The movie W. gave director Oliver Stone a chance to plumb the depths of George W. Bush’s soul. Based on my review, Stone portrayed Bush as even shallower than he let on in public. The Ghost Writer lets director Roman Polanski give Tony Blair the same treatment, just in transparently fictional setting. Polanski may be a convicted child molester here in the United States, but he clearly hasn’t lost the knack for directing. The Ghost Writer does turn out to be a whole lot more engaging than its transparent premise would suggest. It also is perhaps a window into Polanski’s own troubled soul. More on that later.

Pierce Brosnan plays Tony Blair, sorry, “Adam Lang” who superficially looks and sounds a lot like Tony Blair. In this movie, he is also George W. Bush’s lackey in TWOT (The War on Terror). By the time the movie starts, Lang has been put out to pasture. He seems to prefer to live in New England in retirement; however, he remains always the restless politician because he rarely stays at his estate for very long. He is apparently rich enough to retire to a very exclusive house on an island off the coast of New England. (They do not say which island it is, but I assumed it was Martha’s Vineyard). There he lives on a big estate surrounded by a very big fence with a number of toughs at the front gate. Protestors can often be found in front of the gate, as they are convinced that Blair, sorry, Lang ordered British forces to torture Islamic extremists.

The ghostwriter (Ewan McGreggor) gets to spend time at the estate for the obvious reason. He will earn a quick quarter of a million dollars if he can revise an earlier draft of the book within a month. As we learn from one of the opening scenes, the first ghostwriter met with an untimely fate and was found on a beach near the estate, dead from drowning after presumably slipping off the ferry to the island. Can you say, “foreshadowing”? I knew you could!

Lang’s retreat is a very odd and very cold (as in impersonal) place. It is clear within minutes of getting inside Lang’s little fortress that there are some major household tensions going on. To wit, Lang’s brilliant but distant wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) seems to be estranged from Adam, who seems to be more interested in bedding his long-time personal assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Catrall). There are many peculiar things going on at the Lang estate and much of the staff’s time is spent in the daunting business of image control. The maid is unusually cold and, moreover, there is a creepy guy who spends his day in the driveway obsessively raking away saw grass. Nor is Lang, when the ghostwriter finally meets him, terribly revealing about his past life. He refers to him as “guy”, but in fact, the ghostwriter is never named once in the movie.

The estate is as dark and confusing as the island it inhabits. It is February and it is unremittingly cold and grey, with frequent squalls of cold rain. The manuscript by the first ghostwriter is kept in a special vault under lock and key. The ghostwriter eventually finds himself trying to supplement the material by talking with others who knew Adam. Names in the first draft of the book and mysterious old photographs in the guest room of the house lead the writer on a chase that becomes increasingly darker and scarier. Meanwhile, we learn that the International Criminal Court wants Lang to stand trial for crimes against humanity for allegedly ordering torture.

So it is convenient that Lang is living in The United States, one of a handful of countries not to recognize the ICC. Lang can quickly escape to Washington into the bosom of his Bush friends, but can he escape from the creepy guy living outside his security fence who seems abnormally obsessed with him? And was the first ghostwriter’s death an accident or something more sinister?

You can probably correctly guess the latter. The allusion to the ICC though is somewhat funny, given that Polanski has been on the run from U.S. law for more than thirty years. He was recently detained in Switzerland and will likely return to the United States to serve his sentence for having sex with an underage minor back in the 1970s. Perhaps that’s what makes this otherwise rather predictable movie work so well: Polanski understands what it feels like to be hunted. It also helps to have some terrific actors. Brosnan’s performance is about what you would expect. McGreggor is a decent actor as always. Eli Wallach has a neat little bit part as well. The actor to really watch is Olivia Williams as Lang’s wife Ruth, who sort of befriends the writer while also pushing him away.

This was one of those rare movies where I figured out the ending, but from the gasps in the audience I gather most of them were like my wife. So there is actually quite a bit to enjoy in this weird, creepy world inhabited by Adam Lang and his cohorts. It’s something of a rarity today in our special effect laden theaters: a movie for adults on adult topics. It’s worth seeing.

3.2 on my four-point scale.

Most of us Americans have a hazy idea at best about The Battle of Waterloo. A quick recap for those of you who might have been asleep during the lecture on European history: in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon had managed to return to power in France after being exiled to the island of Elba off Tuscany. (It would be like Obama losing a second term, and then later winning another term.) Napoleon had already held power for a decade. Having been bitten many times by Napoleon, allied powers quickly organized to defeat him again. English and Prussian powers were able to defeat his armies rather handily in June of 1815 at Waterloo in Belgium. After all, they knew what they were up against and brought forty thousand more soldiers than Napoleon to the battle. After the battle, Napoleon went to live on another island, this time St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he died rather ingloriously of stomach cancer in 1821.

In short, Waterloo was the concluding battle of Napoleon’s resurgent short second reign. In contrast, President Obama has been in office a little over a year. The closest analogy one can make between Napoleon and health care reform legislation was Napoleon’s administrative reforms, which included a tax code, a public road and sewer system, establishing a central bank, and a set of civil laws known as the Napoleonic Code which were, at least in theory, quite progressive. Many of these laws and institutions survive today and may be Napoleon’s true legacy in France.

In this health care battle, if any side has superior forces, it is the establishment. It is true that Democrats have the political advantage in Congress. However, the watered down legislation making its way toward the reconciliation process represents significant concessions to the health care and health insurance industries. Single payer health care? Gone. A public option health care plan to compete with private health insurance plans? It has virtually no chance of being added during the reconciliation process, based on press reports. If brought up, it stands little likelihood of making it through reconciliation.

In many ways, if the current legislation were enacted, it would be a great victory for the health insurance industry. These companies understand that in the end they cannot sell health insurance if no one can afford to buy it. The legislation requires most uninsured Americans to buy health insurance from the private health care insurance industry. The government is basically requiring Americans to dole out more of their hard earned money to give to private corporations, not the government. That sounds like the government is assisting the corporatocracy, not socialism. If Americans cannot afford to buy the product, in many cases the government will offer subsidies and tax credits to make it possible.

To label these reforms as socialism is ridiculous. If regulating the health care industry is socialism, then one has to ask the obvious questions of what else the government is doing is socialism, because most of the federal government could be construed as socialist. Regulating drugs for safety and efficacy must be socialism because it interferes with the free market for drugs. Federal highway transportation standards and interstate commerce regulations must be socialism. Most significantly, Medicare and Medicaid must be socialism. Yet, few of those railing against socialized health care are talking (at least openly) about getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid. Many of them loathe Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) but to vote against Medicare would estrange them from virtually every senior citizen in the country. Republicans, of course, thrive on cognitive dissonance. So sure, of course they can be for socialized medicine for senior citizens yet bitterly oppose it for the rest of the working class whose taxes, by the way, are funding the Medicare system that seniors are using.

The only health care legislation that would truly be socialist would be a certain forms of a single payer health care system. This would have the government pay all Americans health care bills. In return, you would have to get health care from a government approved health care provider. Even so, as envisioned, the single payer health care approach is probably not socialistic, because the government would not directly provide the care. Most single payer health care systems follow this model. Great Britain’s Public Health Service is a major exception. Curiously, in Great Britain the Conservative Party is aligning itself as the savior of the PHS.

Is a public option socialistic? A public option provides a government administered (not owned) health care plan open to all legal U.S. residents. It would probably look a lot like Medicare; in fact, it might be Medicare extended. However, practices currently do not have to accept Medicare patients, and many do not (or do so only with grumbling) because they do not feel they are adequately reimbursed. A public option would probably not be wildly successful. A public option would probably be like buying a “good” or “better” model refrigerator. Most Americans would lust for the “best” models available from companies like Blue Cross. However, having a public option, even if it is not as great as Blue Cross, beats having no health care at all. Ask forty seven million uninsured Americans. What a public option does is help make health care more affordable because health insurers would have genuine competition. However, as I noted, the public option has little chance of passing with health care reform.

The argument really amounts to whether the federal government should mess further in the health insurance marketplace. It’s about making sure the government does not grow any further, except in ways that matter to Republicans, like having large defense contracts to privileged contractors like Halliburton. It is apparently okay for the government to ensure that securities are traded in a fair and open manner. However, it is not okay for the government to require a level playing field for health insurers. State corporation commissions ensure level playing fields all the time with electric, sewer and water rates and we don’t fret about it. Some states even regulate health insurance providers. We recognize that industries that are monopolies, or near monopolies like the health care industry in many states, need regulation to ensure that a vital service is available at all. It is hard to think of any service more vital than health care. Moreover, it’s hard to think of an area more in need of regulation, given astronomical premium increases and no constraints about whom a company can insure.

