DO NOT LISTEN TO PREDICTIONS

For as many years as I believed my parents knew better than I. I believed that TV political pundits also knew more than I. Indeed they do have more information. However, they are mostly unable to use that information to predict the entire political system. Beyond that, they are hampered by their own wish to appear ‘pundit-like’, to please their bosses, and like the legislature, to assure their continued employment.

To that end, also like the legislators, they pretend to speak for the average American with whom they long ago lost any contact they may have once had before they became victims of the Peter Principle. (“In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.") from Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in a humorous book which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology" "inadvertently founded" by Peter, their book in 1968 The Peter Principle, the principle has real validity.

The Audacity of Hope could better have been written about the predictions made publicly on the McLaughlin Hour for years, few of which came to pass. Those made by the self-described 'experts' for all major media outlets on newspaper, air or TV fare no better. There was a time when they could say anything and get away with it, but no more. Today there is a visual and audio recording of everything uttered. McCain has tried to lie his way out of things denying he has said what the media can play back, almost instantaneously, that which they accurately claim he said, leaving his denial a mere flap of his lips. So far, that fact has not quite sunk into the brains of some of the politicians and pundits. Cheney seems to be one of the worst at maintaining he never said what he did say, with abounding proof on archived TV files to the contrary. For those schooled in never admitting they lied and never taking responsibility for their actions, technology seems to be catching up to them.

If we assume that McCain actually has forgotten what he has predicted, promised or said, we enter another sphere of confusion. McCain's brain is 72 years of age while Obama's is 46 or so. In either case, whether he is fabricating that he never said something or indeed has actually forgotten, it is not a positive sign for the brain functioning of the President of the most powerful nation in the world.

So I am left with a real question. Will the pundits be as anxious to make a prediction with such vehemence in face of the likelihood that it may not come to pass if they know it will be played over and over to the country at large, win or lose?

THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ME

There are, I presume, times in everyone's life when they say to themselves, I could have been killed. I'm grateful I wasn't,when my husband and I were with three of our children in the Athens airport, just having arrived off a TWA plane whose destination was Tel Aviv when Palestinian guerrillas threw hand grenades into the crowd in which we were a part. The weather around the country makes one feel unsafe to be anywhere but I live in New England where we have been most fortunate not to have deadly weather in the frequency with which many people in other parts of the country suffer.

In the few months between college and graduate school, I volunteered at the State Women's Reformatory. I listened to reasons most of the women (if not all) were there, because they were without resources, familial, emotional, financial or otherwise to have carried them through life able to make constructive judgments, surround them with people who would help keep them safe, or teach the ways to survive without having to place themselves in such constant jeopardy.

Those first few weeks and months of early life for an infant are so important. We, as a medically technological society have come a long way in learning that human touch, caring, warmth and comfort are so important then to allow for later development of a sound system of self-esteem. "Dr. James W. Prescott has devoted his professional life to being an infant and child advocate. He joined the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) NIH and established and directed the Developmental Behavioral Biology Program from 1966-1980 that studied the biological and social consequences (types) of early nurturing and has learned what types of environment make for a violent or peaceful society.

Prescott has concluded that mother nurturing, and affectional bonding or the lack of it, explains the primary origins of both peaceful-egalitarian or authoritarian-violent cultures. In the late 1970s, the NICHD unlawfully terminated his 17 year federal career, as a scientist administrator by the NICHD, NIH for opposing then NICHD abandonment of its agency responsibility to support research on the causes and consequences of violence against children. Dr. Prescott is a developmental neuropsychologist and a cross cultural psychologist with his doctorate in psychology from McGill University.

He has made available two videos that document impaired brain development and the emotional-behavioral disorders that result from failed bonding in the mother-infant/child relationship that include depression and violence. The first, entitled, The Origins of Love and Violence provides a 13 minute introduction to the central thesis that the mother-infant/child relationship is the essential factor for whether a child becomes loving or violent. Failure of mother-love and bonding results in both a failure to thrive and produces depressed, hostile and angry children who later become vengeful and violent adults

Enormous amounts of primate research have proven that a failure in bonding causes the brain to develop abnormally, both anatomically and neuro-chemically. These effects can be observed as early as infancy as depressed infants and young children." The lack of attachment for many can not be later compensated....the brain mechanisms set up for it are the equivalent of complete atrophy.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) saps people of their ability to trust, feel safe, and even read current situations and people with any accuracy. It seems as though there are constant triggers of memory that tie the traumatic past to the present. Only when the person afflicted with PTSD can be in a position of knowing they need never be in that situation of terror or abuse ever again, will they be completely able to their fears and anxieties once again.

MORE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE SEQUELS

Having discovered that there are now somewhere about 50 books written as sequels to Austen's books, I have been concentrating on those specifically after PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Currently I am reading the 10th book written in the style of Austen. However, this one, Mr Darcy Takes a Wife, goes further into the physical aspects of marriage than Jane Austen ever experienced or could write about herself. The cover reads: Hold on to you bonnets! This sexy, epic, hilarious, poignant and romantic sequel to Pride and Prejudice goes far beyond Jane Austen. The cover further describes telling the tale we always wanted to hear....how the Darcy's lived happily ever after....





