Who says "zany" anymore?

Is news really so hard to come by that people are talking about Mitt Romney using the word "zany" to describe Newt Gingrich?  You'd think Mitt Romney was caught on tape spouting an expletive while smoking a cigarette made by illegal immigrants.

What's next? A flibbertigibbet? A will-o'-the-wisp? A clown?

Apparently, the "z" word is strictly off limits in political discourse and worth devoted coverage when it breaks the lips of a politician.  The Los Angeles Times noted that Romney "lobbed some rhetorical grenades" by using the word.  "With lines like this, just think about what Mitt Romney has saved for Thursday night's debate."

The Daily Mail called the comment Romney's "most personal assault yet on Newt Gingrich."

ABC News characterized Romney's new word as "the latest in a string of attacks" and Ed Rogers, who writes as one of "The Insiders" for the Washington Post, reasons that it "was the product of pre-mediated analysis."

(Who am I to argue? I'm just an outsider who doesn't know what "pre-mediated" means.)

But here are a few key points most people are missing in all the dramatic buildup to what TIME has already named The Zany Debate on Thursday night.

First, Mitt Romney never actually said Newt Gingrich is zany.  It may have been implied, but what Romney actually said in his New York Times interview is this:

Zany is not what we need in a president. Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it makes for fun reading, but in terms of a president, we need a leader, and a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.

What's so controversial about that statement?  Are there people who want a zany president?  Doesn't "zany" get good ratings on the radio and make for entertaining reading?

But here's the bigger point.  "Zany" was not some pre-meditated—or even pre-mediated—comment from Romney.  It wasn't a calculated attack on Gingrich.  It wasn't even a description Romney came up with on his own.  It was used by the New York Times reporter, Jeff Zeleny, to describe the policies that Gingrich might come up with as president.  The New York Times article gives you Romney's response, but you have to watch the interview to hear the question.  Here is what Zeleny asked:

Do you think the American voters are getting enough of a sense of what [Gingrich] might do or is there some worry that as president, should he win, that there might be some zany things coming from the Oval Office?

Zeleny asked if people should worry about zany ideas, so Romney used the word "zany" to answer the question.  That's hardly remarkable.  In the context of the question, Romney actually does a pretty good job of not singling out Gingrich and instead focusing on his own strengths as a leader.

It's not that Romney is trying to avoid criticizing Gingrich.  He has no problem calling Gingrich unreliable and citing specific examples.  But all the hullabaloo—can I say that word?—seems like an example of journalists making the news instead of covering it.  The blame lies primarily with the New York Times for sticking the word in headlines after prompting Romney to say it.  The blame also lies with the many reporters and bloggers who happily disseminated the story without bothering to either watch or accurately report on the full interview.

A rant with no solutions

A comment I hear every now and again is that no one responsible for the collapse of our economy or the mortgage crisis at its center has ever been held responsible.  I have a few problems with that statement.

First, who deserves the blame?  I'm not informed enough to know precisely who is responsible.  I suspect blame can be shared far and wide from the bankers and investors who concocted shaky financial instruments to  ratings agencies to regulators to the parties taking out mortgages they couldn't afford.  Did I leave anyone out?

Second, it isn't true that no one has been held responsible.  There have been at least three criminal cases and a handful of civil cases brought against various individuals and institutions.  Still, in an environment where so many people are out of work with little prospect of finding sustainable employment, it is hard to feel like justice has been done when you compare the relatively few fines to the billions of dollars in aid that went to financial institutions that are built on greed and managed by multi-millionaires.  What good are a few fines to people who need economic assistance or even those who have jobs now but are facing decreasing wages in real terms?

I'm not in favor of the class warfare language I see in editorial pages and hear on the airwaves, but I do think there is something broken in our economic system or society.  As undeserving as some of the recipients may have been on their personal merits, our society relies on the credit and cash flow made possible by large banks and investment houses.  Salvaging the savings and investments of the middle class meant propping up the wealth of the privileged.  Insulated from their share of responsibility, those who have the most are securing a larger and larger share of wealth in this country.

What's the phrase?  "A rising tide lifts all boats?"  Maybe so, but that assumes all of the boats are in the water.  Right now, it feels like a lot of the boats are stuck on shore.