It is clear what the cost of inaction would be: eventually there will be no health insurance industry at all. Maybe that is what Republicans are secretly hoping for, although the way they take major contributions from the health care industry it is hard to believe. After all, if no one but the very wealthy can afford to pay out of pocket for health care, perhaps with all these surplus doctors costs would finally drop to an affordable level. I personally think it’s more likely I will get a visit from the tooth fairy than this ever happening.

So I would not hold my breath there. I can guarantee you one thing: if health care reform does not pass, eventually the health care industry will be petitioning Congress for regulation. The last thing they want is not be the broker between you and receiving health care. So take your health insurance reform now or later. The reality is the current legislation is a great gift to the health insurance industry, which will likely ensure its survival with, at best, only a light touch from government.

Waterloo? In this case, Napoleon is not President Obama, but the health insurance industry. Perhaps the rock group Abba got it right:

Waterloo – knowing my fate is to be with you.

In the hands of a different director, this could be turned into a slapstick comedy, but instead this story is told in a straightforward manner. Nashira (Francis Benhamou) is so orthodox a Muslim that she wears a hijab in public. She has to handle a class of elementary students full of such diversity that the teachers refer to the school as a little U.N. She is quickly forced to interact with Rochel (Zoe Lister Jones), an orthodox Jew. Rochel is a special education teacher and her student participates in some of Nashira’s classes. Both approach each other warily, but a student quickly presses the obvious issue. Don’t Arabs hate Jews and visa versa? Both women have hardly spoken a dozen words to each other and suddenly in front of the class they have to confront their ethnic and religious divide.

Nashira only takes her hijab off at home. Home includes Mom and Dad, who are obsessed with matching her up with a proper Muslim man in an arranged marriage. Rochel doesn’t have to wear a veil, but also has to deal with her own set of orthodox Jewish parents, also obsessed with her getting married, but even more so that Nashira’s parents. Both Nashira and Rochel quickly discover that because they are being pushed into arranged marriages and come from orthodox households that they have plenty in common. Rochel rebels being matched. Nashira is intrigued. Both risk being ostracized if they do not agree to an arranged marriage.

While they wrestle through their first year of teaching, they also have to figure out how to work with each other and handle the large number of arranged suitors coming to their doors. This quickly give both two women something in common. Almost unwillingly, they find they like each other. The same cannot be said of their parents. Rochel’s mother is aghast when she brings Nashira home to work on a joint assignment. Nashira’s parents are equally wary of her new friendship with Rochel.

Rochel’s quickly begins to resent her yenta and finds herself yearning for the freedom of her older cousin, who had the audacity to break away and live a life free of her Jewish trappings. However, some exposure to her cousin’s life soon makes her realize she is uncomfortable with her level of freedom. Yet none of her arranged suitors suit her in the least; in fact each one seems worse than the last one. Nashira’s experience is much better. Her parents soon introduce her to a man who takes her fancy and she begins making her wedding plans.

It is a story that is perhaps a bit too contrived and predictable, but both actresses are unusually convincing in what would otherwise be stereotypical roles. Moreover, it is nice to see an orthodox Muslim woman and an orthodox Jewish woman break free of their ethnic stereotypes, if only on screen. They discover that their common humanity is a stronger force than their obsessive orthodox upbringing. Yet, both take some comfort in the traditions as well.

In short, Arranged is a simple film destined to tell a simple story that is a bit uncomfortable at times, a tad melodramatic and sometimes lightly funny. By design it never quite soars. It would be unfair to call it a B movie because it is hardly mediocre. Rather it is a heartfelt and well-acted story of an unlikely but enduring friendship.

Does that make it a chick flick? Maybe. Lacking guns, violence, nudity or swear words it may appear to be inoffensive, but to the many of us who grow up in orthodox families can relate easily enough. So it is definitely more than a B movie, but has few of the qualities of an A movie either. I give it a B+ for sure, or a 3.1 on my four point scale. If you have the opportunity to see it, you should but it is not special enough to seek out. While not as much fun as movies that revel in ethnicity like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, many of us will still find the movie touching.

This is quite alarming. What is socialism? According to Merriam-Webster, it is “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”. Granted, thanks to the “enlightened” people at Fox News, most Americans now believe the word has an entirely different meaning. Socialism now apparently means the government taking any action to redistribute wealth, particularly from the richer to the poorer. (Don’t worry, patriots. The other way around is perfectly okay, as always. Screwing the poor is a sacrosanct American tradition.)

All I know is that the meaning of “common wealth” is obvious enough! It means that some poor bugger down in Tidewater, Virginia must be entitled to some part of my six-figure salary! Virginia felt so strongly about being a commonwealth that in its original constitution passed in 1776 it declared that “Commissions and Grants shall run, In the Name of the commonwealth of Virginia, and bear taste by the Governor with the Seal of the Commonwealth annexed.”

Virginia is not alone. Three other socialist states are out there: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky. All have the audacity to call themselves commonwealths. And we let them into the U.S.A.! How could we? Don’t these uppity states know that socialism is un-American?

I am afraid to say there is rampant evidence of socialism here in the Old Dominion. For example, if you want to purchase hard liquor, you must buy it at a Virginia ABC store. Warning: before reading further, if you are standing, please sit down. Virginia ABC stores are owned and operated exclusively by the State of Virginia. In fact, we have a Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control! Virginia law allows no other legal means of acquiring hard liquor within the state! This has some obvious problems. First, there is no competition! The government sets whatever price it wants to for liquor and residents must pay it! This encourages bootlegging and an illegal moonshine industry, which is still going on today! Even worse, when Virginia ABC stores make a profit, the profits are used to fund state services! This also means that Virginians who enjoy hard liquor are disproportionately overtaxed.

If it were only Virginia ABC stores, perhaps this socialism would be tolerable. Yet, Virginia also has a state lottery. It allows no other lotteries in the state, so private industry has no opportunity at all to run their own betting parlors. This is by law! Moreover, Virginia prohibits most other forms of gambling. If you are into gambling on horses, you can only place bets on races at state owned and managed offsite betting parlors and only for races at Colonial Downs east of Richmond. This is clearly more socialism as well as stifling free enterprise!

My suspicion is that there are similar socialist things going on in the commonwealth socialist states of Kentucky, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as well. It should be obvious that Massachusetts is already a socialist state, given their tendency to elect Democrats! It’s like they want to be socialists! How weird is that?

If you are a red-blooded, all American citizen, you should be alarmed by these socialist trends. I have heard other states are doing similar things, but are masquerading as “states” rather than the communist/socialist/tree hugging commonwealths they actually are. Clearly, drastic action is required. We can start with a constitutional amendment kicking any state out of the union that labels itself as a commie “commonwealth”. Actually, it would be much cooler if it allowed residents of other states the right to rape, pillage and plunder these states. That would show them the way the natural order actually works. Maybe they will eventually see the light. In fact, we should be able to kick any state out of the union we feel that may even be thinking about socialism. Why? Because socialism is bad, obviously! It stifles competition and free markets.

I guess I need to move across the Potomac River and back to Maryland. There may be many Democrats over there, but oh Lord, at least they are not a commonwealth!

Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley chronicles the key periods of a now largely forgotten time when the Mediterranean Sea was fiercely contested between the Ottoman Empire, the Barbary States and various Christian states. Empires of the Sea is not for those easily grossed out. It takes a steady stomach to read the wrenching details of the various battles and campaigns, much of them waged by fleets of fast running galleys. At the same time, the book is fascinating and even riveting. It is the sort of book that is eminently readable and hard to put down, as well as meticulously researched. It is full of surprising detail and depth. It is easy to imagine yourself at the Siege of Malta or the Battle of Lepanto caught up in horrific events of human bloodshed that are hard to believe actually happened.

The late 15^th and early 16^th centuries were a time when, if your nation was not at war you were probably doing something wrong. A nation was lucky if they were fighting just one war at a time. Some nations, like the city-state of Venice, did their damnedest to buy peace from their oppressors, but it often came to naught. For back then, as is still unfortunately true today, religion and imperialism triumphed a lot of common sense.

The Ottoman Empire may be as close as the Muslim world ever got to a true Muslim empire. The remnants of the empire comprise what is now Turkey, but at the time, the Ottoman Empire was busy trying to expand both eastward and westward. Eastward meant frequent wars with Persia. Westward expansion typically meant campaigns in Hungary and Austria. There was also the battleground of the Mediterranean Sea. The Ottoman Empire controlled roughly the eastern half of the sea, although Venice controlled Cyprus and a little known religious organization called The Knights of Saint John occupied the island of Rhodes on Turkey’s coast. Greece at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire.

