It’s so easy to see when it’s happening to us and so hard when we’re doing it to somebody else.
When Hugo Chavez calls George Bush the devil or tells us what to do, Americans are offended and tell Hugo where to go. (That rhymes nicely.) The same goes for the Chinese, Iranians or whatever other bunch of gangsters knows better than we how to run our affairs.
But we’re oh so hurt when Iraqis, Saudis, Palestinians, Israelis, Koreans, Frenchmen, or Germans tell us we shouldn’t be telling them what to do or how to do it.
Why is it so clear one way and not the other?
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Gerald Ford
Any of you who read this blog with regularity know that Gerald Ford was one of my favorite presidents. One of my close friends and long time colleague, Gordon Vander Till was a close personal associate of the late president, and I asked him to share some of his memories of the man with you and me. Here's Gordon's short take on Mr. Ford:
It was my great pleasure and privilege to serve Mr. Ford as his first full time special assistant in the Grand Rapids office. When he asked me to become his presence in the district, neither of us really knew fully what a position description would look like. I spent two weeks in the Washington office learning their protocols, meeting congressional liaison persons in various department and agencies of the federal government, and learning the personal predilections of the staff located in H-230 of the U.S. Capitol.
On my last day of this accelerated indoctrination, March 19, 1969, Mr. Ford and I had a brief sitdown and review. One of the most enduring admonitions I recall was his explicit direction that there was no political test in his office. "When someone comes in to seek help," he stated, "remember that I was elected to serve ALL the people of the congressional district." He told me that I had his permission to sign his name on correspondence if I felt it was necessary, and he gave me his telephone credit card (at&t) with a dime in the slot -- "call if you need something," was his final direction.
After press notices were sent to local media in the 5th congressional district of Michigan, the office phone rang "off the hook" as we used to say. Local service clubs were anxious to hear about what was transpiring -- and after some initiatory dealings with media, people started showing up on our doorstep. The next five years of my life was spent trying to help constituents resolve their problems with government, especially the federal government.
Along the way I also managed to oversee two re-election campaigns, find time to speak at commencements, and help people resolve "barking dog" complaints. When Ford was dedicating a new section of expressway in the northern end of his district, one of the media types asked him for speculation on the future of Spiro T. Agnew. . . and then asked if Mr. Ford would be interested in becoming vice-president. Ford gave a hearty laugh and said, "We still have a vice president." We left the ceremony and two weeks later Ford was named by Nixon to succeed Agnew.
Sorta like me, you know, son of a trucker to assistant to a President of the U.S. Along the road of life, one never knows the little surprises that may arise.
Gordon
It was my great pleasure and privilege to serve Mr. Ford as his first full time special assistant in the Grand Rapids office. When he asked me to become his presence in the district, neither of us really knew fully what a position description would look like. I spent two weeks in the Washington office learning their protocols, meeting congressional liaison persons in various department and agencies of the federal government, and learning the personal predilections of the staff located in H-230 of the U.S. Capitol.
On my last day of this accelerated indoctrination, March 19, 1969, Mr. Ford and I had a brief sitdown and review. One of the most enduring admonitions I recall was his explicit direction that there was no political test in his office. "When someone comes in to seek help," he stated, "remember that I was elected to serve ALL the people of the congressional district." He told me that I had his permission to sign his name on correspondence if I felt it was necessary, and he gave me his telephone credit card (at&t) with a dime in the slot -- "call if you need something," was his final direction.
After press notices were sent to local media in the 5th congressional district of Michigan, the office phone rang "off the hook" as we used to say. Local service clubs were anxious to hear about what was transpiring -- and after some initiatory dealings with media, people started showing up on our doorstep. The next five years of my life was spent trying to help constituents resolve their problems with government, especially the federal government.
Along the way I also managed to oversee two re-election campaigns, find time to speak at commencements, and help people resolve "barking dog" complaints. When Ford was dedicating a new section of expressway in the northern end of his district, one of the media types asked him for speculation on the future of Spiro T. Agnew. . . and then asked if Mr. Ford would be interested in becoming vice-president. Ford gave a hearty laugh and said, "We still have a vice president." We left the ceremony and two weeks later Ford was named by Nixon to succeed Agnew.
Sorta like me, you know, son of a trucker to assistant to a President of the U.S. Along the road of life, one never knows the little surprises that may arise.
Gordon
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Coming Through!
I’m pulling on the cardigan and getting Andy Rooney angry again, and, as you well know, that’s mad as hell. Today I’m angry with the press – like I’m usually not. Today it’s different because a major news story in two papers that I checked (The Washington Post and the Boston Globe) reported the facts in one of their news stories and offered no editorial balancing. How bad is that?
It seems that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit organization that appears to have no axe to grind – right - says that if you buy a small car and you get hit by a big car you’re more likely to be pushing up daisies than if you’d switched sides. Now the people at the Institute didn’t act surprised; in fact, they seemed to understand the laws of physics.
It’s kind of like Wild Bill deciding to play running back for the New York Giants breaking through a hole on the right side and meeting Brian Urlacher, linebacker for the Chicago Bears, coming full speed the other way. Despite wearing the same protective gear, guess who the memorial service will be for?
But don’t the morons buying those mini-movers have a number of motives beyond wanting to have their relatives hit the lottery of a huge insurance settlement after they’ve gone? Could it be that these folks have been told that they shouldn’t be burning up too many hydrocarbons, so they’re trying to save the planet? Couldn’t they also know that putting the feedbag on their magnum SUV is expensive to the point of hurt and that it burns up an ever scarcer natural resource? Some of them may have actually though through the process to the point that they think the manufacturing of these vehicles uses less steel and that they’re are cheaper to build and sell. And there must be other selfish and do good reasons for their stupid decision to drive these rolling coffins.
In the continuing debate on personal safety, selfishness, hubris, and screw the losers in life’s economic lottery on the EIB Broadcasting Network , el Rushbo repeatedly declaims to his brilliant ditto heads that they should run out and buy the biggest heaviest monster they can fit into their mega-garages. Rush knows that Global Warming is nothing but a figment of Al Gore’s overactive imagination and that revving up the Sherman Tank in the back yard is the best way to show your independence and your true blue American patriotism.
It’s all well and good that the Institute should describe the facts that the little guy in a collision is likely to get the worst of it. But don’t you think the papers have at least a little obligation to point out some of the reasons why – beyond the price of gas – people should be conserving natural resources and thinking about the environment?
In a related story, it is reported today that the Navy is going to retire the USS John F. Kennedy next year. This mega-ship, many football fields long and twenty-three stories high is one of the last ships to burn oil. Wouldn’t it be prudent for a rich ditto head to put training wheels on `Big John’ - as the sailors call it – and drive it down the freeway? Nobody on that bad boy is going to get smushed in a head banger with a Toyota.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
It seems that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit organization that appears to have no axe to grind – right - says that if you buy a small car and you get hit by a big car you’re more likely to be pushing up daisies than if you’d switched sides. Now the people at the Institute didn’t act surprised; in fact, they seemed to understand the laws of physics.
It’s kind of like Wild Bill deciding to play running back for the New York Giants breaking through a hole on the right side and meeting Brian Urlacher, linebacker for the Chicago Bears, coming full speed the other way. Despite wearing the same protective gear, guess who the memorial service will be for?
But don’t the morons buying those mini-movers have a number of motives beyond wanting to have their relatives hit the lottery of a huge insurance settlement after they’ve gone? Could it be that these folks have been told that they shouldn’t be burning up too many hydrocarbons, so they’re trying to save the planet? Couldn’t they also know that putting the feedbag on their magnum SUV is expensive to the point of hurt and that it burns up an ever scarcer natural resource? Some of them may have actually though through the process to the point that they think the manufacturing of these vehicles uses less steel and that they’re are cheaper to build and sell. And there must be other selfish and do good reasons for their stupid decision to drive these rolling coffins.
