I think we may yet have another Churchill.
While he still has the freedom to speak, and we have the freedom to listen, both privileges bought for us at unimaginable cost, I hope we all take his words to heart.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
June 6, 1944/June 6, 2009
I awoke this morning to one of the most insightful comments I have ever heard on radio, compliments of NPR's Scott Simon.
I wish I could persuade the world to visit his words and take them to heart, especially these quoted from his interview with historian John Keegan, responding to the question:
'What if D-Day had failed?'
"America would be marooned," said John Keegan, sweeping a hand over a globe. "Alone on a vast planet flooded by fascism." Hitler might have let America alone for a while, he said. But every Jew in Europe, every Roma, every gay, Jehovah's Witness, disabled or retarded person, and millions more Poles and Russians would have been executed or worked to death.
How many millions would we allow to be killed, he asked, so that Americans could live in an isolation some would call peace? And what kind of Hell would be left to our children in a world dominated by the creators of the Nuremberg Laws and death camps?"
It is sobering to remember that Hitler was only fifty-one years old when he took his own life the following May. Had he and his regime prevailed, he and his could have been in power well into the 1960's and beyond. It beggars the imagination.
So, here I sit on June 6, 2009, drinking coffee, watching the Memorial Golf Tournament (hosted by Mr. Nicklaus), catching up on the laundry. My bride and children are thriving, each in their own corner of the world. Business, although down somewhat, is good. We get to follow our dreams and make a living at it. How many people have that privilege?
We have this, in great part, because of what these brave souls accomplished on June 6, 1944.
One of those boys who did not survive that day hailed from a small town in central Kentucky, one of my mother's dearest high school friends. Her eyes still well up when she recalls him, these sixty-five years later. My father, recently passed, fought in the Pacific. In his final years, he shared memories of boys who never made it home. He arrived home with a lifelong case of survivor's guilt, and his adulthood friends were mostly boys from his Marine company who all settled within two miles of one another. He was the last to depart, and his loneliness was profound.
What if we lived our lives a bit more deliberately in the shadow of these men and women?
Would we have hit songs like 'Blame It On The Alcohol' all over the radio?
Would we conduct our politics with knives and poison?
Would we tolerate mayoral races featuring wrestling midgets?
Would we embrace business practices based on the notion that the person on the other end of any transaction is a sheep to be fleeced? Would a Bernie Madoff even be possible?
Would we look at the world outside our borders and say 'Never again' (and mean it!) to the new flock of facists who think it's perfectly acceptable to massacre entire classes of people in the name of some twisted utopian ideology?
Would we not look harder at ourselves, and make certain we are not headed down the slippery slope toward despotism ourselves?
What would we do with our lives and our culture if we lived a bit more in the shadow of June 6, 1944?
I wish I could persuade the world to visit his words and take them to heart, especially these quoted from his interview with historian John Keegan, responding to the question:
'What if D-Day had failed?'
"America would be marooned," said John Keegan, sweeping a hand over a globe. "Alone on a vast planet flooded by fascism." Hitler might have let America alone for a while, he said. But every Jew in Europe, every Roma, every gay, Jehovah's Witness, disabled or retarded person, and millions more Poles and Russians would have been executed or worked to death.
How many millions would we allow to be killed, he asked, so that Americans could live in an isolation some would call peace? And what kind of Hell would be left to our children in a world dominated by the creators of the Nuremberg Laws and death camps?"
It is sobering to remember that Hitler was only fifty-one years old when he took his own life the following May. Had he and his regime prevailed, he and his could have been in power well into the 1960's and beyond. It beggars the imagination.
So, here I sit on June 6, 2009, drinking coffee, watching the Memorial Golf Tournament (hosted by Mr. Nicklaus), catching up on the laundry. My bride and children are thriving, each in their own corner of the world. Business, although down somewhat, is good. We get to follow our dreams and make a living at it. How many people have that privilege?
We have this, in great part, because of what these brave souls accomplished on June 6, 1944.
One of those boys who did not survive that day hailed from a small town in central Kentucky, one of my mother's dearest high school friends. Her eyes still well up when she recalls him, these sixty-five years later. My father, recently passed, fought in the Pacific. In his final years, he shared memories of boys who never made it home. He arrived home with a lifelong case of survivor's guilt, and his adulthood friends were mostly boys from his Marine company who all settled within two miles of one another. He was the last to depart, and his loneliness was profound.
What if we lived our lives a bit more deliberately in the shadow of these men and women?
Would we have hit songs like 'Blame It On The Alcohol' all over the radio?
Would we conduct our politics with knives and poison?
Would we tolerate mayoral races featuring wrestling midgets?
Would we embrace business practices based on the notion that the person on the other end of any transaction is a sheep to be fleeced? Would a Bernie Madoff even be possible?
