All I want for Christmas (is for us to be better, for real)

With so much animus animating the world, not to mention the greed, the envy, the vanity, the wrath, and especially the pride, I have to wonder, sometimes, who the good guys really are.

They are each of us, I hope. And they can only be those among us who can find it within themselves to forgive such a wretched little species. Who else, after all, will help us pick ourselves up after we've torn one another apart?

So self-important, this sad little breed. So full of its own bitterness for the world that, for the most part, it alone has wrought.

Hatred and piety are the strange old standbies of our important differences. But, surely, they are not all that we have to offer. And, just as surely, they are not some blind path we will take for good. Or confuse, for long, as some wave of the future.

I guess I'm disappointed with the world today. A world a significant portion of which will celebrate in a few days the birth and life of a man who offered us a better example.

Even if we do not follow it. And even, thus, if his life and death occurred in vain.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps we can't be better. Because the world is such a dark and dangerous place and we find it just too tempting to use it as an excuse to be as ugly as we see fit, as well.

What a sad and hopeless punctuation mark that would be to our existence. And, perhaps, if that is the path we are choosing we should get about the business of choosing it and be done with it. No sense in lolligagging on our way to self-righteous self-immolation and mutually assured self-destruction.

Seems like such a stupid path for us to take. Given how little good is done. And how many people have and will always be destroyed in its wake.

But maybe that's all we have to offer.

Because it's so much easier than living with an open heart. And the last thing we could expect ourselves to do is the hard thing. Even if it happens to be the only thing that will ever do any real good.

I don't think that's true, personally. And history is both one long record of our inhumanity and serious failures and our propensity towards greater humanity and to be better over time.

I don't know why, exactly, we have this tendency to celebrate our worst impulses before we give way to our better angels. Why empires defend their bloodshed. Why slaveowners defend their holdings. Why Nazis and Communists indulge their power to destroy. Why all of us mock the compassion and decency that recognizes the evil in all of these. Other than the defense we feel for our own touch of evil.

I'm not sure why, exactly, humanity perpetually defends its inhumanity as wiser counsel. Other than to defend itself from honest challenge we feel too weak to accept.

All I know is that it is human. And that respecting and accepting, better, our humanity is more honest than pretending that its frailties only affect those few who failed in this moment.

And all I know is that I am tired of wondering who the good guys are because their animus and destructiveness looks so much like the bad guys.

It's time we put this ugly legacy behind us. So we can all learn to be better. For real. Just like the man said.

Keeping us honest

The most honest and even-handed coverage of the climate debate I've read to date.

When Science Becomes a Casuality of Politics

Be nice if we could learn to stop being such dicks when there are important matters to attend to.

In the meantime, someone's got to keep us honest, at least.

Change you can believe in (or else)

As good a description of the health care bill as I have seen.

Change Nobody Believes In

"And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new 'manager's amendment' that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that 'reform' has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

***
Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. 'Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills,' Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like 'community rating' because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed 'waste,' even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. 'The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice,' the Stanford professor wrote."

And in case you're concerned this is all a right-wing conspiracy, Robert Samuelson from the Washington Post adds his two cents.

Yes, it's all about Obama

"Despite Obama's eloquence and command of the airwaves, public suspicions are rising. In April, 57 percent of Americans approved of his 'handling of health care' and 29 percent disapproved, reports the Post-ABC News poll; in the latest survey, 44 percent approved and 53 percent disapproved. About half worried that their care would deteriorate and that health costs would rise.

These fears are well-grounded. The various health-care proposals represent atrocious legislation. To be sure, they would provide insurance to 30 million or more Americans by 2019. People would enjoy more security. But even these gains must be qualified. Some of the newly insured will get healthier, but how many and by how much is unclear. The uninsured now receive 50 to 70 percent as much care as the insured. The administration argues that today's system has massive waste. If so, greater participation in the waste by the newly insured may not make them much better off.

