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STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

8/24/2011

 
Style and Substance
    The blog titled Days of Yore elicited this comment from reader, DS, about Senator Ron Paul: "He's a vicious, ideologue wolf in populist sheep's clothing." 
    My point was that Senator Paul’s policies, if enacted, would destroy the U.S. Yet I feel Paul believes what he says, unlike demagogue, Rick Perry, who believes in nothing but himself, or Mitt Romney, who believes in nothing at all.
    “The style is the man himself,” said George-Louis LeClerc. I can like a person while disagreeing with what he says. It’s left to each of us to separate substance from style.
    A public figure whose mild manner could not conceal viciousness, was Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush’s Secretary of Defense. Soft spoken, with contempt for his critics, he came across as bored and impatient, whether talking about downsizing the army or water-boarding prisoners of war. Listening to him felt like being in the fourth grade with a substitute teacher.
    This morning, on the radio, Rep. Leonard Lance, (R) New Jersey, calmly said that the “overwhelming motivation of those in the Tea Party is fiscal responsibility,” delivered as if stating that the earth is round. If Lance really believes it is responsible to reduce services to the middle class while not touching a dollar of the millions being passed to billionaires, he should join up with Ron Paul.
    Another style is the hellfire-and-brimstone thundering of Rick Perry, the echo-chamber howling of Michele Bachmann, the thuggish army-latrine profanity-laced  bellyaching of Donald Trump. Although each has individual bumps, it’s one style: strident, raucous, substance pre-agreed, audiences there to be fired up,  like professional wrestling, which ex-wrestler, Governor Jesse Ventura, called “an art form.” in both, the audience comes for the madcap buffoonery, performers and audience pandering to each other in a serio-comic dialogue, almost a game.
    Americans, it is said, are more swayed by emotion, which worries Obama backers. Capable of a stirring speech, Barack Obama is firmly planted in sweet reason. The Radical Right is ready willing and able to topple the U.S. from the world’s moral high ground. The Loopy Left, also ready and willing, is able only to cripple the coalition that elected Obama in 2008. From legitimate Left to sensible Center to reasonable Right, the choice is clear.


Paul Daniggelis
8/25/2011 02:16:43 am

Stuart - I have been reading your blogs regularly since they have been popping up on my machine. I have been shaking my head over each and every blog. I was prepared to summarize my view of your positions on the issues as - he has just been living in New York too long. New York, of course, been a bastion of Liberalism. In the El Paso Times this morning comes a story that has elicited my hope that New York may yet undergo a rennaissance of right thinking. I quote, "Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the New York City Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government . . . the department has dispatched undercover officers into minority neighborhoohs as part of a 'human mapping program . . .'"
Pardon me for redefining the euphemistically named Human Mapping Program as - profiling. Of course the left will protest these NYPD programs which are designed for your safety but I am hopeful that they will be allowed a free hand in controlling elements that are determined to destroy us.
Now, as far as most of the other issues you have commented on let me say that many of these liberal left programs would be fine if we could afford them - but we can't. The national debt was pretty much under control from the birth of the nation until the mid-sixties. That's when things got out of hand. Look at the charts on the internet and watch the spending soar. I, personally, blame much of this on the space program. (You may argue it is our wars that have cost us dearly and I may agree except where our national security REALLY IS threatened.) The money spent on the Space Program was another of those feel-good ideas that cost far mare than we could afford spend. A fraction of those moneys would have been better spent on a pipeline network throughout the US to move water from where there is too much to where there is too little. Enacted in the 1960's America would be a garden from coast to coast by now.
These are just a few of my views that I consider rational. Liberals will pounce on them perhaps as anti-Kennedy. Not so. I was a Liberal then and applauded the announced 'fly me to the moon' program with the rest of the US. I even cried when Kennedy was murdered. I am one those who will never be convinced that Oswald was the lone assassin. I am skeptical of government cover-ups like the Warren Commission. Indeed, the older I get, the less I know about what is true. We are in an age of relativism and I have reached an age where that is not acceptable. I have a theory about why we die (over and above the aging process). I think we die because we can no longer tolerate the changes society inevitably imposes on us. It is in the nature of things, just as I believe it is in the nature of things that confrontation, including wars, are inevitable. We are an aggressive species even if YOU are not. We are aggressive because we are territorial just like most of the animal kingdom. In another life I would like to have been an ethologist so that I could research the relationship between man and the rest of the animal world. We like to think we are better, superior, in God's image, etc. We may simply be evolutions highest yet flawed example of the animal kingdom. 'nuff said!

