Sunday 24th August 2008   Why we don’t deserve better We are fed up with business as usual or what has become usual in the political campaign. We haven’t missed an election since we had our first opportunity when we turned 21 and voted by absentee ballot from Africa. Not too long after that we voted early on our way to Vietnam. We are growing increasingly tempted to sit this one out. It is perhaps too much to hope for and more than we Americans deserve, considering the way we respond to this political process; but we wish that we had a few, just a few candidates who chose to campaign on their own values and their own hopes and aspirations for this country. Alas, We have John McCain and his staff telling us about Obama and Barack Obama and his staff telling us about John McCain. Speak for yourselves boys. It would appear that about ninety percent of the political discourse is bad mouthing the opponent. We would like to have some candidates who would stand up and tell us what is right about what they would do, not what is wrong with what the opponent has done or might do. We are tired of skeletons in the closet stories. Hell, there are fine doctors who have gone all the way through med school who haven’t seen as many skeletons as are dragged out in typical campaigns. I wouldn’t want to vote for someone who didn’t have a few of those problems that most folk wouldn’t want to talk about. What are we electing, senators, congressmen, presidents or saints? We don’t expect to hear many candidates tell us what they would do instead of trying to convince us of the fallacy of what “my opponent” would do. Why? Because we respond to negative advertisement. According to the New York Times t “Senator Barack Obama has started a sustained and hard-hitting advertising campaign against Senator John McCain in states that will be vital this fall, painting Mr. McCain in a series of commercials as disconnected from the economic struggles of the middle class.” We are hearing figures like $400,000 spent over one weekend in those kinds of commercials. Why is he doing that? Look no further than the poll by Reuters/Zogby. (We aren’t real fond of campaign decisions and direction being determined by polls either) “In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.” Negative ads work. The whole darn process is headed hell bent for election. The election is the single most driving factor and it seems that those on both sides are willing to do anything to win. Anything that is except tell us what they believe is right for our country. This week is the Democratic Convention in Denver. It should be a time when the Democratic Party members select a nominee, work out a platform and begin their campaign in earnest. Sunday night news reports tell us of the headquarters the Republican Party is setting up in Denver in an attempt to distract the media and gain some of the limelight, not content to wait a week or so for their own convention. With the announcement of Biden as the Democratic VP nominee, we have a fresh new assault. We’ve already heard enough about why we shouldn’t vote for the other guy. Please, a candidate who will give us a GOOD reason to put the mark by his or her name. This is one voter who is turned off by the conduct of both parties reminiscent of schoolboys scuffling on the school yard vying for attention. Maybe we don’t deserve better, but it would sure be a refreshing change. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Friday 15th August 2008   Money can’t Buy Everything We can’t drill our way out of the energy problem, we can’t dig our way out of the energy problem and we can’t buy our way out of greenhouse gases. We all can laugh at the country boy who uttered the immortal words, “I’d give a hundred dollars to be one o’ those millionaires.” But, when it comes to our energy problems, we are inclined to act like that country boy. There is legislation now pending in Congress to levy a carbon tax on among other things power plants that are belching tons and tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are talking about big bucks here folks. The Texas Public Utility Commission has done some calculations and the results are, to say the least expensive. They knock the sails out of the winds blowing the good ship coal plant and the carbon tax would destroy the only argument coal generated power plants had going for them. The claim that it was “cheap” On Tuesday, the PUC said that costs associated with national carbon legislation – which would put a price tag on the carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants – could range from as low as $13 a ton to as much as $70 a ton annually, and perhaps go even higher. They anticipated that the average annual cost would be between $30 to $45 a ton. The following is a list of recent or proposed coal plants in Texas with the added annual cost of carbon legislation at $35 a ton, based on available information about C02 emissions: TXU, Oak Grove: $581 mil/year CPS, Spruce: $259 mil/year Dynegy, Sandy Creek: $263 mil/year Formosa & Calhoun Co.: $196 mil/year TXU, Sandow: $189 mil/year NRG, Limestone: $259 mil/year Int. Power, Coleto Creek: $210 mil/year Las Brisas: $364 mil/year Tenaska (w/ carbon capture): $26 mil/year Total - $2.347 billion/year Additional carbon dioxide emissions from the 19 older plants in Texas would amount to $8 billion at the average carbon tax of $35 a ton every year, Public Citizen estimates. Including the plants listed above, the total annual price tag of Texas coal plants would be more than $10 billion per year. We know they do things big in Texas, but this is not small change and those costs will ultimately be passed on to the consumer. But, that is not half the problem. There is something inherently wrong with the thinking that says adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere is alright as long as we spend greenbacks to do it. That whole kind of thinking has guided our energy policies for years. It is time for a change. We aren’t going to be able to dig our way out of the energy problem any more than we will be able to drill our way out. To be certain, oil, natural gas and coal are and will remain for some time major players in our energy picture. But, we cannot sit still and look to those sources as the ultimate answers. They are not the only problems with the energy picture, Nuclear power is another area where we looked to cheap fuel and the consequences be damned. At the moment there are 104 nuclear powered electric plants in the United States. And by the way, we don’t have an answer with what to do with the spent nuclear fuel wich will be radioactive and a potential hazard for not just years, but centuries. Last time we had an “energy crisis” back in the mid-70's we had a total of 57 nuclear power plants on line, generating nine percent of our electricity, some 172 million kilowatthours (KWH)a year Today, even though we hear a lot of talk about no new plants being built in the last so many years, we have 104 plants online delivering 19.5 percent of our electricity and generating some 806 million KWH of electricity. Do a little math here. Those numbers, from the governments nuclear regulatory site appear to indicate that our electrical usage has more than doubled since 1975. Back then is would have been 1,911 KWH and in 2007 the number works out to 4,231 KWH. There should be a clue here folks. Nuclear energy ,with no way to dispose of the radioactive waste; coal fired plants that produce greenhouse gases that will somehow magically respond to a tax (costs that will ultimately be passed on to the consumer) are two legs of the three legged stool we seem to be content to sit on. The third leg - Ethanol. As we wrote a year and a half ago, Ethanol is an answer but not a solution. Back then the President called for an increase in the production of renewable and alternative fuels from 7.5 billion gallons today to 35 billion gallons by 2017. Some studies have indicated that it takes about one and a half times as much energy (production of corn, fertilizer, processing and refining of the alcohol) to produce ethanol as it contains. Using those kinds of figures, more ethanol production would drive us deeper into the need for oil. The most favorable figures show a 20 percent increase in fuel. One gallon of petroleum product to produce 1.2 gallons of ethanol. Unfortunately, Ethanol does not produce as much energy per gallon as gasoline. The ratio is about 5.5 to 7.7. Ethanol does burn cleaner than gasoline in our automobiles. However as a renewable resource produced from corn, it is at best not much of a savings in fuel. There is the other problem -- space. To produce enough corn for that 35 billion gallons of ethanol would require 129,000 square miles of farmland. That is roughly the equivalent of the land area of Kansas and Iowa combined. We can sit on that three-legged stool and hope for an answer or we can get up off our backsides and start working to renewable energy sources that don’t carry heavy environmental penalties and we can conserve energy to reduce the demand. The record profits of big oil, it appears, have not been pushed into research and development, but rather large portions of the profits have been used to buy back stock and solidify the companies. We will write more later about nuclear energy and the problem with profits in that industry, but suffice it to say, we aren’t building nuclear power plants not because of any greenhouse effect, but a greenback effect. We are not confident that we, as a people have the intestinal fortitude to conserve. Last week, in our home state, The Kansas Energy Council gave a preliminary nod "I guess I'm going to vote for this just as a way of advancing the public discussion," said Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, the council's co-chairman. "Gas has never been $4 a gallon. We're in a different environment." However, state Sen. Janis Lee, D-Kensington, said the change stood no chance of making it through the Kansas Legislature.to reducing the state's speed limit as a way of encouraging more energy efficient driving and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The decrease, which would require a change in state law, appears to be a long way from becoming reality. "There's no way, shape or form this is going to pass," said Lee, a member of the panel. Reducing driving speed from 70 mph to 65 mph is expected to increase fuel economy by 7 percent to 23 percent while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other heat-trapping gases, according to the council. Secretary of Transportation Deb Miller said the average speed on Kansas highways posted with 70 mph limits is 78 mph. The average speed on rural roads posted with 65 mph limits is 75 mph, she said. Most of the highways that would be affected by the 5 mph change would be Interstate highways and heavily traveled federal or state highways, she said. According to news reports, Michael J. Volker, an energy economist for Midwest Energy in Hays, said people living in the western part of the state would be disproportionately hurt by a decrease in the speed limit. He said he'd prefer to see the council push for changes that would result in more fuel-efficient vehicles. "We'd much rather see us build a better mousetrap rather than lower our standard of living by making us spend more time on the road." Travel on Kansas roadways dropped by 6.7 percent in June compared to the amount of miles driven in that same month a year ago, the Federal Highway Administration announced Wednesday. The drop was the seventh-biggest percentage decrease among states behind Idaho (7.7 percent), Maine (7.0 percent), Utah (6.9 percent), Nevada (6.7 percent), Washington (6.8 percent) and Alabama (6.4 percent). The one comment posted to the news article about the proposed reduction in the speed limit perhaps reflects our national attitude concerning the energy and environmental problems: “If you are worried about global warming, one way to eliminate a lot of hot air would be to do away with the Kansas Energy Council.” We don’t see a lot of hope on the horizon until we all start accepting the energy problem and not just for somebody else. It belongs to us all. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Thursday 14th August 2008   Cold days ahead As we sat on the front step a few nights ago and watched the western sky we heard the song of the Cicada, more commonly, although incorrectly called the locust in these parts. It is far more predictable in these parts than the rain. Late July or early August and the trees are buzzing. Great Grandmother Siemers always said that when one heard the locusts singing, it was 90 days to the first killing frost. We never checked that out exactly and suspect she wasn’t too far from wrong. At any rate, we are now less than 90 days away from cold weather. And if the thought of cold winter winds, snow and ice aren’t enough to chill your bones, the best figures we can find indicate that heating oil, the stuff used by large populations in the northeast is up 36 percent from a year ago. But that is in New England, how about the rest of us. Natural gas prices are forecast to be 67 percent higher than last year. In case you haven’t checked your electric bill closely, the energy cost, at least in our neck of the woods, has increased significantly over a year ago, like maybe four or five times greater. Folks, we have an energy problem and it is going to hit right home real soon. We can drive less (and we are) with that $4 gasoline, but come winter, we shouldn’t have probably hundreds of thousands of low income Americans choosing between food, medicine, or heat. By the way there are an estimated 8 million homes heated by heating oil and 54 million homes that are kept warm by natural gas. That is a big chunk of the population. What is the answer? As it now stands, don’t expect the federal low income energy assistance program to be much help. It is currently funded at a level that provided assistance last year to only 16 percent of those eligible. There are those in Congress who are trying to increase the funding, a stopgap measure to be certain, but one that is going to be needed to keep the homefires burning this winter. So where is it. It has been filibustered by the Republicans. They only want to vote, it would seem on opening up the offshore drilling areas and the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) started trying to increase funding for the energy assistance program last November. On the other side of the coin, the Bush administration proposed cutting it by $379 million. Last month, he was the lead sponsor of the Warm in the Winter and Cool in the Summer Act which would double LIHEAP funding, adding $2.5 billion to the program Although President Bush threatened a veto and proposed cutting the weatherization program that helps lower-income families reduce energy consumption over the long-term, there were fifty-two co-sponsors, including thirteen Republicans. But when it came time to vote on the legislation on July 26, there were only fifty votes to end a Republican filibuster - ten shy of the sixty needed to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. You guessed it. The Republicans wanted a vote on legislation that would open up the continental shelf to oil drilling. It is time to put some of these folks on the shelf permanently. Isn’t it time we paid at least as much attention to people as profits? That is what it is about, pure and simple. According to the center for disease control, during the period 1979 to 2002, a total of 16,555 deaths in the United States -- an average of 689 per year -- were attributed to exposure to excessive natural cold. It is time that we gave the cold shoulder to some of these folks who have only one answer – drill. Near as we can tell, based on Grandmother Siemers’ rule of thumb, it should be a cold day in Kansas come election day November 4. That may or may not be, but it will be a cold day in H _ _ _ before this writer votes for one of those clowns or ringmasters who haven’t had time to do anything about energy except pout and chant drill, drill, drill. That of course includes those who are now calling for a special session yet haven’t cast a vote since April. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Tuesday 12th August 2008   They Are Both Johns It has been said, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” It has also been observed that “Bedfellows make strange politics.” Some might think we are referring to the Clintons. Not so. We were remember the first time we saw “bedfellows make strange politics” used in campaign for Alabama governor. A restriction in Alabama's state constitution prevented George Corley Wallace Jr. from seeking a second term in 1966. Wallace had his wife, Lurleen Wallace, run for the office as a surrogate candidate, similar to the 1917 run of Ma Ferguson for the governorship of Texas on behalf of her husband, who had been impeached and was barred from running. Mrs. Wallace won the election in the fall of 1966, and was inaugurated in January 1967. But no, we are thinking about the two Johns (a pun if you like it) John Edwards and John McCain. Edwards isn't running for president anymore. He's not running for anything as far as we can determine. And he's not an elected official. But wait, his admission of infidelity makes the front page of the New York Times, Larry King and every right wing broadcast. Edwards' infidelity was, because of the circumstances, particularly bad. His wife was and is ill. How could he do such a thing? Spare us the details, although there are some who will likely not let this story go away until they have every lurid fact. We ask instead, if John Edwards' infidelity is news, and he's not a candidate for anything, why isn't John McCain's? The Republican nominee apparent reportedly had numerous affairs in the years after returning from Vietnam to a wife who had been disfigured in a car accident. The same wife who raised their children and stood by him during those years he spent in a prison in Vietnam. Then by his own report, he discovered a 25-year-old heiress one evening in 1979. While he was still married he promptly lied to her about his age, and almost as promptly left his wife for her. We don’t condone the behavior of either John, but in the name of all that is holy, can we drop this scandal chasing that has characterized this presidential campaign, forget about the celebrity nonsense and get to some of the things that matter. We’re not sure which is worse, the “drill now” chatter from the Republicans afraid to go home from Washington that is an empty hoax or the nonsense that somehow the infidelity of a man who is no longer a candidate is an important issue for this country. We don’t believe it is but if the infidelity issue is valid for non-candidate John, then how about the candidate John? Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Monday 4th August 2008   Finally Justice Done A week ago, Saturday, July 26, marked the 60th anniversary of President Harry Truman's issuing Executive Order 9981 -- the order that ended segregation in the military. He wrote: "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the president that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale." Truman had earlier told the NAACP convention, speaking before the Lincoln Memorial in 1947: "It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our efforts to guarantee a freedom and equality for all our citizens. And when I say all Americans, I mean all Americans." It was not a popular decision to integrate the armed forces, but Truman knew the time had come. We are told he was deeply affected by the injustices and tragedies awaiting black veterans after they returned from the battlefields. Saturday a week ago was more than the 60th anniversary of that event, it was also the day that the US Army chose to make right an injustice that happened 64 years ago. An injustice against 28 African Americans that grew out of a crime that has been described as “so improbable that many had trouble believing it could have happened at all” Three black soldiers stood accused of lynching an Italian prisoner of war at Fort Lawton in Seattle in the middle of World War II. Two were convicted. During World War II, the black soldiers at Fort Lawton were housed in segregated barracks near the Italian prisoners of war. After a scuffle between a black American soldier and one of the POWs on the night of August 14, 1944, a riot broke out, injuring dozens. The next morning, one of the Italians was found hanged at the bottom of a bluff. The subsequent trial of 43 men, all black enlistees charged with rioting, became the largest and longest Army court-martial of the war, and the only recorded instance in U.S. history in which black men stood trial for a mob lynching. Forty-three black soldiers were charged with rioting, three of whom also were charged with the murder. Only two defense attorneys were assigned to the case and given two weeks to prepare. They were never shown an Army investigation criticizing its own handling of the riot. Two of the men were convicted of manslaughter and 28 convicted of rioting. The men were sentenced to hard labor and forfeiture of military pay and benefits, and given dishonorable discharges. A week ago, a senior Army official offered an official apology and handed out certificates setting aside the convictions and converting the discharges to honorable status, in recognition that prosecutors had committed "egregious error" that resulted in a trial that was "fundamentally unfair." All but two of the men were dead, and neither was present. Samuel Snow, 84, one of the two still living, died Sunday at 12:43 a.m., Snow, 84, died at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. He entered the hospital Friday for an irregular heartbeat. Snow, a resident of Leesburg, Florida had come to Seattle for the Saturday ceremony. Ray Snow, Samuel's son, said: "My dad has been standing in formation all these years waiting to have his name cleared. With the Army's honorable discharge he was at ease. He now has his discharge papers and he went home." Twenty-six of the men went to their graves with the stain of wartime dishonor still on their records. The wrongly accused men were publicly exonerated at a tribute held in a meadow of Discovery Park Saturday near the former Fort Lawton chapel and parade grounds. Although most of the prison terms were relatively short, the convicted soldiers would have been affected their entire lives. Sixty years of no GI Bill, no VA, no ability to get a civil service job with that dishonorable discharge. We are told that