On the western side of the Mediterranean Sea was a country called The Holy Roman Empire that you may have read about in history class. Basically, it was an imperialist Spanish state which occupied parts of France and Italy, periodically parts of Portugal as well as vassal states to the north and east like The Netherlands, Austria and Hungary. The north coast of Africa was home to set of loosely aligned outlaw Arab states that today we think of as the Barbary States.

Roger Crowley takes us into these turbulent times in the Mediterranean. The book is anchored around four pivotal events. It begins with a successful siege of the island of Rhodes by the Turks. We learn that the Ottoman army was experts in the art of siege. Even so, they had their hands full trying to capture the well-fortified Rhodes from the Knights of Saint John, who had tenaciously clung to it for centuries. The details of the siege are horrific and bloody, as you might expect, but in some ways, they are a mere prequel to much bloodier sieges and battles to come.

Between major encounters, we learn of the horrific piracy in the western Mediterranean by The Barbary States, principally organized by bloodthirsty creatures straight from the id like Hayrettin. A typical raid would consist of a few dozen well-armed galleys overrunning a town or village. The men were quickly killed, and the women and children were sold into slavery. Crowley informs us that far more whites were sold into slavery during these times (largely by other whites) than were blacks centuries later. Of course, the place was also plundered for all its wealth. While most of the barbarity was inflicted by those aligned by the Muslim Barbary States, Spain and Venice were not beyond similar exploits. Both Christians and Muslims were supposed to represent higher values, but it is clear that cruelty was boundless on both sides back then. Gentlemen were few. Barbarians were aplenty, and many of the plunderers delighted in the most hideous acts of cruelty and terror. Crowley leaves nothing to our imagination.

The Siege of Rhodes leads up to another huge Ottoman siege of the island of Malta, which sits south of Sicily. The siege and the perseverance of the islanders against great odds is probably the highlight of the book. The descriptions of the siege are riveting. A loosely-aligned federation of Christian states that were supposed to come to the aid of Christian Malta largely turned their backs on their fellow Christians. Despite overwhelming Ottoman and Barbary forces, no relief and poor preparations, somehow the residents of Malta manage to survive the surge. The descriptions of both the siege and the destruction afterwards, which killed tens of thousands of people, should have your hair standing on edge.

The Siege of Malta at least had the effect of organizing the various Christian states against the common enemy. (It should be noted that Christians probably had much of what was inflicted on them coming, as these events can be seen as payback for the various crusades centuries earlier.) Pope Pius V, feeling the barbarians moving toward his gates, successfully convinced King Philip of the Holy Roman Empire along with the city-state of Venice to inflict coordinated revenge. However, they could not organize effectively enough to keep the Ottomans from laying siege to Cyprus. The Venetians endured a long and brutal siege on their fortress of Famagusta on Cyprus. A noble surrender ends tragically with the beheading of hundreds of Knights of Saint John.

The book moves toward a swift conclusion with a description of a massive naval battle off Greece that seems to have been swallowed up by history but which Crowley details with chilling realism. The Battle of Lepanto was a naval battle of a size that had never been seen before and has probably not been equaled since. It involved hundreds of galleys and turned into a rare Christian victory. The size of the battle is hard to comprehend as it occurred at close quarters, but was lead by the famous Don Juan. How big and bad was the battle? It would take nearly three hundred years before a bigger battle would occur on either land or sea. Even the fictional siege of Minas Tirith depicted in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings does not quite compare with this epic sea battle. Yet, the Battle of Lepanto is largely lost to history. Cervantes was present at the battle, and his character Don Quixote speaks of the horror of the battle in the book of the same name.

All these sieges and violence seem so pointless centuries later. Both the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire are long gone. The Vatican remains but Venice is just a city in Italy. Ultimately, no side won. Short-term booty there was aplenty, but only at the cost of enormous suffering by multitudes of innocents. Centuries later it is clear these massively bloody events were just an epic waste of time, money and lives, as our modern events will likely be seen in a few centuries. All empires are doomed to contract at some point as they overstretch the land they try to govern. Still, as history this era is compelling. While ultimately pointless, the individual events of the period still fascinate when their detail can be exposed. The book’s focus on events at sea during this era, instead of the land wars that get most of the attention, is long overdue.

If you are in general not much into reading history, you should make an exception for Empires of the Sea. Actual history can often be far more compelling and fascinating than anything you can dream up. While barbarity still occurs on a massive scale, rarely does it reach these sorts of magnitudes today. Thankfully, we are generally more civilized today. While some crazy neoconservatives would be happy to emulate the cruelty of those days again in CIA torture chambers, hopefully they will remain a small minority. After reading Empires of the Sea, you realize that only fools or ignoramuses would want to revert to those crazy and barbaric days of yore.

The Homestead is a resort that sits nestled among the Appalachians in Hot Springs, Virginia. It is in fact a very old resort. The first building for visitors was constructed near the hot springs in 1766, when we were not even a nation. In 1766, it was more like a fancy hunting lodge. In the intervening two hundred plus years, the resort has grown. It now caters to skiers, conventioneers looking for an unusual place to congregate and people with lots of money and leisure. For the rest of us, if we have some money burning a hole in our pockets, we can escape for a few days and live the life of the British aristocracy.

One thing is for sure, The Homestead is not an inexpensive place to visit, even during off-season. My wife and I just returned from spending two nights at The Homestead. The first few days of March are as empty as The Homestead probably ever gets. I would be surprised if ten percent of its eight hundred plus rooms were full. It turned out the dearth of people was something of a blessing, as the place is often packed during prime season and on the weekends. If you need a massage or even two, chances are you can be worked in without much problem during the first week of March. Nevertheless, do bring plenty of money because maintaining the high quality of the resort does not come cheap.

Over two centuries the resort has metastasized, in a good way. It’s sort of like being on a cruise ship, except the meals and most activities are not free. At least you do not have to worry about becoming seasick. There seems like a million things you can do at The Homestead, and most of them cost extra and include spending the day in the spa, having the kinks worked out of your muscles, skiing, falconry or playing golf. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply relax. A good place to relax is in The George Washington Room where, if so inclined, you can browse through an eclectic selection of books housed in cherry wood cabinets or play chess or checkers. Based on my experience, it is an excellent place to stretch out in a chaise lounge and snooze for an hour or two. Moreover, you won’t have to worry about CNN or Fox News playing on a nearby television to disturb your slumbers.

The Great Hall, the main entrance to the hotel, is truly grand. It comes with sixteen-foot ceilings, roman columns and plenty of comfortable chairs that invite intimate conversation. On cold days you can sit next to one of the many fireplaces, feel their heat and hear the wood crackle. Some of the more nerdy bring their laptops. At least in March, as a gentle wet snow fell outside, the Great Hall invited only peaceful contemplation. The Great Hall becomes a bit grander between three and four in the afternoon. This is tea time. A pianist sits down at the grand piano while waiters and waitresses (in black uniforms, of course) ask you very politely if you would like tea. A few minutes later, they return with a large silver tray laden with tea and tea biscuits, which you can sip like a proper British aristocrat, adding cream and a dash of lemon if you prefer.

With only two nights and with winter weather making most outdoor activities inadvisable, we spent most of our time indoors. Getting anywhere was an adventure because you have to traverse numerous long hallways and staircases. This resort is not for the vertically challenged, although there are elevators you can take if needed. In early March, the hallways were mostly eerily silent. However, we did eventually find the spa (where my wife enjoyed a Swedish massage), the exercise room (where I spent two hours working out), the bowling alley (where we played pool and I lost twice), the movie theater (showing mostly G-rated family films) as well as many other rooms and alcoves that range from ornate to intimate. In them you could relax, look at old paintings on the wall, or lapse into a comfy chair. Dark paneling is de rigueur at The Homestead.

Overall, the standards are quite high at The Homestead. Most rooms are standard size but some suites are available. Our room came with an exceptionally comfortable king sized bed and a very large flat panel television on which standard definition cable channels looked somewhat stretched and silly. Perhaps the high definition channels will show up in time. Regardless, we rarely have slept so well in a hotel bed, but our sleep was also enhanced by the relatively few hotel occupants. For the most part, the hotel is an example of how well you can preserve and modernize a massive but aged resort if you spend enough money and can give it enough attention. Clearly, there is no lack of money at this resort. The only mystery is how they keep the place so immaculate. I imagine the cleaning crew mostly works only at night because they were certainly absent during the day.

