A unifying force

Yahoo News ran the following Time Magazine article this morning:

Phelps v. Snyder: Supreme Court Case Tackles Hate Speech

 

AP – Shirley Phelps-Roper, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., protests in front of the … 

 

By ADAM COHEN - Wed Sep 29, 5:55 am ET

After Matthew Snyder, a U.S. Marine, was killed in Anbar province in Iraq in 2006, some uninvited guests showed up at his funeral at St. John's Catholic Church in Westminster, Md. The Rev. Fred W. Phelps Sr. of the Westboro Baptist Church and several family members came from Kansas holding signs reading "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "God Hates Fags" and "You're Going to Hell."

There is no question it was hateful stuff. Phelps' self-styled church preaches that God is punishing America because of its tolerance for homosexuality, especially in the military. The Phelps family makes its point by holding protests at military funerals. The Phelpses also posted an "epic poem" online entitled "The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder," which, among other things, says to his parents, "you raised him for the devil."

Snyder's father, Albert Snyder, sued. He said that the protests, at the funeral of his only son, made him violently ill. He prevailed on his claims of invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress and won a large damage award, but that ruling was reversed on appeal.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case [which revolve around free speech].....

Perhaps some slack should be cut for the Reverend Phelps and his followers on the grounds that they are obviously insane: If you're anti-homosexual, why protest against the armed forces, which are themselves bastions of anti-gay sentiment? And if you want to win people over to your cause, is there any possible worse way to do it than to harass the grieving relatives at the funeral of a young man who just gave his life for his (and your) country?

(Or maybe Phelps is a secret operative for the gay cause; if so, he's quite effective.)

In the meantime, let us enjoy this one brief, shining moment of national unity, as Democrats and Republicans put aside their partisan squabbling and unite in the commonality of their feelings about Phelps. 

Tax brackets

There has been a lot of publicity recently about whether or not Congress should let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest taxpayers, i.e., single people making above $200,000 a year or married couples making above $250,000.

We've all heard the arguments for and against, with those for letting them expire saying that the wealthiest should pay their fair share and that we need to reduce the deficit. Those against letting them expire say that doing so would hurt small businesses and that in many communities that amount of money doesn't really make you wealthy.

I lean towards extending the tax cuts, but it's not a passionate feeling.

What I do feel strongly about -- and am surprised there hasn't been any talk about -- is how ludicrous it is to have only one tax bracket for people making above $250,000. True, a single guy making $200,000 in, say, Nebraska, is going to have a pretty nice lifestyle. But a married couple in Manhattan who both work and make $250,000 to support themselves and three children are not rich by any stretch. They will have very little discretionary spending money.

So why should they be taxed at the same rate as a couple who make a million dollars a year? There should be gradations of tax rates for those who make over half a million a year, a million a year, and five million a year. To lump a hedge fund manager who makes ten million a year in with a dentist and his accountant wife who together make a quarter million a year is ludicrous. They should be in different tax brackets.

Of course, it's the hedge fund managers and their ilk who finance political campaigns (both Democrat and Republican) for the most part, so don't expect any change.

Addendum, 9/30/10: The very next day the NY Times ran an article saying the exact same thing. I take it all back!

Arthur "Pinch " Sulzberger II

The following AP article appeared on Yahoo News today: 

NKorea: Kim Jong Il's son named to political posts


SEOUL, South Korea – The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was elected to leadership roles in the ruling Workers' Party, state media said early Wednesday, bolstering speculation he's being groomed to succeed his father as leader of the nuclear-armed nation.

The announcement of Kim Jong Un's election to key party positions came a day after Kim Jong Il made him a four-star general. The announcement of his promotion marked his official debut in North Korean state media.

The son was named vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission as well as to the party's Central Committee, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. The posts would be the son's first known political posts.

Kim Jong Un is 28 years old. What an amazing military career he must have had to already be a four star general at that tender age.

It's always good to see merit rewarded, whether in a communist country or just at a leftist newspaper.

Needed: a gentleman farmer

Spoke to my son the other day. He is finishing up basic training at Ft. Benning. Among other questions, I asked him what the drill sergeants were like. He said they were fine, not at all the sadists they are sometimes portrayed as in the movies. He said they were mostly just normal guys who had been assigned the job even if they hadn't necessarily wanted it.

The concept of having people do jobs they don't particularly want has some merit. Over time, the Army must have noticed that certain types gravitated towards the job of drill sergeant, and these were often the people least suited for the job. So they started assigning people that job whether or not they wanted it. This probably saved a lot of recruits a lot of unnecessary grief at the hands of men who wanted free rein to indulge their bullying tendencies.

Often, people gravitate to jobs for the worst of reasons. Child molesters become scout troop leaders, or priests; sadists become interrogators or prison guards. If these jobs were somehow assigned more randomly, there would be fewer of the wrong people drawn to them. A pederast might not be happy working at an old age home, but at least he would have less opportunity to do mischief.

We live in a free society and certainly people should be free to pursue whatever career they want. And nobody would want a society which assigned occupations by lottery. Perhaps what we need is simply more psychological screening for certain jobs -- like scout troop leader or prison guard.

One of the jobs which could use a little more psychological screening is that of politician. Too often, politicians are narcissists and even sociopaths. These are people who crave public approval and just attention in general. Becoming a politician is a complicated process that requires connections, skill at fundraising, and an ability to glibly lie. These are not the skills we would necessarily want in a leader; but they are the ones our system breeds.

Given this, wouldn't it be better for a committee of wise men to just pick a President? This is of course wildly unrealistic: who would pick the committee of wise men? But think of how much better a President we could get.

George Washington, after leading the Revolutionary Army to victory, retired to his farm. According to our history books, he was then essentially drafted to become our first President. He is, to my knowledge, the last man to become President reluctantly. In the last eighty years, most of our Presidents have schemed and plotted and connived and lied their way to the job. (The sole exception might be John F. Kennedy, whose father schemed and plotted and connived JFK's way to the top.)

