Terry Cowgill

‘Sage’ Advice: Think Twice About Hillary

The Sage has written yet another scathing column on Hillary. This is not surprising since Morris has (since leaving the Clinton White House) been on a personal crusade to expose the former First Lady as (at best) an overly ambitious phony and (at worst) Lady Macbeth with a different sexual orientation.

To make matters worse, Morris is so sleazy he makes my skin crawl. Any criticism of Hillary, therefore, has to be taken with more than a grain of salt — especially coming from someone who once sucked the toes of a prostitute. He is, however, often right, though not always.

Now, if you’re interested in seeing results in a public official’s performance, Morris’s recitation of Hillary’s record in the White House is compelling. From various White House appointments, to healthcare, to her insistence on a female attorney general, it was one failure after another. And what memorable work has she accomplished in the Senate, aside from lacking the political courage to vote against Bush’s Iraq war resolution?

So even her critics are supposed to acknowledge her vast “experience?” That word is a double-edged sword. I have a hunch if Hillary is elected president she would do a worse than Bush.

P.S. And please don’t tell me, “At least she’s smart and wants to do the right thing.” Jimmy Carter was smart but a failure as chief executive. Reagan was no rocket scientist but is one of the better presidents of the last century. Depth of intellect and good intentions are of little consequence in that job …

Unity Ticket: Sam & Mario

Two very interesting (if idealistic) pieces today on the 2008 presidential race. And both have slightly local angles.

Mario Cuomo (where has he been the last dozen or so years?) argues in the LA Times that his fellow Dems will need to say what they are for — not just what they are against — if they want to hold on to Congress and retake the White House. Agree wholeheartedly, Mario.

Then he begs the candidates and the news media to elevate the debate beyond 30-second sound bytes and allow for thoughtful responses to complex issues. Agree again, but it will never happen, so even raising the subject is of dubious usefulness.

As the shallow format of the recent Democratic presidential candidates’ debate demonstrated, the American people have short attention spans and they are bound to get shorter with each successive generation.

I myself am a political junkie but I’m not sure how long even I could last listening to a half-hour Hillary lecture on education policy or Dennis Kucinich extoling the virtues a carbon tax.

Continue reading Unity Ticket: Sam & Mario…

Beaver Bust

Update: The little bastards have done it. This afternoon (Saturday) driving past the transfer station, I saw that the dam has been restored to its former glory in less than two weeks. With free labor like that, who needs the ACE?

Anyone know what happened to the giant Beaver Dam at Beeslick Brook? Evidently the venerable dam on Route 41 a few hundred feet past the transfer station gave way just after the weekend of April 14-15, when we were inundated with 4 or 5 inches of rain.

No one at the transfer station (even the estimable Art Hotaling) seemed to know when it went down. Robin, you go by there every day. What’s going on? Have the little creatures started to rebuild? I hope so. I’ve been admiring it for five years.

P.S. Come to think of it, I’ll ask Joe Cleaveland. He owns the only home in that immediate area.

Pigeon Holed

Wow. What a great photo. Hope you were wearing a haz-mat suit, though, Jenny. Lying belly-down on 34th Street (or on any stretch of pavement in Manhattan) can be hazardous to your health!

Slouching Toward Fascism?

I guess it’s time for another post involving a prominent feminist. An old friend sent me a link to a piece by Naomi Wolf in yesterday’s Guardian.

The normally persuasive Wolf argues rather unconvincingly to a British audience that the Bush administration is leading us down the path to fascism — in essence, what she calls a 10-step “blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship.”

Curiously, she leads with the example of last fall’s military coup in Thailand, where “coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.”

The Bush adminstration has already begun taking these 10 steps, she said. I guess the key word there is “begun.” None of these steps has actually been taken, so if we never make it to a dictatorship, Wolf can insist she was only issuing a cautionary tale.

And you know what? It will never happen here for several reasons, most notably that we are an armed society — a fact that Wolf conveniently ignores. If the Bushies truly want to turn Burbank into Bangkok, they’ll need more than the PATRIOT Act. Heck, they’ll have to get past Charlton Heston first.

Continue reading Slouching Toward Fascism?…

A Crisis of Masculinity?