In the continuing debate on personal safety, selfishness, hubris, and screw the losers in life’s economic lottery on the EIB Broadcasting Network , el Rushbo repeatedly declaims to his brilliant ditto heads that they should run out and buy the biggest heaviest monster they can fit into their mega-garages. Rush knows that Global Warming is nothing but a figment of Al Gore’s overactive imagination and that revving up the Sherman Tank in the back yard is the best way to show your independence and your true blue American patriotism.
It’s all well and good that the Institute should describe the facts that the little guy in a collision is likely to get the worst of it. But don’t you think the papers have at least a little obligation to point out some of the reasons why – beyond the price of gas – people should be conserving natural resources and thinking about the environment?
In a related story, it is reported today that the Navy is going to retire the USS John F. Kennedy next year. This mega-ship, many football fields long and twenty-three stories high is one of the last ships to burn oil. Wouldn’t it be prudent for a rich ditto head to put training wheels on `Big John’ - as the sailors call it – and drive it down the freeway? Nobody on that bad boy is going to get smushed in a head banger with a Toyota.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The Only Thing We Have To Fear
Given the U.S.’s difficult position in Iraq, the rest of the Muslim world and the lowly opinion in which the rest of the world holds America, can there be reason for optimism? While conservative talk show hosts and many of their left wing counterparts see the world – and especially the United States - as going to hell in a hand basket, I don’t share that view and am actually quite optimistic about our future.
The end of the Cold War left the United States as the world’s only super power. The Soviet Union, a social, economic and political bankrupt, threw in the towel and became conservative, inward looking, and well liquored old Russia. George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) became the first president of the modern era, and the elites that defined our world view basked in the glory of the last side standing.
Two groups took most credit for this great and largely unexpected turn of events, the neoconservatives and the evangelical Christians. Having read many books on the subject – none better than Andrew Bacevich’s, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War – it appears that the rise in the political standing of these groups as a result of their apparent success in the Cold War and in providing the foreign policy theories for Bush 41’s successors gave them the right to call the opening moves in the twenty-first century.
We are fortunate that the first great foray into the new millennium was a relatively modest one. How the president proposes to get us out of the quagmire that he created will be difficult, costly and cannot yet be fully fathomed. This decision to invade was probably the worst foreign policy blunder in American history, but, while tragic, it is probably not going to be as costly in blood and bullion as Korea and Vietnam.
Bush 43 will be the poster boy for future presidents who are feeling their oats, and it will be a bold chief executive who takes this nation into an optional war in the next thirty years. Our nose bloodied and our hubris exposed, we are looking forward to a new role in the world.
We may wind up being the leaders of a completely new civilization. We seem to be drifting away from Europe and forming a new and vital grouping of states, including perhaps all of North America. Certainly, Europe seems to be looking east as it incorporates the states formerly part of the Soviet orbit. The Europeans seem revitalized as result of their great union and seem inclined to thumb their collective noses at us. Oh, we’re still friends, but they resent us as an overbearing partner and have convenient memories of our contributions to their riches and safety over the last sixty years.
But Europe appears unable to solve an ancient riddle that has vexed our species since we walked out of Africa. Should people be assimilated and have upward mobility based on merit or on their traditional place in society. The present owners of the land are not reproducing themselves sufficiently to assure continuity of the society, yet they are unable to successfully deal with those flowing in to fill the longer rungs on the social and economic ladders.
China’s model, while appearing successful on the surface, is fraught with peril for them. The gangsters in charge have opened the economic valves to the creativity of the population but intend to hold onto the levers of political power. Think about that in futuristic terms. The Indians, however dynamic, are still struggling with problems of caste and an over burdensome system of regulation.
Meanwhile the North American Free Trade Agreement appears to have brought Canada, the U.S. and Mexico into a new and powerful amalgam whose workings seem quite different from our old world parents and major competitors. Our internal arguments are creating dynamism qualitatively different from what Don Rumsfeld termed, `Old Europe.’ Even as we struggle with the problems of race and assimilation of newcomers, it is clear that that those committed to equality and upward mobility based on merit maintain the upper hand. Many new groups - regardless of origin, race, religion, gender, or ethnicity (including many from the Islamic world) – have succeeded as individuals and their groups often exceed the wealth and income of the White majority.
These advances have not been made without social difficulties. No matter, America, for all its problems, faces the age old battle of mobility with political and economic power in the hands of those committed to solving it based on equal opportunity, social justice, and ultimately on merit. That is why despite all of our problems, people are willing to give up everything to move here and prosper intellectually, economically, spiritually, and politically.
As these changes take place domestically, China, Russia, Japan, India, and the Islamic civilizations are setting limits on our power, and we seem to be settling in to a slightly more conservative place on the planet. We’re still the biggest kid around, but we’ve been brought up short with a bloody nose in Iraq. Our days of stealing lunch money and picking on the little kids in the cafeteria line of the world’s resources seem to be behind us, at least for a few decades. This is good; our internal creativity far exceeds that of our competitors.
A lot of neoconservatives and evangelicals find this discombobulating, but is it really that bad that we don’t run the whole world? I don’t find it so, and it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the Cold War and the world reach we’re still trying to project. It isn’t like we’re surrendering; we’re just adjusting to a world in which we remain the biggest and strongest nation in the world but one which the rest of the residents have us checked – but not check mated.
Our thoughts of empire have been inspired by Rome and England. Maybe we should rethink our definition to that of Florence. We are the city on the hill. Our residents can create wealth, power, and civilization without conquering everyone in our way just as the Florentines did in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
We’ve still got the world’s most dynamic economic system. Rugged individualism will provide us with ideas and organizations second to none. Our major competitors such as India, Japan, Russia, China, and Europe have leagues to go in deregulating business and industry to the point of our best.
Our richest and most successful citizens while compensated too greatly are showing signs of emulating Renaissance princes and merchant kings by creating such programs as the MacArthur awards to encourage creativity in all fields, and look at what’s happening to the great wealth of such stars as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as it is being harnessed to cure the world’s ills. Dozens of fortunes have been converted to foundations and trusts designed to make America better. Things are not all bleak, and despite the conscious efforts of many of our leaders to frighten us, we will prevail against ignorance, disease, and poverty.
And look at what the little folks are doing to keep the mighty on the straight and narrow. Tens of thousands of bloggers daily point out that the emperors are without fig leaves. And they can’t be shushed or shot – not all of them anyway.
No, the world’s not all bad and America is far better than many pessimists think; there are many more positive than negative signs. As we move toward 2007, I see the glass as well over half full, and I hope you do too.
Happy Holidays! Peace, prosperity, good health, and happiness in the New Year!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The end of the Cold War left the United States as the world’s only super power. The Soviet Union, a social, economic and political bankrupt, threw in the towel and became conservative, inward looking, and well liquored old Russia. George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) became the first president of the modern era, and the elites that defined our world view basked in the glory of the last side standing.
Two groups took most credit for this great and largely unexpected turn of events, the neoconservatives and the evangelical Christians. Having read many books on the subject – none better than Andrew Bacevich’s, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War – it appears that the rise in the political standing of these groups as a result of their apparent success in the Cold War and in providing the foreign policy theories for Bush 41’s successors gave them the right to call the opening moves in the twenty-first century.
We are fortunate that the first great foray into the new millennium was a relatively modest one. How the president proposes to get us out of the quagmire that he created will be difficult, costly and cannot yet be fully fathomed. This decision to invade was probably the worst foreign policy blunder in American history, but, while tragic, it is probably not going to be as costly in blood and bullion as Korea and Vietnam.
Bush 43 will be the poster boy for future presidents who are feeling their oats, and it will be a bold chief executive who takes this nation into an optional war in the next thirty years. Our nose bloodied and our hubris exposed, we are looking forward to a new role in the world.
