Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Will my fellow Americans please grow up?

Since election night last Tuesday, I've read articles, watched news coverage, and saw comments online that lead me to the conclusion that too many Americans are acting like a bunch of children. There are the paranoid people on the Republican and right-wing side who are afraid that an Obama administration will create a Gestapo-like force, seize their guns, confiscate retirement accounts, and put an end to free elections in this nation. There are the sore winners on the Democratic screaming about the need to punish Senator Joe Lieberman for supporting John McCain, the need to exercise the "nuclear option" to eliminate filibusters in the Senate, and a small handful who have threatened violence against Republican senators who would attempt to filibuster legislation.

Wake up, people! Our country has withstood a lot. There have been good presidents and bad presidents, good Congresses and bad, wise policies and foolhardiness, but our nation has endured for 221 years under the Constitution. I don't see how that's likely to be change. Let's all just try to act in a mature and civil manner. Thank you. That's all I have to say about that, for now.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sampling Intellectual and Cultural Life in Cincinnati

Lately, I've been attending various events of a cultural or intellectual here in Greater Cincinnati, either alone or with friends. These events have ranged from orchestra performances and science lectures to a book festival. They provide a clean break from thoughts of work, a chance to meet new people, and the opportunity to stretch my mind in different directions. In the past two months, I've been to one play (Tartuffe), three performances of classical music (mostly Tchaikovsky), one performance of contemporary instrumental music, two science lectures (on dinosaur evolution and the role of Big Bone Lick in the development of vertebrate paleontology), and the Books By The Banks book festival.

I'm not mentioning all this to brag or boast, but instead to mention that each of these experiences has been positive. I wish more people would go out and participate in such events. There is life beyond work, sports, and reality TV. I think our nation would be better if more people would stretch their minds a little like I've been doing. It's fun! And educational, too.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

And the winner is....

Yes, we all know Barack Obama has been elected President. He is an intelligent and charismatic man who I think will make a dynamic leader for this nation, and improve our image throughout the world. I just happen to disagree with most of his platform. I'm interested to see what happens in the years to come, but I remain a cynic on politics (notice the name of the blog?).

Monday, November 3, 2008

Elections tomorrow

Tomorrow is Election Day. As happens every four years, we American citizens get to vote for electors to the electoral college (those few Americans who really get to vote for the President and Vice President), to directly vote for other offices at the federal, state and local levels, and to vote on a variety of issues at the state and local level. Its at the ballot box that we citizens can best make our voices hears. I encourage any American who might actually be reading this blog to go out and vote tomorrow.

Thank you, and good night.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Reading for pleasure

Reading for pleasure is an activity I often engage in. Lately, I've been working my way through random volumes of Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe that I picked up second hand, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and a history of the French Revolution, among other things. It is all interesting and entertaining material, but it is recreational. There are other books and on-line materials I read sometimes, for professional reasons. Without that material, I wouldn't be able to do my job.

Either way, for fun or money, reading is important to me. But its not just important to me.
Literacy is a cornerstone of modern society. Some elements in American society denigrate reading nand education, but that's just wrong. It's not being able to read that isn't cool.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

In my last post, I spoke about embracing life in Cincinnati more fully. I did some of that today. I went to the Books by the Banks festival, took a walk in the park, and went to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It was wonderful. About life, I remain an optimist.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Cincinnati

I was originally planning to write about 9/11 and its aftermath and its impact on my optimism, but I'll post on that some other time. Instead, I'm writing about Cincinnati, Ohio.

Cincinnati has been my hometown these past ten years, after moving from New Jersey in my late teens. I have a love/hate relationship with Greater Cincinnati. It's where I went on my first date, made a go at college, made new friends, first ate Indian food, and began a productive career that has sent me to distant lands. Presently, most of my friends but none of my family call it home.

I've learned about its history, about its people, and about its culture, but in some ways I've always remained an outsider, an alien. The East versus West mentality means nothing to me. I care nothing for the Bengals or the Reds. Church festivals hold little attraction to me. The chili has sweet stuff in it! Getting a good pizza involves considerable driving time. And I find the city to be much more socially conservative than I.

As I thought about it one day while far away on business, there are many positives. There is the Cincinnati Museum Center and its free lectures on science and history, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Zoo, and the aquarium just across the Ohio River. There are theaters and performance places. The parks of Cincinnati and Hamilton County are impressive, and our friends across the river in Kentucky have some nice ones, two. The public library system is top-notch, with a staggering collection. The University of Cincinnati offers numerous free and low-cost events, artistic and intellectual. There are symphonies and artsy theaters. The Cincinnati area really does have a lot going for it, but you have to go out looking for it.

I'm not going to try to fit in by going to church festivals and Bengal games, but there's a lot more to Cincinnati than that. It's not New York, Chicago, or even Philadelphia, but it does have its own cultural and intellectual life, and I plan to embrace that life more fully. Maybe I'll find some way to make my own contribution to it, eventually.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Early Bush Administration

Early on in the Bush administration, I felt a certain wary optimism. I didn't agree with his platform on many things, but there were a few key things I did agree with, so I watched. And waited. There were some good signs at first. He chose many moderates for his cabinet, like Colin Powell and several middle-of-the-road Republican governors. He increased the military budget, which was sorely needed after the Clinton administration's policy of funding peacekeeping operations by shifting money from training and procurement.

But there were signs of trouble already on the horizon. Perhaps the earliest was the faith-based initiatives office. His administration was just as weak-willed as his predecessors about confronting China, and took a meek stance after the Chinese forced an American plane in international airspace to land, and held both plane and crew captive. Then there was the virtual ban on stem cell research funding.