Saturday night at the hospital, Ray Snow showed his father the honorable discharge plaque and read it to him. Samuel Snow's smiled broadly and was very pleased that his name had finally been cleared and justice done. Like most events like this, there is more to the story. Not only was the trial a reflection of the attitudes toward race in this country in the 1940's, attitudes that have still not completely changed, it was also a reflection of our attitude toward the world community. We are hesitant to write that we can understand how this injustice was done. We have a hard time understanding inhumanity to man under any circumstances, That said, we were at war, there were many reports of how the axis powers were mistreating prisoners. It was in part a demonstration to the world that the United States treated prisoners or war fairly and dealt out justice to those who abused them. Although it is now known that those African Americans were not responsible for the death of the Italian soldier, at the time it was a powerful demonstration of our commitment to the Geneva Conventions. Considering our attitudes today concerning “detainees”it is nothing short of remarkable just how far the government went to pursue the case of the slain POW. Today, Today, POWs in the reign of the Bush administration have found justice and humane treatment elusive. They've been tossed into dark cells at Gitmo, held without being charged or sent who knows where. Remember waterboarding? They've been stripped of basic legal protections that ensure that innocent people are not persecuted. They have no due process. And if they suffer or perish in custody, the American public is the last to hear about it -- if it ever does. We have an administration that apparently is not only willing to look the other way but to endorse treatment of detainees and those being held that would bring out a call of ‘war crimes’ from the highest office in the land were it the other way around. We've lost our way. There was a time when a dead Italian soldier in Seattle grabbed international headlines. Now the fates of war prisoners in Iraq or Afghanistan are lucky to find a mention somewhere buried inside the newspaper. History may forgive us for taking 64 years to correct an injustice done against our own. We cannot expect the same if we continue our unjust behavior toward the world community. Where is our essential sense of integrity? Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Wednesday 30th July 2008   Child Abuse We Americans become righteously indignant when we hear of a child being abused. Generally we feel great sympathy for the child involved and scorn for the individual who commits the act. We call for justice. That is the way it should be. However, when that child becomes a generation of children and when the abuser becomes a large population - - - we shrug it off and don’t give it a thought. Well, that child born yesterday was abused to the extent of a bill for $31 thousand plus on the day of birth. This weekend past the word came out from the administration to expect a budget deficit for the next year in the range of half a trillion dollars. Worse even that figure is phony baloney. Add about 200 billion for the amount that we are “borrowing” from social security and another 80 billion plus for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq that is outside the budget and we are approaching a Trillion dollars of someone else’s money – your children’s and grand-children’s money. And even that added on probably doesn’t give a true picture. The budget office predicts the economy will grow at a rate of 1.6 percent this year and will rebound to a 2.2 percent growth rate next year. That's a half point higher than predicted a consensus of business economists. The administration also sees inflation averaging 3.8 percent this year, but easing to 2.3 percent next year — better than the 3 percent anticipated by economists. How abusive can we be? Back in 1980, the last year of the Carter presidency, the entire national debt was 930 billion dollars. That child’s share was about $1,600. If the budget projections pan out, we will add that much or nearly that much next year. The debt went from 930 billion to $3.2 Trillion during the Reagan-Bush 12 years in office and increased to $5.6 Trillion during the Clinton years. The last year Clinton was in office the nation borrowed 18 billion dollars. Of course we hear about the “tax and spend Democrats” as being responsible for the increases and run away spending, but during six of the Reagan years, a time of substantial growth in the deficit, it was the Republicans who controlled Congress. The same holds true for the unbelievable debt being rolled up by the current administration. Six years of Republican control of the Congress and effective control of the Senate today with the ability to prevent votes through the filibuster rules. This deficit for next year easily blows away the previous record of $413 billion in 2004. George W. Bush inherited a projected 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion, which he proceeded to turn into a projected deficit of more than $4 trillion. When he took office in January 2001 the Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of $635 billion in 2008 and $710 billion in 2009. Now, OMB projects deficits of $389 billion and $482 billion in those years respectively -- a swing of more than $1 trillion in each year. On January 15th 2004, the outstanding public debt jumped $13 billion to $7,001,852,607,623.35. This was the first time in history the national debt surpassed the $7 trillion mark and came less than two years after the debt first passed $6 trillion. On October 18th 2005, the outstanding public debt rose to $8,003,897,406,911.24 -- the first time it had risen above $8 trillion. During the current administration more than a trillion dollars has been siphoned off the Social Security account. And, the government is doing better with this one than you can do with the absolute best credit card offer around. No interest, no pay back plan, just an I.O.U. As of last year, the Bush Administration had added $2.78 trillion, or about 29.5% of the total national debt of about $9.5 trillion. It looks like we will be borrowing about half a trillion dollars during the fiscal year that ends October 1. It is the failure to take any action to correct not the run away spending but the run away from paying that has characterized this administration. This administration inherited a budget with projected surpluses by some definitions and pointed towards cutting down the deficit. The next president will inherit a budgetary nightmare -- a balance of trade deficit, a vanishing value for the dollar, a national debt that will adversely affect every element of the economy and a a national passion for tax cuts and passing on the costs to our children’s children. I call that about the worst kind of child abuse. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Saturday 26th July 2008   Memories and Tears We spent the better part of last week saying goodbye to the old family place. The children were home with their children and we spent the time going through family heirlooms and memories. More than a few tears were shed saying goodbye to the place where the children spent their summers with grandparents, to the place that had become the last anchor for the family name after more than 100 years in that small Western Kansas community. That was as it should have been and perhaps the realization of the loss was more profound because it is happening at one time. It was the last time we will all be together in that place. It will remain and we will be together again, but sadly that one shining spot that holds so many memories of days and family now gone will be gone as well. We suspect that we are more appreciative of loss when it comes in one big package rather than in increments. This loss is a personal loss. The last seven and one half years have had a constant stream of losses and unfortunately, we Americans Republicans and Democrats alike seem to be incapable of even shedding a few tears for the loss. We need change to reverse this string of losses. Come fall each of us needs to consider just how our government has contributed to or allowed these losses to occur. We need some new faces, both democrats and republicans alike share the guilt. In that period the administration has led us to war in two countries, for reasons based largely on what must be called deceptions if not outright lies. Two more wars may be just around the corner in Iran and Pakistan. We have alienated almost the entire Muslim world and our credibility and support is sagging in much of the rest. In the conduct of the wars we have, may believe, violated the Nuremberg prohibitions against war crimes, and the Geneva Conventions against torture and abuse of prisoners. If one expresses any concern whatsoever for the 1.2 million Iraqis who have died, and the 4 million who have been displaced, as a result of that ill conceived invasion ‘true patriots’ will probably consider you either anti-American or too weak kneed to stick it out and “do what it takes to win.”. The more than 4000 Americans who have died in Iraq, more than 40 thousand wounded? Right, put a ‘support our troops’ bumper sticker on your car. The dollar has lost 60% of its value against the euro, and the once mighty dollar is losing its reserve currency role. Oil was under $30 a barrel seven and a half years ago. A minimum of 400 percent increase after our government told us we would see $20 after we removed Saddam. Inflation is in or near double digits and the fed is not in any position to use the traditional increase in interest to slow it. Employment is falling and we have been unable to create a increase of new jobs for Americans save those at the very bottom of the economic scale. A little over deregulation and do we ever have a mess with a million plus homeowners facing some king of foreclosure. GM stock last month was at a level not seen since the 1930's. Ford Motor Company just reported its worse quarter ever with a second quarter loss of $8.7 billion. And, the little guy is in big time difficulty living with high costs of energy and food. Virtually everything we buy has increased in price while incomes have remained stable. Health insurance and prescriptions are out of sight for those who are able to have coverage and 40 million Americans don't have coverage. The petroleum industry is riding high with record profits and the answer from Washington is to give them more land to drill on and continue every possible break. Even Boone Pickens, long time oil man is saying this is one crisis we can’t drill our way out of but the administration seems to have little enthusiasm for alternate energy development. Buying oil from overseas is not just about buying oil at high prices. The trade and budget deficits have gone off the scale in the last seven years. The US trade deficit is larger than the combined trade deficits of every deficit country in the world. We can no longer finance our wars or our own government with our tax revenues. Instead we rely on foreign loans. To pay for its consumption, we sell existing assets--companies, real estate, to foreigners. Were that not enough the administration seems hard pressed to determine just how it will