I want to vote for someone better than me

I've heard many reasons for why some people are now supporting McCain/Palin, who weren't for McCain before: she's more conservative, both socially and fiscally, she's anti-abortion, she's pro-religion; all good reasons if that is what floats your boat. However the dumbest thing I've heard has been people saying they will vote for Palin because she is just like them, a hockey/soccer mom. Not to insult hockey/soccer moms but "WHAT"? That's the reason they feel she is qualified from being a heartbeat away from being one of the most powerful people on the planet? Are these people on dope or are they just dopes?

This doesn't apply to every hockey mom, who sees themselves in Ms. Palin's harried life but still disagree with her stance. I'm also not talking about those you generally agree with Governor Palin's views and are thrilled that she is a hockey mom like them too. I'm talking about those who think that just because she is a hockey mom she deserves to be Vice President. My children play sports so I know many coaches and parents. Most of them are great folks to hang around with. They're pretty much like me. That doesn't mean I think they are qualified to lead the US, much as I don't think I'm qualified to lead at this point in my life and if I ever vote for a President or Governor based on whether I'd like to hang out with him, than I hope the Board of Elections revokes my voting rights (I make an exception for local offices, with such small towns I may very well be having a drink with my Mayor).

With the energizing of their base, I can now see a certain logic for picking Palin, even if she is obviously unqualified for the national stage at the moment (I hope the campaign includes a crash course in federal government). And I guess time and investigations will tell whether any of the potential scandals are real or just part of the usual political garbage and presumptions and lies we get this time of the year. Hey, the job is to get elected first. And if you correctly judge that more voters vote with their heart and not their brain, you might as well go for it. It doesn't mean I think much of those voters. They're the ones who got this country into the mess we're in in the first place -- voting for the incompetent they thought was like them and not the better choice.

Yes, that's right. I'm talking to you voters who voted for Bush over McCain in the GOP primaries in 2000. Thanks for handing the keys to an intellectually incurious former drunk, who seems like a nice guy, over a maverick who, usually thinks for himself.

The hypocrisy reeks

Well the media has had its fun with Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin, the Governor from Alaska, a state with a smaller population than Brooklyn, NYC, and her family, including her pregnant teen daughter, redneck future son in law, drunk driving husband and questions about the divorce of her husband's business partner. It's been an amusing sideshow but it also led the public's attention away from Palin's social conservatism, her views on Alaskan independence, troopergate and her general lack of experience. Forget her conservative views for a moment and look at her resume - a little weak don't you think? It makes Obama's resume look much more impressive. We're expected to be believe that a 2 year chief of a small, rural organization is qualified to run a trillion dollar operation? These are the issues we should be discussing.

While the job of the Vice-President is basically to make sure the President is still breathing, I am a little more concerned about who is warming up in the bullpen when the President is a 72 year old cancer survivor. But hey, don't let that worry the Republican party. The GOP has an election to win in November and another President and Vice President to inaugurate on January 20th.

I'd like to have someone competent on the 21st on January. Unfortunately too many voters think character issues are important when you're about to entrust someone that amount of power, as if the "nice" guy is so innocent. They'd rather have the hockey mom over the "elite" Senator from Chicago because she is more like them. That kind of thinking is what got this country in so much trouble. We wasted tons of resources basically investigating Clinton's sex life then elected an inferior candidate because he seemed like a nice guy.

I don't want a leader who is like me, my friends or family. I want someone who is better than us. I don't care who a leader sleeps with or prays to. I don't care if he/she is a nice person or a total jerk during off hours. I do care about what he or she will do on the job. Give me a slut who is an intelligent leader over a tea sipping fool who doesn't know what he is doing any day. What happens in a leader's bedroom (or whatever bed he or she is in) is none of the public's business.

Personally I don't care that the potential future Vice President has a teen daughter about to give birth to a baby out of wedlock. What I do care about is the Governor's competence. However, it's all about power and keeping it, not what doing what is best. What I'd find really amusing, if the situation wasn't so serious, is how the GOP went from Dan Quayle bashing Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock 16 years ago to how wonderful that the Palin family is not having an abortion, who cares about a 17 year old being pregnant. And of course, their own little pitbull, Bill O'Reilly, who so upset that Britney Spears 15 year old sister was pregnant this past spring has changed his views to Palin's becoming a grandmother is a private family issue. Personal responsibility? That's not for Republicans apparently.