The remaining uninsured may also exceed estimates. Under the Senate bill, they would total 24 million in 2019, reckons Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. But a wild card is immigration. From 1999 to 2008, about 60 percent of the increase in the uninsured occurred among Hispanics. That was related to immigrants and their children (many American-born). Most illegal immigrants aren't covered by Obama's proposal. If we don't curb immigration of the poor and unskilled -- people who can't afford insurance -- Obama's program will be less effective and more expensive than estimated. Hardly anyone mentions immigrants' impact, because it seems insensitive.

Meanwhile, the health-care proposals would impose substantial costs. Remember: The country already faces huge increases in federal spending and taxes or deficits because an aging population will receive more Social Security and Medicare. Projections the Congressional Budget Office made in 2007 suggested that federal spending might rise almost 50 percent by 2030 as a share of the economy (gross domestic product). Since that estimate, the recession and massive deficits have further bloated the national debt.

Obama's plan might add almost an additional $1 trillion in spending over a decade -- and more later. Even if this is fully covered, as Obama contends, by higher taxes and cuts in Medicare reimbursements, this revenue could have been used to cut the existing deficits. But the odds are that the new spending isn't fully covered, because Congress might reverse some Medicare reductions before they take effect. Projected savings seem 'unrealistic,' says Foster. Similarly, the legislation creates a voluntary long-term care insurance program that's supposedly paid by private premiums. Foster suspects it's 'unsustainable,' suggesting a need for big federal subsidies.

Obama's overhaul would also change how private firms insure workers. Perhaps 18 million workers could lose coverage and 16 million gain it, as companies adapt to new regulations and subsidies, estimates the Lewin Group, a consulting firm. Private insurers argue that premiums in the individual and small-group markets, where many workers would end up, might rise an extra 25 to 50 percent over a decade. The administration and the CBO disagree. The dispute underlines the bills' immense uncertainties. As for cost control, even generous estimates have health spending growing faster than the economy. Changing that is the first imperative of sensible policy.

So Obama's plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Health benefits are overstated, long-term economic costs understated. The country would be the worse for this legislation's passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of 'universal coverage.' What it's not is leadership."

There's more in both pieces worth reading. But the most important problem, frankly, with the bill is Democrats' attempt to force Americans to trust legislation that they don't trust to resolve our problems with health care. Without even really listening to the concerns.

The advantage for opponents by this manner of governing is that it makes it all the easier to just kill this thing entirely with a new majority and start completely fresh.

Like Republicans before them, Democrats are about to learn a very serious lesson in governance. If you think that assertions of overwhelming power can trump substantive concerns in a democratic discussion and debate with voters who can elect otherwise, you got another think coming. And voters will throw your asses right out of office until your party gets the message.

Republicans got their message, in part. It will take several cycles.

But illiberal forces who think they can turn the clock backwards on genuine liberal progress, meaning progress that promotes greater liberty and responsibility, are in for a very rude awakening.

Because, as it turns out, Americans like their freedom. When they can finally see more up close and personal what the alternative looks like.

And they like it for good reason. Because for all of our bumbling and failures and, frankly, their creation of most of the problems in the current health care system, Americans are in a better position to make better choices about their health care and how to correct them than the Federal government ever was. And, ultimately, most of the problems in the system will need the kind of changes that only individual Americans can offer for their own lives, and not ones that can be coerced by anyone else.

Americans may not know what will work. But they can get a sense of what won't work. And Americans are right, by my lights, with so many variations of market distortion in this legislation, that this bill will make our health care woes worse, not better.

And what Democrats need to get clear about, right now, is that change you are forced to believe in is not change you will ever really believe in at all.

Big America

Matt Welch says the obvious when he calls out Paul Krugman for the open, unabashed, inconsistently reasoning hypocrit that he is and just happens to make the most promising suggestion for health care reform I have heard to date.

Paul Krugman's Selective Effigies

First on Paul:

"The New York Times columnist on Aug. 7:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there's no comparison. I've gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can't find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. [...]

So this is something new and ugly.

Krugman today:

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy."

In debate, that's called a double-turn. In life it's called "you really don't know what the fuck you think, do you, except for who you hate?"

