Towel Toss Theory

My new theory is very simple, although the psychological elements could probably be (will be, maybe) bandied about for years to come.

Romney wants to throw in the towel but cannot handle the quitter image.

Often - probably far more often than most readers appreciate - I utilize golf as a way of expressing some point that is not at all golf related.  Here is another one.  When a putt rolls right to the edge of the cup and suddenly, seemingly against gravity and other physical laws, stops short or veers off or even turns slightly back away from the edge, one of the players will often remark that the ball looked into the abyss and got scared.  This may well be what has happened to Mitt Romney.

All the ridiculous gaffes and goofiness employed recently by Mitt Romney are surely part of a plan for a sneaky exit from center presidential stage after he got close enough to see into the abyss of the actual job.  He cannot simply announce his withdrawal from the race and upset all the mega donors and high-powered friends in the 1% crowd; he's got to be throwing the game!  His tax form trick should have been enough to accomplish this already.  Who said he was unqualified?  HE did!

And has everyone watched the news clips of his speech in Ohio that assails President Obama for the taxes he has raised on the middle class, then turns around and says that Obama has a new surprise plan to raise taxes on the middle class?  This is even more detrimental (because mental is the key word) than his revealing of his true self in a private meeting with rich friends.  He now seems like someone headed for a home where he can be cared for by medical & psychological professionals.  Soon he will be entirely unable to speak.  But of course, this may all be part of his real plan which is to exit public life while gaining pity rather than inciting the hatred of offended friends.

I will not feel sorry for him as he departs the scene to relax on a Grand Cayman beach sipping a cool tropical drink.  He will enjoy his whole new latitude and visiting his money more often.  They probably have beautiful executive nursing homes there also.

FLASH:  Late on the same day I posted this, Mr. Romney, in a positive thrust to make himself look good to all voters, proudly highlighted his commendable performance as a governor when he made sure all of his state's residents had health care.  Republicans are probably looking for a straight-jacket for Mitt's mouth and are ready to toss him bodily into the nursing home. 

10/05/12  NO - I have NOT revised my opinion following the first debate.  Good performance by the shape-shifter, but all based on false premises and outright lies.   

Credit Where It's Due

If you appreciate (and give credence to) a recent comment by former candidate Santorum that warns his fellow Republicans they cannot expect to get the votes of the educated elite, the  intelligent people of our society, then this brief piece won't impress you.

People who actually ARE intelligent enough to pay attention to far more than polls and pundits and to expensive TV ads both pro and con, are coming forward to discuss the strong evidence of real accomplishments of the current administration.  An article from January, 2012, cited a list of 244 items to the credit of the President, and the list was growing.  No doubt, by now it could have doubled in the number of real accomplishments if the recalcitrant Congress had passed the jobs bill and stopped obstructing in every way they could manage.  The article covers the study done by a Florida Professor, Robert P. Watson, so prepare to have to deal with someone of that awful group called the educated elite!

Good article, unless you are hoping as the Republican members of Congress hope, that our sitting President will utterly fail. 

Sam or Me?

Which of us is a better citizen?  Which of us tries hardest to do right by others?  And which of us has the better annual income?

Do you know Sam Clements?  If I were to tell you he is a member of Congress, carried in on the 2010 wave of dissatisfaction and unrest among the national electorate, would that help you remember him?  If I were to give you some salient points about his voting record over his almost two years in office, would that maybe help you place him?

No - none of the above would help you at all to know Sam Clements because the above references are "what if" and are actually meaningless.  There is no such name among our congressional seats.  In a quick Google search, the name naturally pops up but only as a not-uncommon name and in at least one case, a name that is associated with a gay-bashing verbal abuse tirade.  Naturally the search also pointed to the name I may have meant which is Samuel Clemens, aka, Mark Twain. 

But no, the name I actually wanted to check out was Sam Clements after I came up with it out-of-the-blue as someone I do not know.  My point is, you hadn't heard of this Sam either, but could you have said with certainty that he was not among those elected to be in our national congress?  I strongly doubt that you could off-handedly know this.

