Fantasy Campaign Ad #6

Voice of Announcer: We asked Rhett Butler how he felt about immigration.
Voice of Rhett Butler: Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Voice of Announcer: We asked Rhett Butler how he felt about the healthcare overhaul.
Voice of Rhett Butler: Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Voice of Announcer: We asked Rhett Butler how he felt about the recession.
Voice of Rhett Butler: Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Voice of Announcer: We asked Rhett Butler how he felt about his past in smuggling.
Voice of Rhett Butler: Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Voice of Announcer: We asked Rhett Butler how he felt about child labor violations.
Voice of Rhett Butler: Frankly, I don't give a damn.

Voice of Announcer: Don't you want a candidate who gives a damn about something?

Paid for by the Campaign to Bring Back Order and Decency to Southern Culture.

Fantasy Campaign Ad #2

Do you, like me, wonder what Gandalf the Grey is smoking?

He's come out against valuable and historical resources.

Just like all those people who complained about swords and arrows, he's against something that will help our country finally defeat the enemy.

He could even help us control this resource!

But what does he want to do? He wants to destroy it! To throw it into the flaming pits of Mt. Doom!

Maybe someone's been smoking the peace pipe a little too much.

I'm Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and I approve this message. Paid for by the Denethor for a Stronger Tomorrow Campaign.

Fantasy Campaign Ad #5

Voice of Mr. Darcy: My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever.

Voice of Announcer: Don't we all want a senator with an open mind? Mr. Darcy has admitted he is prejudiced, and the last thing we need is another prejudiced member of Congress. It's time we tell Mr. Darcy that he has lost our good opinion forever. Vote Wickham this year.

Paid by the Campaign to find Wickham an easy and enjoyable job at the public expense.

Fantasy Campaign Ad #1

As we put up with the endless attack ads, I am going to re-run a series of fantasy ads I created during the 2008 campaign.

HE drinks the blood of unicorns . . .

HE is for domestic surveillance . . .

HE supports the enslavement of mankind . . .

HE denies elderly workers life . . .

HE wants to possess your child's mind . . .

HE is against term limits . . .

HE controls a secret group of hooded supporters . . .

CAN YOU TRUST A MAN WHO TALKS TO SNAKES?

This year, tell Voldemort that enough is enough!

I'm Cornelius Fudge, and I support this message. Paid for by the Cornelius Fudge for Minister of Magic Committee.

The Moon and The Skylight: The Loss of American Imagination

This beautiful skylight is the hand-painted highlight of the Painted Desert Inn, located in Petrified Forest National Park. The Inn and the skylight were created by the CCC.

I have been in the middle of a re-read of Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins' brilliant book on his role in the Apollo program. After reading it, I re-read a few portions of Andrew Chaikin's equally brilliant A Man on the Moon. All this comes after a visit to the Painted Desert Inn, a beautifully restored gem in Petrified Forest National Park. The Inn was renovated and decorated by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR's ingenious ideas for putting young men to work during the Depression. Not only were they put to work re-building an historic inn, but they were allowed to use their artistic expression--painting the skylight, designing tin lamps, and as Coloradoans know, painting murals.

With all these ideas swirling in my head, I read the end of Chaikin's book:

Instead of letting the moon be the gateway to our future, we have let it become a brief chapter in our history. The irony is that in turning away from space exploration--whose progress is intimately linked to the future of mankind--we rob ourselves of the long-term vision we desperately need. Any society, if it is to flourish instead of merely survive, must strive to transcend its own limits. It is still as Kennedy said: Exploration, by virtue of difficulty, causes us to focus our abilities and make them better.

Recently, the continued exploration of the moon has been back in the spotlight--President Obama has issued his recommendations for NASA's future and been confronted by former astronauts.

All of these issues, ideas, and irritants have forced a single idea into my head--we have lost our national imagination. When confronted with an economic downturn, we offer people money for clunker cars, fueling the idea that conspicuous consumption can save us, rather than offering people jobs rebuilding and creating new landmarks and art. When confronted with the future of the Space Program, we choose to borrow Russia Soyuz (built around the time of the Apollo CM and LM) to fly, rather than put our imaginations to work to create a new vessel for exploring the skies.

We have, as Chaikin says, lost our national vision. Politicians are focused on the present, on the now, on what will get them votes. That has been true throughout time, but in my limited study, politicians also used to focus on what would happen in the future--John Adams wanted a Navy even though the US wasn't at war, FDR wanted to give all young men honest jobs, even artists, JFK wanted to inspire American to achieve the unbelievable. Whatever your thoughts and feelings on Kennedy, what cannot be denied is his imagination and inspiration, especially contained in his famous speech at Rice University in 1961:

"We choose to go to the moon! We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things--not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Politicians, legislators, public leaders--they are choosing to do things because they are easy, not because they are hard. In this present-minded focus they are neglecting not only the future, but the past. There are still starving artists out there who could be put to work making our country beautiful for the future. There are still young people focused on science and exploration--there may be no frontiers left on land, but there are still frontiers to be explored in space and sea.