Wouldn't it be preferable, psychologically speaking, to have someone who didn't so obviously lust for the job? Wouldn't it be better, rather than to have a man who will do or say anything to get the job, to have one whose initial reaction is, I don't really want that job?

To effect this, we would have to pluck someone out of obscurity. Perhaps we could draft a gentleman farmer. Or a war hero. Or a high school teacher. It would certainly be better than our current system of most ambitious (and thus, often, worst) man wins. We might not get someone who was prepared for the stress of the job, but we also wouldn't get an arrogant, dishonest man with a great sense of entitlement, either. The only requirements would be good character and an IQ over 150.

Such a system would probably be unworkable, but it does have its merits.

Inspirational

The story of an incredible hero, which ends on the perfect note:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/unbreakable_nwd2yUdK4KoALnCrJDXfsI

Art imitates life -- too well

The following article appeared in the NY Times online edition this afternoon:

Rusting in a Crane Yard, Steel Art With a Pedigree

Richard Perry/The New York Times

A massive sculpture by Richard Serra stands in a fenced lot in the South Bronx. 

By Sam Dolnick

To see gargantuan steel sculptures fashioned by Richard Serra, you could visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, or the Ida: Beacon, 60 miles north of New York City. Or you could go to a crane yard near a heating-oil terminal in Port Morris, an industrial section of the South Bronx.

There, amid belching smokestacks and clanging delivery trucks, sits artwork made by Mr. Serra, a secret grace note in a decidedly ungraceful block. The briny air from the river just steps away blows across the steel plates, bent in a trademark Serra arc that would be recognized on the moon — which, in the art world, Port Morris might as well be.

This is just too perfect. Most of Serra's sculptures look like a part of the hull of a rusty old oil tanker, and they would actually look far more at home in a shipyard than at the Guggenheim. It certainly doesn't look at all out of place in this heating oil terminal. The article describes his work as a "secret grace note." It's probably a very well kept secret -- exactly zero people who drive by the yard probably recognize it as art.

In the picture above, the heavy duty construction truck actually looks more like art than Serra's sculpture; at least there's a certain beauty to its functionality, whereas the "sculpture" is perfectly useless. (Doesn't "sculpture" imply that some sculpting has gone on?) Serra's work looks like a misplaced factory smokestack, or perhaps one of those containers where they store the salt they put on snowy roads. It's probably the ugliest thing in that terminal yard.

But Sam Dolnick, the author of the Times article, doesn't feel that way. In a later paragraph he says: 


Whether art or art-to-be, it is striking just the same. Seen from the lot next door, it is a rusty mirage, an amber curve that overshadows a nearby crane truck and stands next to a corrugated tin shed of similar size if not sensuality. When the sun hits the delicate outer slope, it shimmers. In place of the usual curatorial card that might provide some insight as to the material or inspiration behind the work, there is a sign saying, “No Trespassing, No Dumping.” 

No dumping? Oops, too late.

I've been told that a large percentage of Times reporters are gay. I'm a supporter of gay rights -- as I've stated many times in this blog -- but the above paragraph sets my gaydar clanging like a fleet of fire engines on their way to a five alarm. So I'm mystified by Dolnick's reference to the color of the ship's hull as "amber." Gays are generally good with colors. And whatever hue that rusty old monstrosity is, it's not amber, which is the color of honey. 

Dolnick is not the only one who appreciates the emperor's new outfit. Here he quotes another fan: 


Told of the unlikely exhibition, Eric Stark, curator of the New School Art Collection, made the pilgrimage one recent morning to see for himself. “Wow,” he said, walking up to the fence. “If you’ve seen enough of these ellipses, it just screams out that this is a Richard Serra.”

Nearby, a shopping cart lay in the shrubs. Used condoms and decomposing cardboard littered the ground. “I find the whole thing incredibly poetic,” Mr. Stark said.

True enough: if a Serra sculpture is art, then used condoms are poetry. 

I find the whole thing incredibly perfect. (Not the "art," the irony.)

IQ test: Which face doesn't belong with the others?

A: Rahm Emanuel's, simply because he's far more demonic-looking than the other three (Ted Bundy, John Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer).

Narcissists in action

I know a guy who likes to talk about himself. When you see him, he'll tell you what he's been up to, how his workouts are going, and what his plans are. If you start to talk about yourself, he'll mumble "I gotta go now," and leave.

If I were the only one who'd noted this pattern, I might assume it was due to me being so boring. But I've heard others say they've noticed the same thing. He's a pleasant guy, I've never seen him get nasty, and he can be generous. But he only wants to talk about himself.

When my children were on the local swim team, I would often chat with the other parents. The majority of the parents were polite, and would ask how my children were swimming. But there was a subset of parents, a small but unmistakable minority, who would come rushing up to me, tell me what amazing time their child had just done, wait for my approval (which I would usually give), and then go flouncing off. Again, these were not nasty people; but their subject of conversation rarely varied.

Occasionally their children would actually have done a noteworthy time. But it was always the same parents who would talk only about their children, while never asking about anyone else's. And the polite parents would never fail to ask about other people's children. Eventually, both sets of behaviors became very predictable.

My only regret was that I gave the first set of parents my approval.

How much time a person spends speaking about himself, vs. how much time he is willing to spend talking about you (or at least a neutral subject), is a very direct measure of his narcissism.

Or at least of his stupidity and self-indulgence.

Think of everyone you know in those terms. It's a worthwhile exercise.

Superficiality vs. good taste

We're constantly told as we're growing up that we're not supposed to judge others by their appearance -- although everyone does it. But it's my impression that those most aware of the effect that beauty has on them are those best able to separate people's personalities from their looks. Those who never pause to consider someone's features are more apt to conflate appearance with personality. Is that preferable?

The same crowd which claims moral superiority for not judging others by their appearance often judges others on equally superficial standards -- which they deem "good taste." For instance, do people wear nice tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, which denote praiseworthy values? Or do they dress in tailored suits with structured shoulders, which indicate venality?