We may wind up being the leaders of a completely new civilization. We seem to be drifting away from Europe and forming a new and vital grouping of states, including perhaps all of North America. Certainly, Europe seems to be looking east as it incorporates the states formerly part of the Soviet orbit. The Europeans seem revitalized as result of their great union and seem inclined to thumb their collective noses at us. Oh, we’re still friends, but they resent us as an overbearing partner and have convenient memories of our contributions to their riches and safety over the last sixty years.
But Europe appears unable to solve an ancient riddle that has vexed our species since we walked out of Africa. Should people be assimilated and have upward mobility based on merit or on their traditional place in society. The present owners of the land are not reproducing themselves sufficiently to assure continuity of the society, yet they are unable to successfully deal with those flowing in to fill the longer rungs on the social and economic ladders.
China’s model, while appearing successful on the surface, is fraught with peril for them. The gangsters in charge have opened the economic valves to the creativity of the population but intend to hold onto the levers of political power. Think about that in futuristic terms. The Indians, however dynamic, are still struggling with problems of caste and an over burdensome system of regulation.
Meanwhile the North American Free Trade Agreement appears to have brought Canada, the U.S. and Mexico into a new and powerful amalgam whose workings seem quite different from our old world parents and major competitors. Our internal arguments are creating dynamism qualitatively different from what Don Rumsfeld termed, `Old Europe.’ Even as we struggle with the problems of race and assimilation of newcomers, it is clear that that those committed to equality and upward mobility based on merit maintain the upper hand. Many new groups - regardless of origin, race, religion, gender, or ethnicity (including many from the Islamic world) – have succeeded as individuals and their groups often exceed the wealth and income of the White majority.
These advances have not been made without social difficulties. No matter, America, for all its problems, faces the age old battle of mobility with political and economic power in the hands of those committed to solving it based on equal opportunity, social justice, and ultimately on merit. That is why despite all of our problems, people are willing to give up everything to move here and prosper intellectually, economically, spiritually, and politically.
As these changes take place domestically, China, Russia, Japan, India, and the Islamic civilizations are setting limits on our power, and we seem to be settling in to a slightly more conservative place on the planet. We’re still the biggest kid around, but we’ve been brought up short with a bloody nose in Iraq. Our days of stealing lunch money and picking on the little kids in the cafeteria line of the world’s resources seem to be behind us, at least for a few decades. This is good; our internal creativity far exceeds that of our competitors.
A lot of neoconservatives and evangelicals find this discombobulating, but is it really that bad that we don’t run the whole world? I don’t find it so, and it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the Cold War and the world reach we’re still trying to project. It isn’t like we’re surrendering; we’re just adjusting to a world in which we remain the biggest and strongest nation in the world but one which the rest of the residents have us checked – but not check mated.
Our thoughts of empire have been inspired by Rome and England. Maybe we should rethink our definition to that of Florence. We are the city on the hill. Our residents can create wealth, power, and civilization without conquering everyone in our way just as the Florentines did in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
We’ve still got the world’s most dynamic economic system. Rugged individualism will provide us with ideas and organizations second to none. Our major competitors such as India, Japan, Russia, China, and Europe have leagues to go in deregulating business and industry to the point of our best.
Our richest and most successful citizens while compensated too greatly are showing signs of emulating Renaissance princes and merchant kings by creating such programs as the MacArthur awards to encourage creativity in all fields, and look at what’s happening to the great wealth of such stars as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as it is being harnessed to cure the world’s ills. Dozens of fortunes have been converted to foundations and trusts designed to make America better. Things are not all bleak, and despite the conscious efforts of many of our leaders to frighten us, we will prevail against ignorance, disease, and poverty.
And look at what the little folks are doing to keep the mighty on the straight and narrow. Tens of thousands of bloggers daily point out that the emperors are without fig leaves. And they can’t be shushed or shot – not all of them anyway.
No, the world’s not all bad and America is far better than many pessimists think; there are many more positive than negative signs. As we move toward 2007, I see the glass as well over half full, and I hope you do too.
Happy Holidays! Peace, prosperity, good health, and happiness in the New Year!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Snow Job
Baby its cold outside. Indeed a fierce blizzard is raging in Washington, and it’s unlikely to end before mid-January.
The White House press corps is spitting mad at Tony Snow for his dodging and pleas of nolo contendere on all questions involving Iraq. “I don’t know,” is the answer de jour by this hubris filled wind bag. Snow came to rescue Bush not to bury him, or so the mouth that roars nothing but ignorance once proclaimed.
The silver tongued hero of the neocons was to provide our ever eloquent president with an English translator. All that was lacking in Washington was a spokesperson who could translate Bushisms into the plain speak of the American people, and the administration would be on its way to winning the war on terror and transforming the Middle East into a land of milk and honey where the lion and the lamb could lie down together in peace and harmony.
But Washington is a land of snow jobs – everything from the Rumsfeldian snow flakes falling gently over the Pentagon to the howling blizzard of `I don’t knows’ roaring from the White House Press Room.
Only now are some – certainly not all – of the neoconservatives beginning to fathom that if things are going right and you’re riding a good horse even Wild Bill would make a great press secretary but if you’re in a tar pit aboard a swayback nag, even Winston Churchill couldn’t bullshit his way out.
Look around Tony; you’re in deep and dark stuff and that horse... And all that slick restating of `I don’t know’ is nothing but a tony snow job.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The White House press corps is spitting mad at Tony Snow for his dodging and pleas of nolo contendere on all questions involving Iraq. “I don’t know,” is the answer de jour by this hubris filled wind bag. Snow came to rescue Bush not to bury him, or so the mouth that roars nothing but ignorance once proclaimed.
The silver tongued hero of the neocons was to provide our ever eloquent president with an English translator. All that was lacking in Washington was a spokesperson who could translate Bushisms into the plain speak of the American people, and the administration would be on its way to winning the war on terror and transforming the Middle East into a land of milk and honey where the lion and the lamb could lie down together in peace and harmony.
But Washington is a land of snow jobs – everything from the Rumsfeldian snow flakes falling gently over the Pentagon to the howling blizzard of `I don’t knows’ roaring from the White House Press Room.
Only now are some – certainly not all – of the neoconservatives beginning to fathom that if things are going right and you’re riding a good horse even Wild Bill would make a great press secretary but if you’re in a tar pit aboard a swayback nag, even Winston Churchill couldn’t bullshit his way out.
Look around Tony; you’re in deep and dark stuff and that horse... And all that slick restating of `I don’t know’ is nothing but a tony snow job.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Everything's Great - I Quit
I feel particularly optimistic today, so I’m resigning from the Democratic Party. That may seem strange as I worked so hard to defeat the Republicans, but, truly, I’ve held myself out as a person beholden to no party and of the center.
Obviously, at this moment I’m likely to support the Democrat in the ’08 run for the roses, but, if they dive to the left or do anything really crazy in trying to clean up the mess created by Bush and his neoconservative Svengalis, no one should be surprised if there’s a change in my registration.
The Republicans are doing a great job of imploding without any more assistance from me, so I’ll just watch as the self destruction much like the war that caused it accelerates. My fear is that the Democrats will see this administration weakness as the voice of the people telling them to take a left turn; that will be my signal to attempt to bolster the morale of the cloth coat Republicans with whom I parted company when Bush showed he’d lost his way and was listening to the hard right neocons and the evangelicals.
By the way, I’m a big time Democrat who gets `Dear Bill’ emails from all the party big shots. I’m sure that I’m the only one in America who receives such personal notes, but I’m not going to write back and tell them of my likely defection, and, right now, I’m counting on them for some real oversight of these jackasses who’ve taken the country in such dangerous directions.
This is a very antsy time, and I certainly don’t have a clue as to how to get out of Iraq and set the ship of state on the right course. While I was desperate for us not to go into Iraq, I have no idea on how to get us out in a somewhat whole fashion.