No one who looks at our tax code can honestly say we're all in this together.  Nor would anyone come to that conclusion we live in a land of opportunity by comparing the skills produced in our schools with the skills required to fill the jobs that exist.  When we rely on illegal immigrant labor and create incentives for whole classes of people to live in perpetual dishonesty, can we say with any honesty that we are the land of the free?  When we pass legislation creating financial obligations we can't afford or when politicians obstruct our ability to meet the obligations we do have, is that the new definition of brave?

The status quo is not getting it done for this country.  It is not creating wide-spread opportunity.  Simply cutting spending and relying on the business community to create jobs won't work.  Companies are profitable and sitting on record reserves of cash.  Laying off government workers and reducing services isn't going to change that.  Similarly, just taxing the rich to do more of the same isn't going to suddenly create opportunity either.  Funding payroll tax breaks and unemployment benefits through taxes on millionaires won't solve the structural problems with our entitlement programs or refocus government on creating opportunity through infrastructure investments, education and smarter regulation.  None of the above is going to restore moral values or societal norms of honesty, caring for one another and living responsibly.

So what's the solution?  I'm not sure, or at least I'm not settled sufficiently in my mind to put it in writing. But I don't think it is going to be found entirely on the populist left or right of our political spectrum.  I think it is going to take a political leader who looks more like a centrist and is willing to pragmatically implement good ideas wherever they are found.  It is going to take us coming to terms with the outcome we want government to effect in our society and electing leaders who can advance that agenda.

(See how I ducked the question there?  A long answer, but not a solution.  I'll write about my thoughts on some possible solutions—both personal and political—later.)

Simple

Blue jeans
Grey shirts
Rosemary mint shampoo
White file boxes
White towels
and Her
Brown paper
Pine or pale
Morning mist
Bright ideas
Not new
Just right

Why not both?

Thelma was gone this evening and had Emma with her, so it was the perfect opportunity to let the boys eat food that is normally quite low on Thelma's list of approved dining options. Before driving to the high school to pick up Braeden from play practice, I asked Mark, "Would you rather have Chinese food or stop at Little Caesar's to get pizza?" Then, inspiration struck me while he was agonizing over the choice.

"What about both?" I asked.

 His eyes lit up and I could see he knew where I was going with this.

"How about we make a Chinese pizza?"

Mark started to rattle off a list of ingredients. That kid knows how to build. Usually, it's Legos. Tonight it was pizza.

The original idea for a Chinese pizza came during a recent in-the-van-driving-somewhere conversation. I challenged everyone to come up with a strange pizza combination. Between Braeden and I, we imagined a combination that included General Tso chicken in some form. Braeden dubbed it the Red Star.

With Thelma gone, tonight was the perfect night to give it a try. We stopped off at Safeway and bought the Express Special—General Tso chicken, chicken teriyaki, fried rice, chow mein and two pot stickers—some mozzarella cheese and a bag of pizza dough. (The Safeway dough isn't that good, but I didn't care. I wasn't planning on eating it. It's not on my diet.) I thought some shredded carrots would be a nice touch. The boys didn't agree. Mark wanted to use the chow mein as one of the toppings. (Again, I wasn't eating it.) Braeden was willing as long as we kept back the fried rice, just to be sure there was something good to eat if the pie turned out to be a disaster.

So, was it a disaster or was it, as the Chinese would say, 鮮美?  You be the judge. (I didn't have have any.) There's no recipe, but if you are brave enough, you can follow Braeden's photographic essay and try your own variation.

The "raw" ingredients.

Mark wanted the noodles. I'm trying to think of a joke that involves Marco Polo.

This was the maiden voyage for my "new" pizza stone. Thelma bought it a year ago to replace my broken stone, but it's hard to give up a stone that works so well even if I do have to piece it together each time I use it.

The final product.

It must have been decent, because the boys ate all but one piece that they saved for Emma.  Then again, they are growing boys.  Downing one pizza between the two of them is going easy.

Miscellanea

miscellanea |ˌmisəˈlānēə|
plural noun
miscellaneous items, esp. literary compositions, that have been collected together.

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I'm not sure which is better: the title of the book ("Fiction Ruined My Family" ) or the title of the book review ("Mom’s a Drunk, Dad’s a Writer: A Recipe for Disaster and a Memoir").

Memoirists impress me.  (And I'm lucky to be married to one.) It seems like an impossible feat to pull off a memoir.  First, you have to have lived an interesting life.  Second, you have to be talented enough to write about it.  Here's an excerpt where the author describes the affects of living with a father who insisted on high standards for language:

I was under the impression clichés could ruin you, ruin your life, your hopes and dreams, bring down your whole operation if you didn’t watch it. They were gateway language, leading straight to a business major, a golfy marriage, needlepoint pillows that said things about your golf game, and a self-inflicted gunshot to the head that your family called a heart attack in your alma mater announcements.