Let's ponder this distinction for a moment. People arent responsible for their own bone structure. Yet they are responsible for their dress. So aren't those who make an effort to dress in a way that will meet with approval more vain than those who are merely good-looking? Therefore, aren't those who applaud the former but not the latter merely approving vanity?

Many of the those who pride themselves on their non-superficiality will judge others by their accent. To such culturati, a Boston or Long Island accent automatically lowers a person in their estimation. A southern accent connotes a backwoods savage who is just looking for the nearest black person to lynch. A black accent sets off all sorts of warning bells, the loudest of which signals the need to pretend those other bells didn't go off. And a plummy British accent is ideal -- so much so that they sometimes find their own speech giving off a faint echo of one. People with good taste rarely admit to such reactions. But that doesn't make those reactions any the less real. Or superficial.

(I'm not claiming immunity from those feelings myself.)

This same crowd judges others by the decor of their house. Do they have "nice" things, meaning, expensive, preferably old things? Are their electronic gadgets well hidden? Why is one set of possessions preferable to the other? Because the arbiters of good taste say so.

People with good values judge others by their cars. Any car which costs over $50,000, no matter how safe a car it is, is in bad taste. But any car known primarily for its safety, like a Saab or Volvo, shows good taste. An ostentatiously green car, like a Prius or SmartCar, is prime approval material. On the other hand, a Civic, which gets nearly as good mileage as a Prius, is too downmarket to really score points.

Arbiters of good taste judge others by their reading material. As a rule of thumb, the dryer your book, the better. People with good taste look down on tabloids, or at best, regard them as guilty pleasures. The guilt derives from the fact that they're actually fun to read. A properly brainwashed person says that tabloids "appeal to the worst in human nature." But reading the National Enquirer is an exercise in schadenfreude that only those who are least in touch with their own feelings don't enjoy.

We all instinctively look at the aftermath of an accident as we pass it on the highway. The difference is, people with good taste deny that they have those instincts.

We're taught that we should be more high-minded -- and interested in things like politics. But government policy, of course, is mostly about the distribution, or rather redistribution, and reallocation of money. But we're also taught that we should never talk about money, which is in bad taste. Unless, of course, we're condemning others for being overly interested in it.

Well-bred people don't use swear words. These are considered the province of louts. Far better for the culturati to demonstrate their snippiness, foul temper, snobbiness, and selfishness without using those eight or nine nine forbidden words. Proper narcissists can demonstrate their low character very articulately without using bad words.

Fuck 'em.

The title of this blog is "justnotsaid" -- as in, certain things just aren't said in polite company. I don't mind saying them because I'm not polite, and I lack good taste.

Having grown up among those who worship at its altar, I find the concept utterly lacking in appeal.

A political war

An AP article about Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100922/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_woodward_book

Woodward has, over time, developed into perhaps the most credible witness the Washington scene has. He's one of the few professional commentators who is not a spin artist, and he seems to have gotten reliable inside access to every administration of the past three decades.

The fact that his new book reveals infighting in the White House is no great shock; this happens in all administrations (though there seems to be even more dissension in the current one). The surprise is the way in which the nakedly political motivations behind the Afghanistan War are revealed.

One paragraph from the AP article:

While Obama ultimately rejected the alternative plan [which would not escalate the war in Afghanistan, and which Obama had pushed for], the book says, he set a withdrawal timetable because, "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."

Obama did say during his campaign that he would "hunt down" Osama bin Laden as a way to implicitly criticize the Bush administration for not having done so -- so he can't appear to be giving up on this goal. Nor does he want to look like the guy who "lost" the war on terror. So we keep fighting a war we can't possibly win (as several of his advisers admit). But at the same time, Obama doesn't want to lose his left-wing base, so he promises to withdraw starting in August of 2011 -- all but assuring the Taliban that they need only be patient to win the war.

In the meantime, American boys are fighting and dying over there, all so Obama can pose as a man determined to defeat al Qaeda -- but not as a warmonger.

As if I needed a reminder

For some reason, the other day I thought of Samuel Johnson's quote, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

Cherchez le sociopathe

There's a French expression, "Cherchez la femme," which, literally translated, means "look for the woman." The expression originated in Alexander Dumas (pere)'s 1854 novel, The Mohicans of Paris. The idea is when a man acts criminally, he is probably doing so for reasons that involve a woman.

A better way to get to the bottom of most crimes would probably be, "Cherchez le sociopathe." Most crimes, at least most big crimes, have a sociopath behind them. There may be a woman in the sociopath's life, but she is near irrelevant compared to the driving force behind the crime -- the sociopath's absolute lack of compunction about committing it.

I read a book about Gypsies once which quoted an unnamed U.S. law enforcement officer as saying that there was no such thing as a Gypsy family which was not involved in crime of some sort. That's my general sense with sociopaths as well. Scratch a sociopath, find a criminal -- of some variety. Maybe their crimes are merely moral in nature, i.e., they take advantage of others while staying inside the letter of the law. But all sociopaths will always be destructive, however much they gussy up their bad behavior with self-righteous justifications and high flown language. And a high percentage break the law, whether or not they get caught.

This is an issue that FBI profilers pay attention to. A case in point was the Atlanta bomber. When Richard Jewell first discovered the pipe bomb in Atlanta's Centennial Park during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, and helped evacuate the area, he was hailed as a hero. But FBI suspicion quickly turned to him after it turned out that he fit the profile of a potential bomber. (There have been numerous cases of sociopathic firemen who would set fires just so they could be first to the scene and be hailed for their heroism; and there have been cases of sociopathic nurses who would put their patients in mortal danger just so they could look good by coming in to "rescue" them. Sociopaths will do anything to look like a hero.) The fact that Jewell was first to the scene was in and of itself suspicious.