Still, you have to admire a party with so much chutzpah that they can go for jugular of a person from "the other side," but then cry foul if their person is attacked for the exact same thing. It's bad when the other side has sex out of marriage or nominates a candidate with little experience, it's ok when we do it. The hypocrisy reeks.

How about MYOB?

In last week's NY Times magazine, I read an article about narrow reporting, in which an amateur reporter pursued a local story that the main stream media avoided. Long story short, there was a violent death in the writer's neighborhood and the local Mrs. Kravitz/ yenta, upset that there was no coverage in NYC's major newspapers as the death was a suicide of a family man, which the media generally avoids as suicide is a private matter, had to resort to local outlets, such as the neighborhood newspaper, that might mention such news. Still not satisfied with that miniscule coverage, she then felt compelled to write about the suicide in the NY Times magazine, thereby ensuring this family's grief received a wider audience (and which I realize I am contributing to by blogging about it). The article angered me for two reasons.

One, is that the author almost gave the identity of the suicide victim away, or at least made it more likely that people who hadn't heard about it would find out about it. Years ago, I used to live in the neighborhood the author and suicide victim lived in. The local paper she mentioned was generally distributed free in my building's lobby and I usually read it. She named enough streets and landmarks that I was able to surmise the block the suicide happened on, enough so that I looked up the article to make sure it wasn't an old friend who lived on that block (it wasn't and the victim lived around the block). The name was dully reported in the local paper but, as I no longer read that paper, I was unaware of the suicide until I read the Times and I think that was what really annoyed me: the local paper has an audience of several thousands; the Sunday NY Times has a circulation of about 1.5M. That is a lot more people who now know of this family's tragedy than did before. This brings me to my second point.

There other reason the article bothered me: the death, assuming if it was ultimately ruled a suicide was a private matter and really no one's business. Over 20 years ago I had a 15 year old brother die in a car accident. Basically, he blew curfew and was car surfing (sitting on the hood of a moving car while the driver tried to shake the passengers off), fell, landed on his head and ultimately died of complications from a fractured skull. The police investigated as there was a delay from the time of the accident to when our doorbell was rung, and, because a child died. Though it was almost a quarter of a century ago, the details are quite fresh in memory, from the VCR clicking off at 1AM, after taping the Honeymooners and Star Trek off of channel 11 as we answered our door to find the driver telling us to come down as my brother had fallen and wouldn't wake up all the way through to hours later as my father cried on the couch like a baby, just before sunrise, inconsolable, saying nothing would be "all right again" as I sat quietly on the floor of the couch while he cried to at least be there for him.

Even now, all these years later, I'm still learning new details about that night. Last week, while having drinks with an older cousin, the topic drifted to my brother's death, my father's death not long after and how we've rarely talked about it over the years and it was only in the last 5 years or so we've really all made our peace with what happened. While talking my cousin mentioned how horrible it was for my brother to have died in my father's arms. What was interesting was that was not the chain of events as I remembered them or as my parents told us. For one thing, I was present when my brother stopped breathing in the driveway behind our apartment building as we waited for the ambulance; we got him going again with CPR. For another, my dad mentioned that he knew it was over when, while following the ambulance to the hospital, a second ambulance pulled over so they could assist in working on my brother. All these years, I thought my parents just sat in our car and watched in disbelief along the side of the highway as my brother was worked on: now I realize that my parents went to the ambulance and were there when my brother died. In one way, it's nice to know he wasn't alone with just the medics, in another, though it explains why my mother, outside of a haiku she wrote for her school's publication, has rarely said a word, letting her grief ravage her body (though she has had moments of happiness, such as weddings and grandchildren over the years, I can't really recall her laughing at anything in the last 20 years, aside from a sarcastic chuckle now and then) and why my father, a 35 year smoker down to less than half a pack a day quickly shot up to 3 packs a day until he died of a broken heart a few years later.

As I implied, all this is deeply personal. Even writing this all these years later still brings tears to me, but, as it is now over half a lifetime ago, distance allows me to talk about it quite freely. However, I can't imagine how much more hellish the whole experience would have been if local bloggers had been around back then to ask us what happened. My brother's death was never reported in the major media nor the local neighborhood papers which generally concentrated on user supplied articles. Outside of an essay I wrote on the matter for a college class, which I found therapeutic at the time, few outside our circle of friends, co-workers (of my parents) and family, knew of his death. Having once been to a funeral covered by the media (mother of a friend killed in a bus accident on the way to Atlantic City about a decade ago which made the news due to puclic interest), I find the thought of our family having to share our grief back then with strangers unnerving. This brings me back to the NY Times article.

