09 May 2010
 
Ring Tones


(Renowned actor and activist Alex Baldwin. Photo courtesy Access Hollywood)

“First, it’s always a treat to be someplace other than Washington, D.C. – the only place where, as I like to say, you can see a prominent person walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.”
- Remarks by SECDEF Robert Gates at the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, Saturday, May 08, 2010
 
I am moving slowly this morning. I took the Bluesmobile and piloted it down to the farm with no less than six passengers yesterday, a new record. It was an impressive feat, the more so since the implacable wind was blowing strong under clear skies and gusting to fifty knots.
 
It was quite a load and the car handled with impressive dignity thanks to the heavy-duty police suspension, though there were moments in the gusts that made me feel the center of gravity was too high and the whole enterprise might go ass over teakettle.
 
Jammed three across in the front seat and four in the back, I thought this is the finest automobile I have ever owned. Not nearly as cool as the finely crafted Hubrismobile, but honest and strong the way America used to be.
 
Young Cousin Paige was seated next to me on the outward journey, and I asked her if she felt a certain clearing of her mental facilities as we passed the massive stimulus construction of the new Metro spur that will connect the capital with its international airport.
 
She indicated it did not. Young cousin Ash sat next to me on the way back, and I asked her as we passed the lunatic improvised exits onto the Beltway coming back if she felt the world close in. She noted the transition with aplomb and said that wine at Willow later might be the answer.
 
They are just visiting, so it is entirely possible that they do not realize how divorced from realty we are here here. Completely mad.
 
There was a total of seven smart phones in the Bluesmobile, and they all went off, seemingly at random. I remember a time when a phone ring was just that. Not now. The variety is now infinite. My cousin Jo Anne has one assigned to incoming calls for each of the family, and all the phones in the car were similarly customized.
 
One of them had a ring tone fashioned from actor Alec Baldwin’s awful phone message to his 12-year old daughter. That guy is a piece of work, flaming left wing, and apparently completely out of his mind.
 
Cousin Brandon has the whole rant memorized, and the car rocked with laughter as he did quotes:
 
“Hey, I want to tell you something, OK? And I want to leave a message for you right now. 'Cause again, it's 10:30 here in New York on a Wednesday, and once again I've made an ass of myself trying to get to a phone to call you at a specific time….You little Pig.” Brandon had the tone perfect.
 
Ash went to the browser on her phone and found the whole phone message, which was posted to the web by the irate mother, crazy actress Kim Bassinger. Ash downloaded it on the spot and we listened to it again and again, with increasing hilarity. How an adult man could talk to his kid like that is beyond me. It is like he was completely out of touch with reality.
 
We laughed about it on and off all day, and into the evening over wine at Willow.
 
I got a note from a Russian friend who is still imbued with the emotion of Victory Day. She lives here now, but was inspired by memories of Moscow, and Victory Days past. She extolled the virtues of the Russian tank- the T-34 in particular- against the mighty German Panzers, which were too sophisticated and complex to be produced in the numbers needed to defeat the swarms of Russians.
 
There was a link to a cool video, which I clicked, and was rewarded with an inspirational clip of exploding tanks. This is a youTube sort of morning, with the pleasant mental fog slow to burn off.
 
The exploding tanks made me think of the travel coming up this week. I wandered back to the spare bedroom and got out the rolling bag, since the time has come to start putting things in it and prepare for the trip across the sea.
 
I am looking forward to it, and getting completely out of this insane city for a while.
 
I am bound for Berlin, the former divided city and once and future capital of the reunited Germany. I understand the German approach to engineering, since I drive one of the linear descendants of the superb technology that created the panzers and the V-rockets.
 
My Russian friend has the fatalistic perspective of the tankers who drove the T-34s with the certain knowledge that the latch on the commander’s hatch was prone to failure, and in the event that the vehicle was struck the crew would likely perish in flame within the steel.
 
The Russians have a shared perspective about the Great Patriotic war that  same perspective I heard in Israel years ago. All the stories start out: "...well, then they killed the whole family and...."
 
I really like the east and west oceans that flank the coasts of America. The great plain south of the Baltic provides no protection. We share that vulnerability only south and north, and the threat of the Canadians appears to be manageable at the moment.
 
The problem to the south is more immediate, and the last time I ruminated about it I provoked friends on both sides of the political spectrum into intense fulmination. I got another clip about the firestorm over the immigration law down in Arizona, and it was pretty slick.
 
There is something beyond the smug posturing about the constitutional aspects of the law, which may or may not have the consequence of harassing people based on their appearance, which is unacceptable in this democracy.
 
Or at least, it seems to run counter to fairness or something. The President mocked the law in that bizarre White House Correspondents dinner this week. That is the event that overshadowed the Times Square VBIED attack for hours, as everyone was busy laughing at one another.
 
I looked it up and played it a couple times to absorb the statistics. The first slide quotes the Justice department the clip from Governor Brewer and it is devastating. It is just a few slides and the sound byte of the President mocking the law.
 
The President says: "And we all know what happens in Arizona when you don't have an ID. ... Adios amigos." It was supposed to be light-hearted but I am a little unsettled when political people slide over to comedy, and it troubled me when I heard it. Governor Brewer’s campaign put the thing together, and the Governor does not appear. She was never elected to be the state’s chief executive, but succeeded to the office when Janet Napolitanao left to be DHS chief.
 
The somber slides set Mr. Obama up with devastating effect. It is not fair, but of course it was not intended to be.

The words start out quoting the Justice department considered Mexican gangs the number one criminal threat as of 2008. Kidnappings have risen to 316, mostly among illegals and drug smugglers; that the onslaught of drug trafficking has strained law enforcement resources to the extent that arrest for less than 500 pounds of pot are not prosecuted at all, and more than a thousand cases were not prosecuted in the Tucson District alone.
 
Then they cut to the President and his joke, and conclude that the people of Arizona don’t consider the problems to be a laughing matter. Clearly it is not, and I guess I have to stay with my original opinion about the law: it is time for someone to do something, and if Washington won’t do it, the locals will have to.
 
Interestingly, the most effective part of the clip is that it doesn’t stay with the Chief Executive. It cuts to a shot of the audience where Alec Baldwin is sitting, big as life, with a huge grin on his face, laughing a Arizona.
 
God, that guy is a pig.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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