The President of Piedmont College, his former employer, reportedly said that Jewell was a "badge-wearing zealot" who would write up "epic police reports for minor infractions." (Dennis Rader, the BTK ("bind, torture, kill") serial killer of Kansas, was supervisor of the Compliance Department of Park City, and was called "overzealous and strict" by his neighbors, who would find themselves getting written up for the most minor infractions. Rader was also, by the way, President of the Congregation Council of the local Christ Lutheran Church as well as a Cub Scout leader.)

Jewell had been unable to keep a job in law enforcement, the field he wanted to work in, thus had settled for a job as a security guard. (There have been several serial killers, including Kenneth Bianchi (one of the two Hillside Stranglers), and Edmund Kemper, who were rejected for work as police officers.)

It seemed that Jewell fit the profile of a sociopathic criminal too perfectly for the FBI not to focus on him. Eventually, Eric Rudolph confessed to and was convicted of the bombing and Jewell was exonerated. But he probably was a sociopath. He just wasn't guilty of this bombing. The FBI profilers are an astute bunch: they know what personality traits to look for when looking for a killer.

The FBI regularly uses profilers to solve serial killings; they should probably do it with other kinds of crimes as well. First spot the sociopath, then look for the crime. Or if there is a crime with a number of suspects, if you see clues to a sociopathic character from other behaviors, you will generally have your man.

The ringleader of any gang is almost always the sociopath of the group. He is the most ruthless, the most fearless, the slyest, and the most manipulative. Sociopaths can even manipulate people who would be otherwise law-abiding into breaking the law. And he will not abide competition; if anyone else wants to be leader, the sociopath will do his best to destroy him.

It has always been one of the great injustices of law enforcement that the sociopath in a group -- the one who was most likely the ringleader, and possibly recruited the others to become involved in crime -- will also be the one who is quickest to rat on his buddies. The others, even though they may have been manipulated into crime by the sociopath in the first place, are more likely to be loyal to their buddies and not rat. The sociopath, who has no honor, will be the first to go for a deal. And since the prosecutors need someone to provide state's evidence, they will make a deal with the first to turn.

When the worst of the bunch gets off free, justice hasn't been served.

Sex criminals are required to register with the police when they move to a new neighborhood. This is partly because, as the experts in the field will tell you, they never really change. If only there were some way to force all sociopaths to register as well; they never change either.

Sociopath alert: Christine O'Donnell

I've always been struck by how there seem to be many more prominent Democrats than Republicans who are obvious sociopaths. (If you're a sociopath who wants to appear saintly, the obvious thing to do is join the party which advertises its compassion, so no one will suspect how little of that emotion you're actually susceptible to yourself.) But Republicans have been striving for years now to be a big tent party, and that tent now houses at least one obvious sociopath.

Christine O'Donnell has received a lot of attention as the Tea Party candidate who wants to take the Senate seat once occupied by Joe Biden in Delaware. Now that she's won the Republican primary, the spotlight she's in is turning out to be very revealing.

The Republican Party had backed Mike Castle, the establishment guy. But after a year and a half of Barack Obama, the voting public is in no mood for moderate Republicans, so O'Donnell has been swept in on a tide of Tea Party fervor. (She bears a superficial physical resemblance to Sarah Palin, which must have made the Delaware voters feel they were getting their own version of the former Alaskan Governor.) But it's apparent why the Republican Party has shunned her.

O'Donnell attended Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1989 to 1993, and even attended graduation ceremonies, although she didn't receive a degree. In 1994 Fairleigh sued her for $4853 in unpaid debts. She finally paid the court judgment in 2003, and after taking one last course, O'Donnell received her degree in 2010. (She had claimed all along that the only issue was one of money, when in fact she hadn't completed her course requirements.)

According to Wikipedia:


"O'Donnell was the founder and president of 'The S.A.L.T.' (Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth) and made several high profile television appearances in her role. In 1996 O'Donnell appeared as a S.A.L.T. representative on MTV's show Sex In The 90's, where she advocated for 'sexual purity' when dealing with our 'God given sexual desires'. O'Donnell also advocated against masturbation, equating it with adultery. Two years later in 1998, O'Donnell appeared as a S.A.L.T. representative on Bill Maher's show Politically Incorrect, and argued that since America 'took the Bible and prayer out of public schools' we were now 'having weekly (school) shootings', and that the 1960s 'sexual revolution' led to the AIDS epidemic."


Arguing against masturbation, and equating it with adultery, would at first blush seem merely nutty. But it's also a pose that someone who wanted to appear extremely "pure" might strike. Sociopaths often try to appear saintly, since they want the accolades which they think would ensue, and they think they can fool people into thinking that they are really that noble. This shows no judgment, but sociopaths are notoriously lacking in judgment.

That lack of judgment was also on display when O'Donnell argued that taking the Bible out of public schools had resulted in "weekly" school shootings. Sociopaths often like to hide behind a cloak of religious fervor as well.

In 2004 O'Donnell sued her former employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, for $6.9 million for wrongful termination, saying that they had demoted and fired her because of their conservative outlook that women should be subordinate to men. In the lawsuit O'Donnell said that she had been accepted into Princeton University's graduate program, but that her firing by ISI would delay her education.

One small problem: O'Donnell had not been accepted to Princeton. The lawsuit was dropped in 2008. (ISI also claimed that O'Donnell had run a PR business while on their time.)

In 2008, O'Donnell was unable to pay the mortgage on her Wilmington house, so the house was foreclosed upon and due to be auctioned off in August of that year. But she sold it a month before that to her boyfriend.

The IRS has filed a lien against O'Donnell, saying she owes $11,000 in back taxes. O'Donnell attributed this to a computer error.

Falling on financial hard times is certainly no sin; it can happen to any of us. But O'Donnell's obstinacy in not paying off her student bills, her lawsuit against ISI, the way she sold her Wilmington house, and her glib explanation of the IRS lien, all give off a distinct odor of dishonesty.

