The Nature of Things

Dick Cheney continues to live up to his first name.  On the rounds this week hawking his new book, the name of which I refuse to give here, Cheney insists that he has "no regrets" over his enthusiastic advocacy of torture.  Never mind that it is illegal under international and U.S. law.  Cheney obeys a higher law - that of his own selfish chicken-hawk interest. He maintains that torturing helpless prisoners is "safe, legal, and effective" and that he would "strongly support" water-boarding if actionable information could be wrung out of a prisoner.  (And just how would you know in advance that such information could be elicited, Dick?)  How are any of his actions and stated views different from the Nazi war criminals who were tried and executed for similar crimes after World War II? Torture is illegal - full stop.  There is no "debate" to be had about it.  You might as well open up for debate whether rape, murder, or child abuse are "safe, l...

As the so-called Super Congress gets to work on a budgeting agreement, one has to wonder if they will pay any attention at all to the opinions of the vast majority of Americans.  The plain, old, every-day Congress didn't, and since these guys are all members of that Congress, even if they are now called "Super", the prospects don't seem very positive.  Still, I suppose we can hope. There is no excuse for them to wonder what Americans think about this issue.  All the poll-takers have been busily asking the questions for almost a year:  How should the debt problem be solved?  By raising taxes?  By cutting spending?  By a combination of the two?  By an astonishing majority, Americans in every single poll even the one by right-winger Rasmussen, prefer that taxes be raised or that there be a combination of raised taxes and spending cuts.  Here's a chart that outlines the findings. Click on chart to see a larger image. You can see that the averag...

I was introduced to the writing of C.J. Box through my local library's Mystery Book Club.  Open Season , the first in Box's Joe Pickett series, was the club's selection for reading in June. Although I didn't get a chance to read it in time for the meeting, the discussion of it made me curious and I put it on my to-be-read list. I'm glad I finally got around to it this week. Box has created an enormously appealing character in Joe Pickett. A Wyoming game warden, Joe is a devoted family man with two young daughters and a pregnant wife when we first meet him. He and his family are able to barely scrape by financially on the meager salary of a state employee  (Been there, done that!) , but Joe is a happy man, because he's living his dream. Being a game warden was what he always wanted to be. Not only Joe but his whole family are lovingly drawn by Box. We get to know them well and to like them and want them not just to endure but to triumph. Seven-year-old Sheridan, ...

The Maltese Falcon was this month's reading selection of my local library's Mystery Book Club. I probably would not have reread it if not for that impetus. But now that I've reread this one and remembered just how good a writer Dashiell Hammett was, I feel the need to reread his other four novels as well. He, after all, was the master and inventor of the  noir  hard-boiled detective, an iconic character in American fiction. One who has many children. The first thing the reader notices on reading  The Maltese Falcon  is Hammett's amazing use of descriptive language. His characters - particularly Sam Spade - and his scenes are described in such intricate detail, right down to the minute twitch of an eyebrow or to the wind blowing through a window to dislodge the ash on a cigarette left in an ashtray, that the reader feels she has not just read the words but has actually seen the painted picture. This is really good stuff! I had forgotten just how good. I first read th...

Happy Friday!

This is the final of Richard Ford's three books featuring his character, Frank Bascombe. In the first book,  The Sportswriter , the action took place around Easter, and I found Bascombe to be a not very appealing character. In the second book,  Independence Day , the action revolved around that eponymous holiday, and I began to understand and have a bit of fellow feeling for the main character. Finally, in this book, my conclusion is that Frank Bascombe, like most of us perhaps, is as good a person as he  can  be and that he  strives  to be a good person and to live a moral life. With all his weaknesses and failures (with which I can perfectly empathize!), Bascombe seems a person worthy of our sympathies and his life has some positive lessons for the reader. We meet Frank here at a crisis in his life. His second wife has left him when her first husband, who was thought to be dead, turned up alive, and she felt that she must return to him. His two children a...