Of the 535 voting members of our national legislative body (435 representatives and 100 senators), there are perhaps 400 you have not heard of in any overt way.  So I am allowing that about a quarter of the total pool of legislators may be folks we ever hear about.  And far less than that number of names would you or I likely know well enough to list from memory.

My point?  Simply speaking, there are lots of inconspicuous nobodies sitting in offices in Washington D.C. and attending sessions of Congress.  Oh, to be sure, these folks are not unimportant in some small way to some portion of our society - particularly to themselves!  But on the grand scale, they could almost live and die unnoticed.  And every two years, several of these unknowns from the House of Representatives will quietly disappear from D.C. and head back to their former homes or to parts unknown; we will not notice nor care.  Some of them will have been occupying seats in the House for several terms, others merely for that single two-year stint from the fluke election temperament that ushered them in.  Some in the Senate will have managed to stay there for perhaps three or four terms (of 6 years each!) and still be unnoticed by the nation as a whole, and now they can steal away just as unnoticed to wherever they choose to kick back and relax.  Naturally, some will continue trying to perform some manner of service to their fellow man because they are genuine worker types, but most do disappear nonetheless from the national scene.  Many, as we hear occasionally but only when some specific scandal erupts, will go into extremely lucrative jobs where their influence as former congressional representatives can be maximized.

Upon departure from Washington, each of these former public servants takes with him or her an annual lifetime income that would keep three or four families in a marginally comfortable lifestyle.  That self-approved pension goes to the hard-working and devoted few who lost seats after many terms of worthwhile accomplishment as well as to the do-nothings who came in perhaps as hard-line Tea Party types who have sat on their asses over the last eighteen months doing exactly what the House Leader(!) has told them to do, which was nothing.  And if that incompetent and obstructionist Leader himself were to be voted out of office because his Ohio district voters wake up and see what has been going on, along with him will go another extra amount (about 50k more than the everyday nobody congressman) in lifetime pension that could sustain yet another whole family.

No complaints are being registered here for my own situation in life; I live happily in a country that allows me to be at least among the top ten percent of the planet's population, in terms of physical well-being, even though my annual income is roughly 15% of what Sam Clements and his other non-entity departing legislators will enjoy for life.  And many of these folks are beginning this life of ease at the ripe old age of thirty-five or forty, looking at limitless futures of good-and-plenty for themselves.  All the while, they will be witness to some of the most desperate measures being thrust upon our nation and its average citizens just to stay financially afloat.  These former elected representatives have their nests well feathered, regardless of how little they did while in Congress to ease the burden on the rest of us.  And in fact, some of these folks will have accomplished absolutely nothing in two, six or twenty years - or worse; some will have been responsible for helping to destroy our national well-being while enhancing their own.

SHAME!  Shame on this current Congress, and shame on all who take advantage of the many on behalf of themselves.

P. S.
This is just a little added thought.  I would appreciate it if some enterprising journalist were to spend the time to look back over perhaps two or three decades and count the number of people who are our former national elected officials, then post the amount of money being paid out annually for these pensions.  Of course, many associated issues relating to the individuals could be pursued as well (how long had they served, did they ever notably affect any laws, what are their current high-powered employments, etc.), if someone were to be so energetic.  The total amount we pay out for these substantial pensions would naturally not look like a huge amount compared to the amount "lost" each year by the fact that so many of our society are not paying income taxes.  The number of such dependent-on-the-government types (victims) being bandied about right now is 47% of Americans.  Keep in mind that this group includes yours truly along with millions of my near-contemporaries who worked hard for decades and paid into good and well-designed government programs that are now supposed to be allowing us to live in minimal comfort from our efforts.  This is supposed to also be living with dignity, but there are those who see us as deadbeats.  Deadbeats?  And we've come full-circle!

Pain Is Relative

But not relatable.  (My own word but it's what I mean to relate.)