It emerged this morning, via AOL, that O'Donnell's LinkedIn site claims that she studied at Oxford University, having taken a course called "Post-Modernism in the New Millenium." (Almost any course with "post-" in its title is going to be obfuscatorily liberal in spirit, which hardly fits the Tea Party ethos.) Oxford University, when contacted, said that they offer no such course, although it's possible they have in the past.

Lying about one's academic degrees is a peculiarly sociopathic kind of lie: there's no pressing need to do it, but it makes you look more accomplished. If you get caught in the lie later, so what? At least you get to enjoy the temporary boost in esteem that comes from a prestigious association.

Verdict: a sociopath, and not even a particularly smart one.

(And I'd probably vote for her anyway.)

John Boehner

(Above, John Boehner; right, actor Robert Conrad)





John Boehner has been in the news a fair amount recently. Now that Boehner is looking like the next Speaker of the House, post-partisan President Obama has elevated his name recognition by singling him out for ridicule on a number of occasions.

It's striking how much Boehner looks, carries himself, and acts just like a corporate CEO. (He also looks a little like Robert Conrad, star of the 1960's TV show The Wild, Wild West.)

Boehner is good-looking, but in a slick way: the cut of his suit is always stylish, his tie perfectly knotted, and never a hair out of place. These all suggest a vain man; the perma-tan confirms it.

Boehner's deep voice inspires confidence. And he carries himself with the erect bearing of a military man (he enlisted in the Navy but was honorably discharged after eight weeks for medical reasons). Google-image him and you won't see a picture of him smiling until the ninth page; this is often the mark of a man who feels he has to accommodate no one. Boehner's usual look is more one of grimness. Of course, he is almost always in his professional role when the publicly available photos of him are shot. Perhaps his private family albums show a more jovial and relaxed sort of guy, but that seems unlikely.

He also behaves like a CEO. When he issued orders for the Congressional Republicans to "knock it off" after they had been seen partying with comely female lobbyists in DC, he had the sound of someone used to ordering people around. And he is always on point. He never wavers from the party line, much like a CEO who always talks about how bright his company's future is -- regardless of the facts.

Sure enough, according to Wikipedia, Boehner started his career "with a Nucite Sales, a small sales company in the packaging and plastics industry, where he eventually became President of the firm." (How long before someone in our unbiased media points out that he is a plastic, pre-packaged politician?) In any case, it's not coincidence that Boehner comes across like a salesman/CEO.

When a reporter recently suggested that Boehner give up smoking with Obama, Boehner replied, "Thank you for your suggestion." The reply captured Boehner's persona perfectly: he could have made a joke but refrained, not wanting to chance being misinterpreted. And while what he said was technically neutral, the air of warfare was unmistakeably in the air.

Boehner is too slick to inspire trust, but formidable enough to inspire confidence -- and also a little bit of fear.

You don't get the sense that he would take teasing well; this is, of course, one mark of a narcissistic personality. On the other hand, you do get the sense that he could fend for himself without a Teleprompter.

Expect to see a lot of him in the next few years.

Addendum: this post was written before Boehner's penchant for crying became public: see this post for a more recent view of the Speaker.

Skunked

We have a Cairn terrier, the same breed as Toto in the Wizard of Oz. On Friday he dashed across the yard and attacked a baby skunk, chomping down on it and then swinging it back and forth violently, as if trying to just shake the life out of the poor skunk. The attack was surprisingly vicious. It reminded me of one of those nature shows where an Australian saltie leaps out of the water next to a tour boat to get at a chicken which is hanging from a string. It was actually a beautiful little baby skunk, too, jet black with the telltale white stripe not even having developed yet. It looked almost like a little black otter as it crossed the lawn.

This was actually around the seventh skunk that Tyke has killed. And he always seems to want to ravage the carcass a bit afterward, often biting right into the smell sac. (No wonder Elmira Gulch hated Toto so much.)

Afterwards I called Tyke a serial killer, which is basically what he is, especially since he has countless baby squirrels and chipmunks on his trophy list as well. My wife tried to defend him by saying he was "just doing his job" -- as if we had hired him to kill skunks. She then gave him the look of misplaced maternal affection that all pet owners give their dogs and pointed out that it wasn't his fault, he was bred to kill rodents. That's actually true: Cairn Terriers were originally bred by the Romans to go after rats and other vermin, so this is what his instincts compel him to do.

My wife took him to the veterinarian after the attack to have him de-odorized, and called Animal Control in our hometown to have them pick up the skunk just to make sure it wasn't rabid.

We got the report yesterday: the skunk was rabid. (This may have had something to do with why it was walking across the lawn in broad daylight.) Rabies is basically only contagious if the rabid animal bites you, and Tyke had already had his rabies shots a year ago, so he is probably okay. The vet gave him a booster shot just in case.

I didn't touch the dog afterward, so I'm going to pass on getting the shots. I don't think I'll get rabies, but who knows. If I start frothing at the mouth on this blog, please let me know.

Oh, that's right, that's pretty much what I have been doing here for the past two years anyway.

Never mind.

The myth of Narcissus

(photo courtesy of John Nash)

The above picture of a high school cross country team appeared in the local paper this week. I happen to know these girls, and all six are quite pretty -- which you can sort of tell from this picture. The picture captures their sense of camaraderie well -- but that is not a flattering angle for anybody.

The picture brings to mind the story of Narcissus, who is supposed to have fallen in love with his own reflection in a pond. (Evidently they didn't have mirrors back in those days.)

Try it sometime. Or better yet, just set a mirror down on a table and look into it. How do you look? With your head tilted forward, your face appears fatter, your eyes piggier, and your chin doubles up. How could anybody possibly fall in love with himself from that angle?

I could understand if Narcissus had had a side-lit, full length mirror at his gym where he could gaze at himself after pumping up on the Cybex machines. But a pond surface? Hard to believe.

That's why they call them myths, I guess.