When it comes to telling a good story, it probably helps that the really good memoirists feel less constrained by the conventions of accuracy.  What actually happened in a situation is less important than what the author actually remembers happening.  I fret over getting all of the details right at the expense of the story.  Thelma, on the other hand, allows experiences to live on and grow in her memory until they are fully realized as something worth recounting and sharing.  Something to be learned from or enjoyed.

I'm convinced memoirists have a fuller experience than those like me who remain confined to the past.

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There's a strange visual irony that the historical image below was attached to a story entitled "Whatever Happened to the American Left?"  Ironic because left and right are switched in the photograph.

A Communist rally as part of the May Day celebration in Union Square, New York City, 1934 (AP)

After the photograph was published in the New York Times about a week ago, a reporter noticed that the buildings adjoining the park were on the wrong side of the square.  With Tammany Hall in the background, the park pavilion should have been on the right and the row of buildings on the left.  After further research, editors at The Times found that the picture that was first published in 1934 and the original print from the Associated Press were both backward.

But why?  And how is it that the protest signs in the lower right corner of the image read correctly?  The Times suggests this explanation:

It is not known why the original prints were made in mirror image. But one possibility is that editors at The A.P. did so in order to make several signs, carried by members of the crowd in the foreground, legible to readers. (The letters evidently bled through the signs, which appear to have been made of cloth, and would have appeared backward if the image had been printed without alteration.)

It makes more sense now when you look at the photograph and realize that all of the other signs and people are facing away from the  photographer.

Perhaps this is just another example the left-wing bias critics assign to the The New York Times.

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Speaking of left-wing bias, a commentator in The New York Times recently lamented the ineffectiveness of ongoing protests on Wall Street.

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

But that small dose of objective reporting—documenting the incoherent messages, uninformed participants and paltry attendance—hasn't sat well with some on the left.  They see a bias and conspiracy of their own, this time coming from the right.  In specific response to The Times article:

We all know that the corporate-owned media is going to try to undermine any protest movement--especially one from the Left.

Did you honestly think they'd do anything else but try to smear and malign the demonstration ....seriously the Grey Lady and the corporate media are all part of the problem and one of the reasons we citizens find ourselves in a world full of hurt...

The comments are a study in contrast.  The same organization that Fox News hosts and fans accuse of being a left-wing propaganda machine is accused by those on the left of being a Corporate (read right-wing) conspirator out of touch with the progressive movement.

It you're getting it from both sides, you're probably doing something right.

Off the Wagon

This is day 53 of dieting and I finally fell off the wagon.

I was doing so well up until this point.  There have been frustrating times.  Times when it would have been easy to bury my stress beneath a mound of flap jacks or in a giant bowl of chow mein.  Times when I could have given into the siren song of humus or the cold indulgence of ice cream.  I've stared awkwardly at fruit.  I've dreamt of chocolate lava cakes. But I had persevered until this evening.  And I have—or used to have, rather—twenty seven pounds to show for it.

Cumulative Weight Loss:

No one's perfect. I get that. It's just how I fell off the wagon that bothers me. I was pushed off by this guy:

"Little Caesar!?  Really?  The creepy little purveyor of bad pizza?"

I know.  What can I say?  He got me.  I didn't intend for it to happen. I can't believe it myself.  I've had so many opportunities to cheat.  So many better alternatives than a slice that makes it hard to determine where the crust ends and the cardboard box begins.

Don't get me wrong.  I love pizza.  Pizza has an elemental quality in my life.  I orient myself to pizza restaurants.  Need directions?  I'll can tell you how to get there based on the pizza restaurants you'll pass.  I'll eat pizza from anywhere.  The day before I started my diet, I had a slice of pizza at ten in the morning from the Flying J truck stop in Wells, Nevada.  It was good, because it was pizza.

Thelma used to have a quotation hanging on our refrigerator door.  "Life is like pizza.  Even when it's bad it's good."  And it's true, but a slice from Little Caesars is not worth the fall off the wagon.  Not when I've said "no" so faithfully to Alfy's or Zeke's or Tutta Bella or Brooklyn Brothers.  It's like saying no to a bunch of cute girls who want to take you to a school dance and then you show up anyway with your cousin.  Maybe she can dance, but it's your cousin.

