Ike's Great Warning

JP, I'M pretty sure what Ike would've made of the milicorporate government by oligarchy we have today, and it wuldn't be good.

They're not making Republicans, or politicians in general, like they used to...

Greetings:  According to http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php, military expenditure is aprox $2,300,000.00 per minute.  PER MINUTE!?  Could that be right?  If thats the case, I think we might be spending a bit much.

Did I read that wrong? Did I miss something?  (It is late)

dear nachista, I am among the first to defend your rights to expect that Sir Boyscout should have the very best in whatever enables him to do his soldier job - I just don't think we should have asked him to go to war in the first place.  (there is that editorial we again)  I think this country went to war just to get oil rights for a few and to continue to create more superrich people on the backs of those of us who would just like to have some peace and quiet in our lives.  

I wonder at my karma - (as the village elder who has already lived through the Great Depression and then watched as we were set up to do it again over the last 25 years) - deregulation?  sure - we'll all play nice in the sandbox (heh heh) - then WWII (the big one) and BTW, I heard Ike make that speech - (on the electric radio) - 

And here we are again faced with Recession, a war that isn't acknowledged or reported now that we have the diversion of a political campaign to run - and we wouldn't want to let people know what is it really like over there - nor do we really want to provide for those who have returned in a much less healthy state than when they left.

Probably it is time for me to go to bed as well - the cat wants in - I grieve that while we kill people in the mideast tonight, there are those of us in this country who can't find enough to eat tonight - who have no place to sleep tonite - not even one house- 

Be safe Sir Boyscout and return to your Lady Nachista - you both deserve a wonderful life together - let those who seek to become rich through oil contracts do their own battles.

In industry it is often said that sometimes it's the man that defines the job and sometimes it's the job that defines the man ("person" would be the politically correct term but I'm a bit tired and sore tonight and you all know me by now).

In the case of our Nation's Presidency, I am much more comfortable with the job doing the defining with the incumbent striving to rise to the occasion. I believe this was the case with President Eisenhower who seemingly transcended his great accomplishments and his viewpoints in order to meet the higher challenges and perspective required of the office.

I would guess that Ike would be pretty disappointed in the way things have evolved over the last several decades where recent presidents have been blind to the fact that they cannot rise above the job itself. I think this is a global trend amongst many of the world's leaders.

I know this sounds "old school", and not by accident.

It's sad that many terms with specific useages have been rendered useless by misuse and overuse.  One is 'fascism'.  The 'corporate state', the ideal under that system, was the union of the state, its prinicipal organ (government), and private financial organizations (corporations) into a unified tool led by a charismatic leader bent on the aggrandizement of and promotion of the nation (alternately 'motherland' or 'fatherland'.   I mention this last item simply because fascism saw the nation as the larger personification of the family.  Hence fascism's obsession with strengthening of the family.

I think everyone can see where I'm going.... I don't find it at all surprising that a soldier who fought fascism would be nervous about its arrogance, blindness, and its obsession with centralized and unrestrained nationalistic power coming back to infect the United States.  You all can be the judge of how far down the path he warned about we have come.  (I long ago came to my own conclusions.)  

Both the Spanish and British Empires came and went.  So too many others.  Those who put their faith in 'strength' and 'national unity' -- and who expect it to come from a monarch (or president) or from 'new leadership' -- should take a look at history.  Franco came and went; Spain is doing better now that he is gone.  Same for Pinochet.  Same for the string of Soviet 'leaders'.  (Putin is just one more cloud).  Same for Mussolini.  And we could go on and on...

Strong leadership and centralized power do not a strong nation make.  Ike was onto something, in my opinion.   But the future will decide what happens to folks living in the U.S.A.  We shall see (most likely in the next 20 years) what happens subsequent to the unbridled concentration of power in a nationalistic elite, bent on self-enrichment and filled with nationalist hubris.  It will be interesting (sort of like how going through a hurricane is interesting...)