avoid any constitutional constraint. The administration has run roughshod over the constitution, trampling on civil liberties in the name of national security. It makes little difference what Congress may enact, the administration issues signing statement about which parts it will obey. Those rights that we cherish most and the ones that should come to mind when we see those stickers that tell us Freedom isn’t Free! – the administration tells us that we can’t afford those liberties at the moment because they make us unsafe. What has happened since “give me liberty or give me death’. ‘Do what you will to me as long as you pretend I’m safe.”, doesn’t have the same ring. There are those who insist that to be a true American you must be loyal to the government regardless of its actions and criticism of the government is tantamount to treason. Without those rights guaranteed in the bill of rights, there is little to set us apart from a great many other governments. They, perhaps as much make America America. Around the world, we just aren’t doing much better with our behavior. The post-World War II Nuremberg Trials declared waging a preventive war of aggression to be "the supreme international crime." What pray tell was our bombing and invasion of Iraq? In the wake of the war we have tortured; kidnapped for torture (extraordinary rendition); used napalm (Mark-77 firebombs), depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction which killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians; and caused over four million Iraqi refugees (ethnic cleansing). All of these actions are defined by most nations as war crimes. Kofi Annan, when Secretary General of the United Nations, declared that the U.S. attack on Iraq was a violation of the U.N. Charter. U.S. forces' mistreatment and torture of prisoners is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. These violations of international law are also violations of Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S.Constitution, the Supremacy Clause. The administration, by its own administration violated FISA on many occasions. The Congressional reaction - legislation forgiving the actions and expanding the opportunity for the government to further wiretap Americans with little or no reason. We could go on, but that is enough. Enough to make us sad about losing those things that should and should have been very dear to us. Doesn’t anybody feel the loss? Where is the response? We think we will go back to our room and cry - Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Tuesday 15th July 2008   The squeaky wheel The squeaky wheel gets the grease, or so the old saying goes. In this case, the squeaky wheel is big oil and we have to question if it really needs the additional lubrication. The president lifted nearly two decades of executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline on Monday while challenging Congress to open up more areas for exploration to address soaring energy prices. “For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production,” Mr. Bush said in a brief Rose Garden appearance in which he sought to saddle his party’s opponents with responsibility for gasoline prices exceeding $4 per gallon. “Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying at the pump.” Let us remember that for six of the seven and a half years of the Bush Administration, Republicans have controlled the Congress. Mrs Truman would have had a hard time getting Harry to call this ploy of the president "manure" we suspect Harry would have gone right on to the farm reference which we would use, were it not for this writer having a censor of our own. Tell you what, those roses in the White House garden don’t need no commercial fertilizer. And if you happen to be walking in the Rose Garden these days, watch where you step. This is pure corn and we aren’t talking about the kind used to make ethanol. The only intent, regardless of all the hoopla from the White House is to try and cast the blame for our energy problems on the Democrats. It would take at least a decade for oil companies to obtain permits, procure equipment, and do the exploration necessary to get the oil out of the ground, most industry analysts say. And even then, they add, the amount of new oil produced would probably be too small to significantly affect world oil prices. "Suppose the US produced all its oil domestically," said Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "Do you think oil companies would sell oil to US consumers for one cent less than they could get from French consumers? No. Where oil comes from has no effect on price." About 86 billion barrels of additional oil may lie offshore, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration. Of that amount, about only 18 billion barrels are subject to the moratorium. Much of the rest lies in areas that are too expensive to exploit or that oil companies have not yet tapped for technical reasons, fueling the industry's desire for fresh territory. We are told that in the best-case scenario, the United States could only produce an additional two to four million barrels of offshore oil a day - not enough to shift the global supply-demand balance in a world market that now consumes about 86 million barrels a day and is growing fast. About a quarter of that consumption now occurs in the United States. According to the Associated Press, oil companies currently have 68 million acres in undeveloped oil leases outside the moratorium area, where they could still drill if they wanted to. Under the moratorium, the government simply hasn’t been giving new leases to oil companies. That’s what Republicans want to give the oil companies — new offshore leases. The Energy and Information Administration concluded in a 2007 report that: The projections in the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Something that takes 22 years to deliver significant results hardly qualifies as a "short-term" solution. Late last year crude oil for February 2008 delivery fell 2 cents to close at $95.98 a barrel. Prices rose 57 percent in 2007, the biggest annual percentage gain since 2002. New York futures reached a record $99.29 on Nov. 21 as a weaker dollar made crude cheaper in other currencies. Our huge trade deficit in oil is a problem. It is not just the deficit but the economic and political threats that have already arisen and will continue from our growing dependence on gulf oil. It is a problem because of the pollution problem, global warming and particularly cruel, the cost of transportation which disproportionally affects those who can afford it the least. Inflation is being driven by fuel costs and America’s poorest citizens are paying for it at the grocery table. Ethanol produced from grain adds to the cost of foodstuffs and further increases the burden that those of moderate and little means bear. Perhaps even more significantly, while we twiddle our thumbs and pretend that offshore drilling and opening the wilderness areas to drilling will somehow significantly increase our oil supply and solve our energy problems, we miss out on the opportunity to develop those technologies that could capture a large share of the energy market. It is hard not to believe that the same research and development that could provide adequate supplies of environmentally sound energy would be a tremendous market for American industry. At the moment our national investment in energy-efficiency-and-renewable-energy programs costs Americans only $4.00 per person a year. We are hearing political chatter about awards for new technologies and there are always grants for energy development floating around the plans to fix this problem. We would suggest that it is too late in the game to wait for someone to build a better mousetrap and then give them the bucks. We would suggest that paying the oil companies already awash in record profits is not the answer. Just prior to the beginning of WWII it was suggested that an atomic bomb might be built by the axis powers. Our answer wasn’t research grants, our answer wasn’t some kind of prize as McCain is suggesting for a better car battery. Instead our government pulled together the best available people and in a massive project that eventually employed 130,000 people and cost in today’s dollars $24 billion for better or worse created the atomic bomb. That is a lot of money, but pocket change compared to what we have spent in Iraq. We need a government directed program of significant scale to develop non fossil fuel energy resources. And we need it now. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Thursday 10th July 2008   Call to duty Rummaging through one of the bags of clothing yet unpacked from our recent move, we ran across some old army fatigues. A particular pair of worn out fatigue pants caught our eye. They were the ones we were wearing when we returned from Vietnam 39 years ago. As Vietnam era vets will testify, they never fit tight and so we guess they would still fit just as well today. They, like this particular old man are worn out. But we are ready to put them on again. It appears that the administration is not going to be satisfied until we are engaged in a war in Iran. We have a over used war in Iraq that has cost a ton of money and lives ruined and cut short. Not nearly enough people really give a damn about those who are dying in that battle ground, Americans and Iraqis alike. This writer wants to vomit (we wanted to use a harsher word) every time we see a support our troops bumper sticker by someone who is a America first as long as it doesn’t cost me patriot. Take off the stickers and enlist if you can. How long has it been since we shocked and awed the Iraqis into a successful democracy in the Middle East. Before that we subdued the Taliban in Afghanistan and they are now in control again of substantial areas in the country. How much more of this success can we stand? How many more missions can we accomplish? Another war? If it has to be then count us in. Back when we were younger and serving we believed that the young men should be the ones deciding to go to war and the old men should be the ones going. We still feel that way. We will put on our fatigues and report for duty and answer the call of our country. However, and this is one big however; when we fall into ranks, we want to be standing shoulder to shoulder with John McCain and George Bush. We want to look down the ranks and see the shiny forehead of Dick Cheney. (Yes, there is shooting to be done of things other than quail) We want to look at that platoon and see some of those hawks who never served anywhere anytime. An old marine I once knew who didn’t exactly approve of hunting said the only kind of game to hunt was the kind that shot back! Line em up, Joe Lieberman, why you might even be a candidate for executive officer. We’re no Teddy Roosevelt, but we are willing to lead that group of people in Congress and the Administration who are so damned determined to go to war in Iran. We shouldn’t be going to war there or anywhere else until they are all ready to wear the uniform and go into battle in the very first wave. When they are ready, we will be ready too but not until. In the meanwhile, we need to do everything to prevent the administration from doing another end run under the cover of the war powers act and taking us to another war. Shout it from the street corner: “Hell No We Won’t Go!” Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Tuesday 8th July 2008   A damned but never-the-less necessary nuisance We walk carefully these days, tethered to an oxygen bottle. One ear is starting to get ragged from having that wonderful little device that holds the plastic hose in place being ripped off when the hose snags on something. If we had our druthers, life would sure be simpler in some respects without the oxygen hose. Of course, quality of life would go down the tubes and for that matter, life might go right along with it. It is a nuisance, but necessary. So, by the way is protection against unwarranted wiretapping. The senate is posed to pass a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act this week probably Wednesday granting what amounts to ex post facto immunity to the telephone and wireless companies who went along with the administration’s request for phone records, etc. The argument we hear is that the ability of the national security agency to wiretap without as much as going to a secret court for a warrant is vital to our national security. There have been attempts to remove the immunity provisions from the bill. One, an amendment by Feingold and Dodd to strip the bill’s immunity provisions, fell short of a majority vote the last time it came up, 31-67. Not even close. It is unlikely others will be successful. The odds aren’t even good for an amendment proposed by Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, that would require the civil lawsuits’ filed against phone companies dismissal unless a federal district court concludes that the assistance from the telephone companies “was provided in connection with an intelligence activity that violated the Constitution of the United States.” This is pretty serious stuff. If a court found that a phone company acted in violation of the constitution at the request of the executive branch of government, the standard joe public would have no legal recourse. What was that moldy old article in the Constitution “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Senate might be making a grave error if it passes the legislation in its current form. If it made any difference it would be. One could argue, and it has been argued before, that the current administration doesn’t give a good damn what the law is anyway. It seems that this no warrant policy adopted by the National security agency as a vital tool to protect us from terrorists following the attack of 9-11 was not only in place but apparently being used seven months before the terrorist attack. (Wonder how we were supposedly clueless about that one?) Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents in a not directly related lawsuit that would indicate that NSA approached Qwest about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records. In court filings released last October there is the suggestion that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. The accounts, which place the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The warrantless wiretaps became known in May 2006. USA Today reported then that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal standing. We believe that no immunity and for that matter no authority should be granted before there are full and open congressional about just how far the wiretap program went. The fourth amendment at times may be a damned nuisance, but it is a damned necessary one. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Monday 7th July 2008   Paper or plastic? Sunday morning, at an hour when decent people were still snuggled in their beds, this writer was at the kitchen sink scrubbing the label off of an instant coffee jar, a jar destined to find a place in the garage holding nails or wood screws or gears from a clock that will never be repaired or some other important parts soon to be forgotten. Old men do that kind of thing. Jars and coffee cans become filled with those items that might be needed someday. Dad had a collection of cans and jars that must have contained at least one of every kind of nail, screw, bolt, washer, tack, staple or other form of fastener ever made. Old habits sometimes are hard to break. As one who spent his formative years in a household that had weathered the depression and the dust bowl and was learning again the virtue of thrift during the second great war, we cannot remember discarding a glass jar unless it was broken. One of our earliest memories is going down into the ‘storm cellar’ and bringing out a jar of canned purple plums, canned in a coffee jar. Yes Virginia, at one time ground coffee came in jars. To be fair, most of the food at our house didn’t come from the grocery store in jars. But the jars that did make it into the grocery bag were re-used. And reused again, and again. Mayonnaise jars come to mind in particular. Sometime in the 50's the official word came along from the the glass companies and the USDA that those various jars housewives had been reusing for years were not suitable for canning. By that time every housewife knew what jars were suitable for canning - which were suitable for hot water bath - which ones would withstand the temperature and pressure of the pressure cooker and which ones truely couldn’t be re-used for canning. The jars that wouldn’t take the heat of canning often found their way to containers for jellies and jams, sealed only by a slim layer of paraffin wax. It took a long time for housewives to realize that those jars that weren’t made specifically for canning weren’t working. Somehow they just kept preserving food, over and over again. We suppose it is a small thing, but perhaps, just perhaps, we have become a little too much of a disposable society. Could that be? Paper or plastic? This writer has a perfectly good cloth shopping bag that could be used for groceries. The only one to blame for it not being used is typing this piece. Re-using shopping bags, saving jars, cutting down on the disposables to the extent possible won’t solve the problems of dwindling resources. They won’t save enough energy to take care of our problem with fossil fuels, but little things add up. We are reminded of the boy throwing starfish back in the ocean. Asked what he was doing he answered "The sun is up, and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die." "But, young man, he was advised, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach, and starfish all along it? You can't possibly make a difference!" The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, "It made a difference for that one." Make a difference today. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Saturday 5th July 2008   Interdependence Day Yesterday, Americans celebrated the now 232 year old Declaration of Independence. It has been a while since those 13 colonies, already at war with Great Britain for a year, after a long struggle led by John Adams, declared their political independence. That declaration of independence set forth “self evident” truths that have been since been embraced by peoples of many nations – that all men are created equal and are with certain inalienable rights, particularly the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It hasn’t been all that simple. Two hundred years later we are still working to define what those rights really mean. And now, we are, like it or not, faced with times that call for a new declaration. That declaration in 1776 specified that it was the duty of government to protect those rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson’s pen wrote a political document and no man would argue that the political freedom of any people is required if they are to pursue happiness and live in liberty. But independence is not enough. Today we live in a world populated by independent states that our founding fathers might not have imagined. True, there are societies around the world where men are not truly free, though many are. Perhaps more importantly, the concept of equality among men is even less prevalent. Those of us who celebrated yesterday use an inordinate amount of the world’s resources. In the words of the environmentalists we have a much larger carbon footprint that most other peoples. There are those who tell us that the answer to the finite fossil fuels is to drill for more. There are those who tell us that the answer to our ever increasing demand for power is to burn more coal in power plants. We are devoting large tracts of land to the production of grain for ethanol. In the southern hemisphere areas are being deforested to plant sugar cane to produce ethanol. Those may be answers, but they are not solutions. Today, as we write, large numbers of people are without adequate food. We are told that we are, by our burning of fossil fuels changing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and are near a point of no return on climate change. How close is subject to debate and there are those who would claim it is a “natural” cycle and we are helpless. That does not mean we should not try and correct our course. Independent? Interdependent? There is no argument that oil supplies are finite. The argument is really over when we will no longer be able to extract oil cheaply enough that we can use it as a fuel. We are at something approaching a crisis point in the development of alternative fuels for transportation. Ethanol is not alone the answer. When Isaiah speaks of the peaceful mountain, what changes is significant, “the lion will eat straw like the ox.” It is not, the weak that accommodate the strong. Quite the contrary. It is the powerful and the aggressive who change, if you will, their stripes. From where we sit, that is the situation today. We need today a declaration of interdependence. If we are to solve the problems associated with climate change; if we are to develop alternative fuels both for stationary and transportation uses; if we are to solve the problems of hunger and poverty, we cannot do it alone. Neither will it be done unless we, as the consumer of an inordinate amount of the world’s resources, take the lead. Unfortunately, solving those problems related to resources, we will most likely have to also reduce our own extravagant use of those resources. It is time, if we truly believe that all men are created equal, that we realize that our independence has created conditions where it is impossible for many of those who share this sphere with us to be equal. We are all in this together. It is time we recognize our interdependence and get on with working together. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Wednesday 2nd July 2008   We’re Back Last December, without announcing a hiatus, we decided that we would suspend our writing for a month or so. With 20 candidates in the presidential sweepstakes spending insane amounts of time and money and answering meaningless questions on countless debates, we needed a rest and we also intended to change the nature of our commentary, leaning less on the political scene from a partisan standpoint and more from the observations of Isaiah. Then, shortly after the first of the year, when natural gas bills went through the roof, along with a considerable amount of heat also escaping from that same route, we decided that after 20 years of paying for a house that belonged to someone else and maintaining same, we might as well take the step and purchase one of our own. That took a few months and then moving in - - - well we have been at the new location for three months and all of our stuff is technically “in” although most seems to still be in the garage in boxes. Today seems a good day to get started on writing again. We had planned to be staining the deck; actually finishing the staining of the deck, but once again a brief shower put that plan on hold for a few days. It seems that in this business of moving in and settling in a new home, Murphy was an optimist. Everything seems to take longer than planned or arrive later than expected. And in the meanwhile, we spent a week in the local facility for those who are not healthy. We started our little trip to our current condition when our ankles started swelling, then the calves and then the thighs and then we finally went into the hospital where they administered their fine care and reversed the edema and took several pounds of water out of our system. Never one to do things halfway, we managed to go along for a long time before we were diagnosed with COPD. We weren’t just the first kid on the block to get the diagnosis of severe COPD, we did it all the way. Severe COPD kicks in when lung function drops to 30 percent of normal. We checked in at 17 percent. We checked out of the hospital with oxygen 24/7. And, after dragging the oxygen hose and various apparatus around the house, we are convinced that 97 percent of the people with this condition (oxygen 24/7) die of whiplash. The chairs, the rug, the dogs, your scribe’s feet, perhaps even the shadow on the floor are sufficient to snag the hose and give us a slight twist of the head, It might please our medicos if we were to write of the evils of tobacco. We have no doubt that our smoking contributed substantially to the condition we now experience. We could be tempted to write long and often about the evils of smoking. We choose not to. We will say it one time, smoking is harmful to your health. That said, we have a list of conditions that should qualify us to be measured for a rough box, but we instead will wait for something really bad to come along before we call it quits. A fistful of pills, oxygen all the time and in general, less energy than we might want is really pretty darn little considering the condition of many people. Now you know why we went away from this writing. Why are we back? Mostly because there are still things we want to say. Although the presidential race appears to be down to two candidates, we won’t be directly addressing that issue for a while. Next time out we will be sharing some of our thoughts about what Isaiah had to say about the condition of man and the lion laying down with the lamb. Might be tomorrow, depends on the weather and the chore list. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Sunday 23rd December 2007        Sunday 23rd December 2007   White Christmas A few days back writing ‘Christmas Letters’ we observed that it appeared unlikely we would have a ‘White Christmas.’ Saturday night one might have wondered just how many years we have lived in Kansas. Beginning at about ten in the morning, the weather people dumped between 8 and 10 inches of argument against our non-white Christmas forecast. We filled the bird feeders and the suet early in the day and sat back and watched the snow fall. Our one window that doesn’t have unclear plastic over it is the small window over the kitchen sink. The window looks out on our front step at the ugly, why would anyone let that grow there?, combination honeysuckle bush/tree and grape vine. Across the flagstone path is an overgrown rose bush, a floribunda we think, that really needs to be trimmed back. To be fair, neither is particularly unattractive during the summer months, but after the leaves are gone, the two skeletons in the front yard are borderline unsightly. Saturday, perhaps, we gained an understanding about why we leave them standing. As the winds howled and the snow fell, with the wind chill hovering around 11 degrees, the two became a haven for a collection of birds. Biologists call it cover. Whatever, we had finches, wrens, cardinals, blue jays, a chickadee, sparrows and yes even a couple of starlings taking refuge in those branches before making their trips to the feeder. The snow and the birds reminded us of a Christmas morning some two dozen years past. We awoke that morning with considerably more than a foot of snow on the ground and drifts waist deep between the house and the barn. The skies were clear and the winter sun bright on the white landscape. After the requisite cup of coffee, we put on our coveralls and started making the trips to the barn carrying pails of warm water for the livestock locked inside. Having replenished the water buckets. We mixed a slurry of bran, water and ground milo for the ducks and geese (add plenty of sound effects here - they tend to get noisy when excited and pleased). We pitched some alfalfa into the trough for the sheep and milked the goats. The temperature outside was in the low teens, but the body heat of the livestock kept the barn just above the freezing point. The steamy warm milk sent out the signal to the pride of cats who lived in the barn and we soon had beggers waiting for their share of the milk. Having tended to the cats and taken the milk to the wash house, we returned to the barn for more grain for the chickens in the coop at the far end of the barnyard. With a bucket of grain and a bucket of water we headed off across the farmyard to the chicken coop. Crossing the farmyard we noticed a covey of quail in some down trees along the terrace on the edge of the farmyard and three or four pheasants keeping them company in the early morning light. Nine of the usual twenty-three deer were standing like yard ornaments, ears up and not making a move as they watched us meander across the farmyard avoiding as many drifts as possible. Then just as we reached the chicken coop, our half snow blind eyes opened fully and on the small wheat field below the farmstead were wild turkeys. Not one, not two, not a dozen, not even just a hundred. About half of that twenty-two acre patch was covered with their dark silhouettes. At least 300 birds had moved out of their cover in the trees along the river to feed and strut in the early morning sun. Our chickens had to wait for their breakfast while we just stood there and watched in wonder. We hope you have a Christmas morning that leaves you watching in wonder. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Friday 21st December 2007   Mike is right – more or less Mike Huckabee, Candidate for the Republican nomination for president came out with a Christmas commercial a couple of days ago. It might have had limited distribution had not the cable news networks picked up on it and well . . . There is a maxim that nothing is accidental in advertising, but Huckabee’s campaign is insisting that the “cross” that moves from left to right behind the candidate during the commercial was nothing more than a bookshelf in the background and the appearance of a cross was purely accidental. If it was an accident it was perhaps the biggest miracle since the prophets quit recording them centuries ago. The candidate’s message is that people are probably tired of political commercials (he is right on on that one) and that we should be concentrating on the real reason for the celebration. We can buy into that thinking too, although we are of the opinion that the political commercials have little to do with the corruption of our attitudes toward the season. We note that in the background the commercial has (in addition to the controversial cross) a Christmas tree. We don’t remember St Luke writing about trees and decorations. We checked out Luke’s account of the nativity again this morning and for that matter, no Santa Claus, reindeer, no Christmas presents, parades, or gift certificates. Frosty the snowman doesn’t show up for the event either. Commercial and Christmas both begin with the letter C. They have in our American society become joined by the “C note”. Major retailers look to the Christmas season for a bounty of sales that will make or break their business year. The stock market rises or falls based on holiday purchases. It goes further. We are told from childhood to behave under threat of suspension of Christmas toys – “He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.” For not a few Christmas can be a season of depression. The inability to buy those gifts that someone else expects can be a major blow. And on the other side of the equation not receiving the expected gift is sometimes viewed as a rejection. We tend to set up unrealistic expectations for the holidays and not infrequently over commit our time and resources. We do this in the name of joy and merriment? In some neighborhoods, the spirit of Christmas merges with the spirit of competition as neighbors and even whole neighborhoods vie to determine who can do the most to hasten global warming. In some locations the Christmas decoration rise to the level of fundraisers. Not only to the ‘Wise Men’ appear in our nativity scenes (They are not in Luke’s account and Matthew has them arriving sometime later) but along with the various livestock also unmentioned in the biblical account, some add Donner and Blitzen and Comet and Cubit. And Frosty and the Grinch share the scene with the shepherds. OK – Bah Humbug. Now we’ve said it and we can be a bad guy. There is nothing per se wrong with all of the glitter and gloss that we have added to the Christmas season. There is nothing bad to be said about the Yorkshire pudding or the Christmas goose. Never mind the fortune spent on gift wrap alone and on greeting cards (as one who kept fruitcake on the table for many years in the printing industry we can’t speak to harshly about that issue, although perhaps we should). Never mind that the diamond from the company whose name is identical to the first letter in kiss won’t guarantee true love. Forget about the gifts we can’t afford or don’t really need. Mike is right. There is more to the season. Among other things, the nativity is the story of a older man and his young wife who travel to a distant city, quite likely on foot, (Luke doesn’t mention any conveyance or donkey) to participate in a census. They are working class folk we can assume because of later references to Joseph being a carpenter. Luke tells us they made the trip in order to be taxed. We generally assume that the birth happened the night they arrived in Bethlehem, but Luke does not confirm that. He writes only that the birth occurred while they were there and the child was laid in a manager because there was no room in the inn. Why was there no room in the inn? We aren’t told that there were no rooms available, we aren’t given a reason why they couldn’t get a room, only that there was no room for them. The child was wrapped in swaddling clothes. If you don’t know what swaddling clothes are, look it up. It may have been standard practice then but today we might call it child abuse. It does tell us that this young mother was trying to do what society expected. We find further evidence of the parents trying to do the proper thing after the birth when they made the required birth offering at the temple. Two turtle doves. That alone tells us that they were poor people. The temple requirement was for an offering of two lambs but in cases where the individuals making an offering could not afford lambs, the doves were allowed. A child is born to poor working class people, unable to find proper shelter, in conditions we would today describe as “on the street.” It still happens today. To acknowledge that however, would be political. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Tuesday 18th December 2007   Right Question – Wrong answer Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has endorsed Senator John McCain for President, citing in part his belief that Mc Cain “has proven that he has the experience, the strength, and the character, to be our commander-in-chief from day one.” Lieberman finds that McCain, “is the candidate who can best . . . lead us to victory in the war against Islamist terrorism.” McCain, for his part, in his long service to this nation, has experienced some of the worst that war has to offer. We would commend him for his long and faithful service. That said, the responsibility of national security is one of the most important, if not the most important responsibilities of the President. But national security is not a function of military action and/or war alone. The Congress, of which both men are members, is charged with the responsibility for declaring war and for raising armies and funding the same. In recent years that Congress has increasingly abdicated the war making responsibility spelled out in the constitution and granted that authority in large part to the President. The result has been an increasing attitude of “for me or against me patriotism” and an unwarranted and unwise elevation of the powers of the commander-in-chief. We increasingly fail to recognize that war, even under the best of circumstances, represents the acknowledgment of our failure to settle differences in a meaningful manner. Under the worst of circumstances war can rightly be equated with madness. One might be argue that today,even under the best of circumstances, it is madness. No longer are we able to wage war between armies. Increasingly the casualties in war are civilian. It matters little if we classify them as unintentional or collateral. Innocent people are dying in increasing proportion in war. Even the most conservative counts on the war in Iraq count 85,000 civilian deaths as the result of the war there. Other counts range as high as ten times that amount. Many, perhaps most, have been anonymous. Increasingly since 1939, civilian populations have borne the blunt of death and destruction. That is the nature of modern warfare. The so called “smart bombs” and precision munitions do little to change that. It is, for most men, no easy thing to look down the barrel of a gun knowing what with the squeeze of the trigger, a human life will be ended. It is not easy even if that individual in the sights is looking back ready to end your life. It is difficult but men do it. How can men pull the trigger when the person in the sights is an innocent civilian or a child. Still some do. Unfortunately, from an aircraft five miles in the sky, from a destroyer deck hundreds of miles away or even a mortar or an RPG firing from a few hundred yards, that decision becomes obscured. It is all too easy to kill from a distance, never knowing who or how many will die. It is the terror of war that caused us to go looking for weapons of mass destruction. But what is really the difference in the weapon? Two airplanes crashing into buildings in New York City killed 3,000. The firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 in a single night during World War II, Hamburg and Dresden were the victims of firestorms caused by bombing and the truth be known, no one knows how many perished there but 80,000 to 100,000 would be a reasonable figure. Those were all the result of conventional weapons. Carpet bombings in Vietnam. Cluster bombs in Afghanistan, Shock and Awe in Iraq. They all have two common features – anonymous civilian deaths and “conventional” weapons.. Our national security was threatened, at least in the eyes of many, when a handful of men, intent on wreaking havoc on an American city carried out the terrorist act we now identify as 9-11. It became a turning point because it happened on an American city, unannounced and with civilian targets. We called it terrorism. What do we call shock and awe? Are cluster bombs a terrorist act? War is seldom if ever pretty nor is it ever the result of clear black and white issues. It can be reasonably sait that it is rarely necessary and always the result of failure. Thus we cannot count the ability to carry our nation further down the path of failure, no matter how it be wrapped in patriotic paper and star spangled colors as a virtue in a candidate. Failed policies based on our unparalleled military strength have not made us more secure, quite the opposite. We don’t believe that our national security rests on our ability or willingness to wage war, but rather our determination to bring it to an end. National security is the right question Joe, but you got the wrong answer. More of the same we don’t need. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Sunday 16th December 2007   A gift Perhaps there was a certain sense of irony that on the last night of Chanukah we were lighting candles, not to behold and enjoy, but as a matter of necessity. Early in the evening we heard the familiar sound of a transformer blowing out and the house went dark. It is not an infrequent occurrence and generally the power is restored withing two hours. We fumbled through the dark and located flashlights and candles and settled down for that period of darkness waiting for electricity to be restored. There is a strange sense of darkness when lights go out suddenly and we are unable to turn them back on. Somehow it is even darker if one is unable to flip a switch an turn the lights back on. Our lights were to be out not for a couple of hours, but for a little more than a day. Along with the lights, the background noise of the refrigerator and freezer running, the entertainment of the computer and television, and our heating system all departed. Alone in the dark. Particularly frustrating was the fact that our little corner of the world was without power and although it was a fate shared by perhaps 150,000 others, the folks across the street had lights. Our homestead, such as it is, is located on a slim island of properties that are frequented by power outages. We neither pay extra for the privilege nor are we given a discount for the inconvenience. Just lucky we suppose. Sitting there in the dark, our aging eyes not thrilled by the idea of reading by candlelight, we turned on that mechanism that is one of our most precious gifts – memory. As the house cooled, we remembered as a small child carrying kindling to the house for the stove. Uncle Delvin, then a boy himself, had piled the kindling high on our outstretched arms and we struggled under the load. (Actually it was probably one or two sticks and he was allowing us the opportunity to be a participant.) Strange, but we remember in detail that kindling wood but we don’t remember where those pieces of wainscoting originated. We remember also taking out the clinkers and cinders from the stove, the remains of the coal fire that kept us warm. If one hasn’t seen a clinker, it is hard to relate, but the remains from the coal fire, baked into an irregular shape full of voids and covered with a purple and blue glasslike surface is something with a beauty and charm all its own. More appreciated as a good material for a pathway, these byproducts of the heating process most often found their way to a well traveled path from the house to the wood shed or some other outbuilding rather than finding their way to some prominent display as a piece of art. It was in the winter of 1948-49 that we spent what seemed like weeks looking out the kitchen window, seated squarely on our favorite chair, actually a stool made from the legs that once were part of a chair. A round seat replaced the original and was covered by a bright blue linoleum top. The stool fit our short legs and was the perfect height to gaze at the decorations forming on the window courtesy of jack frost and watch as the snow piled up in the yard. It not only seemed like weeks, it was weeks. Winter began in mid November and continued through March. The Air Force was called on to drop hay to the millions of stranded cattle across the plains states. Kansas suffered less than some areas, but snow was in abundance. In our own personal world, we had a special leather hat, made to look like one of those that the aviators wore. It had a tight covering of the head, and the sides came down over the ears with straps that buckled under the chin. We were pretty proud of that top piece until we left it under the new gas stove in the corner to dry out after getting it soaking wet playing in the snow. We didn’t tell anyone we had put the hat there to dry and by the time the adults noticed the aroma of leather, the hat was shriveled to half normal size and looked like a piece of overcooked bacon. Living in this wonderful modern world, we no longer have a stove to throw our hat under. In fact, with the power outage, we had almost no heat at all last week. There was still the kitchen range that operated on gas. As the temperatures dropped below 50 in the house and started making their steady progress towards 40, we turned on the oven and opened the door to provide some heat for the kitchen. This we are told is not a recommended procedure. It does not produce the same aroma as baking bread and those in the know warn against carbon monoxide. Even with the oven door open and the controls set at 450 degrees, the heat generated was nothing like that put out by the old wood burning majestic range on our grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming. Routinely starting a fire in the stove heated the entire cabin. It was a two-room cabin. Nevertheless, that grand old stove heated the house. Winter as well as summer. As the ice formed on the trees and power lines outside last week, our memory found its way back to 1956. In April of that year we had a power outage in the central part of the state that shut down telephone and electric service for about a week. Refrigerated and frozen foods found their ways to the porches as we made due with no lights. The roads were blown full of snow and drifts and traffic was pretty well reduced to a standstill. Dad was a rural mail carrier and of course the mail had to go through. We had a difficult time understanding his zeal to deliver the mail and questioned his sanity at walking over a mile through knee deep and deeper snow to deliver a couple of advertising pieces that were called ‘boxholders’ in those days. We came to realize later that it had nothing to do with delivering that mail. The ‘boxholders’ were an excuse to go check on the elderly farm couple stranded without phone service or electricity. Like that elderly couple, we have become stranded these days, a prisoner of our reliance on electricity. We have a brand new coffee brewing system that is a marvel. Brews one cup at a time, no