was in or The Rolling Stones. Then there were rock bands that really weren't rock bands at all but rather were English music hall bands who played with rock instruments like The Beatles. I liked The Beatles quite a bit, but it was like cheating to say that because of them I liked rock and roll.

There have been rock groups or acts I've admired along the way. The aforementioned Beatles, The Band (really a bluegrass group that played rock instruments), Adrian Belew (really an experimental musician who played rock instruments), Dave Alvin (when he stopped being a rocker), Elvis Costello (a literate rocker), Joe Henry (really a literate r&b guy), The Talking Heads (really a world music band), and John Hiatt come to mind. But as you can see from all of the qualifiers after their names, I don't consider most of them to be rockers at heart.

Then there are contemporary pop musicians who I don't think anyone would call rockers that I've loved like Randy Newman and Paul Simon. But mostly, I'm much happier listening or writing stuff in styles that came before Elvis.

Rock and me just haven't been a good fit. The whole idea behind what makes a rock band - a group of people with limited understanding and history of music who are typically angry and lousy aliterate bad boy students trying to make art or entertainment - is something I just don't understand. I was a good student. I studied music. For me, the idea is to play music well and be literate. The instruments need to be in tune. The singing better be solid. The players need to know how to play. The writer needs to know more than a bit about what preceded him (no, Mr. Rocker, music did not begin with The Beatles). And if you're angry, maybe you should see a therapist or get some drugs instead of imposing your bad mood on an audience.

That's not to say I don't like outside art as music. If someone like a Daniel Johnston wants to hand out handmade tapes where he pours out his heart, that's a wonderful thing. I was just listening to some music by Mingering Mike - the guy who made all of those wonderful album covers for his fictitious "soul superstar" career - and that was interesting (if barely listenable) in its own way, as well.

But for me, rock as practiced on music labels and on radio stations is a corrupted outside art. It seems to be far less about the music - which is usually awful - than the culture. It's the money. It's the drugs. It's the sex. It's about being fashionable and cool with a fake kind of angst and strut. It's a pose. There are enough poseurs in the world without rock and roll. Plus the rise of rock pushed out wonderful music written by jazz cats and non-rock songwriters from the public marketplace.

A few weeks ago, I was watching two pretty decent rock bands, Death Cab for Cutie and My Morning Jacket play on TV. For me, those two are the good part of rock and roll. Both bands came up slowly by word of mouth and established a name for themselves free of record label hype. They're both fronted by a troubadour kind of figure. Personally, I find Death Cab for Cutie far too pretentious and twee (plus the musicianship is kind of lousy), but that's just me. My Morning Jacket is far more easy for me to listen to.

But in both cases, when I listen I'm not listening as a fan. I'm just judging the music from a distance. As I'm listening, I'm asking myself, "If I was 20 years old or so again, would I like this?" Lyrically, the songs are not meant for guys or gals my age. They don't translate well to people who have decades of life experience.

On the other hand, that same night I watched an old rock act play, Van Morrison. OK, he isn't exactly rock, but he's close. Van Morrison was never a good live performer, and now he just looks too old and tired to go out there night after night. It was a painful listen.

Groups like My Morning Jacket prove that rock and roll is alive and well. But it's not for me. It barely was for me when I was young. It's certainly not for me now.

I've been in rock bands. A few months ago, some young guy heard me playing solo and asked me after if I wanted to front a punk band. I just laughed. I said to him, "You need to find some tall skinny young guy who exudes so much sexuality that women will throw their thongs onstage during a show, not me." My rock and roll playing days are definitely over.

Same with rock songs. I still get ideas for them in my head. But like Winston Churchill once said about exercise, I lie down and wait until the urge passes. I do not do no rock and roll no more.

Uncle Stuey's Unsound Investment Advice

After a long illness, the American Dream died last week. It's not surprising that it happened. How long could it all last? Earning power in this country has been stagnant for about 30 years. Our growth has been based on higher and higher debt loads for the American consumer. Eventually, it had to crash. And now it has.

The 20th century was the American century. I have no idea who will own the 21st century, but it won't be us. That doesn't mean that we're headed for a depression with people camping out in the city parks across the country that Frederick Law Olmsted designed so many years ago. I'm not that pessimistic. But for the next decade or so, I expect hard times ahead. I'm not alone.

If you don't have money now, it's likely that you'll really be hurting. You have my sympathy. I didn't vote for Bush. I just benefited from his incredibly stupid policies just like I benefitted from Clinton's/Bush the elder's/Reagan's give everything to the business world that it wants stupid policies. And now you're being taken even further to the cleaners to help support a financial industry that has been disdainful of your mere presence on this planet. There's just no justice in this world or at least no government that doesn't protect the wealthy more than it protects the poor.

What if you do have some money that you've squirreled away. What do you do now? I just read a NY Times article that said essentially you should keep doing what you did before, but spend less. This seems like ridiculous advice. Anybody can give better advice than this including me. So here goes. I give you Uncle Stuey's unsound investment advice.

For me, the whole enterprise of stocks is a house of cards. I don't even believe in publicly held companies; a company has to be truly desperate if it asks for money from a public that has no loyalty and will buy and sell shares on a whim. If I had serious money to invest, I'd only plunk my money down on privately held companies. If I owned a big company, the only time I'd go public would be when I wanted to cash out and live on a yacht off the coast of Tahiti.

Be that as it may, others see things differently. Companies need money to grow and they frequently solicit for funds via an open marketplace. How a company is valued by the marketplace is mostly voodoo and fashion. But if everyone else says the emperor is wearing great clothes, who am I to say that they are wrong? I say follow fashion as long as companies are making money.

This last statement leads me to the late 1990s. Companies weren't making money. Instead they were burning capital like crazy. People were talking about "new rules" for the stock market where it was just great to see companies lose money every year. Stocks soared. Then all of a sudden people started to think that those new rules didn't make any sense. That turned out to be our last crash and it was a nasty time when a lot of people went broke.

This crash is worse. I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

The invisible hand that everyone had faith in (why I don't know) has been shown to not exist. We now have the US government trying to be a very visible hand. Uncle Stuey says that this very visible hand will hopefully keep things from crashing completely. But...

The growth of the stock market was based on magic. Riches were to be had and the dreary government supposedly played no role. Now just about everyone agrees that the magic isn't there. Without magic, there are no obscenely large gains in the market. It's just the day to day of companies needing money and soliciting for funds. It's a dull business this soliciting for money when there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The American stock market is now like a restaurant that still serves good food, but is no longer "the place."