Johnny Carson once joked that what William Tecumseh Sherman ACTUALLY said was, "war is hell, but is sure is a steady job." In the interim since Eisenhower's warning, the US's single biggest export, in dollar terms, are weapons. What he was warning us of is that demand for warfare doesn't drive the capacity for fighting wars, but rather that capacity drives demand.

Bravo Nachista. AND PeterLake.

Since Ike got there first, any other coinage like the Hollywood-Healthcare Axis or the Streisand- Entitlement Complex is going to sound forced and a little derivative, but do you really suppose he would be comfortable with the vast power of the Left, either? No doubt, the clamor on both sides has gotten louder. Remember, Ike was from the days of Black and White. Three channels. Nightly signoffs. No onsite weather reporting.

And why do we know about Scuds, patriots, etc? Because the news media ( barely still involving presses)  recognize it isn't quite enough to all try to sound like they are Canadian ( nothing wrong with that, eh ) telling us aboot dawlers, so they seize on the Jargon du Jour. Who do you think sold us more Patriot Missiles, Jack Abramoff or Wolf Blitzer? Did you ever hear of a sortie before the Gulf War?

For that matter, Nachista's point about surplus is fairly crucial. Having "enough when you need" it frequently means having more than you need when you don't need much. When is the last time you used your spare tire? Ready to jettison it yet?

I keep coming back to what Donald McCaig once said on NPR about the Balance of Nature: It is not some fine tuned intricate thing. It is a constantly overbalancing cancellation of excess. Drought is moderated by flood, etc. I hope I got that more or less right.  American Politics is its own arms race and the racket it produces, the vast fortunes made convincing us we know what we are talking about, the fortunes spent by populist zillionaires convincing us we don't?

 I also heard on NPR George C Scott (?) delivering lines from a play called Park Your Car in Harvard Yard. An old man complaining about a childhood rival: I got a bike, he got a RED bike.

 How am I going to digest my breakfast now? 

My blues are just like yours, only bigger and meaner and smarter

You've got a broken heart, well, mine is broken harder

You can wish into one hand and spit into the other

My blues is just like yours, I've got to tell you brother.

Hoping to hear more and more from our Newest Compatriots,

Willie 

I like to read history, and I've lived for short periods in other countries, and I can't help but feel that there's a better way to run a country. Ireland and Switzerland mind their own business, don't meddle in other people's governments (except for famine and disaster relief), maintain a small and fierce military strictly for home defense, and with all the money that saves, can provide mass transit and universal health care for all their people. Now THAT'S my idea of a civilized country!

The last time I looked at our military spending statistics, the numbers said that we spend more than the rest of the world combined. Something's not right there, like with our medical spending. We're being fleeced by people running this country for their own benefit, people with no conscience, no morals, no integrity. We got a glimpse of them during the Enron scandal. We see their nastiness in every political campaign, full of slander and deflection from real issues that never get addressed. Americans are distracted by toys and television while the bad monkeys commit horrific international crimes to steal other, weaker countries' resources, using our kids as cannon fodder. It's wrong and it's evil. I consider the current administration to mostly consist of evil and stupid people who, in other times, would be tried and condemned for treason. Now we're afraid to call a lie a LIE, and white collar criminals escape with golden parachutes. How many times must we be witness to the catastrophes these venal people wreak when their pals lie their way into the government and remove all oversight on their nefarious and just plain dumb activities? How wrecked will this country have to be before we wake up and demand accountability? People I know in other countries are constantly appalled at what we allow our government to get away with. Why is it that we can't see it, stop it, prosecute it?

I'm all for a strong military, but I want a shield, not a sword.

Don't get me wrong, I thought invading Iraq was a mistake from the start.  Our president was bound and determined that he had a new and improved way to cut off the head of the Hydra, but it turned out to be the same way everyone else had tried.  Now since we poked the sleeping dragon, we have a responsibility to put out the fires.