The war of the sexes, Part III

(The trailer where the killings took place)

Since the recent theme of this blog has been the war between the sexes, a news item popped up yesterday which seems appropriate to comment on. This was in the UK's Daily Mail yesterday:

Husband enraged over how his wife cooked his breakfast eggs kills her and four others in Kentucky shotgun rampage

A man facing eviction over his terrible temper became so enraged by how his wife cooked his eggs that he killed her, his stepdaughter and three neighbours with a shot gun before turning the weapon on himself.

Dressed in his pyjamas, Stanley Neace, 47, went on the killing spree in a trailer park in Jackson, eastern Kentucky. The massacre happened at around 11.30am local time.

Neighbours in the roadside trailer park said Neace stormed across the lawns of several homes and fired dozens of shots from a 12-gauge pump shotgun.

Killing someone over how one's eggs are prepared is, of course, as stupid as killing someone over an X-rated DVD. But I'm not going to make a silly little joke as I did two posts ago and talk about the importance of a good breakfast or somesuch. I actually have a point to make.

This story will undoubtedly provoke all sorts of knee jerk reactions about "trailer trash" and America being a gun-crazy society and how horrible men are. All of which will contain some truth, as well as be overly simplistic. What is unquestionably and completely true is that some people are just not fit to live in the company of other human beings. Stanley Neace was such a guy. He should have been sequestered away a long time ago. He was about to be kicked out of the trailer park for his bad temper; he should have been kicked out of society as well.

There was a movie which came out a while back, called "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise. The idea of the movie was that the authorities could tell who was going to commit a crime ahead of time and would arrest them before they committed the crime. This was supposed to represent a futuristic nightmare, where innocent people could be arrested without having committed any crime.

Such a concept, of course, goes against every tenet about democracy we've ever been taught. And how could you possibly predict the future? Obviously, you can't. But with a case like Stanley Neace, the future -- especially in retrospect -- seemed predictable enough. And he ought to have been put somewhere where he couldn't have harmed people. If he had been, his five victims would be alive today.

But how do you institute a process like that without allowing for the possibility of abuse?

It's pretty much impossible. Which is, in a way, too bad.

Before they actually find a way to do that, they will probably find a way to alter such behavior at the genetic level. That would make for a better, if slightly more boring, society.

Portrait of a phony

The following item appeared on Page Six of the NY Post this morning:

Dan Abrams believes in female superiority

Msnbc legal eagle Dan Abrams is making the case for women, literally. He's inked a six-figure deal with Abrams Books (no relation) to chronicle ways women are superior to men. In "Man Down," he'll present studies, polls and other "evidence" to prove that women actually best the boys in typically male areas like gambling and enduring pain, and even make better hedge-fund managers and cops. Abrams isn't basing this on his own studies of gorgeous actresses: "If I had any unique insight into women, I would be married. I don't. This is a fun book written from the perspective of a lawyer making a case. A lot of people will be surprised by what we found." It's due around Mother's Day next year.

Dave Allocca/Startraksphoto.com

A friend once said to me, "I have a friend whose philosophy is that every woman is more interesting as a person than every man."

I scoffed, "That's not a philosophy, that's a line. How many times have you heard him espouse this 'philosophy' when there are no women around?"

But there are lines, and there are lines. Dan Abrams' book is essentially the biggest line I've ever heard. Abrams, who evidently has a reputation for squiring around gorgeous actresses (rather than female cops or gamblers or hedge fund managers), is looking to burnish his rep with the sort of air-headed, politically correct actresses he dates. And what better line to counter his womanizing reputation with than, "Hey, I wrote an entire book about how women are better than men" -- and then actually being able to produce that book.

(This is also not a bad way to burnish his rep with the sort of air-headed, politically correct people he must butter up at his employer, MSNBC: this is the type of conclusion that they are always looking for, facts be damned.)

The entire story resonated with falseness from start to finish, but Abrams really gave the game away when he said that the book "will be written from the perspective of a lawyer making a case."

(We all know that lawyers on a case do nothing but seek the truth.)

You've got to wonder if he was able to say any of this with a straight face.

Justifiable homicide

The following article appeared in yesterday's NY Daily News:

Enraged wife stabs husband to death after finding X-rated porno DVD in apartment.

An enraged Brooklyn woman stabbed her husband to death after finding a porno flick in their apartment, police said Friday.

Shellyann Henry, 32, discovered the X-rated DVD in the family's Bushwick home Thursday night and confronted her husband. They began to fight - in front of one of their children - and Henry grabbed a kitchen knife.

Police said she repeatedly plunged the knife into Rudolph Henry's chest about 9:40 p.m., bringing a violent end to what neighbors say had long been tumultuous relationship.

"She's a great mom, but she lost it," said neighbor Dawn Springs, 26. "She was screaming to police that he [had] porn with their 4-year-old son."

The accused killer dropped the bloody knife and called 911. Police and paramedics raced to the scene, but Rudolph Henry couldn't be saved. His wife stayed in the third-floor apartment on Wilson Ave. where she was arrested.

Shellyann Henry has three children - 17, 4, and a newborn. Investigators believe the 4-year-old boy witnessed the murder.

According to neighbor Dawn Springs, Shellyann was "a great mom." She does seem to have had some mixed up ideas about child rearing, though. She evidently felt that her 4-year-old son would be permanently scarred by being in the same house with an X-rated DVD -- but that witnessing his mother hack his father to death would not be so traumatic.

Hard to predict a bright future for the 4-year-old. Or the newborn.

But at least one good thing came out of the whole episode: one of those porn-watchers finally got what he deserved.

Darwin Awards, local version

The following item appeared on the "Police Log" section of my hometown's local newspaper yesterday:

A 51-year-old man was scammed out of approximately $50,000, Lt. Donald Wakeman said. The man received a cold call telling him he'd won $3.5 million and a new car in a Jamaican lottery in January 2010, and he proceeded to communicate back and forth via e-mail and telephone with persons pretending to be associated with the lottery.

