Many celebrate Mother's Day over a buffet brunch laden with fresh fruit, French toast and Egg's Benedict.
Not I.
With Mom in southern Florida and me in Minnetonka, MN, our Mother's Day consists of phone calls, e-mail cards and a food basket that unfortunately arrived DOA in Palm Beach. (Apparently no one appreciated that chocolate and cheese simply won't last forever in eighty degree weather without refrigeration....) Mom will use her credit for a Day of Beauty instead! My day will be busy with real estate, laundry, watching the exciting finale of The Cavendish Invitational Bridge Tournament on-line and some bridge play later this evening. My dad will squire Mom around in sunny Florida.
Yet, despite being almost 2,000 miles apart, I'll be thinking about my mom a lot today.
Life together did not run smoothly for the two of us - to say the least. My mom and I battled about the cleanliness of my room (or lack thereof!), what I wore, what I ate, where I went . . . yada yada yada. If you were looking for a candidate worthy of a black belt in nagging, my mom would be your woman. If you were searching for a child who could try the sanity of saints - I would be your kid.
Today, however, I realize more and more the wisdom of what my mom has tried to impart to me - and how fortunate I have been to have her.
Too many of my close friends won't be celebrating the day with their moms, not because of physical distance but because of the ultimate separation; their moms are no longer with us.
So - if you are among the fortunate ones, as I am, to still be able to enjoy your mom (and listen to one more withering nag), celebrate the day! And - if you are not - happiness to you as you reflect on all the joys of the days you spent together.
Happy Mom's Day, Mom!
Of course, Happy Mom's Day to all my Mom friends, too!
Like so much about the Bush presidency, the wedding of daughter Jenna brings out a strange strain of media bias and bitterness. Take as an example this Associated Press report, which recounts the history of First Family weddings over the course of the last 200+ years, from John Adams’ adninistration to present day. According to Leanne Italie, George Bush would have had a hard time explaining a White House wedding:
Bush’s wedding in tiny Crawford, Texas, on the other hand, is expected to be low-key — out of the view of prying media eyes.
“This is going to be such a different kind of situation,” said Katherine Jellison, an associate professor of history at Ohio University who chronicles the American obsession with marital pomp in her recent book, It’s Our Day.
“Jenna’s father is not running for re-election,” she said. “The frivolity of a big White House wedding in the middle of an unpopular war would have used up what little political capital he has.”
Gee, did it do that for Lyndon Johnson? In 1966, the Vietnam War hadn’t hit the peak of its unpopularity, but political pressure in opposition had certainly hit the mainstream. That didn’t stop Luci Baines Johnson from having her wedding at the White House in an elaborate ceremony, complete with television coverage.
The idea that it takes “political capital” to stage a wedding for a child of the President is patently absurd. Who besides the most extreme lunatics would demand an end to someone’s wedding because their parent didn’t have political capital? Better yet, what credibility would Bush lose on policy after hosting a wedding reception for his daughter at the White House?
With this sort of reporting about a wedding - does anyone for a moment think that a Republican administration has a whisker of a chance to get a fair hearing on issues of policy?
Yeah; right.
Twenty four hours of typepad difficulties; 2 days in Las Vegas to shoot photography for one of the world's most famous bridge tournaments. (Yes, I know I should be playing - but - that's another story!)
When I get an opportunity, I definitely will be posting. Until then....
Dr De Bruyn and a colleague were on Trypot beach at Marion Island to study elephant seals when they noticed a young, adult male Antarctic fur seal, in good condition, attempting to copulate with an adult king penguin of unknown sex.
The 16 stone seal first subdued the two-and-a-half stone penguin by lying on it. The penguin flapped its flippers and attempted to stand and escape - but to no avail.
The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.
After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted, the scientists reported.
Folks, you just can't make this stuff up.
A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.
A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."
My liberal buddies constantly tell me how Europe is so much more enlightened, more civilized, more compassionate than we in these United States. After reading about "plants rights", however, I can only wonder ... between the plants' rights and the animal rights groups, what are we supposed to eat - rocks?
What exactly is the problem with the American health-care system?
The problem is not that Americans don’t have fine doctors, medical technology, and treatments. American medicine is the envy of the world. The problem is not that most Americans lack adequate health insurance. The vast majority of Americans have private insurance, and our government spends many billions each year to provide even more.
The biggest problem with the American health-care system is one of cost and access, and as a result tens of millions of individuals have no insurance. For example, we currently spend for about 2.4 trillion dollars a year on health care. A decade from now that number, under current projections, will double to over four trillion dollars.
The Obama and Clinton response to these problems is to promise universal coverage, whatever its cost, and the massive tax increases, mandates, and government regulation that it imposes. But in the end this will accomplish one thing only. We will replace the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of the current system with the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of a government monopoly. We’ll have all the problems, and more, of private health care — rigid rules, long waits, and lack of choices, and risk degrading its great strengths and advantages including the innovation and life-saving technology that make American medicine the most advanced in the world.
I have a different approach. I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves. To that end, my reforms are built on the pursuit of three goals: paying only for quality medical care, having insurance choices that are diverse and responsive to individual needs, and restoring our sense of personal responsibility.
For those who think I never criticize Republicans and always castigate Democrats - please read and remember:
Obama is right. HRC and McCain? Well. As Professor Mankiw reports:
Yesterday I was on the NewsHour to talk about the gas tax holiday. I asked if there was another guest and the producer said, "We tried, but we couldn't find anyone to argue the other side (that the gas tax holiday made sense)."
You don't have to be Jewish to remember.
But there are those who can never forget.
One of the greatest blessings of living in America is our First Amendment, which protects the right of all of us to speak out without facing government persecution. People in other countries, even strong Western democracies, are not as fortunate.Be vigilant; no matter how offensive, better to have concepts open and discussed than hidden.
In America, there are efforts, particularly on college campuses, to silence voices of dissent through the imposition of punishments for stirring bad feelings. But most citizens still seem to understand the Founders’ wisdom in crafting the First Amendment: A vigorous exchange of ideas helps us solve problems, and protects other freedoms. Without a First Amendment, government officials would move quickly to silence the spread of information they found inconvenient or threatening to their power.
Perhaps turning food into transportation fuel would make sense if massive amounts of grain spoiled every year from a lack of demand, but that certainly isn’t the case. Farmers love the higher prices that come from the new demand to fill gas tanks, but higher prices have consequences for poorer nations that have just begun to be felt. Morally speaking, shouldn’t we feed people before we feed cars?
What makes this even more absurd is ethanol itself. It burns cleaner, but has significant problems as a transportation fuel. It has only two-thirds the potential energy of gasoline, which means more of it has to be used to get the same mileage. Ethanol has to be shipped by truck as it cannot be pumped through a pipeline, so much more energy has to get expended just to bring it to market. In order to use more than just a small amount in a mixture, car engines have to be designed differently to use it, which means more energy and resources have to go into producing the vehicles.
Every fill of the tank with ethanol uses the same amount of corn a child would eat in a year, and let’s not even talk about the amount of potable water used to grow the corn in the first place. Given the above, which is the better use of the corn?