I don't believe that the one and only reason for the war was oil...but it was one of the biggies.  If we as a people weren't so blinded by greed and apathy we'd see that each and everyone of us is responsible for our nation.  You want cheap crap at your local Walmart, ok our government makes a deal with the devil (er, I mean China) to get it for you.  I see selfishness, consumer lust, ignorance, and xenophobia on a massive scale, every single day. 

Unfortunately cutting defense spending will only hurt those in the field doing the job.  Its like when a corporation has setbacks, the first people that suffer are the ones making the corporations products.  Sure the CEO has to do without a third or fourth McMansion, but the production line worker has to go to the food bank because she can't afford groceries because of her pay cut...or worse being laid off. 

I wish we had a few more men in power like my father.  In our family business if times were tough he felt responsible for his employees and HE went without a pay cheque so that the employees could provide for his family, why?  Because he could afford to, because he had planned for bad times, he grew up during the depression, he knew how bad it could get.  Lately we've had employees complaining that they aren't getting bonuses and aren't allowed to work overtime, when we politely explained that if we gave bonuses and overtime to everyone then we also couldn't afford next month's payroll and we would have to close our doors and lay everyone off.  Then they got it, but it was shocking how out of touch these well-educated people were.

There has to be a better way, but I don't know what it is.

I read this a few years ago and it has stayed with me ever since.

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in
1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of
Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some
2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up
until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves
generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits
from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will
finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by
a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning
of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these
nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1.  From bondage to spiritual faith;

2.  From spiritual faith to great courage;

3.  From courage to liberty;

4.  From liberty to abundance;

5.  From abundance to complacency;

6.  From complacency to apathy;

7.  From apathy to dependence;

8.  From dependence back into bondage "

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul,
Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000
Presidential election:

Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million;? Bush: 143 million;

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000

States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won
was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great
country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in
government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of
democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already
having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Fortunately we still have the bondage phase to go.

But Nachista, the above is completely bogus. He disclaims it on his own website:

DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scotish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it for 3 years. For details see:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp. >

Thanks Dutchman.  Normally I check Snopes for information on details like that, but I never did on this one.  Its not the statistics that I care about.  It is the example of the Pride cycle.  And regardless of who wrote it, it is correct.  I've studied it in various history classes at university in regards to the Roman Empire, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire (thanks professor Lyons for the single most entertaining history class I've ever takes).  There are exceptions to the rule, but in the end nothing lasts forever...which is probably a good thing.

Is anyone else having trouble posting in here today?  It keeps booting me out of the text box.  But I have bigger fish to fry...someone jacked my credit card number and tried to charged several thousand dollars worth of photographic equiptment.  *sigh* Wankers.

I can't say I remeber being taught a lot about history in school around here your pretty much taught up to WWII but not really anything after the teacher mentions why there is a generation with the name of Baby Boomers.  

Which means on today's topic I'm pretty much in the catagory of a self taught historian.

What I have kind of learned about Ike's famous speech is that 100+ years after our nations first president George Washington gave his farewell address in a way they seemed to almost have the same message. Washington DID warn the American people at the time to watch out when getting involved with other countries. to take care of your nation first. It seems that with ending of WWII, the invention of the A-bomb, & the cold war raging President Eisenhower felt it would be ever so wise to modernize the same sentiments & warn the American people about "policing the world" with its own countrymen's lives at stake. 

I can't agree with Olivia's statement about the current administration being stupid & dumb & treasonist as I only hear & read what the media reports which on every channel is slanted for an agenda.  I can agree that some things are done WAY wrong, but I can make the same statemnet about the local & state goverments in my area also. It's pretty mcuh all a crap shoot to me & I can't begin even state that I have the knowledge to make any of it better or easier even if I were in their shoes.

Like Nachista I was ALWAYS taught though that a Great Nation never really makes it pass 200 years of rule. It's a house of card & it tend to collapse upon itself after a while.

