Music of the Day: Mike Stern, Is What It Is

The Dems have lost their hair candidate, the former Senator from North Carolina, their "populist/progressive" candidate, the insufferably lachrymose and saccharine John Edwards. From the outset, the man was an empty suit, a poseur claiming humble roots while living in a mansion next to trailer-dwelling neighbors, mere regular North Carolinians of average or below-average means. What his electoral appeal was remains a mystery to me--while in North Carolina during the 2004 presidential campaign, I saw a bumper sticker that reflected nicely the feeling of the locals for both John Kerry and their own spawn, John Edwards, to wit: Flush The Johns. One got flushed in '04 and the other self-flushed himself today after a pointless and empty "campaign" for the nomination of his party. Pretty will only get a fella' so far, I guess. . . .

It seems as if Dem voters now must choose between the considerable toxic baggage hauled around by The Mrs., not the least of which is her husband, the Former Narcissist in Chief, or the seemingly empty vessel that is Mr. Obama whose sole platform plank seems to be "change," whatever that means. If I were a Dem, I'd be tempted to embrace change if it meant finally jettisoning the Clintons, in all their various slimy and reptilian iterations, so maybe Mr. Obama would be my man, no matter how empty.

As for the Reps, we must choose now between a man who cannot raise his arms above his head, Senator McCain, and a man who, like Edwards, seems to spend a lot of effort fixing his hair, Governor Romney. The former Mayor of New York City has called it quits (that great sigh of relief you heard when Rudy pulled the plug was the gang in caves all over Afghanistan who now figure they can further live to plot and murder with the scary and perhaps vengeful Giuliani out of the equation), the former governor of Arkansas (what the hell is up with Arkansas?) seems to be on life support, Fred Thompson has either disappeared or just moved on to another phase of his "campaign," no one can tell for sure.

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have opened a pizza parlor on the planet Whackazoid, from which Kucinich hails; Dr. Paul can attempt to foist his bizarre libertarian notions on the Whackazoidians while Kucinich welcomes Shirley MacLaine for occasional visits while they eat vegetarian pizza and plot a successful return to Earth to completely take over Cleveland, Ohio. Why Cleveland?

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Tom Scott, Them Changes

New champions have been crowned in Australia, which means that I can now get back to the "bidness" of reading again. This evening I finished Beevor's book about Stalingrad and as RB suggested to me a month or so ago in a phone conversation, it was an amazing read. WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Germans and Soviets being as cruel and inhuman to one another as possible. Not good reading before bedtime. Still, an important book for the lessons one can glean from it. . . .

Next Sunday I guess I will succumb to the football-thing again for the one remaining game of the season. I don't really care much who wins, as long as it's interesting. Maybe the commercials will be entertaining. Maybe the half-time show won't be wholly offensive. If nothing else, the game will provide an excuse to drink beer in the daytime. As an old AFL fan from the 60's, I guess I'll have to pull for the Patriots, but I cannot imagine suffering a stroke if the Giants win instead.

This evening we received our first computer-generated phone call of the 2008 election, a call from a perky sounding college sophomore (just guessing, but that's what she sounded like) stumping (if that's the right word) for Hillary Clinton. If they are able to track how fast people hang up, I may be in the running for some kind of prize--forty plus years of tennis means my reaction time is pretty damned good, and I hit the "end" button on the phone before the recorded wench could get another word in after "Clinton." Cat like reflexes!

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Even though we have eight feet of snow on the ground outside, I'm fully engaged in tennis--the Australian Open. It's in the 80's there, which sounds wonderful, and it's really hard not to watch the best players in the world doing battle on the beautiful new blue courts in Melbourne, so reading has taken a back seat to staring at the TeeVee.

Friday night MLB and I attended a hockey game and then came home; before turning in we decided to check the action in Melbourne and the Roger Federer match against Tipsarevich had just begun, so we watched a bit. And then we watched some more, because it was good, and Fed wasn't playing all that well and was in some danger of losing. So we watched as he mounted a comeback, and then we watched as Tipsarevich went ahead, again, and then we watched as Fed finally tied the match, and then we watched as Fed won 10-8 in the fifth set. The match was finally over. It was 3:15 in the morning. We were exhausted. Max the Wonder Dog started barking at 7:30am, so I was up and out of the nice warm bed, making coffee, taking the poor blind beast for walkies, while MLB slept for two more hours. I don't remember much else from the day. . . .