But I feel good about the direction of America today. The old bulls of the Republican Party have drawn a line in the sand that stands for no more neocon adventurism. The most serious of our defense and foreign policy intellectuals are thinking of ways to end this fiasco without blowing up the planet, and virtually all serious thinkers are working to curb the mess without further wrecking our standing in the world.
There are only two important people – and they’re both real factors – George W. Bush and John McCain who are still looking for victory in Iraq. Even Joe Lieberman is in a run silent run deep mode.
All in all, I’m looking for a Christmas message from Bush that may include both `mission accomplished’ and a new direction that heads us toward the egress.
Happy holidays to all!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Obviously, at this moment I’m likely to support the Democrat in the ’08 run for the roses, but, if they dive to the left or do anything really crazy in trying to clean up the mess created by Bush and his neoconservative Svengalis, no one should be surprised if there’s a change in my registration.
The Republicans are doing a great job of imploding without any more assistance from me, so I’ll just watch as the self destruction much like the war that caused it accelerates. My fear is that the Democrats will see this administration weakness as the voice of the people telling them to take a left turn; that will be my signal to attempt to bolster the morale of the cloth coat Republicans with whom I parted company when Bush showed he’d lost his way and was listening to the hard right neocons and the evangelicals.
By the way, I’m a big time Democrat who gets `Dear Bill’ emails from all the party big shots. I’m sure that I’m the only one in America who receives such personal notes, but I’m not going to write back and tell them of my likely defection, and, right now, I’m counting on them for some real oversight of these jackasses who’ve taken the country in such dangerous directions.
This is a very antsy time, and I certainly don’t have a clue as to how to get out of Iraq and set the ship of state on the right course. While I was desperate for us not to go into Iraq, I have no idea on how to get us out in a somewhat whole fashion.
But I feel good about the direction of America today. The old bulls of the Republican Party have drawn a line in the sand that stands for no more neocon adventurism. The most serious of our defense and foreign policy intellectuals are thinking of ways to end this fiasco without blowing up the planet, and virtually all serious thinkers are working to curb the mess without further wrecking our standing in the world.
There are only two important people – and they’re both real factors – George W. Bush and John McCain who are still looking for victory in Iraq. Even Joe Lieberman is in a run silent run deep mode.
All in all, I’m looking for a Christmas message from Bush that may include both `mission accomplished’ and a new direction that heads us toward the egress.
Happy holidays to all!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Birds Are Singing
The birds are singing, ten of ‘em. Canaries play two roles, they sing and they croak.
As we carelessly drove the ponies down into the deep, deep mine, we paid no attention to the horrible conditions of the walls, ceiling, or air. As we found ourselves facing an endless seam of soft coal that was crumbling about us and as the timbers and bulkheads groaned and creaked, with no other alternatives, we called for the canaries.
Ten old birds to the rescue. “Get the hell out!” is their unanimous refrain.
These birds are scared to death. Sure, Lee Hamilton can work with anybody, and Jim Baker can fake it. Sandra Day O’Connor is a civilized person. Senators Robb and Simpson were never partisan crazies, and the same goes for all but two of the other members. Ed Meese is a real Republican and Leon Panetta is a fire breathing Democrat.
That Meese and Panetta can agree on 79 points and not withhold their approval of a single finding is both wonderful but really, really scary. The air in this mine is bad, really bad, toxic. If these two partisans join hands it’s not for their parties; it’s for America.
Already, the cries that this map to the mine mouth isn’t realistic are being heard from both sides – those that want to stay the course and those that want to cut and run. I admit – and the members do too – the commission has created a corridor of mirrors within the smoky air.
But it’s time to board the carts and whip the crap out of those ponies in the direction being pointed out by the canaries. There’s little time for face saving or for better ways. All aboard! The birds are beginning to cough.
The Congress better damn well start acting like an oversight committee and the partisan sniping better be held to a minimum. This America we’re talking about, not Republican or Democratic platform planks. Both parties better buy in and kick some executive butt.
The air’s bad, and it’s time to face the truth. We’re in way too deep. Our exit strategy is on the table. It ain’t what we’d like – none of us, but the walls are creaking. Get with it or get the hell out of the way; otherwise the next phase will really be like Vietnam.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
As we carelessly drove the ponies down into the deep, deep mine, we paid no attention to the horrible conditions of the walls, ceiling, or air. As we found ourselves facing an endless seam of soft coal that was crumbling about us and as the timbers and bulkheads groaned and creaked, with no other alternatives, we called for the canaries.
Ten old birds to the rescue. “Get the hell out!” is their unanimous refrain.
These birds are scared to death. Sure, Lee Hamilton can work with anybody, and Jim Baker can fake it. Sandra Day O’Connor is a civilized person. Senators Robb and Simpson were never partisan crazies, and the same goes for all but two of the other members. Ed Meese is a real Republican and Leon Panetta is a fire breathing Democrat.
That Meese and Panetta can agree on 79 points and not withhold their approval of a single finding is both wonderful but really, really scary. The air in this mine is bad, really bad, toxic. If these two partisans join hands it’s not for their parties; it’s for America.
Already, the cries that this map to the mine mouth isn’t realistic are being heard from both sides – those that want to stay the course and those that want to cut and run. I admit – and the members do too – the commission has created a corridor of mirrors within the smoky air.
But it’s time to board the carts and whip the crap out of those ponies in the direction being pointed out by the canaries. There’s little time for face saving or for better ways. All aboard! The birds are beginning to cough.
The Congress better damn well start acting like an oversight committee and the partisan sniping better be held to a minimum. This America we’re talking about, not Republican or Democratic platform planks. Both parties better buy in and kick some executive butt.
The air’s bad, and it’s time to face the truth. We’re in way too deep. Our exit strategy is on the table. It ain’t what we’d like – none of us, but the walls are creaking. Get with it or get the hell out of the way; otherwise the next phase will really be like Vietnam.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Who Cares?
The media abounds with stories about George W. Bush’s place in history. His decision to attack Iraq has historical tongues wagging about whether he is the worst president in American history or perhaps just the worst since Richard Nixon. James Buchanan has been plucked from the dustbin of history, vacuumed off, and held out as the absolute bottom of the barrel – until maybe now. Other commentators have resurrected such presidential luminaries as Herbert Hoover and Andrew Johnson to parade their stuff in the contest for the bottom.
This must be very difficult on Mr. Bush and even more so on Laura and Barney. It can’t be nice to read bout yourself as bracketed with the most incompetent people ever to occupy the White House or to learn that your husband is a total moron – or worse. What does the loyal staff do when they pick up the papers in the morning and find front page comparisons with Bush’s forty-two predecessors – and find him wanting against all of them?
Were I on staff, my reaction would be very swift; let Barney use the Post and Times for whatever he has to do and tell Laura that the paper people skipped the White House this morning. But every day? That would be tough on even the most dedicated of lackeys and sycophants.
In thinking about the problem, I figured out the bottom line; it doesn’t matter. So you’re the worst in history; who cares? Do you really think that Jimmy Buchanan, or Herb Hoover, or Dick Nixon wake up each day on their clouds or – heaven forbid – spits and try to explain themselves to their neighbors? Are you kidding? They’re definitely cool – or hot – with their situations. Although there may be some thoughts of readjustment as they ponder George’s predicament.
And just who cares what so called `presidential experts’ care. They were wrong about Harry Truman and they could be wrong about forty-three, and while I don’t think they are, who cares what a loser like me thinks anyway?
I’ve known and met dozens of people with names like Lincoln, Buchanan, Grant, and I’ve bought vacuum cleaners called Hoover, and I’m sure many of you have too. It has never crossed my mind to ask the Lincoln if he was descended from Abraham. Do you think I’d open up with Buchanan with, “What the hell was that bozo great, great, great uncle of yours doing asleep at the switch when the country was going to hell?”
Would you get in a Lincoln automobile and ask the owner if his vehicle was manufactured by relatives of our late great president? Of course you wouldn’t.