From the extreme periphery or maybe just near it: General Eisenhower's campaign train came to our town in '52.
It had flattened a penny that I had placed on the rails and while he spoke from the back of the last coach, my dad and I were edging ever closer to Van's Tavern across from the station that proximity probably having a lot to do with our finding ourselves in that place at that time.

As the candidate wrapped up his speech, I had me a little idea and bolted from my dad's side yelling: "Hey, Ike, hang on!"

He turned back to accept what I presented as a "lucky coin."

It didn't look so to him all misshappen and flat and he said so asking: "What makes it lucky?"

"If you believe it, then it is," I explained.

"I do believe in luck and more-a lot more, he said, How about you?"

"Me too, sir," I said because I did and do.

He slipped it into his dark blue pants pocket and turning an unintended half-salute into a wave, disappeared smiling into the train.

My dad was not completely tickled with the whole deal and made me promise never to leave his side that way again. I held to that... as long as I could.

Nachista ~ A HUGE THANK YOU to Sir Boyscout & to you.

Sir Boyscout for loving his countrymen enough to put his young life on the line for us so I can log on to this forum or call in sick to work or buy that dang red dress & shoes. 

I appreciate & respect his decision greatly.   

I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to be a military wife I have some friends who are also ones & they & you really are Super Women to me.  

stoney,

Terrific story, thank you.

I've always suspected this and now I'm pretty sure it is true.

Whenever the topic turns to politics and government, I develop some form of arthropod with an ecto-skeleton up my butt, my heart races, I stutter even when writing and I break out in a cold sweat.

I must be allergic to BS.

Today is another good day to prune the trees. "Talk amongst yourselves, I'm feeling verklempt."

Actually, it is such a beautiful day here in the upper Midwest and since they will soon be rarer than hen's teeth; I'm gonna take it all in. Later gators.

I'd like to know how anyone could vote for "dangerously low" considering that the US government is in a multi-trillion dollar deficit and has to bail out companies, which are as we speak, causing the collapse of the US economy. Where are our priorities anyway?

Reedd I think the spending is beyond our comprehension.  I actually think more funding needs to make it to the front lines where its needed, do they get it?  Rarely.  Ask a Marine about Bada-bada-jam and see if they think they are getting enough funds for the equiptment, weapons, ammo, etc.

You'd think that the more advanced technology we develop, the more effecient we would become in our administrating.  But sadly it seems to be the opposite. 

 Actually, I've never been a Garrison Keiler fan, mainly because I never read him, although I have come across his blog, that I think sums up the state of the GOP, quite well. Even Ike would have agreed.

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/politics/256778

Politicians are the way they are because we demand that they jump through hoops.  We demand tax cuts and pork barrell spending on OUR projects and couldn't give a damn what happens outside our corner of the country.  Then we get up in arms when we here there are 999,999 earmarks in the budget.  The American dream has been corrupted and has infected Americans and we have turned it into our fast food world that serves us and only us and screw everyone else.

We all love to point fingers at politicians and lobbyists, but we are all responsible.  They are there to serve us, so why aren't we demanding a higher level of accountability from the stewards of our nations?  Why aren't we living on the values that our country was founded on?  I think there is a direct connection to the decline of social values and the glut in our daily lives  to decline of morales and the increase in glut in our government.

After all is said and done, several things seem to me to be self evident: (1) in a world of bioweapons, nuclear proliferation, and (next) nanobot warfare, no amount of military hardware or personal bravery will provide 'safety'; (2) The era of 'nations' (areas of land having a government or hierarchy of governments with power over those land masses) is coming to an end.  (3) More fluid, temporary organizations -- ranging from transnational corporations to international criminal networks to international NGOs -- are displacing the bureucratic dinosaurs called governments.  (4) The wisdom of the saying attributed to Gandhi is becoming more pertinent: "The best way to eliminate one's enemy is to make him your friend."