This is NOT a treatise on family and the trouble we can have with those interesting relatives who make up our extended families.  This is quite simply about pain.

How is yours coming along?  Yes, I mean your pain.  Oh, you don't have any that you know of and don't really relate?  Then please stop reading here and move along to something more entertaining.  Reading this could actually cause a discomfort you wouldn't otherwise need to address.

Now, for those typical folks who DO suffer pain now and then, does it seem almost impossible to describe exactly, precisely, the pain you are experiencing at any given time?  That's because it IS impossible.  The best any of us can do is approximate a description of our pain, and often even that isn't easy.  This is because the ONLY person who can completely know a certain pain is the one who is suffering it.  Others can listen to attempts at describing a specific pain, but they can come only reasonably close to actually understanding it - or could be very far from grasping it and not know how badly they are missing the real grasp.  Someone may sympathize with you because you are suffering, but that is a real arm's length reaction.  Others can empathize with you because they have felt pain (perhaps in the same area of the body) and know it can be miserable.  Some may commiserate with you because they feel a closeness to you and are willing to share in your misery - the very meaning of "co" is to share or take part in, as in the way a coworker is one who helps with, shares in, the work.  A commiserater shares the misery.

But relating?  Someone can tell you that he/she relates to what you are describing.  That could mean that the person has known a pain similar to the one you seem to be suffering.  But the pain you are feeling and the one the other person has experienced may be related in about the way distant cousins are related, actually not sure they know each other when suddenly meeting again after years of non-contact.  Even if the pain experiences in question are closer to the way identical twins relate to each other, they are still not identical.

My dear wife has various pains and maladies that she tries to describe so I can grasp a little of her misery.  Our only shared pains that are similar are those that hit our lower backs.  Each of us proudly presents with a congenital anomaly of an extra vertebra.  This (we are told happens to one in 100,000 births) unnecessary and perhaps not well formed structure at the base of the spine would be no problem if it behaved entirely like its fellow vertebral connections.  But it doesn't.  Not as flexible, or when it flexes, is prone to getting stuck in a painful lock-down, followed often by massive muscle spasms around the lower and middle back.

Here is an attempt at describing just an outward effect of my own lower back difficulties, and though my wife and I suffer similarly, this is not the way she would try to clarify it:  My putting stroke, on the golf course, has developed around my pain.  Some who see me on the greens will assume I have tried to mimic Jack Nicklaus, which wouldn't be a crazy thing to do considering his success - but it is not the reason I crouch the way I do to putt.  Before I attempt a putt, I stand virtually straight to line up the path I expect the ball to take, then to hit the putt, I bend the knees and get low over the ball in a position most would not want to achieve.  The reason?  There is a commonly taken position over the ball (one I used myself a few years ago) which requires a simple bending of the spine.  If I were to take that stance today and try to hold it long enough to make the putt, I may well be stuck in that position for the rest of the day or for the next several days, suffering extremely painful spasms and needing crutches or a cane to allow any mobility.  Consequently, my putting stance may make some folks think I am trying to make friends with the grass or insects crawling on it.  I merely need to drop past the vulnerable spot that my back could decide is lock-down mode.  And I am the only one who can tell where that spot is.  And it can be found by surprise at any time during any movement; it's on the golf course that I have prepared protective moves.

Several men in my golf group are more than twenty-five years my senior, and in some cases, they are quite obviously more agile and less in pain than I am.  At times I say I anticipate playing golf until perhaps my mid-nineties, then expiring peacefully following a satisfying round on the greens.  (This I call, the Bing Crosby exit but he did it at the age of seventy.)  In reality, there are many days now, in my late sixties, when I wonder whether I can handle the pain for even another decade.  And I am basically a positive and optimistic person!  It astounds me that people who are already immobilized with injuries, deformities or various ailments can go on each day looking forward to many more years of life.  My own pains are often enough to make me feel that getting a great deal older is not necessarily desirable.  When I hear someone say about a deceased loved one that "...he is now at peace," I automatically think only of the fact that the departed one "is now without pain."