In concluding her essay, the author lamented few journalists did any reporting on her neighbor's death, even though there was a surfeit of interest, judged by the gossip she heard around the neighborhood. I suggest that one, most of the people who were interested were probably the type of neighborhood gossips who would want to know this type of information anyway. A second thought is that most people know there is no story of public interest here; it is just a family tragedy not to be shared with the world at large unless or until the family is ready to share. Although, I am writing about it, my brother's death is still rarely discussed amongst my surviving brother, sister and our cousins, aside from when the memories overwhelm me now and then and I share my sadness with my wife (which usually leads me to write something in my personal journal, or, now in the 21st century, on a blog -- as I said before, I'm fine once I get it out and don't really mind sharing). It is our story. It belongs to no one but ourselves. Those who know us will know who this article is about; those who don't will have no clue. On a side note, I ended up with many of my brother's old class photos and recently posted them on our elementary school's Facebook page. It has been nice to see the comments from my brother's old classmates who also still remember and miss him.

The writer justifies her nosiness as one of a concerned neighbor. I classify it as someone who not only does not know how to mind her own business. Worse, she turned one family's tragedy around and made it all about herself and her failure to be Mrs. Kravitz and ask the police what happened on the day of the death. I think that is what really disgusted me. You may be curious about what is happening with your neighbor, it doesn't mean it is any of your business.

Over the Brooklyn Bridge

There was an article in this weekend's NY Times about the sale of the Moonstruck brownstone (the setting for the 1987 movie starring Cher and Nicolas Cage) in NYC's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. For those not familiar with the area, Brooklyn Heights is a mid 19th century neighborhood of brownstones adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge and just across the East River from downtown Manhattan. Back in 1965, it was also the first neighborhood in NYC to be declared a historic district. While the article focused mostly on how the long time owner fought to save the neighborhood from development when he bought his home almost 40 years ago (back then urban renewal meant ripping everything down and starting anew as opposed to the rehabbing popular today, there was one or two lines near the end that struck a chord: the part where the old owner, while enjoying his retirement, started missing the old neighborhood after a few weeks. I feel his pain.

The first apartment my wife and I had was in the area, basically on the border of Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn, adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge. We lived there for over 5 years, leaving only when it became clear that a one bedroom and a baby wasn't going to work for us. We loved the area, we still have many great memories: walking around the scenic brownstones and promenade in the evening with our dog, going out to the dinner or drinks at a moments notice, not caring if we got too drunk to drive because we walked everywhere, all the interesting shops in the neighborhood and, of course, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge most mornings in lieu of taking the subway into Manhattan for work.

Though we've driven through the area over the years, we never really revisited. Part of it was my wife's reluctance to go by our old apartment building and look out over Manhattan and see what wasn't there anymore (we had a great view of the Twin Towers from our kitchen window). Part of it was we and our friends were also suburbanites now, busy raising our young families outside the city, our partying days drifting to our past, and had no great need (or time) to go back.

However, this past spring I went back for the first time. Our eldest is into trains, my wife jokes it was from all those months when he rode the subway in the womb, and NYC has a subway museum several blocks from our old apartment. Like the former owner of the Moonstruck house, I missed the old neighborhood, despite not having lived there in over 7 years. So, since I knew I could get free parking on our old block, I parked in front of our old building and walked my son through his old baby haunts. Long story short, you really can't go home again.

The neighborhood looked the same, but wasn't. Part of it was the increased police presence on on our old block. As it is essentially the service road for the Brooklyn Bridge, the police pay a little extra attention these days to that particular area (hopefully that also means that cars are not broken into on a regular basis by the subway station at the end of the block anymore). At the time I wondered if this meant that cars were being broken into with less frequency. However, I also just read an article in the NY Post about a blogger catching a car thief in DUMBO. When we lived in the area, every now and then, as we headed to the subway stop, we'd see a series of cars on our block broken into. This would go on for a few days, stop for a period of time, then restart. It got to the point where we joked that whoever was doing it must be in/out of jail again. I now wonder if it was the thief mentioned in the article. Anyway, Idigress.