Healthcare is important. Jobs are important--but outside of war, FDR's new deal and JFK's moon mission spring to mind as peaceful ways to put people to work. Yes, travelling to the moon cost billions of dollars, but billions of dollars flowing to American workers, not Chinese.

This has been a bit of a rambling rant, and if you actually read this far, you must be related to me. I have no solutions, or challenges. I do not have the ear of any great leaders. I wish only for America to rediscover its drive, its ambition, its imagination. I want us to paint murals in city buildings. I want us to fly to the moon, or Mars, or even Venus. I want our focus to leave the now, leave ourselves, and create something for the future.

Perhaps I am challenged by this because of some simple dates--I was born ten years after the first moon landing, and my son was born forty years after that historical event. What have we done since? Disco? MTV? The iPod?

Bracketball

Birds do it, bees do it, even President Obama does it--it's that bracket time of year again. While I didn't get to use a giant bracket emblazoned with the presidential seal, I too was able to fill out my bracket this year for the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, the March Madness of lore.

Both the President and I took Syracuse past Oklahoma, a bit of an upset. As a nearly lifelong Dukie, however, I can never pick UNC to win it all, even if that's the wise choice. This year, I'm just participating in a small-time betting organization with my bracket--Mr. Cool, his younger brother and I are all in it for a $10 Target gift card.

So who are your picks? What sort of betting are you doing with your bracket? And, if you're at work, are you seriously considering either streaming the games to your computer or putting them on the TV? (Maybe that's just me--perhaps I shouldn't reveal that my HS has large screen TVs in every room with cable, or at least CBS.)

Great Inaugural Addresses

Lincoln's First Inaugural

It's inauguration day, and we shall see if Obama can measure up to the great oratory past presidents have laid down on their first day at work.

Lincoln: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." from his first inaugural address

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." from his second inaugural address

TR: "We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln."

FDR: "This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Kennedy:

"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.	24
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.	25
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Designing Your Oval Office

President George W. Bush's Oval Office Rug

As we inch up on the Inaugural, one of the things that will be changing in the White House is the Oval Office. Each president gets to choose paintings, busts, desks, and the rug to fit his or her taste. George W. Bush really loved his rug, making it a focal point of his office.

Most presidents choose the Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria, made out of timbers from the HMS Resolute, a ship that searched for John Franklin's ill-fated northwest passage and got stuck in the Arctic ice.

Typically, a portrait or bust of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln graces the room. The rug always features the seal of the United States--the eagle. Harry Truman changed to have the eagle facing the olive branch.

How would you decorate your Oval Office?

Abigail Adams

As I wrote yesterday about John, I thought I would write a little about Abigail. I studied her in a freshman history class, and took her as a hero. Intelligent, sharp-witted--a true partner to her husband. There are books about her, and you can read her correspondence, which sparkles (a cliche, but oh-s0-true) with life and vitality. Throughout her letters you can read of her passion for her husband, her thoughts on his duty to America, her duty as a wife and mother, and her real, true opinions of other political figures.

Abigail to John, as he became president (and after 33 years of marriage):

The cold has been more severe than I can ever before recollect. It has frozen the ink in my pen, and chilled the blood in my veins, but not the warmth of my affection for him for whom my heart beats with unabated ardor through all the changes and vicissitudes of life, in the still calm of Peacefield, and the
turbulent scenes in which he is about to engage.

Abigail to Thomas Jefferson, responding heatedly to his claim that he had not supported a libelous newspaperman:

The serpent you cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished him, and gave you sufficient specimens of his talents, his gratitude, his justice, and his truth. When such vipers are let loose upon society, all distinction between virtue and vice are leveled, all respect for character is lost.

Abigail to her only daughter, on the subject of grandparenting:

I begin to think grandparents not so well qualified to educate grandchildren as parents. They are apt to relax in their spirit of government, and be too indulgent.

I could go on.

This painting of Abigail was painted by Gilbert Stuart while she was still first lady. While painting it, Stuart remarked that as a young woman she must have been a "perfect Venus," to which Adams replied, "She was! Oh, sir, she was."

Classy

Whatever your feelings about the incumbent, one of the marvels of American history has always been the transition from one administration to another. Sure, John Adams left in the middle of the night to avoid Thomas Jefferson, but every since it has been a time that astonishes the rest of the world. So, today, I thought President Bush's comments about the election were pretty dang classy:

"No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud
of the history that was made yesterday," he said. "Across the country, citizens
voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America's
democracy and the strides we have made towards a more perfect union. They chose
a president whose journey represents a triumph of the American story, a
testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our
nation," said President Bush.

Today, I am indeed proud to be an American. Although, I'm not sure what commercials will be on TV tonight.

VOTE!

I voted this morning in a small-town City Hall, with a cold line first thing in the morning. I am proudly wearing my "I Voted" sticker.

Many other elections have happened on November 4th, so check out today in history.

Edited to Add: Perhaps the coolest place on earth to vote today--if only I wasn't afraid of heights!

Standing up for Sarah

I found this interesting article, concerning how some feminists who disagree with Sarah Palin are still trying to stand up for her. I found it interesting, as I too have been disheartened at the treatment she has received with a lack of media outcry. Specifically, when I heard Larry Flynt was crafting a porn film about her, without any sort of outcry, I felt a loss of hope for the position of women in our society. Perhaps if more people think like those in the article, there is some hope.