I always find it strange that people are (mostly) reconciled to the fact that they will eventually die, and that medical science is mostly concerned with improving and lengthening one's short span on earth. BUT folks seem unwilling to admit that the United States will eventually die, despite the best efforts of some to improve and prolong its existence.  Perhaps because I've lived in several countries, and because I have relatives in Spain and Japan, I don't feel that 'our' (emphasis!) is tied to any specific nation state -- because I think of 'us' as being folks in my extended family. 

I suspect many Jews will understand, since many of my Jewish friends are descendents of folks who survived Hitler by getting out while there was still time!  Also a Georgian friend who got her family out of Georgia and into the United States.  And Vietnames folks who made it to various spots and then here.  Americans like to think of their nation as 'the destination' for refugees, but when I look at the past and peer into the dark glass of the future, I see the United States as simply one more stop in a never-ending migration of survivors from one place to another.  Those who stick fast die in place, more often than not. 

IMHO, there's nothing wrong with loving one's nation (including the US) but we should love nations as we do people: here today, gone tomorrow, and never forgotten in our fond memories.   Ike's warnings were simply words -- ignored words -- like those of Cassandra.  And like poor Cassandra, Ike's warnings never were and never will be heeded, because of the oldest human weakness: optimism, aka, 'it can't happen here!'  

What we CAN do as individuals is to know when things are desperated enough to 'jump ship'.  And Ike's warning (as those of many others) may not right the ship of state, but it can give fair warning of when it's time to 'move on.'

Rings, thanks for your support.  Give your military spouse friends a big hug for me.  I've got a friend who's DH is coming home on Saturday and it is such a HUGE relief to know that he's out of theatre and safely on his way back to her side. 

Sir Boyscout was just placed on TNPQ and may not be able to deploy with his company in February and he is feeling stressed, guilty, and disappointed that he won't be able to be there to lead his team and protect his guys.  No sane person wants to be on the battlefield, but plenty of honorable guys want to be out there to watch each others backs.  I'd be lying if I said I don't feel slightly relieved to think he might get to stay home out of harms way for this deployment, but I'm also ashamed of that too.  There is definitely a love/hate thing that goes with being married to the military.  But I knew what it was like when I married him, so I can't complain too much.

This might be a good time to send folks looking for answers here >>> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html .  Then again, perhaps this is not a good time to send folks looking for answers to >>> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html. ; Heh, heh.

Well put Doc, glad to see you're safe.  We need to concentrate on first being good people and second being good neighbors and good citizens of the world.  It shouldn't be this hard to live in peace, it just shouldn't, guess that's the frail nature of humankind.

In your catalogue of Fall, received yesterday, you speak in one item, of standing with a glass of bitters.

A Brit will tell you that if you drink all of that glass, it will make you sick.

Better exchange it for a pint of bitter.

Bottoms up!

I can't fathom the chronic paranoia that seems to feed Americans' drive to be safe from "destruction".  What constitutes destruction of a country with 300 million people?  What does it mean to be "safe"?

This same urge to see danger everywhere seems to drive a gun culture that is byond reason.  When I worked in Miami, a co-worker showed me his 9 mm Beretta.  He kept it in the trunk in case somebody tried to hold him up at a traffic light.  So someone shoves a gun in your face...are you going to ask him to wait while you open the trunk or just give him your wallet?

Americans sneer at Canuckistanians because our military is puny and under-funded.  Some even go so far as to say that we're being protected by the U.S. and don't pull our weight.  By that logic we should have troops in Iraq, fighting the good fight, supporting our neighbour in its drive to make the world "safe" and to "free" Iraqis.  Instead, we have troops in Afghanistan, fighting on the Taliban on behalf of a corrupt regime, many of whom make great money off selling heroin to Western consumers.  