Another part of it was the doorman to our old building had retired and none of the maintenance staff remembered us (but the mailman did). The diner on the corner was still open, but the very small grocery store in one of our complex's buildings had recently closed. But that wasn't all. There was also more pedestrian traffic. When we left, the adjacent residential area now known as DUMBO was just beginning to be redeveloped from abandoned warehouses into loft apartments, making the area sort of SoHo east. This meant there were many more pedestrians on our block, wandering from Brooklyn Heights to DUMBO. But there was more that was different.

When we lived there, the neighborhood was well to do, for Brooklyn. This time it felt like the way Manhattan's Upper West Side used to feel. Many more upscale shops, squeezing out the mom and pop places that had hung on since the 1950s and 1960s, were in place. Though some of the old places we liked were still around, there were a lot fewer of them. But I also nannies dragging children around on a Saturday, something I never noticed when we were there in the 1990s. The neighborhood had always been family orientated but it felt like it had lost a little of that.

When my son and I left that evening, I realized that for the first time since we left, I no longer missed the neighborhood. Life had gone forward and it no longer felt like home. Hopefully the former owner of the Moonstruck house will soon have the same feelings as he settles into his retirement.

They usually know how to campaign

Senator Obama recently noted, "the Republicans don't govern very well, [b]ut, they know how to campaign," recent events notwithstanding, such as the interesting events surrounding Gov. Palin and the federal government's apparently decent response to Hurricane Gustav. By that he was implying that the Republican party is very good at talking people into voting against their own best interests, such as voting for the party that wants to keep health insurance in private hands by implying people have a choice in their care (as if, even for the middle class realistic choices are few) that they wouldn't have under socialized medicine. As evidenced by many events of the last years, one could argue that the GOP seems to want incompetent people running government so they argue that government is so bad that voters will demand that there be less of it.

Of course, what Senator Obama failed to point out is that the campaigning by the GOP doesn't stop with the election. They keep on going. The GOP has been excellent in getting the public to ignore that the Bush administration has greatly expanded the federal government in budget, departments, people, and intrusion into average Americans lives while increasing the nation's debt by hiding behind his social conservative views, such as his love of the religious right (his base), anti-abortion stance and privatizing social security. Of course, the Democrats don't exactly have clean hands over the last 8 years. The Patriot Act was voted in almost unanimously without even being read. Under pressure from the GOP, most of the Democrats in Congress abandoned their jobs and just let the executive branch roll over them. This continued even after they got control of Congress. Whether that is the Dems being weak or the GOP being strong, with that record, it is hard not to admire the Republican party. And if it weren't for the federal government's failed response after Hurricane Katrina 3 years ago, their dreams of a super majority may have continued.

Still, the last few days have been amusing as more comes out about Governor Palin. From what I read, she seems like a nice, bright person whose qualification for being vice president seems to rely on the Constitution and views that appeal to conservative right. In fairness, the role of the VP is basically to go to funerals, breaks ties in the Senate and to make sure that the President still has a pulse so in that regards, she is fine. However, as McCain is a 72 year old cancer survivor, I worry that she may not be qualified to step in as President if something happened to a President McCain. I imagine most of Vice President Cheney's detractors would admit that Cheney has the experience and ability to run the country if something were to happen to President Bush. It seems, in an effort to break away from the "corruption" that has overtaken the GOP over the last decade or so, that McCain has thrown out the baby with the bathwater -- throwing out the good campaigners along with the Washington insiders that has broken the system.

Personally, I don't really care about labels. Give me a socially liberal/fiscally conservative candidate willing to re-evaluate our entitlement programs, make proper investments in our future, which includes understanding that our borrowing from the Chinese to pay the Arabs for oil needs to be addressed ASAP and I'll be happy. Whether that person is a Democrat or Republican is besides the point. I just want a leader who will put this government back on the right track.

Goodbye summer our old friend

Well this is it. The last day of summer, despite temperatures forecasted to be in the low 90s here in NJ when school reopens this week. The pool closes for the season today but wasn't it only yesterday that I was whining about the water temperature at the pool club being only 56 on Memorial Day weekend? It seems like summer goes faster and faster every year.

Oh there have been signs of summer's coming to close. The days have been getting shorter: no longer is the sun already shining when I get up for work and the late evening walks with my daughter have gotten noticeably earlier. I see a few glints of yellow in some of my trees and a few leaves are now littering my backyard, a warning shot to my back that it has two months to go until .... ugh, I hate even thinking about raking! And, despite this week's forecast, it has been a tad cooler as of late. The other morning I wore sweats in lieu of shorts for the first time since May when I gave the dog his morning walk. And of course, the back to school racks at the stores, seemingly up since 4th of July, have been well picked through.