What it really boils down to is that except for a few of the very top guys – maybe Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt (the second guy) – nobody even knows who was president before Bill Clinton. Golly, our intrepid reporters have dig out obscure Ph. Ds just to get the list of the president’s anyway.
So George and Laura and Barney should relax. Look at it this way; has anyone ever been able to even read through the list of names of Egyptian pharos without falling asleep? And except for Rammer and Tut, whoever heard of even one other of them? And there were some very incompetent people on that list – and good ones too; had to be.
The same goes for the Kings of England or the list of the Popes. Their only use today is as substitutes for counting sheep by these same over educated characters who are saying George is the worst. Maybe George should be asking who these jerks are. Could they be the worst evaluators of presidents? Maybe Barney would like to pee on some of their books. Who knows? Who cares?
So be cool George and all you worry warts in the White House. After we get out the mess you’ve created, you can go off and join Jimmy Buchanan in a pinochle game and never be disturbed until some phony baloney Ph. D comes rummaging around to see who’s winning. Even then, who cares?
Blog on!
Wild Bill
This must be very difficult on Mr. Bush and even more so on Laura and Barney. It can’t be nice to read bout yourself as bracketed with the most incompetent people ever to occupy the White House or to learn that your husband is a total moron – or worse. What does the loyal staff do when they pick up the papers in the morning and find front page comparisons with Bush’s forty-two predecessors – and find him wanting against all of them?
Were I on staff, my reaction would be very swift; let Barney use the Post and Times for whatever he has to do and tell Laura that the paper people skipped the White House this morning. But every day? That would be tough on even the most dedicated of lackeys and sycophants.
In thinking about the problem, I figured out the bottom line; it doesn’t matter. So you’re the worst in history; who cares? Do you really think that Jimmy Buchanan, or Herb Hoover, or Dick Nixon wake up each day on their clouds or – heaven forbid – spits and try to explain themselves to their neighbors? Are you kidding? They’re definitely cool – or hot – with their situations. Although there may be some thoughts of readjustment as they ponder George’s predicament.
And just who cares what so called `presidential experts’ care. They were wrong about Harry Truman and they could be wrong about forty-three, and while I don’t think they are, who cares what a loser like me thinks anyway?
I’ve known and met dozens of people with names like Lincoln, Buchanan, Grant, and I’ve bought vacuum cleaners called Hoover, and I’m sure many of you have too. It has never crossed my mind to ask the Lincoln if he was descended from Abraham. Do you think I’d open up with Buchanan with, “What the hell was that bozo great, great, great uncle of yours doing asleep at the switch when the country was going to hell?”
Would you get in a Lincoln automobile and ask the owner if his vehicle was manufactured by relatives of our late great president? Of course you wouldn’t.
What it really boils down to is that except for a few of the very top guys – maybe Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt (the second guy) – nobody even knows who was president before Bill Clinton. Golly, our intrepid reporters have dig out obscure Ph. Ds just to get the list of the president’s anyway.
So George and Laura and Barney should relax. Look at it this way; has anyone ever been able to even read through the list of names of Egyptian pharos without falling asleep? And except for Rammer and Tut, whoever heard of even one other of them? And there were some very incompetent people on that list – and good ones too; had to be.
The same goes for the Kings of England or the list of the Popes. Their only use today is as substitutes for counting sheep by these same over educated characters who are saying George is the worst. Maybe George should be asking who these jerks are. Could they be the worst evaluators of presidents? Maybe Barney would like to pee on some of their books. Who knows? Who cares?
So be cool George and all you worry warts in the White House. After we get out the mess you’ve created, you can go off and join Jimmy Buchanan in a pinochle game and never be disturbed until some phony baloney Ph. D comes rummaging around to see who’s winning. Even then, who cares?
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
It's Morning in America
An article (A Virtual Chalkboard For Budding NFL Fans) in today’s Washington Post describes how millions of mostly young males in the U.S. are becoming expert in the Xs and Os of professional football. The number of people who can glance at a defensive set on their TV screens has expanded exponentially as a result of `Madden NFL’ a video game. This phenomenon is worthy of front page coverage by one of the nation’s leading papers.
In my Andy Rooney moments, I wonder if this is a good thing – a really good thing. Millions of kids are spending hundreds of millions of hours to be able to tell at a glance what only John Madden and Bill Belichek used to know. But there’s an obvious upside to this, instead of only dozens of people being able to break down tapes for NFL teams, there is a developing cadre of millions of potential candidates. On the other hand, since this is highly desirable work, the wage rates will soon plummet to minimum wage levels.
It’s a great world we live in. We’ve come a long way since Classical Civilization when the government provided circus for the masses. Today, the private sector in the form of Madden NFL and its thousands of counterparts and the NFL itself and its pro sports and college competitors deliver circus right into the homes of the consumers. Not only that but those who feel compelled to really attend the circus must compete to buy high priced tickets to many sold out venues in order to be part of the show.
There’s an even better side to this situation. Young people can be passionate about things and are willing to toil for long hours and pay big money to learn what used to be the province of an ascetic priesthood of coaches. Bill Belichek apprenticed at his father's knee and honed his skills for years just to get the chance to intern for nothing with other experts. Now his life’s learning and that of other equally qualified clergymen of the Church of the NFL is available to the masses. So instead of just dozens of boys wasting their time in hopes of coaching the Packers, millions can aspire to be fired losing in the great zero sum game. So while they exercise only their thumbs and their noggins and cannot ever hope to play and get hurt running up huge medical bills, they will all be qualified to coach the Cowboys.
Even better, among the millions of youngsters learning Madden NFL there are tens of thousands who otherwise might have gone bad, and these will have no time for mugging old farts like me or working part time to support illicit drug habits. And they’re not driving cars while they play – I hope – and therefore the roads are safer.
And they say there’s a decline in Western Civilization. Give me a break!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
In my Andy Rooney moments, I wonder if this is a good thing – a really good thing. Millions of kids are spending hundreds of millions of hours to be able to tell at a glance what only John Madden and Bill Belichek used to know. But there’s an obvious upside to this, instead of only dozens of people being able to break down tapes for NFL teams, there is a developing cadre of millions of potential candidates. On the other hand, since this is highly desirable work, the wage rates will soon plummet to minimum wage levels.
It’s a great world we live in. We’ve come a long way since Classical Civilization when the government provided circus for the masses. Today, the private sector in the form of Madden NFL and its thousands of counterparts and the NFL itself and its pro sports and college competitors deliver circus right into the homes of the consumers. Not only that but those who feel compelled to really attend the circus must compete to buy high priced tickets to many sold out venues in order to be part of the show.
There’s an even better side to this situation. Young people can be passionate about things and are willing to toil for long hours and pay big money to learn what used to be the province of an ascetic priesthood of coaches. Bill Belichek apprenticed at his father's knee and honed his skills for years just to get the chance to intern for nothing with other experts. Now his life’s learning and that of other equally qualified clergymen of the Church of the NFL is available to the masses. So instead of just dozens of boys wasting their time in hopes of coaching the Packers, millions can aspire to be fired losing in the great zero sum game. So while they exercise only their thumbs and their noggins and cannot ever hope to play and get hurt running up huge medical bills, they will all be qualified to coach the Cowboys.
Even better, among the millions of youngsters learning Madden NFL there are tens of thousands who otherwise might have gone bad, and these will have no time for mugging old farts like me or working part time to support illicit drug habits. And they’re not driving cars while they play – I hope – and therefore the roads are safer.
And they say there’s a decline in Western Civilization. Give me a break!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Monday, December 04, 2006
It Never Happened
An examination of possible Republican directions as we move toward the 2008 election leads me to conclude that the Iraq War – as I understood it – was nothing but a figment of my overactive imagination. In checking my mirror for signs that I might have morphed into a cockroach but finding only the usual gray stubble, I wondered, could it have been that it was only a nightmare? But the morning paper still reports that our troops are being blown to bits, but it is equally clear that only George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld got the troops into harms way.