Unsurprisingly, you will find excellent dining at The Homestead. You had best bring some fancy duds with you, because they won’t let just anyone into The Dining Room for dinner. Gentlemen are expected to wear shoes, a collared shirt and a sport coat or suit. Don’t expect a salad bar, but you can order salad as a second course if you prefer. Do expect to find the staff impeccably groomed, a three-piece band playing button down music (show tunes were popular last night) and modestly sized entrees of very high quality. For those with looser feet than mine, there is also a modest-sized dance floor to enjoy.

Breakfast in the same room is much less formal and more pedestrian, with a large breakfast bar full of the foods you crave. Even with all the usual temptations like eggs and hash browns, I found the fresh fruit alone to have been worth the $25 cost of the meal. The taste of this morning’s fresh strawberries, pineapple and blueberries still linger on my tongue.

We could have easily spent a week at The Homestead, but we are not yet independently wealthy. Between the wonderful but expensive meals, extras like massages, various resort packages you can choose from, the dubious “activity fee” and the room rate, a couple can spend $500 a day without any problem, and it is easy to spend considerably more. However, if you have the money, you should feel no qualms about spending it because The Homestead offers no compromises in providing a first class resort experience. While the money holds out, you can buy yourself the sort of lifestyle you have always wanted but could not quite afford.

The Homestead has hosted over twenty presidents as well as celebrities that seem countless (many of whom can be found in pictures on the limitless walls), but also has its dark side. Most recently, on March 21, 2009, Beacher F. Hackney, a resort employee, allegedly shot and killed two of his supervisors. He is currently #1 on America’s Most Wanted fugitives and is still at large.

We would have liked to have more time to spend at The Homestead, but this short mini-vacation amounted to a quick getaway to reconnect and de-stress. We look forward to a return trip as soon as our bank account recovers.

Watching the “bipartisan” health care reform meeting on Thursday at Blair House was an exercise in mental torture. Even the Supreme Court would have to agree that no Gitmo inmate should be forced to listen to all eight hours or so of this “dialogue”. Watching it was kind of like hitting your head repeatedly against a brick wall. Not that President Obama did not try to lead out Republicans or ask them pragmatic and civil follow up questions. It’s just that Republicans did not have a whole lot of viable suggestions. The script was very shopworn even before the first Republican opened his mouth: start from scratch on a new health care reform bill. The only aspects of health care reform they seem willing to agree to are malpractice reform (which would affect less than one percent of health care spending) and allowing citizens in one state to get health insurance from other states. Everything else: forget about it! Cover the uninsured? Not interested. Seriously reduce the number of uninsured Americans? Not interested. As business reporter Steven Pearlstein pointed out recently in The Washington Post, based on the “discussion” at the Blair House, Republicans don’t give a crap about those too poor to have health insurance and certainly don’t want one dime of taxpayer money spent on the uninsured. In their ideal world, the uninsured would not get into the emergency room until they first brought a statement from their bank that they are credit worthy.

One of the definitions of insanity is to not learn from the same mistake. By this measure, Republicans (and this includes Conservatives and Tea Baggers) are insane. We usually deal with the insane by getting them psychotherapy or, if a menace to others, putting them in a rubber room. A clinical case could be made that the vast majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill should be in a rubber room. Because although we have tried massive tax cuts for the wealthy not once but twice and the result has been to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, Republicans are still convinced that all we need are yet more tax cuts affecting primarily the wealthy to change the situation around. In short, they are insane.

Republicans are insane on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. Most of them deny that climate change is happening and many of them also want to abolish the EPA. This could revert the United States back to the 1960s when we had no environmental laws and polluters could pollute without restraint. They want to reduce fuel efficiency standards for cars. They actually think we can solve our dependence on foreign oil by drilling off our coastlines. The effect will of course make us more dependent on foreign oil, which will come principally from overseas and at higher and higher prices by not weaning ourselves off oil. It is just insane!

Perhaps most insane of all is that Republicans have this dichotomy about wanting to take a meat cleaver to reduce the size of government then, when asked, find it hard to find something to cut. Take a look at this 2008 American National Election Survey where self identified conservatives try to find things they would cut in federal spending. The number one thing that conservatives would like to cut is foreign aid, which accounts for less than 1 percent of our budget. Even there conservatives could not muster a majority (only 49%). Well, that certainly won’t solve the budget deficit! The next thing they most want to abolish are welfare programs. This is essentially Medicaid and food stamps, but even here, only 35% of conservatives want to do this. Presumably, 65% do not. About twenty percent want to cut funding for the war on terrorism. I assume this is the Ron Paul wing. It is clear from the chart that while tax cuts are always in season, if they were back in charge cutting the size of government would be mostly lip service, as it was under Reagan and two Bush presidencies.

But of course now these same people are in a froth because we are doing all this deficit spending. Moreover, they are deeply upset at President Obama for deficit spending money on tangible goods that we need like new bridges and road surfaces which also help to get us out of a bad recession. They prefer tax cuts and fairy dust instead. (Actually, Obama accommodated Republicans and added plenty of tax cuts in his stimulus package, including tax cuts for small business, and they are still upset.) They are telling us the government should live within its means, even during a severe economic recession. Yet, it is clear that if they were back in charge, the first thing they would do is cut taxes some more, and thereby exacerbate the budget deficit!

So why do Americans keep putting these bozos back in power? It must be because the majority of us are even dumber than Republicans, or as a nation, we suffer from ADD and cannot even remember all the debt we piled up under the last administration. Actually though the polls do not give as much comfort to Republicans as they might hope for. Americans are pissed off that divided government means that things like health care reform are not being accomplished. (By the way, Americans still strongly support health care reform, including a public option.) What is driving voters insane is the inability of politicians to find common ground at a time when it is essential. They are paying the price in house foreclosures, rising health care costs and unemployment. As much as they dislike the way Democrats are using their majorities, they like Republicans even less. Voters have a lot of visceral anger but little way to express it. Moreover, who could blame them? Obama promised change you can believe it, but a progressive president cannot necessarily turn around a deeply partisan and recalcitrant Congress. This was borne out on Thursday at the Blair House.

One thing is clear: you won’t get bipartisanship by electing Republicans. If voters want to end gridlock by voting for Republicans, they might end up breaking the gridlock but it is unlikely they will get real solutions to the problems they care about. Put Republicans back in power and for sure, you can count on more tax cuts for the privileged. You can also count on deficits that will make today’s look small. Voters would be insane to do so. Unfortunately, when you are really, really angry you are not usually thinking clearly in the first place. You are letting your emotions take control of your faculties, instead of using your brain.

If voters want bipartisanship then they have to vote for people who are running on the platform of being bipartisan. These candidates should have a track record of moderation and crossing the aisle. You certainly won’t find that in a tea bagger! Unfortunately, you are unlikely to find any such a creature nominated by the Republican Party this time around, and the odds are not much better for the Democratic Party either. With the exception of the lunatic left wing though, you can at least rest assured that the Democrats running will at least be sane. At least we have one foot firmly in reality.

If like me you don’t understand Russian, you end up going to Google Translate to figure out the title of the video, which is “I am very glad, because I’m finally back home”. If I had to guess the title it would be, “I ingested ten times more Prozac than the doctor allowed.”

I mean, wow! For me, not even The Wedding Dance video can come close to this 2:41 little gem from what appears to be the glorious era of the Soviet Union. I am guessing it was made sometime in the 1970s when the Cold War was still grinding on and Comrade Brezhnev was in charge. It just reeks of plasticity and phoniness, yet it is somehow kind of compelling. I dare you to stop watching it in the middle.

The “singer” here is apparently a Russian named Eduard Hill. Hill is apparently obscure enough in America not even to merit a Wikipedia page, but he does have a Facebook fan page. It was weird enough that even Huffington Post picked it up. A check of Google did not reveal much about the guy. Eduard Hill, whose real name is apparently Eduard Anatolyevich, is still around, apparently living in Saint Petersburg. You can see an updated picture of him here. From what little I can find of the guy on the web, he apparently does not sing. Rather he mimes. This is obvious from watching the video. He could have used more rehearsal because his lip syncing is poor, to say the least.

Still, Hill is mesmerizing. Is he alive? Are there little puppet strings coming down from the rafters directing him when to smile? He looks all botoxed around the eyes. His smile looks like a doll maker stitched it onto his face. Then there is that goofy gate as he saunters onto the stage, not to mention the very cheesy visual effects. Apparently, he is glad to be home, which for most Russians back in the 1970s probably meant a gray cinderblock apartment complex. I guess the proper way to return home after a long trip is to dress in suit and tie.