Fiction for the Election

The best short story about politics, elections, and the presidency I've ever read: 2066 Election Day by Michael Shaara. I do believe I've found it full text on the fabulous interwebs. Please enjoy!

Obama & The Godfather

While checking out our presidential candidates pop culture favorites, I learned that Obama's two favorite movies are The Godfather, Parts I and II. In fact, I saw him talk about this on TV, citing the fact that the first movie begins with the line, "I believe in America."

I'm not going to fault him for this, as I too love The Godfather, both book and film, but I would like to clarify what he's talking about. This will involve a trip down memory lane, so be prepared.

When I took European Immigrant Literature in college, I was fulfilling a credit requirement for my English Education degree. Luckily, I loved the class, and never more than when we were reading The Godfather. What an assignment! I loved every second of it, and when we watched the movie (Part I), it blew me away. I know most people think of this as a "guy" film, but it's fantastic. Powerful, mesmerizing--the acting is insanely good. (You should, of course, know who's in the film--Brando, Pacino, Duvall.) I've seen it many more times since then, although I've never managed to force Mr. Cool to join me.

So I totally understand why Obama loves this movie. I respect him for making the choice to say he loves a gangster film over, say, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but his choice of singling out that first line rings false. Oh, sure, it's the first line of the movie, but it's said by Amerigo Bonasera, who has come to the Godfather for help. He has always believed in America, so when his daughter was brutally attacked by WASP boys, he trusted the American justice system to punish them. It failed him--they were released with just probation. Bonasera, though, wants more. He has always believed in America, but it has let him down. It has not given him the justice he desires--so he has come to ask the Godfather to kill the two young men. The Godfather refuses, and chastises Bonasera for not coming to him earlier. If he truly believes in America, he should accept the justice it provided. In the end, the Godfather does send some thugs to properly beat up the young men.

The idea throughout The Godfather is that while America is a land of prosperity, opportunity, and justice, if you are an Italian immigrant, you will be better served by the Family. There you can truly find prosperity, opportunity, and justice. Perhaps that is true for all of us--perhaps only in family can we find true fulfillment. Patriotism might only lead to disappointment.

Fantasy Campaign Ad #4

Destined to be the leader . . .

Supported by a strong, intelligent wife . . .

Victorious in battle . . .

A gracious host to the previous rulers . . .

Seeks advice from different channels . . .

Doesn't this sound like a man you want in charge?

I'm Macbeth, and I supporteth this message, and I desperately wanteth to be King! Even tho', tis but a sound and fury, signifying nothing, this ad wast paid for by my dear Lady Macbeth, who almost more desperately wanteth me to thine King!

Fantasy Campaign Ad #3

Do you need a reason, puny human?

Vote Zeus!

This message paid for by Hephaestus, Lightning Bolt Crafter and organizer of the Keep Zeus in Power Fund.

The VP Debate

Well, not too bad, I think. No moments of, "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you are no Jack Kennedy." No candidates declaring, "Who am I? Why am I here?"

Although, to be fair, I sort've zoned out and started surfing the internet after a half hour, as I can only take so many talking points before I get grumpy. I relish the fact that we are only about a month away from the end of the campaign, as it truly feels like it has been going on since I was a wee voter.

I think I have only about one political, election-related blog post left in me. Then we will return to our normal teaching, reading, knitting schedule. So, today I leave you with an interesting commentary on the debate from Peggy Noonan. It was nice to read a moderate, conservative, positive spin.

Sarah Palin, Take 2

I've been hearing a lot of negative stuff about Sarah Palin, but as I was prepping myself for the debate tomorrow by reading upon various things, I watched another interview with Katie Couric. I found it quite interesting, both in that she did well and shares several of my beliefs, but also that this time Ms. Couric felt a bit more hounding. Look, Katie, I'm not going to tell you all the magazines and newspapers I read either, because I'm not here to give out free advertising. Anyway, if you're still watching and enjoying aspects of the campaign, take a watch.

My video wasn't working, so I've replaced it with a plain and simple link to the interview.

Huh?

PETA's newest idea--incredibly wacky, as sexist as their fur ads, and a bit funny. It also makes me want a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.

A Lurking Conservative

I haven't been blogging much, because I've been engaged in ready an incredibly lengthy debate on one of the general forums on Ravelry. It started out with the question from a European confused about the positive response toward Sarah Palin. It has turned into an intense, somewhat acrimonious debate concerning McCain vs. Obama.

Yesterday afternoon, I had sometime to throw up a few mild ideas that were moderately well received. Reading it this afternoon (I had over five hundred posts to catch up on), I realized that only one conservative woman was posting her ideas, and she was being debated by about twelve more liberal women. It was interesting to read--I lurked, but chickened out of really getting involved. I was a bit shocked to read this vitriol from women who love to knit, but apparently I've picked up a habit not quite in keeping with my more conservative self.

Should I have spoken up? Shouldn't we all just agree to disagree? Is the election invading any of your "comfort" spots?