The neoconservatives were obviously betrayed by the big three. Rummy never followed the script of sending in enough troops or setting up a real national democracy. It’s obvious from a review of the Doug Feith conspiracy papers (on which the Cheney charges of treason against those of us opposed to the fiasco were based) stating that there was an al Qaeda operative in every Baathist office in Baghdad, so we should have had enough troops to arrest every government employee in the country. Never happened.
The real conservatives said all along that the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force was not followed, so we can’t blame them. Never happened.
The evangelicals were merely supporting the president in pursuing a war of values. How can you doubt that there were a whole heck of a lot of evil people in Iraq and killing a million of them and letting God sort them out was very good thing, so we can’t blame the evangelicals; there really were lions eating the good folks. Never happened.
Obviously, no Republicans – other than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – are responsible for what happened, so now that our sinuses have been cleared by last month’s, why can’t we just move on?
Sure, almost all of the Republicans – and a lot of wimpy Democrats - voted to let Bush handle Saddam, but, like I said, they thought he’d do it right. And he didn’t, so how can we hold them responsible? Never happened.
Damn, they reduced my taxes by sixty bucks and up to a thou on the rest of you in the middle class. Why can’t you thank them? Real wages fell, but, hell, the economy’s growing and we should be cheering as the stars like the Waltons pocket their billions. In the Great Depression when we were all broke and out of work, didn’t we love it when the silver screen showed the winners? Why can’t we just cheer The Donald and make him our surrogate in the winner’s circle?
Looks to me like I’m a bad sport; instead of saying we’ve got punish those people who enabled all these fiascos, I should be looking beyond Bush and giving the Republicans the benefit of the doubt in 2008. They are not going to nominate a guy named Bush. Heck, Jeb may not run for eight years now. You know they’re the party of small government and reduced spending. If it hadn’t been for George Bush, you’d have seen. They’re the party of the little guy; golly, if you’re a small farmer worth only eight or ten million bucks and being subsidized by the Department of Agriculture, they’re all for you and your family. Can’t we just let bygones be bygones?
It was Bush – and Cheney and Rumsfeld – who did it. Don’t blame us; we’ve got some small government candidates we want you to consider in ’08, and we’ll build you a bridge to nowhere while we’re at it.
Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe all those people who six months ago were calling us cutters and runners and who have now turned on Bush really weren’t responsible for any of this mess. Right! Never happened.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The neoconservatives were obviously betrayed by the big three. Rummy never followed the script of sending in enough troops or setting up a real national democracy. It’s obvious from a review of the Doug Feith conspiracy papers (on which the Cheney charges of treason against those of us opposed to the fiasco were based) stating that there was an al Qaeda operative in every Baathist office in Baghdad, so we should have had enough troops to arrest every government employee in the country. Never happened.
The real conservatives said all along that the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force was not followed, so we can’t blame them. Never happened.
The evangelicals were merely supporting the president in pursuing a war of values. How can you doubt that there were a whole heck of a lot of evil people in Iraq and killing a million of them and letting God sort them out was very good thing, so we can’t blame the evangelicals; there really were lions eating the good folks. Never happened.
Obviously, no Republicans – other than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – are responsible for what happened, so now that our sinuses have been cleared by last month’s, why can’t we just move on?
Sure, almost all of the Republicans – and a lot of wimpy Democrats - voted to let Bush handle Saddam, but, like I said, they thought he’d do it right. And he didn’t, so how can we hold them responsible? Never happened.
Damn, they reduced my taxes by sixty bucks and up to a thou on the rest of you in the middle class. Why can’t you thank them? Real wages fell, but, hell, the economy’s growing and we should be cheering as the stars like the Waltons pocket their billions. In the Great Depression when we were all broke and out of work, didn’t we love it when the silver screen showed the winners? Why can’t we just cheer The Donald and make him our surrogate in the winner’s circle?
Looks to me like I’m a bad sport; instead of saying we’ve got punish those people who enabled all these fiascos, I should be looking beyond Bush and giving the Republicans the benefit of the doubt in 2008. They are not going to nominate a guy named Bush. Heck, Jeb may not run for eight years now. You know they’re the party of small government and reduced spending. If it hadn’t been for George Bush, you’d have seen. They’re the party of the little guy; golly, if you’re a small farmer worth only eight or ten million bucks and being subsidized by the Department of Agriculture, they’re all for you and your family. Can’t we just let bygones be bygones?
It was Bush – and Cheney and Rumsfeld – who did it. Don’t blame us; we’ve got some small government candidates we want you to consider in ’08, and we’ll build you a bridge to nowhere while we’re at it.
Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe all those people who six months ago were calling us cutters and runners and who have now turned on Bush really weren’t responsible for any of this mess. Right! Never happened.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Rest Easy
They say there is never any good news. This column from today’s Washington Post puts that canard to rest. This is one of the most touching stories I have ever read and couldn’t wait to share it.
The author, Marc Fisher, is a columnist for the Metro Section of the Post. This such an extraodinary piece that I can't believe that it wasn't placed in the Main news or Outlook sections.
I know I'm building this up but assure you that the subject is heroic and the presentation perfect.
Wild Bill
---------------------------------------------------------------------
By Marc Fisher
Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page C01
E very year for more than a decade, at the height of the season, Morrill Worcester would pack up a truckload of his Christmas wreaths and head down from Maine to Arlington National Cemetery. Without fanfare, he and a dozen or so volunteers would lay red-bowed wreaths on a few thousand headstones of fallen Americans.
There was no publicity. No crowds gathered. The gesture was one man's private duty, born of a trip to Washington he won as a 12-year-old paperboy. Of all the monuments and memorials he saw, it was the visit to Arlington that stuck with him -- the majesty and mystery, the sadness and the pride, the sight of all those neat rows of government-issue white headstones.
Years later, after he had started his Christmas products business, at the crunch point of one season Worcester asked some men who were building his new factory to find some wreaths and buy them for him.
They went a bit overboard: When Worcester heard that he was the proud owner of 4,000 wreaths that couldn't possibly be sold by Christmas, he called a friend who owned a trucking company, contacted his senator in Washington and, two weeks before Christmas 1992, was at Arlington, laying wreaths.
It seemed like the right thing to do. So he continued the ritual each year, honoring those who had died so that he and other Americans might live as they saw fit.
Then, a few months ago, the e-mails started. Maybe you got one: a heart-wrenching yet elegant image of Worcester's wreaths, each adorned with a simple red ribbon, resting in front of seemingly endless rows of identical gravestones on a snowy day at Arlington. Beneath the photo, a few lines of poetry:
"Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well . . . "
And then just a paragraph about Worcester's annual pilgrimage.
The e-mail became an Internet phenomenon, forwarded so many times that the professional skeptics who spend their time checking out urban legends at Snopes.com mounted an investigation. Sure enough, this was the real deal.
A week from today, Worcester will leave Columbia Falls, Maine, to lead the trailer full of wreaths down the coast. This time, it won't be just the trucker, Worcester and his wife, Karen. This time, there'll be an escort of a couple hundred Patriot Guard Riders, a national group of motorcyclists who take it upon themselves to display their respect for fallen service members.
This time, Worcester and friends won't barrel down the interstate; they're taking the slow road, Route 1, so that more motorcyclists -- perhaps thousands more -- might join the caravan.
This time, the wreath-laying won't be a private affair. Instead of the 10 or 12 volunteers who had been rounded up in past years by Wayne Hanson, a retired federal law enforcement officer who lives in Springfield, at least 500 people will be ready to help lay the wreaths Dec. 14 -- and maybe many more.