Though it has been many years since September first meant back to school for me personally, my children do go back this week. Like most of us, summer just means getting up for work in daylight and not having to wear a jacket in the morning, except, perhaps, a few weeks when we go on vacation. Long gone are the endless weeks of being happy and free (though it was nice to come home, grab my suit and hop in the pool after work in July when the pool stayed open until 8PM). For the children though, Thursday will be a rude awakening.

Fortunately for me, I will be long out of the house by time they rise -- Thursday will be my first day back at the office in almost two weeks. It won't be long until we fall back into our usual school year routines ans summer becomes a distant memory as we look forward to various holidays. Already I see a few Halloween shops getting ready to open and mums for sale at the local farms. And in a sure sign that fall is near, a family of wild turkeys just paraded through my yard, reminding me that it will be Thanksgiving before long.

Well, off to the pool and then the store to get burgers for the BBQ tonight.

OMG! Mom is using a cell phone! Everybody panic!!

I just read another article about how the world is coming to the end. This time it is due to, horrors, moms using a cell phone while with their children! Oh no, cell phones are harming children! 10 years ago it was the internet, 30 years ago it was TV, 50 years ago it was rock & roll, 70 years ago it was radio -- I can probably go on to the electric light or the wagon trains to the west. Every time something new comes along, experts "panic" and explain in great detail how these new devices will spell the end of civilization as we know it as bad parents raise monster children. This has been going on for over a century. Yet somehow, most of these children survive to become productive adults.

One expert worries that increased cell phone usage is leading to speech delays in children. Well delays happen no matter what. In the early 1970s, my youngest brother barely spoke until he was 4 -- he was fine, he just had nothing to say. My eldest child was speech delayed, but that was because he had a hearing problem that wasn't evident until he got a little older. Our 3 year old daughter, in comparison, is a chatterbox (at least around us, she can be a little shy around strangers). I would not "blame" any of these instances on our using/not using a cell phone while with the children (especially for my brother as those devices didn't exist back then, at least in the average home) -- it's just the way things were with these individuals.

How is answering a few emails or texting in the evening different then calling a friend or relative on the phone, which is what my parents did in the evening? The article notes that parents are so busy on cell phones in cares they rarely talk to their children. I rarely talk to my children in the car, mostly because I like to concentrate on driving (silly me....). I'm kind of funny about paying attention to the road when I'm driving a several ton weapon at high speeds, does that make me a bad parent? According to the article, it might. Guess what, kids are going to hurt their foot on the slide, for example, whether you are on the phone, talking to another mother or paying complete attention -- it is part of being a child.

I'm tired of being guilted by "experts" for wanting a little me time. Do any of these experts remember what it is like to care for a small child? It is seconds of fun and excitement surrounded by mundane boredom. Watching Dora the Explorer for the umpteenth time is quite painful unless you have something to distract you, be it a book, a cell phone or laptop so I can surf the net or blog (yay for wifi!). It sounds cruel, not devoting every second to your child, but parents need to stay sane. At the moment, both my children are playing by themselves, if not in visual range, at least in earshot, using their imaginations as they play. They don't need me to interrupt them at the moment as they learn things for themselves.

My wife and I are not heavy cell phone users, using them mostly for seeing where the other one is when we need to meet up or to let the other know we'll be home late from work, so I don't know first hand whether the phone usage leads to an 80 percent more likely chance for children to have emotional, social and behavioral problems, including hyperactivity as the article suggests. But children have been hyperactive forever (and they weren't treated for it). If so, how do they explain my younger brother's hyperactivity in the 1970s, decades before cell phone usage became common? Some children are just energizer bunnies, they keep going and going and going and going .... Knowing a few parents with out of control children, I'd guess that it is more likely the cell phone is just a symptom and the parent would've been lax in correcting their child's behavior anyway.

By the way, as a victim of long car trips down to Florida from NYC every summer as a child, I am very much in favor of electronic toys to distract the children. Those trips were incredibly boring, those games like looking at license plates and signs only work so long, and I would have loved to have the toys my children have now. I or my wife may not know every little detail in our children's lives, but I recall my parents not knowing everything going on in the lives of my brothers and sister. But as both my children are generally well behaved, are respectful and listen to my wife and I, I figure we're doing something right. If not paying strict attention to our children at all times like a prison guard makes us bad parents, well, I know plenty of "bad" parents with great children to hang out with.