In order to receive the $3.5 million, the man sent various amounts of money over the next eight months, which would purportedly cover fees and expenses.

"Unfortunately, he fell victim to a scam that has occurred for quite some time now all across the country," Lt. Wakeman said.

Haven't these kinds of scams become somewhat of a joke? Most emanate from Nigeria, not Jamaica, but it should be obvious to everybody by now that this is what they are. You have to wonder, how could a guy be this naive at 51? Had he gone through his entire life with blinders on?

One of the anomalies of my hometown newspaper is that when someone from out of town gets arrested here, they'll print his name, but when someone from the town is arrested, they usually just list his age but not his name. I'm dying to know who the guy is, though.

Mostly 'cause I have a couple things I wanna sell him.

Humans and subhumans

(Cal Coburn Brown)

Yahoo News ran the following AP article this morning:

Wash. executes man convicted of woman's murder

By SHANNON DININNY and NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS

WALLA WALLA, Wash. – Convicted killer Cal Coburn Brown was executed early Friday by lethal injection for the rape, torture and murder of a Seattle-area woman, after delivering a statement complaining he was treated unfairly by the legal system.

Brown, 52, had protested sentencing disparities, saying that criminals who had killed many more people, such as Green River killer Gary Ridgway, were serving life sentences while he received a death sentence.

"I only killed one victim," he said. "I cannot really see that there is true justice. Hopefully, sometime in the future that gets straightened out."

Brown did not apologize to the family of the victim, but said he understood their emnity for him. He said he forgave that hatred, held no emnity toward them and hoped the execution would give them closure. He also said the prison staff had been most professional and that he had no complaints about his treatment there in 17 years.

Brown confessed to killing the 21-year-old Washa during an interrogation in California for an alleged assault on a woman there. He later led authorities to Washa's battered body, which was inside the trunk of a car.

He met Washa near Sea-Tac airport in Washington when he helpfully pointed to Washa's rear tire, indicating a problem. When she stopped to check it out, he carjacked her at knifepoint. For the next 36 hours, Brown robbed, raped and tortured Washa, before stabbing and strangling her.

"His demeanor — that's what struck us. And his lack of remorse," said Lt. Al Franz of the Palm Springs police department, one of the investigators who first interviewed Brown in California. "This is a violent individual, and he was just very, very calm while he was telling his story," Franz said. "The lack of remorse was pretty incredible to me. The way he spoke about his victims, they weren't people to him."

Brown, who is from San Jose, Calif., had a history of violence against women, including a 1977 conviction in California for assaulting a woman with a knife at a shopping center. He also served 7 1/2 years — the minimum sentence — for assaulting another woman in Oregon in 1984.

It's no surprise when a murderer turns out to be a sociopath. But there are still lessons to be learned here. First, note the always present self pity in a sociopath's psyche: "I only killed one victim. I cannot see that there is true justice." He assaulted two other women, and tortured Washa before he murdered her. His execution won't really offend most people's sense of justice.

Brown said he "forgave" the family of the victim for hating him, and felt no emnity towards them. But who does he think he's fooling, exhibiting such "compassion"? Where was his compassion for his victim? Sociopaths always think they can fool everybody, especially with their false emotions.

The other lesson here is his preternatural calmness. Lt. Franz of the Palm Springs Police Department put his finger right on the heart of sociopathy: "The way he spoke about his victims, they weren't people to him."

To put yourself in the mindset of a sociopath, you have to imagine yourself as the only human being in a world populated by robots. If you break a robot while using it, you just get another one. So it is with sociopaths and people.

It's not that shocking that serial killers feel that way -- after all, they are serial killers. The thing to remember is that all sociopaths feel that way, even if they aren't serial killers. Sociopaths are somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the population, and you find them in all walks of life, both sexes, all races. (And most of them don't kill.) So when you meet someone new, you shouldn't be quick to assume that he's just like you.

If he's a sociopath, he certainly doesn't feel that way about you. To him, you're basically just a robot.

Viva Fidel!

(Above, Fidel around the time of la revolucion; right, a more recent picture)





Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic, reported today that when he asked Fidel Castro if Cuba's economic system was worth exporting abroad, Castro replied, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

This is a stunning admission from the leader of one of the last communist countries in the world, a man whose name has been synonymous with communism since 1959. It's not surprising that the Cuban system does not work -- that has been obvious to all observers (except Michael Moore) for a long time. What's stunning is that Castro would admit it.

Maybe because he's 84, he's just tired of maintaining the lies which have propped up his government for so long. (It's actually surprising he's that young, given how long he seems to have been around.)

It is often said, "Out of the mouths of babes..." The idea is that babies aren't sophisticated enough to understand diplomacy, so they just innocently blurt out the truth. The expression is probably even more apt for old people, who know more than babies, and are past caring.

We've all heard the expression, "I'm too old to lie." I find myself using it fairly frequently these days (in connection with this blog). And I'm nowhere near as old as Fidel. When he first rose to power in 1959, John F. Kennnedy hadn't even been elected president yet. And Nikita Kruschchev was in the middle of his reign in the Soviet Union.

In what was perhaps Krushchev's most famous speech, he once said to a group of Western ambassadors, "We will bury you."

(He never did.)

Fidel, however, has buried Krushchev, along with practically all of his other former comrades: Leonid Brezhnev. Chairman Mao. Marshal Tito. Ho Chi Minh. They were his contemporaries, and they're all long gone.

And now Fidel seems to have buried communism, once and for all.

(Perhaps he and Mr. Obama could exchange jobs; that way each would get to govern the way he really wants.)

Addendum, 9/12/10: Fidel said he was misunderstood, and mean the opposite of what he said. You decide for yourself which of his statements is more honest.

Thorium

Guy sent the following to me:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html

It's surprising this hasn't gotten more publicity: a nuclear fuel that eats its own hazardous waste? Nuclear fuel is already ridiculously underutilized considering how clean it is and how small the risk seems to be. Thorium, according to this article, would be both cleaner and safer.