Then on the substance of the health care bill:

"Here's a cost-saving reform I've heard of, that's not in there, because the president rejected it at the very beginning of this process: Place individuals on equal tax footing as employers when it comes to purchasing health insurance plans, so that we can transition from the post-WWII Company Man artifact of health-insurance-as-reward-for-employment, to a competition-spurring, cost-reducing model of individuals owning and shopping around for their own policies. In other words, markets, not mandates.

As Peter Suderman keeps pointing out, this plan doubles down on most everything that's bad with the current system. Pretending in the face of mounting evidence that this limping husk of a bill contains every bold reform idea there is might just be one reason why it's not very popular. At some point, people just stop believing you."

That last part is what hits home. It's the part that progressives just can't seem to get clear about, yet. Everyone knows that this bill has no bold new ideas and noone believes that it will fix the problems in the system. Because it is the same old New Deal-era ideas that voters grew skeptical of a long time ago when America first started unraveling the legacy of unintended consequences from both that era of legislation and the experiments of the Great Society back in the 80's and 90's.

And because Americans know in their hearts, for good reason, that it is more freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, and not more government that are America's most enduring values.

What the political class is having a hard time accepting, right now, is that Americans have confidence in themselves even when their politicians do not.

For good reason. Because it really is the American people and not the American political class that are the source of America's and all liberal democratic peoples' most honest and sustaining progress. Always has been. Always will be.

And no amount of bullshit out of Washington will ever undermine that confidence.

And that's a good thing. Not something to be forced out of existence.

The only people who think different are those who lack the confidence necessary for America to tackle it's difficult health care problems most effectively and honestly.

And who in the world would want those people in charge of the process?

Not Americans, as it turns out. To the chagrin of leftists everywhere. And that is a damned shame.

When it's not a sign of an America bigger than the smaller visions of its political masters.

And I'll take a bigger America over smaller would-be-masters any day of the week.

Making a difference

Had a kid request this Cranberries song, the other day. An era when songs like this one really did make a difference in the world.



This kid's going through a serious Cranberries phase, right now. Can't tell you how much that touches me given how much I loved the Cranberries growing up. Songs like this one and U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday helped create the political climate necessary to end the violence in Northern Ireland. And it moves me, a lot, actually, that a kid at a school for kids not terribly moved by much, except for their own egos, too often, was moved by Dolores and her motley crew on this song and all of their gorgeous music.

And after a long conversation with this kid, I felt like maybe I was making a difference in this job that I haven't felt in quite awhile, actually.

Maybe I am the sum of more than just all my mistakes. Which have been plentiful in my life. And felt mighty weighty this semester.

Perhaps I have something to offer. Perhaps he does. Perhaps we all do.

We shall see.

Maybe we really can do better

How refreshing. Journalism that is moving and big-hearted, rather than petty and small-minded.

Chris Henry, dead at 26, could have been a role model

Be a downright shame, wouldn't it, if everyone aspired to be bigger, like this? World just be a damned mess of violence and mean-spiritedness, pettiness, and narrow-mindedness, and general hard-heartedness if everyone was this soft and compassionate. This decent.

It's a good thing that this generation has finally transcended humanity's long history of indecency and inhumanity. And finally put the compassionate amongst us in their place.

Because the last thing we need is more kids like Chris Henry, and everyone else, for that matter, when we're honest, turning things around. No matter what the cynics, including ourselves, when that's the case, have to say on the matter.

The most important question history offers

When all is said and done, the problem with most of human history is pretty straightforward.

A lot of petty, small-minded people having a hard time facing honestly that it is their smallness and pettiness that has so unhaltingly torn down so many of even their own best intentions. Not to mention their own straightforward self-interest. And, most importantly, everyone else around them.

There is a reason why we study enlightened self-interest in history classes. Looking after others' interests does tend to do good for the person doing the helping as much as for the person being helped.

And much of human history is watching folks who have not figured that out fucking things up for everyone else, including themselves.

And for much of human history that means us, as much as anyone else.

Am I one of those people? Are you?