We had a great run over the last few decades because people bought a lot of junk they didn't need. They bought everything imaginable on credit including houses they couldn't afford. All of that recycling of money kept everything going. From about 1981 to about 1999, a complete idiot, even me, could invest in the stock market and see his or her money grow ten fold. That game is over.

Expect credit to remain ridiculously tight. Expect people to be scared. Up until this past week, I thought our recession would last just a couple or three years. I was very optimistic that all of the spending would come back eventually. Now I don't think so.

For me, there is no upside to the current American market and a lot of risk (but a potential upside) to the overseas market. We are done with the era of people buying stuff they don't need on credit in this country. So I'll keep pulling out of the American market. I'll slightly pull back on overseas markets but not much. Eventually, the Chinese and the Indians will be like we used to be, buying piles of junk they don't need to make themselves feel good. Then the house of cards can be built again. It won't be based on our conspicuous consumption, but mindless spending taking place somewhere else.

As they say in Sicily, the sun doesn't shine on a dog's ass all day long. It shined on ours for a century. I wish it could have lasted longer. But it didn't. The American Dream RIP. Now aren't I the cheery one today.

***********

Oh a little addendum. Today the stock market dropped 3 percent and oil futures shot up dramatically (16 percent) as money chased after commodities. The conventional wisdom is that the price of oil is not tied to speculation but is driven almost entirely by supply and demand. That conventional wisdom was wrong today. I think it's wrong most days.

Making Amends

Last week was the anniversary of my mother's death and as is traditional I went to a synagogue to say a prayer for her. Instead of going to my synagogue, I went to an old-school Orthodox synagogue like the one I grew up in. It was a blast from the past to see those big hats and those bearded faces. When I think of those times, I remember how old everyone looked to me. Now I ironically noted I was older than most of the people in the shul.

As is traditional, the rabbi said a little something about Jewish law between the recitations of the Kaddish. He talked about the laws of erecting a succah, an open wooden structure used to celebrate harvest time during the holiday of Succoth. Jewish law says that the succah, which is decorated with branches, must not be under any tree or covering. It must be open aired.

The question the rabbi undertook was what to do if you mistakenly construct your succah under a tree. At face value, this would seem like a question that you ask when you have too much time on your hands. Apparently, the rabbis of old did have a lot of idle time because they answered it. The answer is that you're supposed to knock off the offending limbs from the tree. But that's not quite good enough. You then have to make the effort to rearrange your decorations in your succah. You more or less pretend that you've just finished assembling your succah and are just beginning to decorate it. Now the succah is legal according to Jewish law.

I said not a word during this dvar Torah because it was my mom's day and I know she would have wanted me to bite my tongue. Plus this wasn't my synagogue. But on another day in another place I would have wanted to discuss this issue. And just like in Hebrew school, I probably would have gotten into trouble.

In the first place, knocking out limbs from a tree during fall isn't the best thing for a tree. The rabbis of old must not have consulted an arborist when they came up with this solution. In the second place, this solution seems really half-assed. If someone is dumb enough not to construct a succah right when the rules are very simple, they should just start over. It's not exactly a hardship to set up a succah anew. In essence, you're letting someone get away with stupidity and potentially killing a tree in the process.

But while such behavior for making amends doesn't make sense for succah assembly it does I think work for matters where people make mistakes in relationships. You say something bad. You do something that hurts someone. There's no going back and erasing everything. Somehow you need to make it up.

You could apologize. I guess that would be the equivalent of knocking a few limbs off the tree. But that shouldn't be enough. Indeed in Jewish law there is no such thing as turning the other cheek. Someone who offends is required to apologize to make amends. But in Jewish law, an apology does not have to be accepted.

No you should do more. You need to do something along the lines of rearranging the succah. Words only go so far. Some physical action whether it be buying flowers or doing some act of kindness is a good idea.

What is this all leading up to? Something quite absurd and ridiculous of course. In a couple of posts, I've mentioned the Milwaukee Brewers' collapse during this month. They once looked like a shoo-in for a playoff slot. Now they are a long shot. I also claimed full responsibility for their collapse. I publicly apologized for my transgressions.

But that is not enough I know. I needed to do some physical act. So the other day, I bought some Sheboygan bratwurst and corn and made us a typical Milwaukee meal. Then I recited an incantation to remove my curse on the Brewers while I ate my brat.

Ignoring the fact that a brat is far from kosher, I've now done all that I can possibly do according to Jewish law. As far as I'm concerned, the curse I've put on the team has been completely removed. If the Brewers lose anymore games it's not my fault. I note the Brewers won handily the day after my "ceremony." Perhaps there are better days ahead.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 23

The Greener

My father emigrated from Germany to the US in 1949. He was 30 years old although his papers said he was 28. I can't imagine that he wasn't still hurting emotionally. He was alone in this world without any knowledge of English. He immigrated through Boston. The officials in Boston changed his first name from Eliezer to Leon. They tried to change his last name as well, but he objected. It stayed Rojstaczer.

Why my father was so stubborn on the matter of his name I don't know. The family name had only been two generations old. It had originally been Fishman, but had been changed at the turn of the 20th century for political or draft reasons. According to my father, the family originally came from Spain and was expelled in 1492. My brother says that my father told him that the family bible contained some writing in Ladino.

In Yiddish, they call immigrants greener and my father certainly was green. He had never owned a car and barely knew how to drive one. When he eventually would apply for his license and had to take a driving test, he had to bribe the official fifty dollars, which back then was a large sum of money. The tester said to him after, "I've never seen anyone make so many mistakes." The first car he owned he ran into the ground within eight months by ruining the engine; he didn't know that cars needed oil. That's how green he was.

From Boston, HIAS, the immigration agency sent my father to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a port town of about 50,000 residents mostly of German and Polish origin. For a town of its size it had a surprisingly large Jewish community as well with four Orthodox synagogues. Nowadays almost all of the Jewish community is gone but back then, it was thriving. My father's sponsor was Leo (or Louis, I can't remember) Rabinowitz, a Federal judge for the region. I met him a few times at bnai mitzvot and weddings when I was a little kid. He seemed to be a taciturn man.

My father came to Sheboygan on a train. He had been given 20 dollars by HIAS and a new suit. In a town like Sheboygan, you could get by if you spoke German, Polish and Yiddish. This was true in Milwaukee as well, which is why my father never learned English all that well. But when he got off the train, he couldn't find anyone who spoke anything but English.

He was hungry. He pointed to his stomach and was directed to a nearby restaurant. He walked in and again only English was spoken. The menu was in English of course but somehow he found a way to communicate what he wanted. When the food came it was delicious.