Yo, dog

Yesterday in Wisconsin, post-partisan President Obama said, "Some powerful interests who have been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time -- and they're not always happy with me -- they talk about me like a dog. That's not in my prepared remarks, but it's true."

A Yahoo News article by Holly Bailey said, "Though Obama didn't acknowledge it, the line was a verbatim quote from "Stone Free," the first song [Jimi] Hendrix wrote after moving to England in 1966....It's unclear whether Obama consciously or unconsciously cited the lyric. A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment."

(Complete stanza:
Every day in the week I'm in a different city
If I stay too long people try to pull me down
They talk about me like a dog
Talkin' about the clothes I wear
But they don't realize they're the ones who's square)

Bravo to Holly Bailey for having picked up on this. At first blush it might appear not to be a direct quote; after all, it's only seven words. But the context and grammar are both so off-kilter that one has to assume it's a direct lift.

Obama's opponents don't talk about him as if he's a dog: in all the criticism which has been leveled at him, I can't recall a single canine reference. Okay, maybe that's being too literal. But most of the resentment against him is for the way he has so cavalierly ridden roughshod over the will of the American people. That is generally not an emotion one hears directed at dogs.

The phrasing is also singular: "They talk about me like a dog." Did he mean, "They talk about me as if I were a dog"? Or could he have possibly meant it in the sense of, "They talk about me like a pack of snarling dogs"? If this was not a direct lift from Jimi, then Obama's grammar can only lead one to conclude that the million dollars he has spent keeping his academic record sealed has been money well spent.

Stick to the Teleprompter, Barack.

But if you do decide to stray from your prepared remarks again and feel like channeling 60's rock stars, you ought to quote a much more appropriate song, the Beatles' Taxman. Lyrics as follows:

Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me.

Who is the Greatest All-Around Female Swimmer of All Time?

Another article I wrote for Swimmingworld.com:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/25001.asp?q=Who%20Is%20The%20Greatest%20All-Around%20Female%20Swimmer%20of%20All%20Time?

While writing the article last week on who the best all-around male swimmer in history was, I had a sudden moment of panic: who was I to be sitting in judgment of this Olympian array of all-time greats and declaring all but one of them wanting? Wasn't this awfully presumptuous of me, to be the self-appointed judge of these six finalists, each of whom was around a million times better than I ever was? Was this not the height of egotism?

But then I thought, ah, that's what all sportswriters do. And the feeling passed.

Who is the second best all-around male swimmer of all time?

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/24975.asp?q=Who%20Is%20The%20Second-Best%20All-Around%20Male%20Swimmer%20Of%20All%20Time?

Another Swimming World article, for swimming fans only.

"Why me?!"

(Above, Tom Magill; at right, Maria McCormack with husband Guy)



There was an amazing story in the NY Post yesterday about a 22 year old man, Tom Magill, who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a 40 story building on the Upper West Side, but landed on a car and survived. He crushed the roof of the car, a Dodge Charger, and wound up on the rear seat cushion, which is what probably saved his life.

According to the Post:

"Doctors at St. Luke's Hospital initially doubted Magill could have dropped from 400 feet -- though multiple witnesses and the eyeglasses he left on the roof prove otherwise, sources said.

"The doctors say it's not as bad as they anticipated. Nothing is as bad as they anticipated," Magill's uncle said yesterday.

Magill had rods inserted in both legs, including his thigh and ankle during an extensive operation Tuesday night. Yesterday, surgeons operated on his groin and chest to relieve the clotting."

It was truly a miracle.

Maria McCormack, the owner of the car, and mother of four, seemed unmoved: "I miss [the car]. It's my baby. I want to meet [Tom Magill] and ask him, 'Why? Why my car out of all the cars in the city?' I wonder how he feels now that he made it. Does he feel like an idiot?"

McCormack complained that she had just had the rear brakes fixed, the oil changed, and the gas tank filled before Magill made his leap. "I was going to get the front brakes done...but thank god I had a migraine! I can't believe my car is gone. I've had other cars, but I really loved this car."

"Why me?" is of course the mantra of all narcissistic personalities who encounter misfortune of any kind. Does she feel that Magill, while trying to take his own life, purposely selected her car in order to get at her somehow? The idea that a complete stranger would have even considered her would only occur to a complete narcissist.

And most people, even if they were peeved about their ruined car (the insurance covered all but $500 of it), would at least have the grace to pretend that they were concerned about Magill and happy that he survived. But McCormack is too piggish to even bother with that.

I'm guessing, judging from the picture of Magill above, that he may be gay and that his sexuality may have contributed to his despondence. (There's a higher suicide rate among gays.) Here's hoping he comes to terms with those issues and lives a long, happy life -- and that he gets to dine out on that miracle for the rest of his life.

I'm guessing, judging from McCormack's quotes, that her four kids will all want to get out of the house as soon as possible. Here's hoping that every single one of her acquaintances reads those quotes in the Post -- and that she never gets any more sympathy from anybody, ever, than she gave to Magill.

At least one party benefitted from this incident. According to the Post:

"A Dodge spokesman credited the car's 'high-strength steel structure' for helping absorb the blow. 'We are glad that Mr. Magill survived the 40-story free-fall and that our Dodge Charger was able to cushion his landing,' said company spokesman Jiyan Cadiz. 'We hope that Mr. Magill gets well'."

(This is why Cadiz is a company spokesperson and Ms. McCormack is not.)

It is good publicity though. I'm just not quite sure exactly how they'd fashion a commercial out of it.

Why it's better not to act tougher than you are

(Above, Michael Enright with his lawyer while being arraigned.)

Enright was mentioned nine posts ago on this blog:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/08/man-bites-dog.html

Am I wrong or does Enright -- the erstwhile cabbie knifer -- look scared of his own lawyer?

So far Enright has been held without bail in a psychiatric ward. Probably the right place for him.