The most important questions history has to offer that I know of.

The way I am

My second favorite look. Right out of bed. No makeup. Just being herself.



Having an unbelievable voice doesn't hurt either.

Second only to that look of total vulnerability. Love unconditional.

Random reflections on public education and life

I must say, at this point, that there is literally nothing that makes sense to me in public education as it exists today.

So many people making so many decisions for everyone else for so little purpose except to exaggerate their already exaggerated sense of self-importance.

It's strange to me, sometimes, that education, for me, was an opportunity to develop my own sense of independent and critical thought. And that both are so thoroughly discouraged at all levels of education except when it conforms with the predispositions, often ideological and rarely any-other-logical-at-all, of those who have the power to enforce them.

Life, like education, often doesn't make much sense, I think, at this point. Except when the bullshit begins to unravel.

And, then, finally, some real progress can be made.

What progress sounds like

Whether folks know it or not, this is the future.



There are plenty of places in life where we will need to use blunt force because no alternatives really do exist.

But the notion that more force, more recriminiation, more vengeance, more punitiveness, the notion that treating people worse really is the path to progress is just kind of silly and not very serious as a path to genuine progress.

Progress means people getting treated better. Always. Always been so. Will always be so.

And no amount of rationalization otherwise will ever trump that. Ever.

Why? Because treating people like shit has consequences. Consequences we are all dealing with, right now, when we're not bullshitting otherwise.

Political parties, like private citizens, will have to deal with some hard knocks until they get that figured out. But we will definitely be learning those lessons, over time. Why? Because things won't get better until we do.

And, bottom-line, progress means things getting better.

And no amount of the world turning into a shitheap will ever successfully bullshit itself otherwise.

No matter who's shoveling the bullshit.

Progress is people getting treated better. It's people getting more compassionate. Not less. It's people getting more understanding. Not less. It's the world getting better. Not worse.

No matter who bullshits otherwise.

We will be treating one another better. And more responsibility for that and the good things that come with it. Believe that.

Because that's what progress look like.

And this is what progress sounds like.

It's a beautiful future, ain't it?

Yeah, I know. Goddamn gorgeous.

The future is intimidation and fear

The tell-tale line in E.J. Dionne's sloppy and less than honest attempt to synthesize a foreign policy in the Washington Post today.

A Foreign Policy Based on Moral Balance

"But these are the days of European second thoughts: Obama is still interesting, he's still not George W. Bush, but what can he show for his efforts? His Israeli-Palestinian initiative has gone nowhere. The fruits of his new overtures to Iran, Russia and North Korea are far from obvious. Where is the climate change legislation that was supposed to get through Congress?

And why did Obama skip the anniversary celebrations of the Berlin Wall's fall? OK, Europeans say, we understand he sees that the future lies in Asia, but did he have to rub it in? And can't he find at least one European leader to bond with?

In the midst of such complaints and questions, I sat with a group of Americans and Europeans to listen to a live broadcast of Obama's Oslo speech before the opening of a conference organized by the French Institute of International Relations. For me, the address was Obama's answer to his critics, both American and European.

To begin with, the president reminded us why he had seized the imaginations of so many in the first place. The speech was commonly described as a defense of "just war," and it was -- a rigorous, unblinking argument for why violence and the threat of violence can be necessary on behalf of the right and the good."

First of all, if the President thinks that the future lies in Asia, I certainly hope he's referring to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and the other genuinely strong economies and liberal democracies in the region. If leftists really think that the future lies in China, they have another think coming. And the world will not only watch that situation unravel until China goes democratic. The world will remember what self-indulgent, self-righteous shitheads in the West rationalized that brutal regime for their own ideological purposes for the rest of our liberal history. If there is anything that leftists could do, right now, to undermine confidence in their ideology, rationalizing the totalitarian impulses of their ideological brethren ranks right up with the list of "what bonehead moves put left-wing ideology in the trash bin of history."