My father always had a huge appetite. When I was a kid, I would watch him sometimes come home after working all day, take an entire loaf of rye bread and make a sandwich out of it by splitting the loaf in half. The waitress asked if he wanted more. He smiled and said yes. More food came. He was asked again if he wanted more. Again he said yes. Finally, he had dessert and coffee. This was America and the food was good and plentiful. He was impressed.

My father gave the waitress his one twenty dollar bill. She communicated to him that there would be no change forthcoming. What he didn't know was that there was no way his meal cost 20 dollars. What he did know was that he was now completely broke. This was America, too, a place where money could fly and where people would readily take advantage of your ignorance and naivete. He would get the handle of it all eventually.

Why It's So Damn Close

I've never said that Obama would win this election easily. But I'm still confident that Obama will win. In fact, this election shouldn't even be close, but Obama's team is in some ways running with one hand tied behind its back. They are making this campaign more difficult than it should be.

There are aspects of this campaign beyond the Obama team's ability to fix. First, there is no way anyone is going to convince racists to vote for Obama. For those who are naive enough to believe that race doesn't matter, make some phone calls for Obama and hear the "I don't vote for colored people" (and that's those who are being polite) responses. You'll quickly change your mind.

Second, you can't smooth over the divisions of this country. It's still very much a red state/blue state world out there. No one, including Obama, is going to be a uniter in this acrimonious climate.

But there are other aspects to Obama's campaign that could have been tweaked and would have helped a great deal. Mostly these relate to a lack of interpersonal skills on the part of Obama and his team. They are very smart, but they don't get people very well. On the whole, they are more than a bit geeky.

For example, this campaign wouldn't be close if Obama had the skill and the ability to massage the Hillary supporters. The obvious way to do that would have been to bring Hillary onto the ticket. He should have done it. Yes, it would have made running the White House more difficult once the election was over, but he still should have done it. He would have picked up a point or two in key states. No one would be biting their nails right now.

But even without bringing Hillary onto the ticket, the Obama group has never quite figured out how to wrap the Hillary supporters in a warm embrace. They showed little respect to either Hillary or Bill during the convention. They continue to not understand just how appealing much of the public views the Clintons, in particular the blue collar voters. As for Hillary's volunteers and donors, the attitude of the Obama camp was a cool, "you lost, we won, get over it" kind of thing. They still view Hillary supporters with a grimace. As a result, they have lost a part of a voting block that they should have easily captured.

Getting beyond the Hillary voters, there is another aspect to the Obama team that isn't helping: it has no fight.* It has this Boy Scout mentality about playing fair. Its advertising campaign tends to be very high brow and aims for the brain instead of the gut. For example, look at this recent two minute ad below. It's one guy talking on and on about policy in a very professorial way. Who, beyond those already in the Obama camp, does this ad speak to?



Despite all of this, there is still the fact that the Republicans have the burden of all of the mistakes of the last seven years and the albatross called George W. Bush. Plus as I've mentioned in a previous post, the ground game of the Obama camp is tremendous. The very qualities that make the Obama team lousy interpersonally are likely the reason they are so good organizationally. They have a great database. They have a huge team of well organized, on message volunteers. They have oodles of money.

Ultimately, what the Obama camp is doing is winning methodically under the radar of the press. It really is painful to watch them do so poorly with the most visible aspects of the campaign. But it is a joy to watch them work their magic in the phone calls, canvasing and fund raising. No campaign has ever tried a ground campaign of this scale before. The press isn't covering this aspect of the race because it's kind of boring; but the ground campaign is critical. My view is that all Obama has to do is draw even in the debates and he's home free. I'd say the odds of him doing that - given the scripted nature of the debates and the predictable questions - are very high.

*As I write this, I'm watching an Obama rally in Las Vegas, and I'm heartened to see him finally flash some real emotion and fire. I hope he keeps it up.

My Apologies

A while back, I noted that my Oakland A's have been playing horribly ever since the All Star break. I needed a new team to root to the playoffs and because of my Milwaukee origins (born in St. Joseph's Hospital for those who want to know) chose the Brewers. For a lot of reasons, this was a disingenuous a thing to do. The Brewers came to town late in my Milwaukee years so I never really had much of an attachment to them. At the time, I was still in mourning over the loss of the Braves and wasn't in the mood to pick up a new team on the rebound.

The last time I was a Brewers fan of any sort was back in 1982 when they made it to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. I held a party at my house and we watched the seventh game on a little 13" black and white TV in my backyard. I made some brats and wore a Brewers shirt. At about the third inning, a friend came late with a six pack of Budweiser. Budweiser! That's a St. Louis beer. I knew he had jinxed the whole enterprise by doing that. Of course, the Brewers lost.

That was a long, long time ago. I barely know the Brewers players of today. I've been to maybe two Brewers games since then. About the closest thing I have to a connection to the Brewers nowadays is that my parents and grandparents are buried in a cemetery where Miller Park can be seen in the distance. Like Sarah Palin's attempt to claim knowledge of Russia because you can see it from some parts of Alaska, this connection is completely bogus.

As a result of my recent disingenuous adoption of the Brewers, I'm sure I jinxed the team. Something bad was bound to happen and it did. The Brewers have gone in a tailspin as of late. They aren't hitting worth a damn. Management has pushed the panic button and fired the coach. It's not the coach's fault, I swear. Bring him back. It's all my doing.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a Brewers t-shirt using an iron on transfer of a 1980s Brewers logo. I've been wearing it as a night shirt. That t shirt is the culprit I'm certain.

I know what I have to do. With this posting I formally renounce my ties and allegiance to the Brewers. As for the Brewers t-shirt, I probably should burn it, but I won't. I'm crazy but not that crazy. Instead, I will stick the t-shirt in a dark corner of my dresser for the duration of the season.

I sincerely apologize to the Brewers and their true fans for my indiscretion. I shouldn't have done what I did. I have extreme remorse. I'm doing my best to make things right. Please forgive me for my sin.

Living With Sadness

I first encountered David Foster Wallace's writing about twenty years ago while reading short stories in the Paris Review. His story, Little Expressionless Animals, about a woman with an innate fear that is exploited on a television game show was both disturbing and brilliant. When his first short story collection came out shortly thereafter, I was so enthralled that I read it in one day. I recommended it to a friend who never returned my copy; I'm sure the bastard just liked it too much to give it back.

David Foster Wallace killed himself a few days ago in Southern California. His books never sold well. I never was able to see him give a reading - believe me I would have loved the opportunity - but had I gone to one, I'm sure that less than 40 people would have shown up. He was just too smart and too good a writer to attract a decent size audience.