As for the music, I have no idea who actually sings it, but it too is hypnotic and catchy like a TV commercial jingle. You may find yourself humming it in the car. Lyrics? You don’t need to know Russian, such much of it is “La la la, la la la, la la la la la.” Then there is the staging, such as it is. Where did they get that weird iron latticework? Moreover, why are there only three colors: brown, beige and yellow? Who is he waving to? His neighbors? If my neighbor were greeting me like this, I would be running to get a gun.

In short, this is exactly the sort of weird officially sponsored “entertainment” you would expect from the world’s biggest communist state back in the 1970s. While Hill looks plastic, some tiny part of him looks like he is having a root canal or a high colonic. It’s like someone has a pitch fork to his ass and that’s the only reason he’s smiling.

Whatever this is, it’s a gem. YouTube had best never delete it. It deserves its own weird immortality.

Update 3/12/2010

Since this video was YouTubed, it has generated a lot of interest (as well as a lot of hits on my blog). I have also learned a few things about Mr. Hill. In fact, he does sing the song. In this case though he is lip sinking his own music and does a very poor job of it. I also found this “peppier” version on YouTube done in front of a live orchestra that you can enjoy. This one suggests the original video was made around 1984, still definitely in the Cold War period. This one is almost good, perhaps because it lacks the slower pace and the very odd staging. Moreover, Hill looks like he is having a little fun with it. Enjoy.

The only ones who seem to disagree, not surprisingly, are congressional Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he plans to oppose any legislation that would attempt to blunt the impact of this ruling. Americans of all stripes though understand what is really going on. Just like in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others. With this Supreme Court decision, it’s official.

Most Americans understand what happens when one group of well moneyed interests can outspend and out organize us ordinary citizens. The result is clear in Congress: a strong resistance to change in any form and a tendency to serve the interests of those with the money. Nowhere was this more evident than in the recent health care debate. By throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying efforts, the health care industry gummed up process rather effectively. Clearly, the status quo works fine for the health care industry, as evidenced by record health insurance company profits and exploding health care costs in general. How does it work for the rest of us who aren’t self financed multimillionaires like Rush Limbaugh? Not so well, as evidenced by outrages like 39% premium increases on some Anthem Blue Cross plans in California and the growing percentage of Americans who simply cannot afford health insurance.

Health care reform is the issue of the day but the same can be said about most of the problems that Americans care about that are affecting this country. If we were happy with the status quo, there wouldn’t be historically high levels of unhappiness with Congress in the polls. However, it’s not easy to throw the bums out and elect new bums, particularly now that the Supreme Court has given the green light to corporations and unions to spend as much as they want to elect their preferred candidates. All this does it raise the bar even higher for those of us who have less money to convince our fellow voters to vote for this other guy (or gal). And we happen to be actual breathing U.S. citizens.

Of course it also doesn’t help that most states carefully draw congressional districts to ensure they are either highly Republican or highly Democratic (generally, depending on the party in power at the time the district boundaries are drawn). The effect of this practice is to disenfranchise anyone who is not among the highly partisan wing of the predominant party of their congressional district. It also inflames partisanship in Congress and creates very safe districts for incumbents. Once elected, these incumbents can create large war chests that discourage challengers. Even with a challenger, their war chests allow them to dominate the media prior to Election Day. Not that they have to worry much about losing anyhow because their districts are specifically drawn to make it likely they will be reelected.

The effect of this policy is to reduce the influence of ordinary citizens for those who have influence money. Republicans in Democratic districts feel disenfranchised, as do Democrats in Republican districts. My congressman is Frank Wolf, who first won election to Congress in 1980. That means he has spent thirty years in Congress. Part of his district is in Fairfax County, Virginia where I live, which is principally Democratic. A much larger part of it is in safe Republican counties like Loudoun, Fauquier and Prince William. It seems likely that when Virginia redraws congressional boundaries after the census, his district will somehow manage to remain predominantly Republican. Frankly, Congressman Wolf is more likely to die in office than retire from it.

Who is funding his campaign? According to OpenSecrets.org, it’s a lot of the usual suspects. In the 2008 elections, organizations representing retirees gave him the most (about $180,000), so don’t expect him to be voting to cut Medicare or Social Security just because both are tending toward insolvency. Next were real estate ($171,000), lawyers ($99,000), Republicans and fellow conservatives ($65,000) and various Israeli lobbies ($48,000). As for the health care industry, they came in at sixth at $48,000. Needless to say, he voted against the health care reform bill in Congress.

The effect of all this extreme gerrymandering is to end up with a congress that is more deeply polarized than it would be if congressional districts were drawn up impartially. At the same time, because they are fed by well moneyed special interests, we get a Congress that is resistant to change. This is turn means that current problems like deficit spending and entitlement reform are less likely to be solved, thus making problems that much more chronic. This ultimately is what is bankrupting the country, not Bush tax cuts or prolific spending on social welfare programs.

Really, even Glenn Beck and Arianna Huffington should be able to find common ground here. Last week at the odious CPAC convention in Washington, Glenn Beck was railing about the need to elect true Conservatives instead of Republicans. Arianna Huffington is one of many liberals, like me, feeling disenfranchised by supposed “Democrats” in Congress. Beck is frustrated because he cannot get rid of the welfare state. Why? Because Republicans will ultimately do the bidding of those who give them money. There are plenty of Republicans, like Congressman Wolf, who take heaps of money from senior citizens lobbies, so don’t expect him to vote to kill Medicare. Huffington meanwhile is in a huff because Democrats like North Dakota Senator Ben Nelson vote for the interests of Blue Cross instead of supporting a public option health care plan. Why? It is because Nelson gets a ton of money from the health insurance industry. Yet it’s not only the extremes that are upset, but also those in the middle whose interests are also not being served. That’s why hardly anyone is happy with the status quo. That’s why eighty percent of Americans are irate about the Citizens United decision while also realizing it is just more evidence of who really is running the country. It sure is not the people! Conservatives and liberals should come together to kill off corporate lobbying simply so they can actually advance their agendas!

It’s the system that is providing disincentives to pragmatically solve current problems. Congress gives highest priority to those who give them the most money. Otherwise, partisanship triumphs. For those few issues that are non-partisan and which there is no vested industry with their hand in the public till, we may get bipartisanship. Consequently, the two biggest things we can do to end our national dysfunction become easy to identify.

First, and probably the hardest thing to get Congress to do, is to change the process by which Congressional districts are drawn. We have an opportunity because the 2010 census is underway. A law that required states to have an impartial commission or judges draw up congressional districts would make it possible for more moderates to be elected. Moderates tend toward being pragmatic rather than idealistic. This would have the tendency to better balance Congress so that bipartisanship is more likely.

Secondly, the power of corporations and unions to influence elections must be checked. At the Washington Post poll demonstrates, there is overwhelming support for restricting the amount of money that these institutions can contribute. Congress could probably succeed in passing a law reforming the most egregious abuses, but this is one of those cases where a constitutional amendment really is needed to settle the issue of corporate “personhood” once and for all. Nowhere in our founding documents does it say that corporations are entitled to the same rights of citizens. This was due to an earlier Supreme Court interpretation that it has now effectively codified to mean without any restraints. If an amendment could pass Congress (a tough hurdle), it is likely to be easily ratified by the various states.

If these two systemic problems could be addressed, we might actually get a government representative of its people again. Consequently, government would be more likely to do the bidding of a majority of its citizens. We might as a result still find ourselves polarized, but it won’t be because of special interests or gerrymandering. Whether America swings to the left or the right as a result is really not as important as restoring a fully representative democracy. The truth is that these days our republican form of government is at best 30-50 percent representative of the people.

That’s probably partly by design, and partly because I have some trouble when an issue has too many permutations. Two instructors showed up from Out and Equal, a San Francisco based non-profit that is helping integrate the LGBT community into the workplace. Of course, the LGBT community has always been in the workplace. For the most part, they stayed silent about their natures at work. During the last couple of decades, more from the community have come out at work. In San Francisco, you expect LGBT to be out in the workplace. In other parts of the country, like many places in the Deep South, if you know what is good for you, you remain closeted at work, and maybe in your community as well. In Washington, D.C., being LGBT not that big a deal, as like most major cities we have a rather large LGBT community. For the most part the LGBT community just blends in. In general, there is an unofficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the workplace. You disclose as much about your personal life as you feel comfortable disclosing. However, it is also perfectly okay to come to work, do your job, act pleasantly and then go home with your colleagues not much the wiser. Miss Manners does not approve of prying questions anyhow. So we generally don’t pry.