Morrill Worcester, who never served in the military, said of the wreath-laying project he started: "This is the least we can do." (By Gregory Rec -- Portland Press Herald)
Raw Fisher
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There will be a busload of school kids from Skowhegan, Maine, a Civil Air Patrol unit from up that way and all manner of Washington-area volunteers, too.
They're still calling, every day. "It's the e-mail that did this," says Hanson, 62, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He got involved with the wreaths in 1993, when Worcester sought help from the Maine State Society, a Falls Church-based group of transplants. "I had a man call from Iraq, a civilian contractor who got his company to give him R&R so he could come back and lay a wreath."
Every year, the superintendent of the cemetery assigns the wreath brigade to a different part of the grounds. Last year, the volunteers completed their circuit of the cemetery, and this Christmas, they start all over again.
Every year, Worcester makes certain to reserve a few wreaths for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the John and Robert Kennedy gravesites, the memorial to the USS Maine and the resting place of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine.
Even as his personal ritual morphs into something much larger, Worcester, 56, wants to ensure that its original purpose remains. "It's just my way to say thank you," he says. "I've got a lot to be thankful for." When he started Worcester Wreaths in 1971, he sold 500 wreaths. This year, that number will top 500,000, mostly to the Maine-based retailer L.L. Bean.
This time of year, the wreath company employs more than 600 people in Harrington, about 45 miles up the coast from Bar Harbor.
Worcester has always returned the checks that people send him. The wreath-laying is his personal statement: "This is the least we can do."
Everyone connected with the wreath project takes pains to note that it has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with anyone's opinion about Iraq or terrorism.
"It's just a way to pay respect," Hanson says. "When I came home from Vietnam, well, it wasn't the best time to be in the military, or to be coming home. But this -- it brings tears to my eyes to see 5,000 wreaths laid out across those white government headstones. You can't think about anything but that ultimate sacrifice these people made to give us our freedom."
This year, the interest in Worcester's project has exploded to the point that he had to find some way to extend the tribute, so he has launched http://wreathsacrossamerica.org, a Web site that coordinates similar rituals at more than 200 military cemeteries around the country.
"The veterans are going to get their due," says Worcester, who never served in the military. "It's going to be quite something."
E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com
Blog!
Wild Bill
The author, Marc Fisher, is a columnist for the Metro Section of the Post. This such an extraodinary piece that I can't believe that it wasn't placed in the Main news or Outlook sections.
I know I'm building this up but assure you that the subject is heroic and the presentation perfect.
Wild Bill
---------------------------------------------------------------------
By Marc Fisher
Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page C01
E very year for more than a decade, at the height of the season, Morrill Worcester would pack up a truckload of his Christmas wreaths and head down from Maine to Arlington National Cemetery. Without fanfare, he and a dozen or so volunteers would lay red-bowed wreaths on a few thousand headstones of fallen Americans.
There was no publicity. No crowds gathered. The gesture was one man's private duty, born of a trip to Washington he won as a 12-year-old paperboy. Of all the monuments and memorials he saw, it was the visit to Arlington that stuck with him -- the majesty and mystery, the sadness and the pride, the sight of all those neat rows of government-issue white headstones.
Years later, after he had started his Christmas products business, at the crunch point of one season Worcester asked some men who were building his new factory to find some wreaths and buy them for him.
They went a bit overboard: When Worcester heard that he was the proud owner of 4,000 wreaths that couldn't possibly be sold by Christmas, he called a friend who owned a trucking company, contacted his senator in Washington and, two weeks before Christmas 1992, was at Arlington, laying wreaths.
It seemed like the right thing to do. So he continued the ritual each year, honoring those who had died so that he and other Americans might live as they saw fit.
Then, a few months ago, the e-mails started. Maybe you got one: a heart-wrenching yet elegant image of Worcester's wreaths, each adorned with a simple red ribbon, resting in front of seemingly endless rows of identical gravestones on a snowy day at Arlington. Beneath the photo, a few lines of poetry:
"Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well . . . "
And then just a paragraph about Worcester's annual pilgrimage.
The e-mail became an Internet phenomenon, forwarded so many times that the professional skeptics who spend their time checking out urban legends at Snopes.com mounted an investigation. Sure enough, this was the real deal.
A week from today, Worcester will leave Columbia Falls, Maine, to lead the trailer full of wreaths down the coast. This time, it won't be just the trucker, Worcester and his wife, Karen. This time, there'll be an escort of a couple hundred Patriot Guard Riders, a national group of motorcyclists who take it upon themselves to display their respect for fallen service members.
This time, Worcester and friends won't barrel down the interstate; they're taking the slow road, Route 1, so that more motorcyclists -- perhaps thousands more -- might join the caravan.
This time, the wreath-laying won't be a private affair. Instead of the 10 or 12 volunteers who had been rounded up in past years by Wayne Hanson, a retired federal law enforcement officer who lives in Springfield, at least 500 people will be ready to help lay the wreaths Dec. 14 -- and maybe many more.
Morrill Worcester, who never served in the military, said of the wreath-laying project he started: "This is the least we can do." (By Gregory Rec -- Portland Press Herald)
Raw Fisher
Post Blog:
Get metro columnist Marc Fisher many times a day.
Live Online
Thursday, Nov. 16, 11:45 a.m. ET:Potomac Confidential
Thursday, Nov. 16, 11:45 a.m. ET:Potomac Confidential
Thursday, Nov. 9, Noon ET:Potomac Confidential
Transcript:Campaign 2006: Local Races
Transcript:Potomac Confidential
More Stories
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Below The Beltway
Full List of Blogs (1 links) »
Most Blogged About Articles
On washingtonpost.com | On the web
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There will be a busload of school kids from Skowhegan, Maine, a Civil Air Patrol unit from up that way and all manner of Washington-area volunteers, too.
They're still calling, every day. "It's the e-mail that did this," says Hanson, 62, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He got involved with the wreaths in 1993, when Worcester sought help from the Maine State Society, a Falls Church-based group of transplants. "I had a man call from Iraq, a civilian contractor who got his company to give him R&R so he could come back and lay a wreath."
Every year, the superintendent of the cemetery assigns the wreath brigade to a different part of the grounds. Last year, the volunteers completed their circuit of the cemetery, and this Christmas, they start all over again.
Every year, Worcester makes certain to reserve a few wreaths for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the John and Robert Kennedy gravesites, the memorial to the USS Maine and the resting place of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine.
Even as his personal ritual morphs into something much larger, Worcester, 56, wants to ensure that its original purpose remains. "It's just my way to say thank you," he says. "I've got a lot to be thankful for." When he started Worcester Wreaths in 1971, he sold 500 wreaths. This year, that number will top 500,000, mostly to the Maine-based retailer L.L. Bean.
This time of year, the wreath company employs more than 600 people in Harrington, about 45 miles up the coast from Bar Harbor.
Worcester has always returned the checks that people send him. The wreath-laying is his personal statement: "This is the least we can do."
Everyone connected with the wreath project takes pains to note that it has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with anyone's opinion about Iraq or terrorism.
"It's just a way to pay respect," Hanson says. "When I came home from Vietnam, well, it wasn't the best time to be in the military, or to be coming home. But this -- it brings tears to my eyes to see 5,000 wreaths laid out across those white government headstones. You can't think about anything but that ultimate sacrifice these people made to give us our freedom."
This year, the interest in Worcester's project has exploded to the point that he had to find some way to extend the tribute, so he has launched http://wreathsacrossamerica.org, a Web site that coordinates similar rituals at more than 200 military cemeteries around the country.
"The veterans are going to get their due," says Worcester, who never served in the military. "It's going to be quite something."
E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com
Blog!
Wild Bill
Saturday, December 02, 2006
James Webb, U.S. Senator-elect
I supported the candidacy of James Webb for United States Senator from Virginia. I worked for his election, harder than some but not nearly as diligently as others. I’m happy that he won. But something happened this week that is very bothersome.