Yet when he died, the news of his death was major news in a few venues that could care less about serious writers. Maybe it was the way he died. Suicidal artists, I guess, make news because they give us fodder to talk about how artists are such tortured souls. It's titillating news even if the subject being described is someone hardly anyone has ever read. Give a news article a heading of something along the lines of "Major Writer Kills Himself" and you can probably draw in more than a few people to read at least a few lines.

It's an aspect of human nature, the news equivalent of rubber-necking, that's less than admirable.

That said, Mr. Wallace was indeed a tortured soul. You knew it from just reading one page of anything he wrote. He was also one of the brightest public or at least semi-public people in America. I'm very smart and can get full of myself easily. But when I'm around people like David Foster Wallace I'm reminded in an instant that there are people who can run rings around me intellectually.

It's a truism that the smarter you are, the sadder you are. Of course, there are brilliant people with temperaments that allow them to find and explore happiness with ease on a regular basis. But my view is that they are the exceptions. If you're hyper- aware of the details of the world around you, you tend to notice the dust in the corners, the things that don't quite work, the daily inequities in most people's lives even if your own life may be a rather charmed thing.

I know what profound sadness is. I suffered from a horrible depression in my teens and twenties and thank god every day that it hasn't returned. It's just luck that it hasn't is my view. When I wake up, I say a prayer, look outside, and the world almost always looks good to me more or less. The trees, the foliage, the birds, the shapes of the clouds, the smell of the air, mostly it fills me with wonder. I'm thankful that it does. I also know that there are stupid little things like going into a large grocery store with its high pink fluorescent lighting that can make me feel sad; I do my best to avoid them.

I wonder if I could maintain my sense of wonder if I was as bright as someone like Mr. Wallace. Somehow I have my doubts. I remember once giving a lecture at a university and one of those oh so bright tortured souls, someone whom I knew, came up to me after and asked me a question about something I said that wasn't quite right. "I heard one of your gears click a bit when you said that," he said. He wasn't trying to put me down. He was just stating a fact. I felt that gear click, too. He had comprehended not only everything I said that day, but also understood my emotional and mental state in saying my every word. I looked at him and thought, "How the hell can anyone live with that level of awareness?"

I think that the answer is that not everyone can. David Foster Wallace RIP.

McCain Jumps The Shark

There's probably a rule in presidential elections that says that above all a presidential candidate must be "presidential." By that I mean that a candidate needs to command respect. If you're vying to be the leader of the free world, you can't be seen as someone of minor stature. Somehow you have to obtain the gravitas necessary for the job. People should defer to you. When they don't, you're in big trouble as a candidate.

The public can make jokes about you in everyday conversation, sure. Late night talk show hosts can make jabs. But in a public event, it should be yes sir or yes madame or yes governor or yes senator. If they don't treat you with deference it means that in the public's eye you just don't have what it takes.

John McCain has had that presidential demeanor about him for at least a decade He was a war hero. He was a national statesman of long standing. But last week, his stature diminished dramatically. Unless he finds a way to get it back, his long shot odds of winning the election will have permanently sunk to zero.

What happened last week was that: 1) McCain's ads were so nasty and full of fiction that his campaign lost credibility as a purveyor of information; 2) ignoring whether or not she's qualified, Sarah Palin has proven to be much more of a star draw than her possible future boss. In essence, the McCain campaign jumped the shark with a couple of outrageous ads and silliness about sexism regarding a line by Obama about lipstick on a pig. Plus he has been made a virtual second banana in his own campaign.

The end result is that McCain no longer possesses the shield of deference necessary to be a viable presidential candidate. People don't hesitate to kick him around. Even on a daytime television show normally respectful of guests, McCain was treated like a used car salesman.

A candidate who loses his aura of authority like McCain becomes very vulnerable to personal attacks not only from the opposing candidate, but also the press. It's also true that every day that he continues to campaign jointly with his VP is another day it becomes apparent that without her presence, he would not have any kind of audience.

Right now McCain has been transformed from a national leader and war hero into a punching bag. When a major strategist and dirty trickster from your own party criticizes you in public for going "one step too far" on negative and error filled advertising you know you're in trouble. When a conservative economist, the best known economist in America, publicly criticizes your proposed tax plans as being unaffordable you know you're in trouble. Punching bags don't become presidents.

A Different Kind of Campaign

Thanks to John McCain's nasty turn (more on that later), I've just started working for the Obama campaign.  I've never seen anything like it. It's a whole different approach to promoting a candidate. Because they have so many volunteers, the Obama camp can run a tremendous ground campaign. The idea is to stay away from worrying about the news cycle and its ups and downs and simply work incrementally, calling, canvassing, registering, and recruiting. It's about doing all of the little things well.

Given the tremendous size of their volunteer force and their money, I don't see how the Obama camp can be beat. All of the flash of the news -who said what, where and when, what the polls show on a particular hour of the day - doesn't mean much. It means a lot to McCain because he wants to create the perception that he's controlling the news. But he doesn't have Obama's workforce or money.

I hate sports analogies, but I'll use one here. John McCain is throwing the ball like crazy because he doesn't have much of a defense and his offensive line stinks. But with all his manpower and money, Obama is controlling the line of scrimmage on both sides of the field. The public and press get all excited about the long bombs John McCain is tossing as of late - the VP out of nowhere, the nasty ads, etc. - but there's the more important interior battle going on that the press isn't paying attention to.

John McCain may get lucky every now and then with his wild efforts, but in the end, he just doesn't have the team that Obama has. No one I've ever worked for has had this kind of team. They are driven. They are focused. They care little about what the nightly news does or doesn't say. There are just so many enthusiastic worker bees.

Plus the mad frenzy of the McCain campaign is starting to backfire. Like last election, the Republicans unleashed a barrage of lies and misinformation about the Democratic nominee right after their convention. But unlike last time, it isn't working. The press is all over these efforts and is being very blunt about calling them dirty tricks. McCain can't even go onto a "ladies talk show" on afternoon television without getting hammered and being called a liar.  Any day that millions of television watchers hear the "liar" word attached to your name is not a good day.

McCain's running mate is quickly losing her shine as well and repulses just about as many people as she attracts; every day, some new nasty bit of information appears about Palin. Yesterday, the Alaska legislature voted to subpoena Palin's husband. Reformers are the ones who deliver subpoenas not the ones who receive them. The entire narrative that Palin is any kind of reformer is proving to be a fiction.

If you don't view the Obama campaign up close and personal, you might think that because it's generally so soft spoken, it's wimpy. That's not it. It's soft spoken because it feels that that screaming loudly and pounding your fist is a waste of energy and a distraction. They are confident that they can easily win this election quietly.