No one takes the time to look at the original assumption...that somehow the U.S. is looking at physical destruction by people who hate them.  In order to fend this off, money is borrowed from foreigners to pay for weapons that kill other foreigners...while your physical infrastructure crumbles into dust...coastal cities are repeatedly mauled by storms, costing a billion or so to rebuild (every year!) ...education is in tatters...the energy economy is held hostage by people who don't have your best interest in mind.

The worry is not destruction by terrorists, it's slow death from problems inside the country.  All Osama has to do is hang around for another 30 years or so, make boogie man noises and wait for the results.  No shots need be fired. 

I can't fathom the chronic paranoia that seems to feed Americans' drive to be safe from "destruction".  What constitutes destruction of a country with 300 million people?  What does it mean to be "safe"?

This same urge to see danger everywhere seems to drive a gun culture that is byond reason.  When I worked in Miami, a co-worker showed me his 9 mm Beretta.  He kept it in the trunk in case somebody tried to hold him up at a traffic light.  So someone shoves a gun in your face...are you going to ask him to wait while you open the trunk or just give him your wallet?

Americans sneer at Canuckistanians because our military is puny and under-funded.  Some even go so far as to say that we're being protected by the U.S. and don't pull our weight.  By that logic we should have troops in Iraq, fighting the good fight, supporting our neighbour in its drive to make the world "safe" and to "free" Iraqis.  Instead, we have troops in Afghanistan, fighting on the Taliban on behalf of a corrupt regime, many of whom make great money off selling heroin to Western consumers.  

No one takes the time to look at the original assumption...that somehow the U.S. is looking at physical destruction by people who hate them.  In order to fend this off, money is borrowed from foreigners to pay for weapons that kill other foreigners...while your physical infrastructure crumbles into dust...coastal cities are repeatedly mauled by storms, costing a billion or so to rebuild (every year!) ...education is in tatters...the energy economy is held hostage by people who don't have your best interest in mind.

The worry is not destruction by terrorists, it's slow death from problems inside the country.  All Osama has to do is hang around for another 30 years or so, make boogie man noises and wait for the results.  No shots need be fired. 

Jeremiah-Thanks for another objective evaluation, but most Americans are kept in a state of paranoid terror by their government. They're easier to control that way, and fostering a police state mentality distracts citizens from noticing the raiding of the Treasury, the relentless chipping away of civil liberties, and the piecemeal doling out of assets to corporate raiders. Why do the hard stuff when you can watch gossip about Crazy Sarah Palin and her living dead running mate on Fox and CNN?  

Americans keep themselves in a state of panic because they want to.  The general public has a sickening victim mentality.  We are frivolous and arrogant as a people, but we want everyone to feel sorry for our losses.  Its pathetic.  Ike said it himself, the responsibility belongs to the public

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

One fact to keep in mind when weighing the military spending issue.  Since the Iraq war began 5 years ago in 2003 we have had 4,147 US Military deaths in Iraq (That count is as of Sept. 3 this year, according to the DoD).  That is combined US Forces.  In just one month in the battle for Iwo Jima during WWII, over 6,000 Marines (just Marines) died.  During the 5 years the US was fighting WWII we had apx. 446,000 military deaths.  So are the the lives of 442,000 servicemen and women worth the incresed spending?

While I'm on statistics, why is it that our text books focus so heavily on the holocaust and American casualties but completely ignore the over 20million Russian casualaties (combined military and civilian) in WWII?

I don't like any of the candidates or their running mates.  I still vote J Peterman for president.

Olivia,
"politicians in general" in connection to Ike- very sharp.
Peter,
Thanks for your kind words and you ain't wrong about the upper midwest today.
Perfection.
Our boxer and I strolled down to the lake and dozed off watching an E-scow about four miles out without envy.

Yes, Nachista, Mr. P for president. Though I don't know if he would be interested. The good ones rarely are!

Sorry so MIA today. Mr. Pitt is at it again. Huge book ms on my desk (full of words like 'viable growth') to edit.