So, my reading schedule has been interrupted by superior tennis--but here's what I'm working on at present:

Antony Beevor's book, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege,1942-1943.
Ross S. Carter's book, Those Devils in Baggy Pants (thanks to Dr. Phil).
P.J. O'Rourke's book, On the Wealth of Nations.
Daniel Hendrex's book, A Soldier's Promise: The Heroic True Story of an American Soldier and an Iraqi Boy.

Once the tournament comes to an end next weekend, I'll be able to get back to the books, with some reports to follow here.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Larry Carlton, Sapphire Blue

"September 1, 1939, was the first day of a war that would last for 2,174 days, and it brought the first dead in a war that would claim an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every 3 seconds." This is the opening sentence of one of the early paragraphs (page 5 of the prologue, actually) of Rick Atkinson's 2002 book An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, which is the first of his so-called "liberation trilogy." The second book, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 is on the bookshelves now, and that means after I finish two or three other books, I'll get to that one; as for An Army at Dawn, for those of you who read this sort of thing, I have to say that this is one helluva read. I have read two of Atkinson's other works, The Long Gray Line (about the West Point class of 1966) and his 2005 book In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, both of which are excellent.

One of this latest book's many strengths is Atkinson's writing, which at times is breathtakingly beautiful; here's a passage that appears on page 41 of the paperback edition: "The dawn was bright and blowing. Angels perched unseen on the shrouds and crosstrees. Young men, fated to survive and become old men dying abed half a century hence, would forever remember this hour, when an army at dawn made for the open sea in a cause none could yet comprehend. Ashore, as the great fleet glided past, dreams of them stepped, like men alive, into the rooms where their loved ones lay sleeping." Here's another brief passage, from page 392: "After ten days of cacophonous slaughter, an eerie silence fell over the battlefield, broken in the smallest hours of the morning by the hammer of typewriters in the adjutants' tents, where clerks labored all night to transform the holiest mysteries of sacrifice and fate into neat lists of the missing and the wounded and the dead." And finally, from page 533 of the epilogue, this: "No soldier in Africa had changed more--grown more--than Eisenhower. He continued to pose as a small-town Kansan, insisting that he was 'too simple-minded to be an intriguer or [to] attempt to be clever,' and he retained the winning traits of authenticity, vigor, and integrity. He had displayed the admirable grace and character under crushing strain. But he was hardly artless. Naivete provided a convenient screen for a man who was complex, shrewd, and sometimes Machiavellian. The Darlan affair had taught him the need to obscure his own agency in certain events even as he shouldered responsibility for them. The failings of Fredendall and other deficient commanders had taught him to be tougher, even ruthless, with subordinates. And he had learned the hardest lesson of all: that for an army to win at war, young men must die."

My only complaint with the book is the system of footnotes employed, which I found to be utterly useless--the source material is extensive, Atkinson appears to be a researcher of extraordinary capabilities, but the system of notes at the back of the book served only to deter me from looking at the citations. Otherwise, this is an incredible book that exposes the miracle, and miracles, of victory in North Africa in World War II.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Stefon Harris, The Grand Unification Theory

All in all, yesterday was a very good day. Five of us stumbled out of our various lairs to see The Bucket List, a film which was entertaining, light, funny, momentarily serious (but not in a preachy or overbearing way), but otherwise not especially meaningful or memorable. Still, it was fun, even if we had to sit in the third row--we all came away from the film looking like people who had been staring into space for 90 minutes or so, with our necks still craned upwards.

Then it was back to the ranch; MLB prepared a wonderful steak dinner, with salad, and some parmesean potatoes and three excellent bottles of wine and lots of laughter, good conversation, some forays into the living room to check the score of the football game, and a light but tasty dessert. Thanks to our friends DG and BG, Dr. Phil and HLB (His Lovely Bride) Debbie--good people, good conversationalists, good humored people. We don't lead fancy or extravagant lives so we tend to appreciate books and good humor and good company and good music and, yes, a good football game. There is also amongst us a great sense of gratitude for the sacrifices made by others on our behalf--sometimes we talk about these things, sometimes not, but the gratitude is always there.

And now for me, it's back to the Aussie Open, the start of the tennis Grand Slam season; goodbye for today and thanks for reading.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.