Then came 9/11, and the world changed.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Current Financial Crisis

I interrupt my normally-scheduled news for my opinion regarding the current financial crisis. I've heard many comments regarding the crisis, blaming, or trying to avert blame from, the three major sources of this crisis. In my opinion, those seeking to avert blame upon any of the three has a partisan agenda of their own. I don't, not with regards to this.

The first cause was the greed of the financial institutions. Banks and other financial institutions knew they were making risky loans and buying risky loans, but it was good for the stock options.

The second was the lax lending standards mandated upon Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by Congress. While it started with a noble goal, home ownership for the less affluent, what it meant was that these institutions were making riskier loans. And Congress refused to act, despite warnings about the potential for those institutions to collapse.

The third was the lack of regulation of the derivatives market. People like Alan Greenspan pushed against regulation, fearing they'd burden the market with over-regulation or cause a panic. This attitude instead let bad investments fester.

None of these three alone were sufficient to cause this problem, but all of them were necessary together. Anybody trying to downplay one of the three probably has an agenda.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Election of 2000

The 2000 US presidential election was something of a turning point for me. I'd shifted somewhat right-wards during the Clinton years, but I've always been a rather independent thinker. Despite that, I didn't care for the third-party candidates running that year, but I had high hopes for two of the candidates the Republicans and Democrats were putting forward, senators named John McCain and Bill Bradley, respectively. As I considered each candidate carefully as the primaries began, I developed my prioritized list:
1) Bill Bradley
2) John McCain
3) George W. Bush
4) Al Gore

Alas, much to my disappointment, Bradley was effectively out of the race by the time Ohio held its primary, so I registered as a Republican to vote against Bush. Alas, to my even greater disappointment, Bush defeated McCain. This left me with numbers 3 and 4 vying for my vote.

I reconsidered the two men carefully. Bush's conservative Christian views worried me a little, but Gore's ties back to Clinton administration worried me even more, Some folks I knew had been students of Professor Rice during their years at Stanford and spoke highly of her. Given some of the problems I saw with the foreign and military policies of the Clinton administration, I thought Rice's position as the Bush campaign's foreign policy adviser was a sign they'd change course there. (More on that later.) So I finally crossed my fingers and voted for George W. Bush.

The total meltdown that was the election process that year was not fun. The partisan rancor that was exchanged by both sides was a bitter tonic. It set a tone that has lasted to this day. And it was only a prelude to the disappointment that was to come after the hopeful start of the new president's administration.

And therein you have the topic of my next blog post, which will cover the early days of the Bush administration.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Optimism Flees Before the Chaos of the 1990's

Although I remember the occasional event from the 1980's, it was really in the 1990's that I began to really become more aware of the wider world. The events of that time period had a major impact upon my perception of that world, lessening my optimism.

During the 1990's, Americans angry at their own government and agents of that government killed and wounded job lots of citizens. Ruby Ridge and Waco were phenomenal examples of governmental overreaction to well-armed people who were paranoid about the government. Although they held beliefs I totally disagree with, maybe they weren't so paranoid afterall, since the government definitely did come after them, in the end. Angry over these incidents, a couple more paranoids killed nearly two hundred people in Oklahoma City.

Some people think that abortion is morally wrong, the murder of children. Some people protest or push for legal changes. Others think that to prevent what they see as murder, they'll commit murder themselves, by shooting abortion providers or bombing abortion clinics.

While all of this was going on here in the United States, the former Yugoslavia was melting down in a civil war, with mass ethnic cleansing taking place on a scale not seen since the post-WW2 "ethnic realignment" of central and eastern Europe. The United States' attempt at providing relief in strife-ridden Somalia and stabilizing the situation there turned into an embarrassing debacle, despite good intentions and the bravery of the American soldiers involved. The US military was worked hard and underfunded while attempting to provide humanitarian relief around the world and enforcing upon Iraq no-fly zones and sanctions.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, Paula Jones compalied of sexual harrassment by then-governor Bill Clinton. Although eventually settled out-of-court, during the trial he nevertheless perjured himself. His subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives and acquittal by the Senate was a global mockery. Clinton's lying under oath and Congressional Republicans insistence on impeachment were an embarrasment to this nation.

And then came the election of 2000, which I'll cover in my next post.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

I am still an optimist, sort of

I have not totally given up being an optimist, only in some areas. I remain an optimist about my personal future. My weight's going down, my career's going up, and I'm making new friends. The seemingly endless work I've been doing on this fixer-upper I purchased is really starting to pay off, with new parts of house becoming usable. I'm happy about all of this, and I only expect things to continue to get better. And if anything does go wrong, I'm sure it will go right again, eventually. In that regards, I remain an optimist.

No, where my optimism has fled is with respect to the wider world. In the realms of politics, economics, education, and (especially) common sense, my long-held optimism has slowly dissipated. Bill Clinton's second term and two terms of George W. Bush have pushed much of my optimism away. Foreign and domestic extremists, a $27 million Creation "Museum," wars, Fred Phelps, and others helped whittle away at it even more. Sometimes, my optimism of old comes back, but it is a fleetingly optimism, sure to be replaced by cynicism or realism, as the news pours in.

I'll explain in greater depth why my optimism fled in my next post.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Greetings

This is my first blog post. I just want to say hello to everybody out there. There will be actual meaningful content at some point in the future. Thank you, and good night.