messing around measuring coffee, no real cleanup afterwards. No coffee when the power is out. Our dogs rely on the sound of the electric can opener as the first clue that their evening meal is about to be served. The other night we snuck up on them when we had to use that handy little manual opener that we carry on our key chain. Sometimes when we are faced with outages, we don’t think clearly. It suddenly occurred to us during the power outage that the furnace was still on, that the pilot light was burning and that perhaps if we just ‘bumped up’ the thermostat it would come on for a while and then we could run the blower . . . . We were halfway across the room when we remembered that all of those functions required electricity and the reason is wasn’t operating was we had no electricity. We are thankful that we didn’t mention that plan to the better half at the time. We can laugh now, it might have been further proof of early onset senility had we mentioned it then. We ventured down to the convenience store to purchase some additional batteries. Overnight batteries became a premium item in our fair city. The quick shop had batteries and was open even though the gas pumps weren’t running. No electricity -- no gas pumps. And no electronic cash register, no credit card reader, no check approval system and if one had no cash – no purchase either. They were reduced to operating on a cash only basis and writing down every purchase on a ledger sheet to be entered in the computer later. We recall the time when a cigar box to hold the money and a sales pad for credit sales were the sum total of the accounting machines in almost any small store. We recall a mechanical adding machine that had about eighty keys on the keypad that calculated the results when a long lever was pulled and whirling wheels and a series of ratchets and levers produced the results. It probably weighed forty pounds and definitely wasn’t a pocket calculator. Back before the ice storm last week intervened, we had decided to write a piece about the difficulties that we might experience today in the event of a depression. We intended to write about how in the 1930's Americans were not nearly so urban and much more able to deal with the crisis because they were living in a world that was not nearly so dependent on outside resources. Gardens, woodpiles, hand operated equipment and a simpler lifestyle made coping with a difficult situation somewhat easier than it would be for us today. We will still write that piece someday. We aren’t prepared for many of the difficulties that natural disasters, or yes, economic disasters could produce. However, we did re-discover this last week that we have available a resource that might even be superior to our electronic entertainment world . . . memories. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Wednesday 5th December 2007   Faith Governor Romney is scheduled later this week to give a major address concerning his faith. I have no reason to explain mine and this is not an attempt to get in ahead of him. However, I believe that somewhere, if it can be pried out from between my words, there is something important to be said here. This writer, not unlike Tom Jefferson on religious matters, is “a sect unto himself.” Tuesday evening, Jews lighted the first of the Chanukah candles at the beginning of the eight-day festival of rededication or the festival of lights. It is perhaps the best known of the Jewish holidays, not because of its significance in the Jewish faith, but because of the proximity to Christmas. The holiday is not, as many may believe, “a Jewish Christmas.” There is indeed a certain irony in the event that is a celebration of the preservation of Jewish identity being tied together with an unrelated holiday of another faith. The story of Chanukah begins when Alexander the Great conquered Syria, Egypt and Judea, but allowed the people under his control to continue observing their own religions. Although not required to do so, some of the Jews adopted the Hellenistic culture. More than a century later, Antiochus IV, then in control of the region, suppressed the Jews and desecrated the Temple. A revolt ensued. Observant Jews led by Judah Maccabee, and a traditionalist group who were the forerunners of the Pharisees, overthrew the Hellenistic Jews and the Selucid Greek government. It was no small military victory with a small band of dedicated people defeating armies. The temple was rededicated. According to the Talmud, only enough consecrated oil was found to light the menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple for one night, yet it burned for eight. An eight- day holiday was declared to celebrate the miracle. That holiday we know as Chanukah. What I find to be significant is that although the military activity of Maccabee is relatively well chronicled, it is not that victory of the few over the many that is the focus of the celebration. It is the miracle of the lights that merits attention. It is important, I believe, in times when it seems we have gone from one war to the next and we celebrate those victories and yes, the surprise attacks that led to the wars, it is important that we look instead for miracles in our own time. Each night of the festival candles are lighted, one the first night, then an additional candle each night. The lighting of the candles is at once a simple act to be enjoyed as the candles are not to be used for any purpose of lighting, only to be viewed and enjoyed and at the same time, the ritual of lighting the candles reflects a complex understanding of man’s relationship to God. Even the number of candles has a greater significance than merely representing the eight days the oil burned. The temple candelabrum had seven candles and the menorah has eight. The extra candle is a reminder that the events of those times went beyond the normal world represented by seven. Telling also are the blessings recited at the lighting of the candles. Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu l'had'lik neir shel Chanukah. (Amein) Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Chanukkah. (Amen) Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam she'asah nisim la'avoteinu bayamim haheim baziman hazeh. (Amein) Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe Who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time And on the first night only, Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam shehecheyanu v'kiyimanu v'higi'anu laz'man hazeh. (Amein) Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season (Amen) We are reminded that the holiday celebrates the miracle of the oil, not the military victory. During the eight days there are songs and games. Foods fried in oil are served during the holiday. Children of all ages play dreidel. The game is played with a top with four flat sides. Each side has a Hebrew letter on it. Nun, Gimmel, Hei and Shin. In Israel the letter Shin would be replaced by Peh. The letters supposedly represent the phrase ‘nes gadol hayah sham’ A miracle happened there. In Israel the Peh replaces Shin and the phrase becomes A miracle happened here. There are those who would contend properly I believe, that the four letters represent four Yiddish words nit (nothing), gantz (all), halb (half) and shtell (put). Those are the rules of the game. Each player puts a penny or a match stick or a foil covered chocolate coin ‘Gelt’ on the table and players take turns spinning the top. Each spin results in either nothing happening ‘Nun’; a player taking all the pieces on the table ’Gimmel’; a player taking half ‘Hei’; or a player putting a piece on the board 'Shin'. When there are no pieces left on the table, everyone puts one back in the pot and the game continues until one person has all the pieces. Then, if played by the rules, the pieces are all divided evenly – there are no losers. Two thousand plus years ago men fought and died. Does anyone really think we would celebrate that victory today if the story ended with the successful revolt? No. It took the miracle with the oil to put meaning to the struggle to maintain identity . Had they known that their victory would be celebrated by small children playing a game with a top, I cannot help but think that the Macabee’s would have smiled. Throughout the ages, Chanukah has signified the miraculous triumph of the weak over the strong, the pure over the impure, the righteous over the wicked. Holidays and celebrations, unless we relate them to our own lives, become just so much glitter that quickly fades. Earlier this year, at a reunion of our peace corps fellows from many years ago, one related a story about one of our former volunteers who had passed on. John died on an obscure battlefield in Vietnam a long time ago. At our recognition of those who had passed on, we were asked, as his mother had been asked many years earlier not to remember John because he was killed in that war, but instead to remember him as the young man in Africa who built a merry-go-round out of a cement mixer because he thought young children should have a playground. Thank God for the miracles that still happen. Contact the writer at PS@postrockcountry.com Please mention the subject of the column. To receive PS by E-mail click here.      Sunday 2nd December 2007   Holiday Activity In case you missed it, the Christmas decorations at the merchants went up the day after Halloween or earlier. But, before we condemn those merchants for rushing the season, let us consider our political folks. The next presidential election is months, eleven of them, away. The first primary is little more than a month from now. The second a few days later. The pollsters, talking heads and pundits have been working for months now telling us who is ahead in the polls, what strategy is required to win and what it will mean if a given candidate loses in one of these first two primaries. Meanwhile, from state to state, parties, legislatures and the politicos of all sizes and shapes have been trying to move ahead primaries in order to gain more impact on the process. From where we sit, they remind us of schoolboys rapidly marking the answer sheet on a multiple choice exam in the mistaken idea that finishing the exam first is more valuable than getting the right answers. Only had 32 percent right, but I was the first one done. Remember that kid? Looks a lot like a lot of us in a hurry. We want to impact the selection of candidates in the worst possible way and we appear to be on our route to success. For this writer, at the moment, the top three candidates in the Democratic Party and the top five in the Republican Party have all failed to garner my support. That is a qualified statement. Except for those eight candidates, the major news channels have essentially ignored the rest of the candidates. And thus I condemn only those eight. They have been in the news and I don’t know much about them, I know about the same amount about the other dozen who for one reason or another haven’t been able to garner meaningful coverage. Of those the media has chosen to cover, we have heard rationalizations about votes, generalizations about proposals, condemnation of opponents and don’t forget pious platitudes. We haven’t heard much about what any of them might accomplish for this nation. We do get regular reports of course about how much