I've never been a part of this kind of approach. It's very team oriented and disciplined. It's not part of my background to have the luxury of being low key because of your strength in numbers. I've always worked in situations where the money is tight and the personnel are small. But I have no doubt that this approach will work. McCain can throw as many Hail Marys and trash talk as much as he wants. Obama is killing him on the line of scrimmage. Add in the burden of being a Republican with an unpopular Republican president in office and McCain doesn't stand a chance.

Forget about the news cycle and all of the narratives being told by the press.  Every day, the Obama camp is making millions of phone calls.  Every day, it registers new voters.  Every day, it's going door to door.  Every day, it's incrementally moving closer to victory.

Airhead

Sarah Palin was John McCain's big circus stunt. He put her in a canon and shot her in the air during the Republican Convention. How long would she stay up there? No one knew. Yesterday we found out the answer. About two weeks. Sarah fell to Earth as a result of one measly interview on ABC. I know Sarah, gravity sucks.

It's clear that Sarah Palin is a complete airhead.

There is no thought going on inside there. She's like George W. Bush without the benefit of having a father with some brains and experience. Her world view is tiny. There is no way that Sarah Palin is capable of being the leader of the Free World. I don't even understand how she can be leader of Alaska. It must have something to do with burgeoning revenues from oil. Given their current revenue stream, a pit bull could probably run Alaska, even one with lipstick.

To be fair, I don't know why exactly the Republicans wanted Sarah Palin to be interviewed in a format where you're taped for hours on end and editors can cut and paste anyway they see fit. I've undergone one interview like that for a national program. OK, it wasn't ABC News. It was ESPN. But it was grueling to sit there hour after hour, knowing that they were looking for that one sound byte that could be taken out of context and used to prove their point. I had to concentrate like hell to make sure that every word I said was unambiguous and not twistable.

I much prefer live interviews. There is no editing. What you say is exactly what people hear and in the order you said it. It's much more spontaneous and I think makes the interviewee look much more human and sympathetic.

But this format was what the Republicans wanted. They got the interviewer they wanted, too. They got him to shlep up to Alaska so that Palin could be comfortable. They gave Palin two weeks to cram for this interview like it was a final exam for the vice presidency.

She failed her exam. It wasn't a hard exam, either. Mr. Gibson threw up a lot of simple basic foreign policy questions. She kept swinging awkwardly. It was hard to tell if she meant or understood any of what she did say.

I don't know if Sarah Palin is a super hawk or not. She recited Dick Cheney-like lines about foreign policy like a robot. It was clear that she hadn't thought significantly about anything related to world issues ever until a week or two ago if then.

I thought I'd feel angry watching these interviews. But watching Sarah Palin filled me with sadness. I felt sorry that she was put up and nationally embarrassed like this by McCain and the Republican Party. She didn't know better. But McCain should have known better.

Sarah Palin is completely over her head on a national political stage. She has little idea of what NATO does and doesn't even know about the infamous Bush Doctrine (believe me, that doctrine is so stinky that I wish I didn't know about it either). She is uneducated. She is not thoughtful. She had no business being on national TV last night. She has no business running for a national political office.

When Ms. Palin gave her speech at the convention, she received almost unanimous praise for her delivery. The Republican Party had a hit on its hands. They managed to keep things going until now. I don't see how they can effectively promote Sarah Palin beyond the traditional Republican base anymore.

I'm sure they'll try. I'm sure they'll spin this interview to the best of their ability. But McCain's camp dictated the terms of the interview. They'll try to dress up the results. But they can only point fingers at themselves in the end.

Even under the most ideal of circumstances, it's clear that Sarah Palin can't go before the press without embarrassing herself and the Republican ticket. She doesn't possess the knowledge or intellectual horsepower to be out there alone. It's worth noting that McCain chose Ms. Palin for the most cynical of reasons. Whatever grief he gets as a result of Palin he fully deserves.

My Personal Backlash

Before the Republican Convention, I was going to vote for Obama, give some money to the Democratic Party and that was about it. I kept on talking about working for the Obama campaign, but could never quite make that step. There was just something in me that said no. I just wasn't that sold on Obama as anyone who has read this blog knows.

Not anymore.

After McCain pulled the circus stunt of bringing in a completely unqualified person as VP because she was a woman whose reactionary politics would play well with the Evangelical base of the party, I was disgusted. Then the McCain ad below came out yesterday claiming that Obama voted for a bill for children to learn "about sex before learning how to read."



The bill in question was, among other things, designed to teach children how to avoid predators. I've seen a lot of scummy political ads in my lifetime. This one is right up there with Jesse Helms' ad from way back when showing the white hand crumpling up the pink slip in his race charged campaign of 1990. It's right up there with the Bush campaign spreading rumors in South Carolina in 2000 that one of McCain's adopted children was really his illegitimate black daughter. This is dirty. This is completely disgusting.

What kind of scummy person would approve of such an ad for their campaign? It completely distorts reality in an attempt to play upon the basic fundamental and oh so strong fears of any parent. This is just so low and manipulative. I understand about "just win baby." I'm not a Boy Scout. But what McCain has done in the last two weeks is an act of desperation that goes beyond the boundaries of what anyone with any shred of decency should do.

McCain has assumed in his ads and in his campaign that the American public is completely stupid and gullible. I agree that there is a lot of stupidity in this country, but not to this level. This is so cynical that it can't possibly be successful in the end.

McCain has never forgiven Bush for his dirty tricks in 2000. He shouldn't. It showed Bush for what he really was. I'll be remembering these dirty tricks of McCain, too. It shows the man for what he really is, someone who will do anything and approve any ad to win.

No Mr. McCain, Obama's campaign has not descended upon Alaska like wolves (a truly bizarre image for an ad considering Ms. Palin's distaste for environmental protection) in an attempt to smear Palin. It doesn't have to. There's plenty of data coming out every day without their help showing that Palin is unqualified. You should have vetted her; you didn't apparently because you were too lazy or impetuous or both. No Mr. McCain, Obama does not want kindergartners to learn about sex. There is no one out there in the reputable press who can find any evidence that your ads are based on facts; they're just plain slander.

When the Swift Boat ads came out in 2004, Bush hid behind the fact that he didn't pay for them. McCain can't hide. He's 100 percent responsible for bringing this campaign to such a low level. This time it isn't going to work.

I'd still bet my car that McCain will lose the election. Polls don't mean a thing. Yesterday, I heard one of the nation's top pollsters, James Zogby, on the radio trying to defend his lack of success polling the primaries. "We were right 19 out of 24 times," he tried to boast. Big deal. That's his measure of success. It's no doubt an inflated measure and even if you take it at face value it's a little more than 29 percent better than flipping a coin. A person who regularly read the news and simply looked at past voting data could I'm certain have done as well. When I heard Mr. Zogby try to rationalize why his poll blew it in New Hampshire - apparently almost every undecided voter turned to Clinton after she shed a tear a couple of days before the election - my brain was twisted into a pretzel trying to follow the logic.