Please take the time to listen to someone who is trying to describe his or her pain, and perhaps you can help a little by merely taking one of the above approaches of commiserating, sympathizing or even empathizing if the described pain is at all familiar in tone.  The person talking about the pain apparently needs to reach out for that human tenderness from others.  Why not give it?  As for my own pains, I prefer not to dwell on them on any frequent basis.  This effort today to discuss pain in general is probably all I will have to say about it until the next time someone who doesn't yet know me very well asks me, "Why do you get down so close to the ground when you putt?"

Please Step to the Podium

And don't trip as you step up ONTO the podium and proceed to the LECTERN.

People, people - why is this so difficult?  Do perhaps 90% of all English-speaking folks abuse this word, maybe out of fear of sounding pompous or too literal by correctly choosing the word lectern?  Do people simply not care when they lazily copy others in the wrong application of the word podium?  Where is the intellectual curiosity these days?

As a high school student, making my first feeble attempt at learning a foreign language, I was so pleased to see the obvious root word for the various English words having to do with feet.  (I had missed any similar connection during an earlier strike-out year with Latin, which was even then being called a dead language when I was a dead-head trying to understand it!)  It was in my new venture into Spanish that I found the word Poder [poh - dare], meaning to walk.  The POD and PED variations, as in podiatrist and pedestrian, began to make sense to my slowly awakening interest in words.  The opportunity to take a course in etymology had never appeared in my school, so my lexologic interests had to be self-directed.  Any simple check in the dictionary shows the Greek podos, a word meaning foot, is obviously the main root for many words, including the English podiatrist and the Spanish poder.

So when I first ran across the word podium, it made complete sense that it had everything to do with where the feet were placed, not where a book or note paper would be placed.  That speaker's stand (which stands in front of the speaker, ON the podium) is a lectern, meaning desk, table, counter, stand, etc.  Check the word podium in a thesaurus.  It has many synonyms, all of them meaning where feet should go, not where hands go to turn pages of notes.  So when we hear a supposedly educated broadcaster say that "[so-and-so] is standing at the podium" - it is perfectly permissible to shout at the television screen that [so-and-so] is standing ON, not AT the podium!

In one of my sales jobs I was a presenter of information and that part of my work was referred to as doing podiums!  It isn't easy to express my disdain for this kind of abuse of words.  There was no podium at all; I stood merely in front of the patrons on floor level.  And as a strict point of usage, had I actually had a podium from which to speak, the act of doing many presentations from this raised platform should have been called in the plural, podia.  If we visit more than one museum or stadium, we are visiting musea and stadia.  Now I never get too riled up or vociferous when someone says he or she visited three museums; the handling of foreign words and their variations is not an easy matter.  (The stadia and musea references even tripped up my spell-check.)  But the typical use of a wrong word as a habit is just a sign of lazy repetition and having no determination to speak with clarity.

My first question above was whether perhaps 90% of us misuse the term podium.  Of the remainder of society, perhaps only a tiny fraction are bothered by it.  Obviously I am in this latter group.

Someday I will tackle the even more completely misapplied word only in probably 99% of our speaking.

Does SIZE Really Matter?

YES, apparently.  In fact, in the context of what I am addressing here, it seems to be ALL that matters.

The subject in the news on morning network television was Tom Cruise and an article written about him in Vanity Fair magazine.  The subject of the article was the supposed "auditioning" having been done by the Church of Scientology looking for a wife for their prize adherent, Mr. Cruise.

As the news reporter and guest discussed some of the points of the matter and revealed how restrictive and controlling the sect is over its members, my wife said in mild surprise, "That sounds like a cult!"  And the harsh emphasis her voice gave to the word cult made it clear that my sweet former Catholic innocent did not consider something called a cult to be worthy of anyone's devotion. 