Secondly, and most importantly, if E.J. thinks that violence and the threat of violence are the wave the future, he has a lot of history that he might consult on where that thinking leads us. Because it's been responsible for more bad than good, on balance, by far. And rationalizing that bad in the name of good is exactly what has fucked humanity since it's inception. Might makes right is a line to caution against such thinking, not to reinforce it.

And if E.J. thinks that he has done an endrun around such wisdom because he found the right cause, history will undoubtedly offer a cold shower dose of reality for that kind of arrogance.

In fact, it has.

The unfailingly failing agenda the Obama Administration is exactly the kind of cold shower leftists could use, right now. If they could get honest with themselves, that is.

And the fact that they can't is exactly what Acton meant.

This is why Orwell wrote those books. To help us see through this bullshit.

And we will continue to get the governments we deserve until we do exactly that.

Power and responsibility

If there is anything I have come to realize, sadly, from this period, it is that power, far too often, is an explicit exercise in escaping responsibility, much of the time. It is about blaming someone else for the mistakes of those who have it. It is about the absence of integrity, far too often.

Not always. But too often to count.

That is why Lord Acton was so skeptical of it and those who have it. And he was right. And that kind of corruption does not discriminate based on ideology or party or any other factor other than the independent integrity of those involved. And even that is not too difficult to compromise with enough muscle. Which is why people do it. No matter how much it builds dishonesty - dishonesty, especially, about the effectiveness of governing efforts - into government.

It doesn't have to be that way. But we'd have to get more honest for it to change. And the most important bit of honesty would be admitting the limits of power to improve our lives.

One day, perhaps. Until then. We get the government we vote for.

And thank our lucky stars that we have opposition parties, checks and balances, and all the ways that we can check and challenge power in liberal democracies to make them more liberal and more genuinely democratic, as we move forward more honestly.

In the meantime, we live with the consequences of the lies we tell ourselves and one another in lieu of something more honest.

And we move, hopefully, toward a day when we can be more honest and compassionate, and everything that is entailed with more genuine progress.

Coming to terms

I'm coming to terms, today. With failure. And tragedy.

In my case, it's a bigger picture failure and tragedy. Not mine, personally, necessarily. Although there's plenty of that to face, as well. Just coming to terms with the limits of my efforts.

If there is one overriding concern in my life it is helping people understand just how much people are capable of in their lives. Just how capable humanity is, if we were decide to fulfill that potential.

Most people can have great lives, is the truth. Lives they love. Lives with lots of love and deep fulfillment, and plenty of everything they might need or want.

There are people whose destinies are more genuinely limited by circumstances beyond their control. Iranians or North Koreans who cannot escape the prisons that are their respective countries. People who suffer any multitude of tragedies - AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, cancer - that they have limited ability to halt. People who have life experiences that they cannot predict or control - murder or murder of a family member, accidental death or disease, and losses of every conceivable source - that they are unable, for various reasons to prevent.

There are people who experience tragedy that they cannot do anything about.

But most of us don't.

Most of us have circumstances that can be changed, knowledge that can be discovered, and relationships that can be improved.

Most misery in the world, truth be told, is foolish drama borne of people all too limited in their understanding, of the world and of themselves, and all too prone to aggression and control and any number of all too human, mistaken, foolish reactions to their circumstances that often have unintendended consequences. More often than not, sometimes.

I am one of those people. Too many times to count, in fact. I will be tomorrow, too. And the day after that. And the day after that, as well. All of us are. All of us will be. From here until our funny, tragic little species ends its run on this earth.

Most of our conflicts have reasonable and honest resolutions. If we decide to resolve them, that is. Most of our problems have reasonable and honest solutions. If we decide to seek them out.

Our problem, humanity's problem, generally, is that, far too often, we decide we are too frustrated and impatient, too angry and disillusioned, too self-involved, frankly, to seek such resolutions. That they are unworthy of our effort or commitment or whatever excuse we have today for why we just choose not to do anything real about our concerns and instead opt for momentary feelings of self-satisfaction over real and honest resolution of important concerns over time.