Jim Webb was invited to the White House for a reception for incoming members of congress. As a newly elected senator to be, Mr. Webb would be one of the stars of the show. Reports of the event indicate that Jim appeared to make a point of avoiding the host, the President of the United States.
During the course of the reception, it is reported that the president made a point of finding and engaging Mr. Webb and that Mr. Webb reacted in a manner that was reported to be unusual, if not confrontational. Mr. Webb is reported to have avoided having his picture taken with his host and in making smart remarks about that.
The president asked about Mr. Webb’s son who is serving in Iraq, and Webb is reported to have responded with something akin to, “That’s between my son and me.”
Naturally, a food fight of that nature was reported in the press, and I among many was shocked by Mr. Webb’s performance. George Will opined that the senator-elect’s performance was boorish, and I – again among many – agreed.
Many of Webb’s supporters rushed to his defense with such arguments as that it was about time someone shook the hypocrisy out of politics and told the emperor that his fig leaf had been dropped or that Webb’s campaign was based on straight talk and that anything else would have been phony.
Mr. Webb, in my view, was right on target during his campaign when he denounced the Iraq War. His views and mine were almost exactly the same on the most important issue – and as far as I can see on many others that were addressed in the election. Despite having been a long time Republican, Mr. Webb made himself available to the Democrats to run against George Allen, primarily because of his rejection of the invasion of Iraq and the new course of the larger war on terror being pursued by George Bush.
I was a registered Republican in 2000 and voted for Bush. Like Webb, I broke with Mr. Bush and the Republicans when the war on terror lost its focus by shifting away from Afghanistan, its Taliban rulers who were harboring al Qaeda, and the terrorists themselves who were planning and training in that country.
My disgust with the president and his congressional enablers was as palpable as that of Jim Webb, and I became an avowed critic of the president and his war. While having zero knowledge of Webb’s evolution, when I found out he was running and his policy positions, I was very pleased since I had trod virtually the same path.
My break with Bush and the Republicans was eased by my view that in the president I had voted for a `uniter not a divider’ but had been sorely disappointed to learn that I was just plain wrong in this. Mr. Bush had turned out to be the worst kind of partisan, and I was going to look for candidates who would restore some sense of civility to government. During the campaign I came to believe that Jim Webb was such a person. While he pulled no punches in his opposition to the war, his interaction with his opponent, Senator Allen, was always civil, far more honest, and almost devoid of the mud being thrown at him.
Many of the people defending Mr. Webb for his alleged faux pas are those from the liberal part of the coalition that elected him. Many of these same people were angered by the heat of the charges by Senator Allen, and they were the ones calling for civility.
Mr. Webb is obviously far more conservative than the left wing of the Democratic Party. He and many others recruited to be candidates by the Democrats were far more centrist than the hard core, and this was acknowledged by virtually everyone associated with the campaign.
I am a Democrat – now – and far more centrist than the vast majority of his Northern Virginia supporters. Almost every analysis that I have perused since the election leads me to conclude that Mr. Webb’s narrow victory was based on votes garnered from Democrat centrists, moderate Republicans, and independents.
I am convinced that Mr. Webb made gross mistake in attending the function at the White House with the intent of avoiding the host and in responding badly to a very civil question concerning the well being of his son. Obviously, it is acceptable to say things in the course of a campaign that are not appropriate in the home of a political opponent. If Mr. Webb cannot abide the person of George Bush, he should not have attended the reception. His absence would not have created nearly the stir as his performance.
I continue to support Senator elect Webb and wish him well. He is a man of significant intellect and is far more honest in thought than most people in public life. But if there are many more repeats of the performance at his first White House reception, the narrow victory that came with the building of a coalition built on civility as well as policy positions will quickly erode.
I am angrier with Webb’s overzealous supporters who have the gall to encourage such behavior than with the senator elect who should be given room to back down gracefully. Their partisanship is showing, and they ought to realize that the great victory by their candidate – and mine – was built on far more than bad manners and incivility.
There, I feel better. I hope we can move on.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Jim Webb was invited to the White House for a reception for incoming members of congress. As a newly elected senator to be, Mr. Webb would be one of the stars of the show. Reports of the event indicate that Jim appeared to make a point of avoiding the host, the President of the United States.
During the course of the reception, it is reported that the president made a point of finding and engaging Mr. Webb and that Mr. Webb reacted in a manner that was reported to be unusual, if not confrontational. Mr. Webb is reported to have avoided having his picture taken with his host and in making smart remarks about that.
The president asked about Mr. Webb’s son who is serving in Iraq, and Webb is reported to have responded with something akin to, “That’s between my son and me.”
Naturally, a food fight of that nature was reported in the press, and I among many was shocked by Mr. Webb’s performance. George Will opined that the senator-elect’s performance was boorish, and I – again among many – agreed.
Many of Webb’s supporters rushed to his defense with such arguments as that it was about time someone shook the hypocrisy out of politics and told the emperor that his fig leaf had been dropped or that Webb’s campaign was based on straight talk and that anything else would have been phony.
Mr. Webb, in my view, was right on target during his campaign when he denounced the Iraq War. His views and mine were almost exactly the same on the most important issue – and as far as I can see on many others that were addressed in the election. Despite having been a long time Republican, Mr. Webb made himself available to the Democrats to run against George Allen, primarily because of his rejection of the invasion of Iraq and the new course of the larger war on terror being pursued by George Bush.
I was a registered Republican in 2000 and voted for Bush. Like Webb, I broke with Mr. Bush and the Republicans when the war on terror lost its focus by shifting away from Afghanistan, its Taliban rulers who were harboring al Qaeda, and the terrorists themselves who were planning and training in that country.
My disgust with the president and his congressional enablers was as palpable as that of Jim Webb, and I became an avowed critic of the president and his war. While having zero knowledge of Webb’s evolution, when I found out he was running and his policy positions, I was very pleased since I had trod virtually the same path.
My break with Bush and the Republicans was eased by my view that in the president I had voted for a `uniter not a divider’ but had been sorely disappointed to learn that I was just plain wrong in this. Mr. Bush had turned out to be the worst kind of partisan, and I was going to look for candidates who would restore some sense of civility to government. During the campaign I came to believe that Jim Webb was such a person. While he pulled no punches in his opposition to the war, his interaction with his opponent, Senator Allen, was always civil, far more honest, and almost devoid of the mud being thrown at him.
Many of the people defending Mr. Webb for his alleged faux pas are those from the liberal part of the coalition that elected him. Many of these same people were angered by the heat of the charges by Senator Allen, and they were the ones calling for civility.
Mr. Webb is obviously far more conservative than the left wing of the Democratic Party. He and many others recruited to be candidates by the Democrats were far more centrist than the hard core, and this was acknowledged by virtually everyone associated with the campaign.
I am a Democrat – now – and far more centrist than the vast majority of his Northern Virginia supporters. Almost every analysis that I have perused since the election leads me to conclude that Mr. Webb’s narrow victory was based on votes garnered from Democrat centrists, moderate Republicans, and independents.
I am convinced that Mr. Webb made gross mistake in attending the function at the White House with the intent of avoiding the host and in responding badly to a very civil question concerning the well being of his son. Obviously, it is acceptable to say things in the course of a campaign that are not appropriate in the home of a political opponent. If Mr. Webb cannot abide the person of George Bush, he should not have attended the reception. His absence would not have created nearly the stir as his performance.
I continue to support Senator elect Webb and wish him well. He is a man of significant intellect and is far more honest in thought than most people in public life. But if there are many more repeats of the performance at his first White House reception, the narrow victory that came with the building of a coalition built on civility as well as policy positions will quickly erode.
I am angrier with Webb’s overzealous supporters who have the gall to encourage such behavior than with the senator elect who should be given room to back down gracefully. Their partisanship is showing, and they ought to realize that the great victory by their candidate – and mine – was built on far more than bad manners and incivility.
There, I feel better. I hope we can move on.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
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