McCain will not only lose; he will also lose a good deal of the integrity he has managed to gain since getting caught in the mud of the savings and loans scandals of the 1980s. The mud he is throwing now will be a lasting part of his legacy. He's a dirty player and slanderer right up there with Nixon, Bush the elder (remember Willie Horton?), and Bush the younger. By the time he is done with this campaign, I doubt even the Viagra ad people - who managed to snag Dole after he lost in 1996 - will be interested in using him.

With every action, there is a reaction. As a result of this truly dirty and nasty campaign McCain has chosen to run, I walked into the Obama office and volunteered. I made phone calls right off the bat. The office was crammed with people. The energy level was outstanding. I'll be going to the state of Nevada for a few days over a weekend to help out. I'm fired up. McCain is going down.

McCain may pick up the interest of the press and a few hockey moms along the way for the next couple of weeks, but he has also driven people like me to actively work against him. I still can't say I'm a big fan of Obama. But I will do everything in my power to make sure that McCain loses. I deserve better than this kind of garbage. The American people deserve better than this kind of garbage. John McCain deserves nothing but contempt. In 55 days or so, he will find out that running a slanderous campaign that assumes the American public consists of complete idiots does not work in 2008.

*****

Yes, today is September 11th, a sad day to reflect about the horrors of terrorism and mourn the lives lost in 2001. I do note that Sarah Palin's oldest son is going to Iraq today. We should all wish him and the other soldiers well and hope they return safely.

On Ridicule

In my reading about the comings and goings of this election, a notion about how to respond to the craziness of the Republicans keeps popping up: don't ridicule. The idea is that by ridiculing or scorning Republican decisions, in particular the decision to bring Sarah Palin into this election, you are playing right into the Republican's hands.

I'm not buying.

Part of the reason I'm not buying this argument is my personal background. I grew up in the tail end of acceptable anti-Semitism in this country. I wasn't allowed in Boy Scouts because I wasn't "American enough." I was kicked out of public school in the morning so that the other kids could do their Jesus thing. I had rocks thrown at me for being "a dirty Jew." Through it all, my parents sometimes would espouse a "mach nicht ka vaysend" or keep quiet strategy that even as a kid I thought was screwed up. That strategy goes back to the pogroms of Eastern Europe: keep a low profile or you'll rile up the goyim and they'll do terrible things. We all saw where that strategy led: annihilation.

So when someone tells me that by ridiculing Sarah Palin I'm riling up the conservatives and swing voters because they get angered by elitists belittling those less educated and smart I say screw that. Let them be riled up. If they aren't very smart that's their problem not mine. I'm not going to kowtow to ignorance.

The Republicans have been successful in turning education and smarts into something dirty and worth contempt. Some victory it has been. As a result, this country is now run by a dummy with all the resulting problems expected when your leadership is ignorant.

People with brains and education need to fight back and say, "OK, you've had your turn with the 'cultural elite' not leading and look where it got us. You want to continue to run this country into the ground? Go right ahead and pull the Republican-'we're ignorant and proud of our ignorance' lever."

It's gotten ridiculous, this regular folk should be running the government thing. Ever since Reagan, we've had perfectly smart and educated candidates on both sides pretend that they are dumber than they are on the campaign trail; they talk as if they were raised in some holler in West Virginia and dropped out of high school at 15. Why on Earth are they doing that? They should be proud of their education and smarts.

Conversely, when some moose hunting, reactionary, poorly-educated, mom of five falls from the sky we shouldn't simply smile and say, "Welcome to the campaign." We should just lay it on the line and say what's true. She isn't very smart. She isn't qualified. She has political views that are way off the charts. We should scorn and ridicule because that's what the Republicans deserve for pulling such a circus stunt.

I note that in my lifetime there have been only two VP candidates prior to this election who have been subject to widespread ridicule: Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle. They both deserved it. Spiro Agnew was found out to be a crook. Dan Quayle was found out to be an imbecile. In both cases, the candidates struck back by saying the "cultural elite," those nattering nabobs of negativism, just didn't get it. The moral majority understood what was right. In hindsight those arguments were pure bull hockey. The cultural elite did get it. Agnew and Quayle deserved all of the ridicule they received and then some.

Now we have a third candidate to add to the list of those VP candidates subject to scorn and ridicule, Sarah Palin. Again the argument is being made that the "cultural elite" just doesn't get it. But so far, we have been two for two. And I'd bet my house that with regard to Sarah Palin, we're up to three for three. As far as I'm concerned, we should be relentless in our scorn for this latest stunt by McCain and the Republicans, those imbecilic elicitors of ignorance (take that William Safire!).

Love and a Big Voice, What Else Could You Possibly Ask For

I'll hold off on my Sarah Palin watch for a day or so except to mention that we're now on day 11 of the Palin circus and that Ms. Palin finally went unscripted on day 9; she immediately showed her ignorance by saying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had become too big and too expensive for taxpayers. The woman should never speak without a teleprompter; she's got a mouth, but not much of a brain. It's as if Ryan Seacrest was running for a national political office. I'm still amazed by it all.

Instead today I'll post about a different woman who I saw for the first time this past weekend. I'm in love. My sweetie met the young woman too and understands completely, bless her soul. My sweetie knows after meeting this woman that there are some things she cannot provide and that a man must follow his heart.

My sweetie has many talents, but singing is not one of them. And my new love, ah my new love, can sing!

The other day we were watching free opera at Golden Gate Park featuring young, talented, but not quite ready for the major leagues voices in San Francisco's Adler Fellowship Program. It was a lot of fun. Maybe 10,000 people were there sitting in the grass, most drinking wine that they brought along. The people next to us also brought along a candelabra for their picnic blanket. Nice touch, that. It was a sweet crowd that listened politely and cheered after every performance.

And that's where I heard my new love. Her name is Heidi Melton. She was about number five on the program. The second she walked onto the stage both my sweetie and I knew something wonderful was going to happen. There was something about her presence. She planted herself on the stage with such confidence that she demanded that you listen.

Then she began to sing. Oh my! In my teen years, there were two things that I was crazy about: opera and baseball. My heart still goes pitter patter when I see someone with natural talent perform either activity. A sweet voice or a sweet swing and I'm a goner. I can still remember the first time I saw Paul Molitor swing the bat. Ahhh. I can still remember the first time I saw Carmen and heard Placido Domingo in the lead male role. Ahhh. I was in love both times. So it goes with Heidi Melton.