Our most foolish problems, frankly, as far as I'm concerned, are the the ones that involve conflicts between one another that can only be resolved with more understanding, of the people as much as of the problems, that we instead choose to engage in any variation of aggression, manipulation, or attempts to dominate and control of one another so accustomed we are to our more aggressive and less thoughtful natures.

I've come to terms with the fact that there are any number of people in the world that could be more genuinely happy, have their needs more honestly met, even have many of their wants more satisfied while having their deepest needs fulfilled, if only they would learn to treat themselves and one another better and learn more about the world and one another than fight and overpower one another.

But, in the meantime, there is much pointless tragedy. And failure.

We can and likely will get this turned around, at some point. It will take much time. Much failure. Much useless tragedy. Just as it always has. Enough failure eventually creates opportunity for learning, if we will take up that opportunity.

Who knows. We shall see.

In the meantime. Much avoidable failure and tragedy. My own as much as anyone else's.

And so our story goes. Human history. A story of failure and tragedy that finally yields, for some, to learning and progress. And the freedom to translate that learning into real progress.

But, for now. Failure and tragedy. My own included.

Same as it ever was.

Let's hope it leads somewhere more hopeful.

In the meantime, enjoy some Ingrid.

Force as a governing philosophy, the death throws

It's ironic, isn't it?

That it is ordinary students and ordinary people in Iran, a country that really believes in force as a governing philosophy and practices it more brutally and without conscience than most governments and countries in the world that are making the most courageous and open challenges to this ugliness?

Iran cracks down on dissent in universities

That it is Americans and activists, political leaders, and other citizens of freer and more comfortable liberal democracies who are rationalizing force as a governing philosophy most publicly, right now?

Goes to show.

Progress has not a damn thing to do with power. To the contrary, progress is when people find the courage to stand up to overwhelming shows of force for the cause of freedom.

This philosophy needs to die for good. The 20th century, and really most of world history, is one long indictment of this philosophy in all of its variants.

And it is people thousands of miles away in a country unfamiliar with the ways of freedom and more honest democracy who are demonstrating for the rest of us what courage really looks like.

And if we aren't going to lead, the least we can do is have the decency to follow. Or get out of the way.

And offer support to those with that kind of courage, even if we struggle to find it within ourselves.

My favorite look

Am I the only man who thinks that women look most attractive when they feel genuinely loved?



And when they have genuine love to offer?

When they can trust that love? And when they can trust the men who offer it?

I want a woman who can trust me enough to have that look for the rest of her life.

I love seeing a woman at ease with herself and with life.



My number one job in life is to make it real.

For everyone in my life. As much as humanly possible. But especially for the woman in my life.

Because I love that look.

When a woman loves without hesitation.

Because she can trust the man she loves.

And trusts her own heart enough to love him back unconditionally.

My favorite look.

Final sign of the impending apocalypse

It's official. We're all going to hell.



Hope everyone brought their sunscreen.

In political news today

So much ego. So little to show for it.

Story at 11.

Why cynicism is for losers

Why not marry an asshole, if they're pretty or rich enough?

Because who wants to be around an asshole all the time?

Other assholes, that's who.

Enjoy assholes.

It's all yours.

What kind of nation are we gonna be?

A nation of thugs? Or a nation of decent people?

Reading the coverage of the President Obama's commitment to Afghanistan, I am struck by what dicks populate this great country of ours.

At a moment when Afghanis and American soldiers need us to stand behind the brave efforts of folks risking their lives to challenge an Afghan future dominated by Islamist thugs, all Americans can do is snipe.

Why? Because the effort is unworthy? Because President Obama is a socialist determined to make America weak? Because conservatives are warmongers who want more Afghanis dead to appease their lust for American imperial power?

Obviously not. To everyone except the most self-centered and self-righteous.

The reason why we are sniping, the reason why so much of our politics is poisoned and dysfunctional right now is pretty straightforward.

It's because we're a nation of assholes.

Or maybe we're a nation pretending to be assholes. It's hard to keep track, these days. And instead of being honest about that, we've decided to pretend that not giving a shit and indulging our pettiest, ugliest, most self-centered impules really is the future of America and the world.