Would we look at the world outside our borders and say 'Never again' (and mean it!) to the new flock of facists who think it's perfectly acceptable to massacre entire classes of people in the name of some twisted utopian ideology?
Would we not look harder at ourselves, and make certain we are not headed down the slippery slope toward despotism ourselves?
What would we do with our lives and our culture if we lived a bit more in the shadow of June 6, 1944?
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
So, How Does The Real Estate Mess Play Locally?
This is a local example of the bigger problem.
You'll see the local bank's front page, quaint as it is, with a list of properties for sale. This has been a recent addition to the web site, by the way.
Look at listing #7, asking $108,000. I walk into the bank, and it's advertised in a circular on the table where customers fill out their deposit slips--zero money down, bank financing at 5%, 8K tax credit for first-time home buyers, the whole shooting match. No takers, the flyer has been there for many weeks, updated with the tax credit offer.
Visit the house, and you find it's a block off a busy highway, overlooking used car lots, the back side of the former Wal-Mart location, a tattoo parlor, surrounded by weedy lots, eroding at a healthy clip. A true Jim-the-Realtor moment.
This could never have been intended as an owner-occupant property. With mortgage, insurance and taxes totalling well over $750 a month, no one can rent it for a profit.
Something will have to give, (like about $50,000 off the asking price), and it will be a rental for some person of very modest income, or it will have to be torn down.
The list on the bank's site is growing.
And this is Tennessee, not California.
You'll see the local bank's front page, quaint as it is, with a list of properties for sale. This has been a recent addition to the web site, by the way.
Look at listing #7, asking $108,000. I walk into the bank, and it's advertised in a circular on the table where customers fill out their deposit slips--zero money down, bank financing at 5%, 8K tax credit for first-time home buyers, the whole shooting match. No takers, the flyer has been there for many weeks, updated with the tax credit offer.
Visit the house, and you find it's a block off a busy highway, overlooking used car lots, the back side of the former Wal-Mart location, a tattoo parlor, surrounded by weedy lots, eroding at a healthy clip. A true Jim-the-Realtor moment.
This could never have been intended as an owner-occupant property. With mortgage, insurance and taxes totalling well over $750 a month, no one can rent it for a profit.
Something will have to give, (like about $50,000 off the asking price), and it will be a rental for some person of very modest income, or it will have to be torn down.
The list on the bank's site is growing.
And this is Tennessee, not California.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
And the Winner Is...
In the hotly-contested race for mayor in Burns, Tennessee:
The incumbent, Mayor Bishop, who recently launched his new career as a wrasslin' referee overseeing wrestling midgets.
Words fail...
The incumbent, Mayor Bishop, who recently launched his new career as a wrasslin' referee overseeing wrestling midgets.
Words fail...
The Real News is Always Buried Somewhere Toward the End of the Article
The GM Bankruptcy dog-and-pony show officially begins Monday morning.
In the great tradition of East Coast journalism, the Washington Post reports on continued 'sweetening' of the deal offered GM bondholders, in order to smooth the way for a takeover by the Federal Government and the UAW. (It's like we live in ***!!!*** FRANCE these days...)
The real news begins in paragraph eight, long after most casual readers have zoned out, and begun thinking about baseball scores or American Idol gossip. Italics are mine.
In the great tradition of East Coast journalism, the Washington Post reports on continued 'sweetening' of the deal offered GM bondholders, in order to smooth the way for a takeover by the Federal Government and the UAW. (It's like we live in ***!!!*** FRANCE these days...)
The real news begins in paragraph eight, long after most casual readers have zoned out, and begun thinking about baseball scores or American Idol gossip. Italics are mine.
'Administration officials were confident many of the bondholders would accept the sweetened deal, especially after the informal committee of lenders had agreed to it. "This new offer we believe has a greater chance of success," an administration official said.
Small individual bondholders, who represent a fifth of the $27.2 billion in unsecured debt, were shut out from voting on the offer.
The "Main Street Bondholders," representing some of those individuals, said the deal unfairly gave the United Auto Workers' retiree health-care trust fund 66 cents on the dollar, while offering bondholders 13 cents on the dollar, assuming the new GM is worth $25 billion. This group of bondholders vowed to fight back using a section of the bankruptcy code, which could give them their own standing.
Excuse me, but don't the bonds held by individuals bear the same language and covenants as the bonds bought by institutions--assuming of course, they bought the same issues and maturities?
Do words have meaning? Does the law apply for the little people as well as the powerful? Do you only have legal standing if you are politically connected? Does the party that in the 2000 election screamed 'Count every vote!' now think it's ok to toss out every fifth vote, because they might not like how that 20% might vote?
Do we understand how utterly devastating this is to our society?
Do we wish to become France, or Argentina?
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