My wife either has not read some of my earlier posts here and there concerning cults, or she has forgotten them.  Interesting that in modern times the very word cult has undergone an adaptation in definition and now, when used in the common vernacular, means only small sectarian groups that are not acceptable to the larger sects.  They are Johnny-come-lately shams of true(!) belief systems and they should be avoided in favor of the long-established mainstream religious sects.

The original meaning of cult is merely stated as a set of beliefs and its pertinent tenets and rituals.  So tradition and a solemn deference that apparently must be paid to long-time established sects that have grown large, means that they - the large groups - get to judge and find guilty of worthlessness, any new or slightly different sectarian group. So the cult of Catholicism (a huge and controlling cult of the larger cult of Christianity), the cult of Judaism, the cult of Islam - all these are given respect and are now free of that slur which gets hurled at Scientology or at splinters of The Worldwide Church of God, or at the Branch Davidians.

Oh yes, size definitely matters!  When that rag-tag little sect called Christians finally, after almost three hundred years of sneaking around and gaining converts, got the attention of an emperor, things changed for them.  Over the succeeding centuries, with the ruler of a large segment of Europe ordering the masses to convert and then with the Pope and his enforcers seeing to it that all within their domain either converted or died, the little sect became a large one.

Where is the line that must be crossed?  Is there written somewhere a number of adherents that small sects must struggle to attain?  When did The Sikhs become accepted as mainstream and no longer have to be mentioned always with the pejorative label of cult?  When did the Mormons - or have they?  Is Zoroastrianism considered mainstream?  And what of those splinter groups that develop as off-shoots of tenets within traditional Christianity?  Are they covered by the large umbrella and considered acceptable?  Are the snake-handlers left alone and not concerned about being thought of derisively as a cult because they are still Christian?  How about the tongues-talkers or the  leapers & jumpers?  As long as they are calling themselves part of Christianity, are they acceptable?  Or should the typical judgmental cult label be casually applied to them?  The lines drawn among religious sects as to their acceptability to the general citizenry of the world are anything but straight and clear lines.  They resemble a Texas redistricting map!

I have my own simple line drawn:  Any way of life that requires the human mind to accept unprovable doctrine over logic and makes a person subservient to ideology, choosing belief over reason, is a sad and wasteful way of living.  Cult still means just that, and the larger ones are merely more detrimental to humanity because they have infected more minds.  Snake-handlers are not nearly as dangerous to humanity as are Catholics or Muslims.  Historically, this is very easily proved on massive scales.

So if you are smart enough to say "No, thanks" to accepting an adder in your hands, why say "Sure thing" to accepting a wafer on the tongue or the requirement of incessant washing of your hands and falling on your face to pray many times a day?  Gotta be a simple case of bigger is better!"

A Holiday for Now

The first entry under my Google search of Labor Day brought up a simple history beginning with:

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

I hope you will click on the link and read it all.  It's shorter than my usual post.

My topic line above means to emphasize the for now aspect.  This holiday may very well be on the way OUT.  If the current raging right-wing of the Republican Party gets into power, what would be the basis of a once vibrant holiday spirit honoring the American Worker?  The party that can have a (proven dishonest) presidential candidate speak in glowing terms about when "...you need an American" while at the same time hailing a governor who destroys labor unions as a hero, will do all it can to end the balancing factor of organized labor in our nation.  The article mentioned above flatly states that the labor movement brought about social and economic achievements, and if you were to ask the rich and powerful business moguls of today whether this is true, they would have to admit that it is true.  However they would hate to face the fact that those achievements came in spite of the wealthy business barons of the nineteenth century who would rather have kept all their wealth and let the common worker (including children) go on living in poverty while working endless hours and having no rights. 

So have a great holiday.  And as you enjoy your cook-outs, family gatherings and other fun activities that were not a part of the All American way of life until the Labor Movement brought some sanity to the way our work weeks and time off were organized, think seriously for a moment.  Try to imagine the bright new future of a nation going in reverse if a big-money coalition buys our elections and eventually chokes off the voice of the American Worker.  But be aware: it is our own national throat we are cutting if we sell our votes this November.