Heidi Melton has the kind of natural major opera house potential that you hear in a handful of voices. Ten seconds into her singing Weber and you knew. She came back after intermission and sang Puccini. It wasn't perfect in both cases, but she'll only get better. Oh my!

To be truthful, my sweetie was a little catty about my new found love. She noted that my new love, built for opera and not a bathing suit, would not easily be able to climb up the ladder leading to our bedroom loft in our new place. I told my sweetie that with the power of love I would easily carry Ms. Melton up those stairs. Her response was, "Yeah, right." Her sarcasm was like water off a duck's back. When you're in love, you can easily move beyond the world's pettiness. So there!

This Month's Model

One of my favorite novels is V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas. I identify with the immigrant experience of the family portrayed so lovingly and achingly more than I can possibly express. In one section of the novel, the family opens a dry goods store, which is an instant hit. People flock to the store at the expense of a nearby older one because of its newness. All goes well until another even newer store opens, at which time business plummets.

We like the new. Often we forsake something perfectly decent for the sake of newness. We do this with spouses, cars, houses, and of course we do it with political candidates. Often what we leave behind is actually better than the great new thing. I guess that's just human nature.

With the current election, I saw the allure of newness firsthand with the Democrats. Their standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, has been a force in national politics for 16 years now. The fresh face, Barack Obama, gave one speech at the convention in 2004 and people immediately began to talk about him as a future president. It was a great speech and he wrote it himself, but really now. One speech for less than one half hour makes a president?

Apparently it does. Three short years later, Obama started to make more speeches that talked about change without too many specifics. Thousands of people flocked to hear Obama each time he spoke, enchanted with his speaking style. He became a media phenomenon that lasted a good six months before people started to get bored with it all. Still on the basis of those six months, Obama hung on to become the Democratic nominee for president.

How did Obama lose his luster and become just another politician? In the 24 hour news cycle, nothing lasts too long. People get bored so easily. They're always looking for the next new thing.

That new thing came along a little over a week ago. This time it was a Republican, Sarah Palin, who fell from the sky and gave a speech at a convention. She didn't write the speech herself, but she gave a captivating performance. It was a speech absent of specifics, but long on style. Just like Obama four years before, people started mentioning the word presidential on the basis of one speech. Except this time they weren't talking four years into the future. Rather it was five months and one heart attack away.

How long will this newest media phenomenon last? I give it another month before it starts to fade. In contrast to Obama, Sarah Palin was too hastily packaged to have an extended run with the media and the public. My guess is that come October, Sarah Palin will be like Obama, just another politician, albeit one who performs well before a crowd.

We should dig deeper when it comes to voting for and supporting our politicians. It's ridiculous that we are so fickle. But ultimately, I think it's just human nature.

Teleprompters

I continue to be amazed by just how bizarre and circus-like the Sarah Palin affair is.

Let's review. McCain picked someone out of nowhere with extreme right wing views and little in the way of credentials who is telegenic. He gave her a 40 minute speech and a teleprompter and heard many say that on the basis of her ability to speak someone else’s words extremely well that she is a valid candidate. He is now having her pop up now and then at campaign rallies to smile, shake hands and again read with a teleprompter parts of the one speech she knows. In between these appearances, the McCain campaign hides her away to avoid having her say anything unscripted.

Yesterday, 12,000 people came to Cedarburg, Wisconsin to see the McCain-Palin circus. I've been to Cedarburg many times. It's the perfect place for those two. When I was a kid it was a town where no Jews or blacks were allowed. It's still almost entirely Jew and black free today. The people like it that way.

When I was a kid, Disneyland had a theater where a robot made to look like Abraham Lincoln walked on stage and gave a 10 minute speech. He looked incredibly realistic and the performance was entirely convincing. After the speech, there would be thunderous applause from the audience. The robot would then walk off the stage.

McCain’s strategy with Palin is to treat her just like that Disneyland robot. It tells me that, beyond being able to read from a teleprompter, she does not have the skills necessary for a national campaign. That this strategy seems to be working so far also tells me something sad about the press, which is so weakened right now that it can't demand access, and the public at large, which isn't concerned with substance. Without the public's obsession with personality, Palin - a haphazardly educated, not very bright, book-banning, creationist, anti-environmental, bible thumper who apparently can't be trusted to speak without a script - would receive little attention except for ridicule.

I read the other day that Palin's role model in leadership is the biblical Queen Esther. I would suggest a different role model - Margaret Thatcher - but Thatcher had far more brains than Palin and was a gifted unscripted speaker so my suggestion is probably not a good one. Let's stick with Queen Esther.

I bet I can out Bible thumb most any Evangelical preacher when it comes to the Old Testament and I know the Book of Esther pretty well. Esther's act of heroism was, unlike the campaigning of Sarah Palin, unscripted. She had to go before the king without an appointment to save the Jewish people. Given that her husband the King murdered his previous wife for refusing to strip for his friends at a party, this was a big deal. Rushing into the king's throne room without advance permission was simply not allowed and could well have lead to death. Somehow she summoned the courage to go before the king and plead her case. I'm guessing - just a guess mind you - that she didn't have a teleprompter.

The Obama camp seems to have determined that the best strategy in dealing with Palin is to ignore her and focus on McCain. Given that the response of the public to Palin is an emotional one - both positive and negative - driven by personality and given that she isn't the one running for president, that sounds like an excellent idea.

Fighting a Ghost

I watched much of the Republican Convention. Aside from Palin's big speech, it was a very dreary affair. Neither Cindy or John McCain are good speakers and the last night was a total snooze.

Before we started to watch John McCain, my sweetie demanded a glass of wine. When I poured her one, she said there wasn't enough wine in the glass to get her through his speech. She was right. We both had to have another. It was painful to watch and listen. McCain looked so old and tired up there. It was as if he could barely summon the energy to get the words out.

On his big night, John McCain mostly stayed away from the Democrat/Obama bashing that has filled this convention. He made the admission that the federal government isn't working and both sides were to blame. I don't think that this was simply a ploy to get votes. I think McCain sincerely believes this. Who doesn't?

But looking at the reaction from the crowd - its near silence - this was not the message the party faithful wanted to hear. They wanted so much to blame the Democrats, those liberal, free spending, atheists on the other side. The fact that the Democrats aren't liberal anymore doesn't seem to change their argument. The fact that spending in Washington is dominated by military expenditures and entitlement programs like Medicare that cannot be cut without a public revolt seems to not register; earmarks, which we heard about time and time again during the Republican Convention, constitute less than one percent of the nation's budget. The fact that there are other religions besides their Evangelical brand of Christianity seems to be a sore point with them.

