George Bernard Shaw -- Major Barbara

UNDERSHAFT. It is settled that you do not ask for the succession to the cannon business.

STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon business.

UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! dont be so devilishly sulky: it's boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair start in life in exchange for disinheriting you ... Well, come! is there anything you know or care for?

STEPHEN (rising and looking at him steadily). I know the difference between right and wrong.

UNDERSHAFT (hugely tickled). You dont say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, youre a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

STEPHEN (keeping his temper with difficulty). You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright (he sits down angrily).

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, thats everybody's birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawingroom dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people. You cant tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You darent handle high explosives; but youre all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world!

LADY BRITOMART (uneasily). What do you think he had better do, Andrew?

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career

Yankees World Series -- Quick Nerdfest Note

This was an easy stat to put together, but I haven't seen it anywhere else.

This will be the 7th time that the Yankees will play a World Series against the defending champion.

The previous 6 results --

In 1923, the Yankees beat the Giants.

In 1943, the Yankees beat the Cardinals.

In 1956, the Yankees beat the Dodgers.

In 1958, the Yankees beat the Braves.

In all four of these cases, the Yankees lost to the team in the previous World Series and won the rematch.

In 1976, the Reds beat the Yankees. The Yankees showed up for their rematch in 1977, except the Reds didn't. The Yankees beat the Dodgers instead.

In 1922, the Yankees lost to the Giants. The Yankees played the Giants 3 straight years -- lost in 1921 and 1922, but won in 1923.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Reflections to the Reaction To Barack Obama's Speech To Schoolchildren That Hasn't Even Been Delivered Yet)

The songwriter was right.

The revolution will not be televised.

It really happened -- we elected Barack Obama.

I didn't think the country was ready. Then I saw how negatively it reacted to Sarah Palin.

Then I thought the election would be stolen. Isn't that why they fired all those U.S. Attorneys and hired all those new ones? But the margin of victory on Election Day was too large to overcome.

Then I thought they'd get to him before January 20. But they didn't.

So this country has made this profound revolutionary change.

This year.

This country.

Not those sophisticated European countries who smirk about how naive we are. What sort of cowboys we are.

Not those third world countries who consider themselves martyrs to capitalist imperialism -- those who think we spend all our waking hours being too fat, lazy and stupid to know which way the wind blows.

The United States of America -- like everyone else -- had fancy words that said that anyone, no matter how humble their background, no matter how defiled their people had once been, this country said that anyone could be President.

And in a revolutionary act unknown in the history of the world, in a free election, this country kept its word.

We elected Barack Obama President, and we swore him in.

The revolution is still not being televised.

The people who support Obama. You never see them on television They're not pretty enough. They're too busy working.

You just see these people who think they are the "Real America" venting their anger.

They thought they were dreaming, but they weren't.

Things really have changed, so of course they're angry. They have the means to create a lot of damage, and a lot of suffering.

And they will.

But I'd rather be on our side of the argument.

The side that knows that little by little, over time and blood, everyone in the United States will be able to pursue happiness.

Health Care Rationing

Why do the same people who think that they have a formula for determining when Grandma is entitled to have her last operation become so jittery when it comes to the death penalty for murder?

****

The idea that health care is too expensive is beyond riduculous.

When Social Security was invented in the 1930s, and the retirement age was set at 65, we figured that we were setting an impossibly high standard, that the few people who got to 65 were lucky, and were entitled to their retirement.

Now, a 65-year old man dies, and he still has his baseball cards.

The question should not be why is health care so expensive. It's so expensive because it saves lives.

The question should be how do we save everybody's life.

I am really disappointed with the turn this health care debate is taking.

Ya Gotta Believe

On July 9, 1973, the Mets beat the Astros 2-1. Although I remember the 1973 Mets as a team decimated by injuries most of the year, on July 9, they played the following line-up.

Garrett 3b
Millan 2b
Jones cf
Staub rf
Kranepool lf
Milner 1b
Hodges c
Harrelson ss
Seaver p

For those of you too young to remember, this was the line-up the team used most of the year, and certainly for most of the "Ya Gotta Believe" stretch drive, except that

(a) Ed Kranepool did not normally play left field. Cleon Jones did. The Mets basically went through 1973 without a major-league center fielder, which is how Willie Mays, at 42, found himself slipping and sliding his way through the World Series.