See, even my metaphors are messed up after my fall.  Ordinarily, I would have come up with a witty pizza metaphor.  Tasty and germane.

How did it finally happen?  In a moment of thoughtlessness.  Braeden had four friends from school over this evening to watch movies and eat pizza.  When you're dealing with teenage boys (or Mark), quantity is more important than quality.  Thus Little Caesars.  Four large pizzas, four liters of soda, 16 breadsticks and I'm only out $30.  (Plus I can pick up Showering Rama at the Thai Place next door for Thelma's more refined palette.)  So, the pizza was just sitting there on the counter and without even thinking I picked up a slice and started to eat it.

Who knows how it will affect my diet?  There's probably some massive rearrangement of my body chemistry going on inside of me right now and I'm going to wake up 15 pounds heavier, one leg will be swollen and my bathroom towel will smell like pepperoni after I take a shower.  I'll have to detox with oat bran shooters and an intravenous drip of V8.

If that doesn't work and I'm back to a more robust and bruised figure, then perhaps I'll flee to the stage and resurrect myself as a Shakespearean actor.

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)

Did you happen...

Did you happen to see this picture of the southern rock band Jeff the Brotherhood?

That's Jamin on the left.  He's sporting a $1500 shirt and $1300 pants.  The cheapskate on the right is Jake whose $1400 shirt needs to be a little longer so I don't have to see his $830 pants.  Personally, if I had that kind of money to spend (and already had a wave runner), I'd get me some of Jake's hairdo.

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Did you happen to read the Sherlock Holmes mystery "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?  If so, did you happen to laugh as I did when you came across this passage:

"I should  be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket....  That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need."

I've been trying to come up with a way to slip those sentences into casual conversation.

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Did you happen to read or hear about the book "Lost in Transition" in which Notre Dame professor Christian Smith shares the results of in depth interviews with 230 young adults ranging from 18 to 23?  What he and his research team found is a generation of emerging adults who lack the ability to speak or reason about moral issues.  The prevailing code is one of moral individualism where a thing is right if it makes you feel good.  As one respondent put it:

"I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong."

In the words of the authors, this idea that right and wrong only exist on an individual level and can be fully determined by the individual...

"...supposes and proposes (1) that no objective moral truths exist (or, if they do exist, humans cannot know them well), and therefore (2) that what people take to be moral truths are only socially constructed, historically and culturally relative ideas about morality."

Thelma and I have discussed recently how blessed we are to have testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I guess that's "church language" coming through.  In social science terms, we know through experience the objective truth of Jesus Christ, his mission and his gospel.  That knowledge gives us a moral code we can teach our children so they have an understanding of what is right and what is wrong and why.  As a manifestation of God's love for his children, they also have access to personal revelation through prayer and the influence of the Holy Spirit to help guide them in making right choices and to help them gain their own testimony of the Savior so they don't have to rely on us to know what to do.

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Have you heard the popular wisdom that all of our Goverment spending is being financed by the  Chinese buying US treasuries?  The idea that we are heavily indebted as a nation to another government is an alarming one.  Referencing Chinese president Hu Jintoa, Michelle Bachmann scored points with conservative political activists earlier this year when she said, "With all the money that we owe China, I think you might correctly say, Hu's your daddy."

It turns out Uncle Sam is still our daddy.  China does hold a lot of our debt.  $1.1 trillion worth.  But that's only 8.1% of the $14.3 trillion Federal deficit.  Government accounts hold 32.3% of the debt (of which the biggest portion, 18.3%, is the Social Security trust fund). That doesn't include the Federal Reserve which holds another 10% of the total.  Private domestic investors hold enough marketable securities to total 22.6% of the debt.

So the portion held by China is large (slightly smaller than Japan plus the UK), but it's not as though we've mortgaged the farm to the Bank of China.

For a nice summary of who holds our Federal debt, check out this interactive feature from Congressional Quarterly.

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And finally, did you happen to hear about the drunk moose that made of with a swing set in Sweden?  Apparently, moose are commonly drunk this time of year in Sweden when the apples begin to ferment. So when the local police found the missing swing set resting against a tree in the forest, they assumed it must have been an inebriated moose.  Makes sense, but I don't know why anyone would assume the moose was drunk.  Maybe it was smart.  Afterall, a few days earlier, a drunk moose was found stuck in a tree.  Maybe the moose who stole the swing set was just looking for an easy way to get up and down the tree.