The Republicans are lost in a time warp. They still want to fight the same political enemy they fought in the Reagan era, but the Democrats aren't the same as they were back then.

Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton moved the Democrats past their own toxic culture, one that still was living in the Vietnam protest era. He was able to do it because the party faithful knew that something had to change otherwise the Democrats would lose year after year. The Republicans are fighting a ghost.

I think John McCain knows and understands all of this. The rumor is that he wanted to move the Republican Party away from its rancor about an "angry left" that he knows barely exists and has no say in the Democratic Party. But he couldn't do it. In the end, he had to bring in a culture warrior onto the ticket to satisfy his base. Sarah Palin would have fit right in with Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. It's ironic that the Republican's new young star is a throwback to an era best forgotten by everyone.

We're back to the culture wars yet again. It's sad, really, on so many fronts. The Republican Party is not yet ready to move on. I think we need about two election cycles of Republican loses before someone can talk them into redefining themselves in a realistic and positive way. All you had to do was look at the sea of white faces at the convention to know that the Republicans continue to cling to a version of America circa 1957.

Someone needs to tell the Republicans that Elvis is dead and he isn't coming back.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 22

Leaving Europe

For both of my parents, life in Germany after the war was almost certainly a temporary thing. For lack of a better word, it was a kind of purgatory. There was no way they were going back to Poland. Where could they go? After 1948, it was entirely possible to go to Israel without any legal barrier, but neither of them went that route.

For my father, miserable in Germany trying to get by through smuggling and an occasional woodworking job, Israel just wasn't desirable. He wasn't religious. He wasn't an idealist in the least. Zionism was an idea he agreed was important, but it was an idea for other people to act upon. The US was where the money was. The US was where opportunity was. He had to find a way to get there.

My mother was too young to make such decisions. It was up to her parents. In contrast to my father, going to the US was not my grandfather's first choice. He much rather would have gone to Israel. These were his people. He'd always found a way to make a good living wherever he was and he had confidence that he could do the same in Israel. Unfortunately for him, my grandmother was adamantly opposed to making aliyah.

In hindsight, my grandfather was right. He was already in his mid-forties. He didn't know a word of English plus, while he wasn't terribly religious, his world view and way of living were so rooted in Orthodox Jewish culture that he never adapted particularly well to the US as I'll talk about later.

Both my father and grandfather worked hard to get to the US, trying through bribes to get to the head of the list. There were far more people who wanted to immigrate than there were slots available. In order to get permission, you needed a sponsor from the US, someone who would take responsibility for you if you couldn't take care of yourself financially. Both my grandfather and father didn't know anyone who could sponsor them directly. Instead, they had to get in through the general pool of random US sponsors, usually Jewish families who signed up as an act of charity. This was a much harder way to immigrate.

My grandfather tried to work all of the angles. He even tried to work through the Canadian embassy and did receive permission for his family to go to Canada.* The permission was through the quota for Catholic immigrants. All my grandfather had to do was declare himself a Catholic on the Canadian paperwork and his family would be on their way. He couldn't do it. He'd lived through the hell of Europe as a Jew. He wasn't go to leave that hell as a Catholic, even though this religious "change" would simply consist of a check mark on a piece of paperwork. This act was the essence of my grandfather, someone at times almost maddeningly principled. His mother, who lived with my great aunt and great uncle after the war and died in Israel, was the same way.

Instead of going to Canada on the basis of a lie, he continued running his business and waited. In April of 1949, he finally got word that his time had come. Someone had pushed him up to the top of the list. But that meant that he had exactly one week to get everything ready to leave. If he wasn't ready in a week, the slot would go to someone else.

My grandfather and grandmother hurriedly prepared for the move. By this time, my grandfather had established an extremely profitable luxury import business in a fashionable part of Munich. He needed a buyer of that business and all of its stock in short order. The business was worth a small fortune at the time, about 100,000 dollars. He didn't have the luxury of time, though, to find a suitable buyer and unloaded the business for 30,000 dollars. This was still a sizable sum of money, probably on the order of close to a million dollars today. My grandfather would never be as wealthy in the US as he was in Germany in the 1940s.

My grandfather and his family gathered their belongings and were off. We still have the suitcase my mother brought with her. It's made out of aluminum or perhaps nickel and on the outside in black my mother's name and new destination are painted in very legible and professional looking script, Jewish Family Services, Milwaukee, WI. Her name in Europe was Rachela. In the US, it would be Rachel. My grandfather's name in Europe was Teyvuh. In the US, for reasons I don't quite understand, his name would be Frank. My grandmother's name was changed from Masha to Mary, which I always thought was funny. There aren't that many Jewish women named after the Virgin Mother.

My father had only himself to worry about. His one surviving relative, the cousin he had convinced to go with him to Russia, went to Israel. He had no business to sell. His possessions were meager, less than twenty dollars, some well worn clothing, his woodworking tools, and one Leica camera that he bought for a couple of cartons of cigarettes. When he received permission to immigrate in August of 1949, he was off in a hurry. I have some very fuzzy pictures taken with his Leica of his journey from Germany to Boston where he first landed.

There! It took me about 30,000 words, but at last I got my parents to the US. I'll probably keep up these stories up until the time of my birth when I'll stop. The fact is that while I was raised with a lot of love and suffered not a single real hardship, I don't view my childhood fondly and can't imagine I'd ever want to write about it.

I have established a rule in my own small family. It's the "28 rule." The 28 rule says it's OK to blame your parents for every flaw and problem in your life while you're growing up. But eventually, you have to take responsibility. Your parents did the best they could. Harping on your parents flaws and claiming they are to blame for your deficiencies is decidedly uncool. After 28, the blame game is downright ugly to observe. So you can't do it anymore. You have to suck it up. It's part of being an adult. After 28, the blame game is officially over.

I'm well past 28. Rehashing my childhood and its problems is not something I think would be valuable for me that's for certain. There have been times already when I've teared up as I've typed these remembrances. I know it would be even harder to write about the times when I was in the picture.

So we'll keep this going for seven more years of my parent's life. It will take another post or two and then I'll be done.

*Oh this sentence reminded me of something I didn't mention. In the 1930s it was clear to my grandfather that Hitler was a threat to Poland and all of Europe. He worked hard to find another place to live. The only place where he could get permission to immigrate was Bolivia. My grandfather was a very analytical person. He contacted the Jewish community in Bolivia to see what conditions were like. He was told that everyone was starving. People were literally eating rats. He decided that entrepreneurial though he was, Bolivia would be too much of a stretch.