Nachista,

I want to second Rings90's HUGE THANK YOU to your Man Scout. Really. And to you. We are solidifying the date for our girls' weekend today and tomorrow. If there is ANY way you could come, pick a date and let me know. We are planning lots of shenanigans and Rings90 and Olivia are in. Also many girls from my other adventures. Will be wonderful. Also, got your note on post about my mother woes. You are too kind. Thank you.

That invitation still goes out to all the girls here.

 So sorry to pop in and out and not say a word about Ike. See I said it. Ike. Love him. 

Pitt is hollering. Must run. 

Stoney,

Don't laugh at naive Miss Ive, but is that a real story? Very nicely written, either way.

Running back into the Peterman room, a bit winded, to holler one more thing:

Doc Nolan!!!

You're alive. How's-a-doing?! 

Running back to Pitt before he notices I have left him alone, dictating to an empty chair. 

Grinning. . . 

Missive, with Mike being on TNPQ our plans have changed...and they will probably change again if he gets off the "brokedick" list.  I would really, REALLY love to come to the girls weekend, but a vacation is just not in the books, especially around that time of year.  If I were still single and didn't have the responsibilities I have now, I'd be there in a heartbeat.  Things are just too uncertain for the next couple of months.  Have fun in Chicago, takes lots of pics, let the squids down at navy pier whistle at you, and enjoy the shopping.

Nachista,

Oh, we'll be on Navy Pier, alright. We'll probably be IN Navy Pier, if that's at all possible. Will miss you and will film it all. If you would like to send posters with Nachista notes, we will be more than happy to hold them in front of the camera for viewing pleasure.

Next trip, you're coming. If I have to drive to Utah and get you myself. I'm a lightweight, but I'm very scrappy. 

Will say one thing that's actually on topic.

Have been thinking of Ike's last speech and the very idea of a last speech as president. How hard would it be to resist turning it into a rant? Right? That's what I was thinking while reading Mr. Peterman's post. Maybe that's sort of what it was for Ike. Or a big FYI.

I imagine the Farewell Address is the hardest to give. So much to say. Mine would be full of post scripts.

"Oh, and btw, . . ."

They'd have to bring out the cane, per Loony Tunes, and yank me. Or the gong.

LOL a final speech is better than a final slideshow.  "Here's the missus and me on vacation at Ft. Lauderdale.  Not sure what this one was a picture of, I think we were in china but my dang camera wouldn't work right and no one on air force one could figure out how to get the light to stop blinking on it.  Now this one is the dog.  Dog again.  There's the dog walking away from us.  Dog licking itself.  So all in all, yeah, good times."

Nachista ~ You have to come somehow in the flesh rather than just in the spirit ~ maybe we should call you from the Navy Pier.

Olivia ~ Glad to see that you can make it it will be fun!!!! 

Doc ~ glad to see you have survivied ~ I hope the rest of our friends & family & community also "weathered" the storm better than the ones I have seen on the news.

Alright I'm now going back to the Darkside by Lovey - They STILL have the cookies.  Maybe that's all Ike wanted by the time his term was done with ~ real home baked cookies... Maybe he was trying to distract the nation from the Mrs. Fields stores with his speech.

Missive, send me the details through my blog and if my plans change later on, I will try my hardest to get my butt out there.

Nachista, SO hope you could be with us-use the Force! I'm hoping I can be with us! This is shaping up to be a fun thing, and we all need a bit of fun. I haven't had a good go-round in donkey's years, so I'm going to wangle away. And wangle a way...

Stoney, thanks for noticing! I'm all about wordplay, mostly for my own amusement, since my modest compositonal pyrotechnics generally do not blip the radar. 

rings, thanks for the encouragement-manipulating schedula as we speak. 