(b) Ron Hodges started only 37 games at catcher that year, Jerry Grote, the nominal starter, only started 76. (Duffy Dyer caught too).

Seaver was 9-4 going into the game, and finished at 19-10, but did not get the decision that night. Harry Parker did.

But even with the starting line-up basically together that night, even with the win, the Mets ended the evening at 35-46, which is generally how I remembered it, in last place, which is also how I remembered it.

This is what I did not remember. They were 12 games back at this point. Which makes their late season accomplishments all the more impressive.

What I remembered better, although I had to look it up, was that on August 30, the Mets were still in last place, but they were only 6 games back. They went 20-8 the rest of the way to win the division.

Ya Gotta Believe

Immigration

I've said this before, but:

We had a full-scale guest worker program in this country for 250 years. It was called slavery.

Now certain very powerful voices, like John McCain, are saying that a full-scale guest worker program is needed again.

I am not paranoid enough to think that John McCain is looking for a return to slavery.

But despite everyone's good intentions, and professed safeguards, a full-scale guest worker program -- a huge legally sanctioned underclass -- can get us to slavery very quickly.

I am not naive enough to believe that everyone has good intentions.

The problem is not that there are jobs that Americans won't do.

The problem is not that the wages are too low.

The problem is that the true cost of certain items -- mainly food --- is too high to be politically acceptable, so someone has to bear the burden.

It says here that legalizing second-class workers is a worse solution than ignoring illegal immigration.

The problem is -- I'll let Lincoln describe it. From the last debate with Douglas

"It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

I admit that our current tendency towards slavery (towards a permanent underclass of guest workers) comes less from an impulse towards racism than from an impulse towards union-busting. But at the end of the day, no matter what, today's union members will not be tomorrow's permanent underclass. The underclass will be non-Caucasians coming into this country from Third World nations.

And they will put the legal status of all non-Caucasians in America at risk.

It would be tragic if Barack Obama would be the President to sign this into law.

Dred Scott and Guns

I am writing this as a draft, since I don't have the time, or the heart really, to go back and check my facts, but I am pretty certain they are right.

This is also a follow-up to my previous post, although not the one I intended to write, which would have been about torture.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an individual right. (The opposing point of view was that any individual right under the 2nd Amendment derived from the state's right to organize a militia, and therefore could be completely controlled by the state). As a result, the Court struck down D.C.'s blanket prohibition against individuals owning handguns. However, the Court was careful to point out that the state had the right to make restrictions on the right to hold guns, although it is not clear what those restrictions would look like.

Now, as a rider to a credit card bill, the Congress has approved a bill allowing people to carry concealed weapons in National Parks. Bush enacted a regulation to this effect in the last days of its administration, and Obama rescinded it when he came to office.

The Congress overwhelmingly passed this bill, and the passage was bipartisan. There is no indication that the President is inclined to veto his own credit card bill over this gun rider.

Proponents of the gun bill say that they merely want to assure that citizens who are passing through national parks on their travels from point A -- where guns are legal under local law --to point B -- where guns are legal under local law --- do not get jammed in the park.

This is the same argument that the slave owners made in the Dred Scott decision. Just because a slaveowner found himself in Federal territory on the way from one slave state to the other does not mean that he should be forced to give up his slave. Even if the slaveowner found himself in Federal territory for years on end.

The Dred Scott Supreme Court ruled that Congress had no right to restrict slaves in Federal territories.

The current Congress is passing a law on the same basis -- that Congress should not be restricting the 2nd Amendment to keep and bear arms --- in Federal territories.

Abraham Lincoln, in his "House Divided" speech, made the point that once Congress is banned from from acting in Federal territories, the jump banning the states from acting for themselves, is very small.

Lincoln was worried that the Taney Supreme Court would eventually make a ruling barring the states from banning slaves. The Supreme Court would say that the states had no right to force the citizens of one state to surrender their rights when they travel to another state.

I am worried that the Roberts Supreme Court would bar the states from banning guns on a similar rationale.

Mostly, I am just very very angry that I may not be able to spend any more time in Acadia National Park or on the Jacob Riis National Seashore.