Simple question.

Since we started down this road - this road of who can be the biggest asshole to make all our problems go way - what's gotten better?

Where? Can you name one place where things have gotten better being a bigger asshole?

I can't. We've become a bunch of sniping, petty, small-minded dicks, is what we've done.

All while pretending that being sniping, petty, small-minded dicks really is the best that humanity has to offer.

It's fuckin' sad is what it is. A bunch of tough characters whining about how the world doesn't share my particular brand of sanctimony. It's goddamn embarrassing, is what it is.

Weak, I believe is the term for it.

Because being an asshole is weak. It's cowardly. It's one long excuse for why someone can't face up to why they're being a dick. And that being a dick in the name of a cause is still being a dick. Largely because it's one long excuse for why I don't have to listen or engage people who disagree with me because I'm right all the time. Caring about others and what they think just weakens my resolve to make them do my bidding whether they fuckin' like it or not. Not because I'm a dick, mind you. Just because I know better than you and everyone else.

In other words, because I'm a dick. Because I'm too weak to admit that none of the above is, ever has been, or ever will be true of anyone. Ever. Not ever. Never has been and never will be. No matter my protestations meant to make it look like I'm that guy or gal to the contrary.

So far, America and the world has been pretending that being a nation or a world of assholes really was what the brighter future held.

It's kind of stupid, really, when you step away and stop defending it. But that's the road we took. To defend our own brand of assholes, obviously. To take down the other guys' assholes. Who defend their assholes, of course, to take down our assholes. And round and round we go.

It's a fucking' joke, is what it is.

Real courage doesn't operate this way.

Real courage defends against aggression, for real. It doesn't rationalize it for ourselves. Real courage gets more compassionate and loving. Including for our tendencies to become bigger assholes. It doesn't adopt assholedom as a philosophy of life or politics.

The only people who do that are assholes.

So the question in front of us is: Are we going be go on being a nation of assholes? Or are we going to be a nation of decent people? Are we going to keep taking up for the assholes? Or are we going to get more honest about what consequences this attitude has had in the world?

I care about assholes, is the truth. As much as anything, because I've been one enough times in my life. And most people I know have been one at one point in their lives. Without exception, really.

But I'm not going to go around pretending that this is the way things are supposed to be.

And I can't feel anything but damned disappointed and embarrassed by a country that would behave otherwise.

So while we choose whether we are going to help Afghanis defend themselves against Islamist goons or not, and defend ourselves against their buddies, in the process, we also need to make another choice.

We're doing this all in the name of what?

So we can look more like them?

Or less like them?

And more like our best selves?

That is the fundamental choice America faces right now.

And I have some confidence, that we have the courage to choose the path of greater understanding, compassion, and decency. And respect for the consciences of those around us. Where real strength lies. And what distinguishes us from the murderous thugs we're fighting.

Because everything else looks fuckin' weak to me.

Little children with big sticks

Constantly fucking up. But never, ever wrong.

The perils of being commander in chief

"In an open letter to Obama on his Web site Monday, liberal activist Michael Moore wrote that by increasing troops in Afghanistan, 'you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you.'

'With just one speech tomorrow night,' Moore continued, 'you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike.'"

Or perhaps some leftists might rethink the idea that they are never wrong ever. About anything, no less.

We are such a stupid and goofy species, most of the time. Little children with big sticks. We beat enough people with them, we begin to believe that our sticks make everything right. And everything is right because of our sticks. And round and round we go with such foolishness like kids in angry bumper cars.

It's so funny to watch my favorite species of special people shirk off greater wisdom for the immediate gratification of egos in desperate need of attention. Might makes right. Revenge best served cold. And my personal favorite.

I always have the right answers.

Well. Thank goodness for that. I suppose we can all sleep well, now, that every single one of us, all in contradiction, to boot, have all the right answers. And the sticks to prove it.

What a bunch of dumbasses we all are. Lovable little dumbasses.

Constantly fucking up.

But never, ever wrong.

Come to think of it. Story of my life.