Nachista, I don't follow your military spending argument. Maybe I'm just dense tonight. It seems to me that we could both decrease the waste, the loss of blood and treasure, and increase our security, by using our military more prudently, mostly for homeland defense. I would rather have your Scout serving HERE, where he could be safer and still see his family, and help with disasters like Katrina and Gustav and Ike. I believe that my point is, if I can get a handle on the death comparisons, which made me so sad, that we should have learned from all those deaths not to send our soldiers into harm's way except for matters of the gravest extreme, and to ensure that their accoutrements are of the highest order when we must ask them to fight. And, that past deaths can never justify to me the needless harm to ONE other soldier, much less 4,147 more.

Last night I attended a lecture at the Clinton School by Bob Drogin, who wrote Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War. He has spent the last 5 years reading the paper trail that led to this war in Iraq, researching the intelligence, and interviewing major players, and his dry statements of the facts pertaining to the Bush Administration's fabrication of justifications for attacking Iraq horrified me. I would've laughed at the absurdity, were the repercussions not so tragic, so I cried instead-tears of anger and sorrow that these gutless chickenhawks would send fellow citizens to die based on a hoax, while CIA operatives who DID know the situation warned anyone who would listen (that would be NO ONE) that there was no reason to go to Iraq.

It is a terrible indictment of our corrupted and celebrity-obsessed media that so much goes undocumented, uninvestigated, unpublicized. An unregulated and unwatched government makes bad decisions with all the reliability of an unregulated and unwatched financial sector. We see what that has brought us, and I fear that we will reap a similar political whirlwind.

Aside: Thanks for your kind words, guys and ladies.  I'm doing fine, but I wince when I think of the folks between Houston and New Orleans who have been hit by THREE serious hurricanes in just three years: Rita, Gustav and now Ike... They are the folks who deserve commisseration...

A suggestion: If you haven't seen Richard Attenborough's classic 1969 film about World War I, 'Oh! What A Lovely War' see it!  This film was totally unavailable for decades (I know because I desperately searched for it for years!) and was re-released on DVD just a couple of years ago.... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064754/

A second suggestion (and I've already got Olivia working on this one....) read Nassim Nicholas Talib's 'The Black Swan' -- especially in light of all the 'it can't happen' BS we've been hearing over the past year.  I don't usually recommend many books, though I'm an addicted reader, but this is one that so very much fits our present, it's 'required reading' in my humble opinion...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Taleb  .  I've given away two copies of 'The Black Swan' to friends, and given one 'book club' talk on this volume, and he (along with a handful of other folks) has provoked me to a paradigm shift in my own thinking.  How serious am I?  Well, I have read the book cover to cover at least 10 times, and try to read a chapter or two at least every other week....  (Check the Wikipedia link now while you're thinking of it....)

I offer these two gifts for those able to accept them, and in gratitude for the welcome I've received here.... :-)

Doc ~ I just read an article about the film ~ Oh what a Lovely War in the last 2 weeks. But for the LIFE of ME I can't remember in what publication.  It was a story actually about te type of music use din the film... It caught my interest so much that I added it to my Netflix List..... Can't wait for my DH to take his fishing trip to Kentucky in Oct. so I can watch it in peace...  

Olivia I'm not arguing that the spending is right, but somewhere along the way we were able to spend money to develop and use weapons, equiptment, and techniques that increase the safety of our troops.  I do strongly believe that money poured into military R&D have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  But I also believe that we would have saved thousands of lives if we hadn't allowed our leaders to drag the country into someone else's war.  Alienated the UN and Nato wasn't smart.  Our "superpower" status is waning while other countries are growing more powerful, we will need those allies soon and we haven't done anything lately to earn their trust or their sympathy.

I've never agreed with this war, but I'm glad we are able to keep them as safe as we have.  0 deaths are acceptable, but this isn't a perfect world and as long as there is war and unrest we will lose servicemen and women in the line of duty, no matter how much we spend, its the nature of the beast.

I'm just glad I'm not in charge, I couldn't run a country, I have a hard time managing a grocery list.