One of the instructors was a fifty something lesbian dressed as a man, right down to the blue suit and pinstripe tie. I first mistook her for a man until I heard the pitch of her voice. She spent most of her career in the military, but left the day the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy went into affect. She was eligible to retire anyhow, but said she could not live with an official policy where she had to remain closeted. The gentleman was much younger, gay and frankly gorgeous. He was skinner than Fabio but otherwise looked a lot like him, but with long dark locks mixed with blond streaks that flowed down his back.

Men dress up for work all the time, however, most of us just dress for success, which means that while we may look good in a suit, we are indistinguishable. When we get home, we revert to blue jeans. This man was as beautiful and any woman I’ve ever seen exiting out of a beauty salon. Frankly, he had me a bit mesmerized. Obviously, I need to get out more because I had no idea my sex could look so good. By the end of the day, I realized what my problem was: I found him attractive. I had no desire to put the moves on him nor I could not imagine myself intimate with him but the same is true with the many attractive women I run into everyday as well. I realized I found him attractive because he took exquisite pride in how he looked and in many ways, this made him seem effeminate to me, and this was the source of my attraction. Finding a man attractive has happened to me before, but only rarely, and generally about every five years or so. Generally, I don’t see my fellow men. I know them as people, but I don’t see them the way heterosexual women do. During the seminar, we were encouraged to challenge our assumptions, and I must say I was challenged.

I have always said I was heterosexual, yet few of us who call ourselves heterosexuals really are entirely heterosexual. Whether we wish to acknowledge it our not, we fall somewhere between the extremes of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Most of us tilt rather markedly toward one side or the other but at the same time, many of us have had homosexual experiences, generally when we were younger. Many like me assume we are completely heterosexual because even if occasionally we do find a man attractive, we don’t act on it.

From the seminar, I learned there is much more to someone from the LGBT community than just their sexual orientation. There are in fact at least four aspects to sexuality to consider about any person. The first aspect is our birth sex, which is straightforward enough. However, there are exceptional cases where someone is born with both obvious male and female genitalia. The second aspect is our sexual orientation, or the sex to which we are attracted. For most of us straights, this is all we think about when we consider someone from the LGBT community. The third is the gender we identify with. A transgender person, for example, has a conflict between their birth sex and the gender they feel inside. For example, if they have male genitalia, they may find it disgusting and unnatural. This often leads to stress because they are inhabiting the wrong kind of body. Lastly, there is the aspect of gender expression, or how someone chooses to express their sexuality. Transvestites, for example Eddie Izzard, like to dress in the clothing of the opposite sex, even while most remain extremely heterosexual. If you think about it, this means that a person might fit into any one of 24 possible categories. Moreover, categories are simply conveniences for us to try to organize aspects of someone in our own mind. A person’s actual sexuality includes all sorts of other possible variants.

By the end of the class my head was spinning. For example, I could be a biological man who so strongly feels I am a woman to the point that I might consider sex change surgery and hormone replacement therapy to look like a woman. Yet, even though I feel inside like a woman, even after all that surgery to make me a woman, I might prefer to dress like a man. Moreover, I might prefer men to women, which suggests I am not homosexual, but a heterosexual woman in a man’s body who prefers a “butch” look. Most would label this person as a homosexual simply because they are attracted to men and be done with it. We were asked to ponder how we would make the workplace an accommodating and friendly environment for people like this so they don’t have the stress of living a closeted identity. Indeed, they will probably be most productive in a work environment where they can truly be out and equal. Before taking the seminar, this all was so less confusing. Of course, I just chose to remain largely ignorant of the many variations of humanity out there.

As confusing as the LGBT world is, it is relatively straightforward stuff, compared it with the kinks many of us straights have but choose to keep in the closet. Since my wife has many friends from the LGBT community and well the kink community, about a decade back I purchased the book Come Hither, A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex by Dr. Gloria G. Grame. It sits next to my bed. I am a reasonably sexually curious person, but curiously in the nearly ten years, I have owned the book, I still have not finished it, although I genuinely mean to finish it. Frankly, I find the numbing variations of kink too confusing to fully get my mind around. Although I’ve gone through the definitions many times, I still cannot quite get the difference between a “top” and a dominant, and submissive and a “bottom”. To my wife it all makes complete sense and is intuitive, but to me it is a confusing muddle. Moreover, power play is just one aspect of the whole world of kink that seems to me to be an endlessly confusing hall of mirrors.

So I figure that if once every five years or so I run across a guy that I find attractive, then overall I must be a very vanilla heterosexual. Because of the seminar, I certainly will be more respectful of those in the LGBT community and mindful of the diversity inside it. In fact, I may be less “don’t ask, don’t tell” than I am now, simply because I don’t want them to feel they have to shutter some part of their life when they come to work.

Frankly, I don’t care if someone at work is or is not part of the LGBT community. If they want to have a picture of their same sex spouse in their office, that’s fine with me. I am glad to hear about their weekend activities with their lover or same sex spouse. I hope they would voluntarily open their lives to my gentle inquiries, because so much of their world still confuses me. My philosophy is people are just people, and these sort of variations should not matter at all as long as in the workplace there is no harassment. Which of the 24 squares a person falls into perhaps helps in understanding where they are coming from and how to manage them. I hope that I can set a standard with my employees that these variations do not matter and we should welcome anyone in the LGBT community we happen to work with for the complex person they happen to be.

I hope I will eventually understand all these permutations. Right now, I just wish my head would stop spinning. Once again, my black and white world seems to be mixed with too many colors to wholly comprehend.

Absence does make my heart grow fonder. There are times when I feel if we really wanted to rekindle the old flame, we should spend a month apart. A week apart, which happens a couple times a year when I am off on business travel, definitely makes me miss my wife. I miss her as well as all those comfortable, somewhat nebbish things we do both together and apart, like sit three feet from each other while she inhabits one computer and I another but largely never speak. I imagine to feel so distracted that I craved her most of the time would take about a month. I really don’t know because in nearly a quarter century of marriage, we have not been apart for more than two weeks at a time.

Passionate love is designed to be fleeting. It tends to get more passionate with increased separation, up to a point. If your hormones remained as high as they are during the passionate love phase, you would live happy but die young. This is why many of us crave a lower intensity kind of love that amounts to the comfort and routine of being married. After a while, you take it for granted simply because it is so always available. We have someone to come home to. He or she may not be perfect, but neither are we. This low-key love that most of the time is pleasant rather than passionate seems to be the key for many to low blood pressure, health and long life.

Some of us would like this pleasant kind of love but haven’t found the right person yet. Others of us may have found the right person but cannot get married. The person they love inconveniently has the same sex as they do. Except in a handful of states they are out of luck. Perhaps they can live with their love, but they cannot do anything to make their relationship legal.

I do not know exactly how things would be between my wife and I right now had we decided to live with each other the last quarter century instead of tying the knot. I do know they would be a lot different. Would we have ever had a child? These days there is a lot less stigma associated with having a child out of wedlock but childrearing is so much less complicated when you are married. Our daughter could fall under my insurance. My wife of course would not be my wife, unless you count her as a common law wife, so she would have to fend for herself in the health insurance market. Frankly, I doubt we would still be together. We both wanted to settle down. Inhabiting a house together was nice, but until we were tied together legally, it didn’t feel quite right. Marriage was important because it meant we were an established and committed couple and could plan a future together in a straightforward and structured way.

It baffles me, particularly with the passing of each Valentine’s Day, why gays and lesbians cannot enjoy the simple right to a civil marriage. I could enumerate the many reason why denying civil marriage is so counterproductive to our society. However, the Reverend Evan Keely, an interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend pretty much said it all in his succinct sermon Forty-Seven Theses that he delivered appropriately on Valentine’s Day Sunday. In addition, I have talked extensively about this injustice before.

Today, I simply want to say to my gay and lesbian brethren just how sorry I am that they were born into a society where they still cannot know the everyday pleasure of waking up with and interacting with a spouse. I never have to worry that my wife will be denied hospital visitation privileges, or that someone I trust can direct our financial affairs when I am unable to do so. I don’t have to worry about finding someone to accompany me to the hospital for outpatient surgery or to drive me home afterward. It comes implicitly with marriage. Having a spouse makes live so much less complicated in so many ways, while of course it introduces relational complexities as well. It is not fair, but I am fully vested in society and you, unless you live in a state that allows gay marriage, are not. Even if you happen to live in a progressive state like Massachusetts, in the eyes of the federal government you are still not married, and are treated as such.

Rest assured that this will change. In time, this injustice will be rectified and you will be treated as equally as the rest of us who happen to have been born with heterosexual orientations. I will not rest until you too can enjoy the right to live pleasantly (but not always with burning passion) with the blessing of civil society with the person you love.