Update: I take issue with my colleague Marshall Miles, who had high praise yesterday for this piece in The Huffington Post. Ridley freely admits he knows little about Smerconish (it shows BTW) but that the bald guy is simply “more of the same.” Why? Because his skin is the same color as Imus’s? Isn’t that a racist assumption? Maybe Ridley would have been happy with Michelle Malkin! What nonsense …

* * * * * * *

Interesting follow-up on the VT shootings. Legendary feminist author Camille Paglia was interviewed this morning by Michael Smerconish, whose Philadelphia-based talk radio show is being simulcast this week on MSNBC in the studio and time slot formerly occupied by Don Imus. Yes, old habits die slowly …

Smerconish asked her about something she was quoted as saying in The Sunday Times of London. She blamed Cho’s murderous rampage at least partly on a “crisis in masculinity.” Another link here quotes Paglia essentially saying the same thing. Here’s a sample:

“Young men have enormous energy. There was a time when they could run away, hop on a freighter, go to a factory and earn money, do something with their hands. Now there is this snobbery of the upper-middle-class professional. Everyone has to be a lawyer or paper pusher.”

This relates a little to a post I made earlier this month on a talk by Evan Dobelle at the Salisbury Forum. College is not for everyone and Paglia takes it one step farther, arguing that even high school is not for everyone — especially those males for whom the standard classroom is “a prison.” I think she’s on to something, although I need more time to digest her specific thoughts on the VT rampage.

Hypocrisy Watch: Hillary & Imus

I don’t know why it doesn’t surprise me to learn that Hillary says one thing and does another when it comes to the N- and H-words. If you think what Imus said was appalling, take a look at some of the revolting lyrics of Timbaland, who hosted a fundraiser for Hillary in his Florida home that netted Hill a cool $800,000. As Bob Dole said during the 1996 presidential campaign, “Where’s the outrage?”

Photo of Timbaland courtesy NNDB.

A Reasonable Decision

I know it must sound like I get my talking points from Gene Burns, but he reiterated his view on abortion last night in the wake of the split decision by SCOTUS to uphold the federal ban on the partial birth abortion procedure.

Gene’s position (and mine for the last 15 years) has been that he is pro-choice to a point. When a mother first becomes pregant, terminating the pregnancy is clearly a decision she needs to make in consultation with her doctor, her family and perhaps her church. It seems a stretch to argue (as the pro-life extremists do) that pulling out a bunch of cells is cold-blooded murder.

But when that fetus becomes viable outside the womb (typically now at about 5 1/2 to 6 months), you can make a very compelling case that an abortion would be tantamount to infanticide. The state (Platonically speaking) therefore has an interest in protecting life because at that point it’s no longer a “choice” but a child.

Continue reading A Reasonable Decision…

The Inconvenient Constitution

When I left for the Adirondacks on Monday morning to serve as a pallbearer at my mother-in-law’s funeral, the last thing I expected was to grieve for 32 more victims of the grim reaper.

On the drive up I had heard that 21 or so students and faculty at Virginia Tech had been slain by a madman. When the wake was over, I learned in the car that the number had risen to 32, which would become the final tally.

After reeling in shock, I recalled the time almost 20 years ago that I attended the wedding rehearsal dinner of a close friend from high school. The bride’s father was a professor at VT and so the event was held on the campus at the faculty club.

The wedding and reception were held the next day up in the mountains north of Blacksburg at the same resort in which the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed. But I digress …

It seems that no sooner had the bodies been removed and the blood mopped up from the floor than the political posturing and second-guessing began. On yesterday’s ride home, right-wing blowhard Sean Hannity condemned gun control advocates for saying the VT tragedy “proves we need more gun control.”

Continue reading The Inconvenient Constitution…

College For Everyone?

Should every kid who wants to go to college be able to? If Evan Dobelle gets his way the answer would be yes.

I’m not sure I would agree completely with Dobelle, who spoke last night at the Salisbury Forum. Dobelle is the current president of the New England Board of Higher Education and a past president of Trinity College in Hartford and of the University of Hawaii system.

I would say I agree with him 50%. There are certainly, as Dobelle noted, millions of qualified high school graduates who cannot afford college or did not apply because their families never really considered it an option. Clearly, we need to do more for them.

But having spent a dozen years as a high school teacher in private schools, I can attest to the fact that there many (perhaps an equal number to those cited in the above paragraph) who have no business in a college or university but are attending because 1) they have been told they should 2) they have a high school diploma and 3) they can afford it.

The truth is that college is not for everyone and a desire to attend (in and of itself) is not a particularly good indicator of a fitness to be there.

Continue reading College For Everyone?…