Brooklyn Joey
8/30/2011 01:36:50 pm

Monthly cost of Iraq War: $12 billion.

Projected total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan wars from inception through 2017: $3.2 - $4.0 trillion.

Cost to the U.S. taxpayer of the banking/mortgage catastrophe aided and abetted by the the G.W. Bush administration: $4.0 trillion.

Total inflation-adjusted cost of NASA since its inception in 1958: $850 billion. The entire space shuttle program cost around $200 billion. FYI: the two space shuttle explosions happened when Reagan and G.W. Bush made drastic cuts to NASA's budget, but expected it to fulfill its mandate unchanged. Perhaps a coincidence. Bill Clinton cut NASA's budget, but also scaled back its missions. No explosions. NASA currently consumes less than 1% of the annual budget of the United States.

The space program has created thousands of useful products and endless benefits for mankind, like the insulation in your house and in your clothing; the freeze-dried food in your cupboards; the wireless technology in your phones and computers; the medical instruments used for heart surgery; the devices in our bodies like joint replacements, hearing aids, and heart stents; safer flights because of advances in lightning protection, windshear and collision avoidance; and yes, those video cameras and database softwares that help prevent crime.

Ironically, the tea partiers and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives recently cut the funding for hurricane-tracking satellites. (Thankfully, the U.S. Senate thought otherwise.) Imagine if we had not had that technology to prepare for Tropical Storm Irene.

The conservatives are also upset over NASA's James Webb Telescope. It is projected to cost $8.7 billion, which is currently $2.2 billion over budget. (The $8.7 billion is included in the $850 billion mentioned above.) This telescope will replace the Hubble Telescope. It has the potential to discover new galaxies and show us the edges of our universe, perhaps peak into the void beyond. Why is it over budget? Because we're asking engineers to build things never before imagined. We are asking astronomers and physicists to think beyond accepted knowledge. The United States used to do this in ALL fields. Innovation + Imaginaton = WOW! Now we're spoiled and lazy, obese and complacent. But hey, if we can just get rid of that president we have, we can wave the flag and proclaim that we're number one again. It's that easy.

The Webb Telescope is scheduled to be launched in 2017 by an Arianne (French) rocket. The European Space Agency is helping to pay for this project. Cooperation with allies has historically proved very beneficial: WWII, the World Health Organizaton, the International Red Cross, taking out Libyan dictators (NATO) . . .

Why do the conservatives and the religious right want to kill the Webb Telescope and space exploraton (and public education) in general? Because we may discover life elsewhere, meaning we didn't all walk off an ark or out of a garden. We may answer some questions about our existence which are not written in "bibles." We may indeed find out why we get old and die.

Before you do die, please visit the Smithonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Was it so long ago that this country of ours dreamed of a brighter future and then made it happen?

urbisoler
1/6/2012 04:46:23 am

Brooklyn - A belated response. I had not seen your input 'til now. I think you missed my point. I'm not supporting the Bush or Reagan administrations when it comes to the national debt. (Although, try to remember that the holders of the purse strings - Congress - was in Democratic hands for 40 years before and during Reagan.) Indeed, it does not matter what political administration - Republican or Democratic - was in power AFTER the mid-1960's. That is when the debt crisis took off. The national debt had been on a relatively even keel since the 1770's until all hell broke loose.
My point is, and the Tea Party's point is, that we can't maintain current spending levels without a financial crisis. You may not agree. Fine. If you think increased spending is the way to go, go ahead and vote for Obama and reverse the House if you can. I'll keep my eye on Europe and see how well they weather the storm. I'm of Greek descent and it galls me to see them groveling for handouts. But they will have deserved their fate if they crumble.
PS I have been to the Air & Space Museum. Fine accomplishments but can we survive the long term? Stephen Hawking doesn't think so. He thinks the only way out of this mess is Space colonization (for an elite few I imagine). Planet Earth has had it. Ciao!


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    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

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           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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