Meanwhile, over at the Fox “News” network, Fox used the occasion of the record snowfall to also castigate Gore and those scientists documenting the unfolding global warming disaster. Naturally, some of the news that Fox “News” did not choose to air was the unnatural lack of snow in Vancouver where the Winter Olympics are underway and where the snow and refrigeration is largely manmade. Nor did they cover the lack of seasonal snow in places like Vermont, which is usually hip deep in the stuff this time of the year but has settled for ice. Nor are they devoting much airtime to the rains and subsequent mudslides in Southern California, which are exceptionally strong this year.

Back when I was studying communications in college, I learned about the phenomenon of selective perception. Most of us go through life with blinders on, perceiving what we choose to perceive and ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn’t match our view of the world. This seems to be a reflexive human trait. Sometimes selective perception can get in our way. George Washington, our first president, essentially bled to death at the hands of his physician. At the time, bleeding someone who was ill was considered good medicine. No one was studying whether this practice was stupid or smart, but it was the conventional wisdom, such as it was. Eventually enough research was done and the practice was stopped when it was deemed counterproductive.

In the real world, we hire scientists and researchers to tell us fact from fiction because we need to infer knowledge based on evidence, not fantasy. Unfortunately, to be elected to Congress you do not have to have accreditation as a scientist or researcher, although a law degree helps. An educated American would look at the Jim Inhofes and Glenn Becks of the world and know their opinions on these matters are ill informed. Instead, particularly when it came to topics like global warming, we should be listening to people like Jane Lubchenco. You probably have no idea who Jane Lubchenco is, which is a shame. She is the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as a professional scientist with sterling credentials. Prior to her nomination by President Obama, she had an illustrious career and received a number of notable awards including the 8^th Heinz Award in the environment in 2002. Lubchenco has not abandoned her position on the reality of global warming because of one snowstorm in the D.C. area. She would be a moron to do so.

Could it be possible that Fox News is just a wee bit biased on the whole global warming question? Could it possibly be that they are far more interested in returning Republicans to political power at any cost than they are in learning the true about global warming as a result of human activity? As if I needed more proof, this reality was driven home to me yesterday at the health club where I happened to watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox “News” redefine the term socialism. Before, it has always meant that the government controlled the means of production. In O’Reilly’s weird world, socialism is anything the government does to shift wealth from one class of Americans to another class of Americans. Clearly, O’Reilly was asleep during the lectures on socialism when he was in school. Communism attempts to make everyone live at the same socioeconomic level, not socialism. Such ignorance is appalling, particularly when the whole point of government is to redistribute wealth. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no roads, no public schools, no bridges, no military, no regulated airwaves, no assurance that our drugs would be reasonably safe, ad nauseum. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no food stamp program, which due to the bad economy now feeds one in eight Americans. These fellow Americans would be starving, but that apparently is okay in O’Reilly’s world. (O’Reilly does seem to be okay with redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich, which has been underway for years.)

In short, the people who are spouting such opinions are either delusional, have an agenda or both. If they really believe that thirty something inches of snowfall on the Washington region means there is no global warming, then they are really morons who cannot see two inches beyond their own nose. Rather than taking them seriously, the media should be laughing them off for being such fools. Meanwhile, glaciers keep melting, the Arctic sea ice recedes to lowest levels ever, mountains of evidence shows winter snow melts beginning earlier every year, tiny Pacific countries are in imminent danger of disappearing due to rising sea levels, and devastating droughts are happening both here in the United States and elsewhere. Climatologists have overwhelming evidence that these are a direct result of shifting climate patterns due to global warming.

The last time I had the flu back in 2005, I remember regularly monitoring my temperature. For much of it I had a temperature in the 102 to 103 degree range. There were other times that I took my temperature and it was normal. Then it would go back up again. The moment it reached 98.6 did I no longer have the flu? My experience suggested this was the wrong inference to draw. The same is true with large snowstorms. One large snowstorm does nothing to disprove global warming. Scientists record temperatures across the globe, look at available evidence, measure carbon emissions and carbon levels in the atmosphere and draw inferences.

In fact, our snowstorms if anything give more credence to global warming, not less because they are more extreme. What makes a snowstorm bigger? It is the amount of water vapor in the air. How to you put more water vapor in the air? Well, if the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic is warmer than it was, the atmosphere above it is capable of holding more water vapor. This is why we get hurricanes during the warm part of the year and not in the middle of the winter. If you move that body of water vapor over a part of the country that is still cold enough in the winter to generate snow, not only do you get snow but a whole lot more snow. Looking for evidence? Look at the length of the Gulf Stream this year, which extends further north than usual. Why? Well, I am not a climate scientist but it seems likely to be that if you have a warmer body of water it has more energy so it can push further north. These changes are likely causing the unusual snowfalls experienced in Great Britain and elsewhere in Northern Europe this year, where it is still cold enough to turn rain into snow, but where there is also more water vapor to turn into snow.

If you “get” global warming, I think you have a duty to get the facts out. We must vigorously challenge these global warming Luddites. If these people succeed in their agenda, not only will the planet rapidly warm up but also we will also likely be dooming ourselves as a species on this planet. Climate change will also drive human migration and competition for resources, increasing the probability of war, conflict and endangering our national security. Speak up! Do not let the sirens of ignorance get away with these outrageous claims.

As someone who survived the Snowpocalype (Dec 19-20, 2009) and then Snowmageddon (Feb 5-6, 2010) and another eight inches (Snowmageddon Part Two) that ended on Wednesday, I can report first hand that, yes, we did get a lot of snow. By my count, my neighborhood received 27 inches from Snowmageddon, Part One. Add in the eight inches and that is nearly a yard of snow. Now there was some time between the two latest storms to attempt a recovery, but we never quite got there before part two arrived. Snowplows had nearly (but not quite) finished clearing the roads from the first storm when the second hit.

Clearing the road in my neighborhood did not mean getting the road down to bare pavement. It means your road becomes a teeth-rattling washboard where two cars can barely pass each other. Driving down my road is a slow process requiring lots of caution, good shock absorbers and plenty of clearance between your car and the road. There are a dozen feet between the lane where it was plowed and my driveway. To get our cars out at all, in addition to shoveling my driveway, I had to shovel a dozen feet into the street.

Yesterday, the major arteries were at least back to bare pavement. Yet, like with the Snowpocalypse in December, lanes frequently narrowed or disappeared altogether. Even if federal buildings and parking lots had been cleared, it would have been gridlock for federal workers to try to drive to work because so many lanes had disappeared. Taking the metro was out for most as well because the outdoor tracks were still being cleared of snow.

If it really costs $100M a day in lost productivity when the government closes, you would think taxpayers might not mind chipping in $50M or so a year in order for DC, Maryland and Virginia to have more snowplows and drivers available. This way commerce could resume a lot more quickly than it did. Unfortunately, Congress is pennywise and pound-foolish, and with so many overlapping jurisdictions, making it work is pretty much impossible. So taxpayers pay for it in federal closures that are sometimes simply a result of neighboring states like mine being niggardly about paying for promptly plowed roads.

What the average American may not realize is that just because the government is closed does not mean it is really that closed. Congress was in session, at least for part of it. The White House was busy doing things as well. Social security checks went out as usual. Homeland security kept running. In short, news stories gave the incorrect impression that the whole government was shut down, at least in the D.C. area. In fact about the only thing that was working was the government, mostly state and local governments pushing snow out of the way and providing emergency services. In some ways, the federal government had to “close” so state and local governments could do their jobs. As for the federal government, except for emergency personnel, offices were closed. Maybe the State Department could not process visas for a few days, but it is likely that some of their other offices away from Washington took up their slack. In general, Washington may seem dysfunctional and politically it is often gridlock. But we have all sorts of backup and contingency plans that the most essential parts of government will keep chugging away no matter what the weather.

It is true we civil servants in the area stayed home because basically we were landlocked. So, incidentally, was virtually everyone else. Some of us did kick back and watch HBO on your tax dollars. Most of us had more pedestrian things to deal with, like simply shoveling our long walks and driveways or fretting over the volume of snow on our roofs and wondering if it would cause them to collapse. We also waited for snowplows that were loathe to arrive, tried to figure out ways to keep our kids from driving us crazy and hoped our power would not go out. For hundreds of thousands of us, the power did go out. For the rest of us, we had to hope we had stashed enough provisions to ride the storm out. In short, we weren’t necessarily being lazy, we were overcome by events beyond our control.

As for the $100M in lost productivity, I really question that figure. One thing the storm demonstrated to me is that I could telecommute nearly as effectively as if I were in the office. So I did! I did not work full time during those days; because of the snowstorm, I had other things I had to do. Nevertheless, I did work part-time even though the Office of Personnel Management excused us from working altogether. Maybe I got lucky but I had no problems telecommuting. The telecommuting infrastructure worked: the high speed internet, the VPN, the access to internal file servers that I needed, the email system, the whole shebang performed flawlessly.

Moreover, I was hardly the only federal telecommuter. All the other members of my team were also spending significant parts of their snow days working. If I had to guess, most were working half to full time. They did so because they felt the professional responsibility to keep things moving. Federal employees have deadlines that must be met as well just like the private sector. In my case, I had an executive steering committee coming at me like a freight train in two weeks. My schedule did not allow for a four-day snow holiday. So I kept plugging away at home. We also had a couple of servers with issues to deal with during the storm, but we were able to fix them working remotely. On Thursday, I also attended a two and a half hour conference call from home. Most of us working in this information age can work anywhere there is electricity and high speed internet. Yes, it is convenient to come together daily in a shared office setting, but it is not essential. When you are working from home, you are still working even if the office is “closed”.

Unfortunately, the Office of Personnel Management’s policies for snow days are still 20^th century oriented. They should be updated. If the telework infrastructure is as robust as it was while the government was “closed”, the policy should be to simply require employees to work from home, like I did. Granted, the people who maintain the telework infrastructure may not be able to fix certain problems if they cannot get to the office. Moreover, if everyone is working from home at the same time, it might overtax the network. It appears though that most technical issues can be addressed remotely. It seems like everyone with a white collar job has an employer furnished laptop and high-speed internet at home these days. All we need is a phone and a desk and we are at work. There is also the advantage of having no commute whatsoever.

If you are inclined to think that federal civil servants are lazy and pampered SOBs, think again. It is true that we may get more holidays than you get, but most of us are not lazy, spend our days at the water coolers, or take two-hour lunch breaks. Most of us are very much vested in our work. It gives a lot of meaning to our lives. I was glad to work from home because I felt useful and I had no lack of work. I just hope next time we will have policies that are more realistic in place. In addition, I hope in the future that the public relations folk at the Office of Personnel Management paint a more realistic portrayal of what “shutting down” the government actually means. It does not mean what you think.

In 2004, I ditched the world’s de-facto browser Internet Explorer for a weird upstart browser called Mozilla Firefox. It was an easy switch. It was true that back then, thanks to Microsoft’s proprietary extensions to HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that things would not always behave the same way in both browsers. Six years later, I still have to use Internet Explorer on a few sites, because the application has not been updated to use web standards. This is now largely a past memory. Unless you need some quirky feature like HTML 5 compatibility (which most browsers are racing to address anyhow) most of the rendering oddities are in the past. Not that a few don’t still bite us. Last I checked, Internet Explorer still did not allow rows in HTML tables to dynamically collapse through Javascript.

For six years, I have been satisfied with Firefox, and generally happier with each new release. I loved all the free plug-ins that were available. The latest version of Firefox (3.6) that I recently downloaded introduced personas. These are sort of like themes for the blank spaces around the edge of your browser. It’s pretty neat to look at, but it’s really window dressing, just like the wallpaper on your computer’s desktop. What matters the most to me is usability. Simple tends to be better.

Firefox’s weakness the last year or so has been its instability. It crashes a lot for me on both Windows and the Mac. This could be more annoying than it is, for you can at least restart it quickly and it will remember your open windows. Firefox also suffers from new version syndrome. Once every few weeks it wants to install a new minor version of itself, sometimes with new features, but mostly to fix bugs. As annoying as new versions are, it’s a straightforward and quick process. It’s better than Internet Explorer, which even though it claims to have excellent security is rife with bugs that require all sorts of mostly behind the scenes patching. IE wants to keep you in the dark about its bugs. Firefox is in your face with them by patching them so quickly.

Since I have a Mac, I also have Safari, which I use from time to time. It’s pretty nice, and there actually is a version of Safari for the PC, although it looks quite a bit different on a PC. There are lesser-known browsers out there like Opera (proprietary and not necessarily free) and Konquerer (for Linux boxes). Now there is also the official Google browser called Chrome. Chrome is part of Google’s grand design toward a web-centric architecture. Its operating system Chrome OS, which I wrote about recently, is taking wings and will soon be appearing on fine netbook computers.

I had installed the Chrome browser but had never really put it through its paces. I did so over the last long snow-congested weekend. After a couple hours, I was hooked. I will still need Firefox for quite a while. If Firefox can be made as fast and stable as Chrome, I would gladly drift back to Firefox. I must say though that Chrome’s speed and stability are both very compelling. I didn’t need Firefox to come out with a persona feature. What I need is a browser that is a lot like my Mac: I don’t have to think about it. It should just work. The best browser is like a sheet of glass. It renders the page of interest transparently, cleanly and correctly. Chrome just takes you where you need to go quickly and with (so far) none of the quirky rendering issues that plague most browsers. Through delivering high backwards and forwards compatibility, Chrome seems to have filled the niche. No wonder that Chrome’s browser share is climbing rapidly, mostly at IE and Firefox’s expense.

Clearly, it is not as feature rich as Firefox. The bountiful plug-ins that are available with Firefox for the most part do not exist with Chrome. However, some Chrome plug-ins do exist. My suspicion is that a good part of the Firefox plug-in community is already working on Chrome compatible plug-ins. As a web developer, I need the amazingly excellent plug-in called Firebug for Chrome. I sure hope it is being ported, although Chrome comes with some built in developer features that are quite decent.

The average user will just notice Chrome’s rendering speed, which tends toward blazingly quick. I had no idea so much of the slowness in Firefox was just its code trying to make everything look pretty. Of course, if the Internet is slow or congested, no browser will speed it up, but whatever Chrome is doing to render content quickly it is doing very well. It helps to have very deep pockets. Since a lot of our content comes from Google, Google can do a lot to put its content on the edge of the network so it will download quickly.

Simplicity and too much intimacy with your favorite browser have a downside. It would be nice, for example, if Chrome would refresh the page by pressing the F5 key, which I have used for the last 15 years. (Instead, it is Ctrl/Command-R.) It would also be nice if my bookmarks would appear on the side, as in Firefox, by pressing Ctrl/Command-B. I also like Firefox’s search box in the top right corner, although by integrating the URL field with search engines you arguably have a simpler interface. Perhaps those features will show up in time. Maybe it would be better if they did not. Simplicity also has a certain virtue. Most of us prefer cars that are simple to use. Too many gizmos and gadgets on the dashboard can make for a confusing experience

Here is hoping that the folks at Mozilla address the instability and page rendering issues so I can go back to it. I hate to give any monolithic company, even one as friendly as Google, all my loyalty. Still, Chrome is compelling in a way IE never was. If you try it for a couple days, you are likely to find yourself also hooked.

And here it is less than two months later and the snow is back, but even worse. I will let the meteorologists tell us what the official tally was. Based on trying to shovel out our driveway late this afternoon after the storm ended (and getting only about a third done) it is clear that this storm will exceed last December’s storm. Based on my shoveling, I’d say we received somewhere between twenty four and twenty seven inches of snow. Washington Dulles Airport (just a few miles away) reported received 32.4 inches of snow so maybe our actual total was higher. Areas north and east of us reportedly received more snow. So it is a good bet that this snowstorm will go in the record books, actually exceeding the crippling snowstorm that dumped twenty eight inches back in 1979 on Gaithersburg, Maryland, where I was living at the time.

As with the December storm, this one I got to ride out in the comfort of my house. Our electricity stayed on but many Washingtonians were not so lucky. No property damage for us, as best I can tell. Our next door neighbor’s purple plum tree though fell to the ground under the weight of the snow.

The storm was preceded by the usual frantic preparations that clogged roads and emptied store shelves. Friday found me nervous, because I was expected in Georgetown to have my sutures removed and the snow was to start around 10 a.m. Fortunately, we could be seen early and the snow when it did start came down wet and for some hours did not stick to the pavement. For a few hours, the storm actually made getting into and out of D.C. a breeze compared to a normal Friday. Most people just stayed home. We were able to buy food without too much trouble before the storm hit as well.

As usual, we expect it will be a few days before we see a snowplow on our street. More than likely they will do what they did last time: plow one lane and throw some sand down. This means of course that our driveway will temporarily extend six to twelve feet into the road, which we of course will have to shovel. Ah, the paradise of living in a low tax state! We are learning more of that good old American self reliance!

No question about it, it was a lot of snow and perhaps I will not live to witness a larger snowfall. Look at how the snow accumulated on our deck and you will get some idea of the volume of snow we received. I will let Mother Nature take care of the back deck. Hopefully it will be melted by spring.