While most readers can imagine much more, this book requires little imagination. The Chicago Tribune describes it as a "breezy, satisfying romance" The youngest sister, Lydia, whose marriage at 16, youngest and first to marry of the five Bennett daughters, decides it is her duty to prepare the older two for their upcoming wedding nights and the consummation of their marriages. Lydia tells her older sisters: "Your husband's manly instrument will swell big and red and hard and angry and enormous....." running out of adjectives at this point. She continues, "And when he first puts it up your nonny-nonny it will be with such force as to render you prostrate with ecstasy and pain." The reader can quickly realize that we have departed from the Jane Austen experience. We have slipped into a more titillating description of what might have happened that Austen would not have put onto paper but you, the reader, can make your own mind up about whether it fills in that blank of what happened after they got married!

ONE OF LIFE'S MANY SURPRISES

Having had a busy late afternoon, with 97 degrees outside and a dry 82 degrees in the house, I had plunked myself in a comfy living room chair facing the TV, looking forward for the first time in the day to watching a bit of world news. It was after 8 PM but there was still a bit of light in the sky when, with a bit of pop and squeak, the TV went off and lights, computer, house fan and everything that ran on electricity along with it.

I pulled the AC plug out of the backof the computer that had been on, should there be a sudden surge at some point (though I have a perfectly adequate surge protector connected) and went into my mental self-lecture of better-to-be-cautious-than-careless, counting on things with moving parts that often let me down. Back to the living room, the phone rang. It was a neighbor checking to see if the lights were out at her house or the entire street. That answered, I tried to return some calls, forgetting that my wireless phones wouldn't work. I finally checked my cell, made my calls, received a call on my land line which still worked, then hunted down candles to light. Is it possible to have too many candles around for just such occasions?

The silence was deafening. With the aid of flashlights (thank goodness for my addiction, buying them when I see them as I see them in checking out) lines, I found my old, tiny, AM/FM radio that had been unused for more than eight years. I checked the batteries (2 AAA) and they had not burst. I turned the radio on and it worked. The sound was quite unfamiliar though I was able to find NPR totally boring at that time, so 'off' went the radio.

Across the street the house was ablaze with lights. My neighbor has a generator! Yellow lights flickered off anything that reflected and I saw that the handy NSTAR truck/cherry picker was working on the transformer down the street. Getting ready for bed in the dark was little problem but reading myself to sleep was one. Using one of those 'never die shake-and-it-will-light flashlights I was able to finish the last few pages on my book and start another just as the pops and squeaks came back and the house lit up again. My bedside clock complained that I needed to set the time, which I did, following the verbal instructions which miraculously worked for the first time...to 11:11 PM and rushed to another room to put the TV on for Jon Stewart.

Happy ending though it was, as I watched the burning plane on Al-Jazeera and thought, "I"m not sorry to be here and not flying." I reflected on how many times in life my plans were put on hold for any number of reasons. The news showed a half million dollar vacation home being washed away by the mid-Western flood. Can there be anything better than TV news to put the proper perspective on how insignificant our personal disasters end up being in face of the disasters others in this world face?

WHAT DO PEOPLE DO TO SURVIVE?

The US is 9th in the world for having fattest people. (see Forbes). The site seems to want to advertise far more intensively than it wishes to impart information. Try to be patient, however, there is some interesting stuff there. For example, Lauren Streib wrote a year ago: The related health risks associated with being overweight are striking. Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and stroke are just some of the hazards. So here we are in the US, dying of overeating in an unhealthy way while in Ethiopia (as has happened in the news through much of my long life) people are starving due the current drought. Hunger persists in the US, as well. 35.5 million people—including 12.6 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in ten households in the United States (10.9 percent). --from Bread for the World, a research and education institute.

Markham, Illinois seems to top the list of US 100 least safe cities. We know there are cities where it is as risky to just step out of your house for fear of stray bullets, than others where the greatest dangers are simply natural causes, like tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, forest fires, hurricanes, etc.

Mental health issues are a most serious problem for people trying to survive with illness. While medications have improved greatly in the last 25 years, we are still a long way from finding the least invasive cures. Many medications have negative and distressing side effects. Many believe the leading cause of death is the healthy system. I found no actual statistics for that.

The conclusion is that it is difficult to survive, even here in USA where we start with the handicap of a plethora of so much more opportunity than many other countries. Why then do we not have the longest life expectancy, the lowest infant mortality rate, and the best of all opportunities for survival?

MEDIA COMMENTS

One of the insulting comments being written is "Clinton dons a brave face and ends her Presidential bid." The image continues to describe her as someone pretending. 'dons a brave face' smacks to me as the comments made when she teared in NH as the self-proclaimed pundits debated over whether the tears and emotion was faked, with many claiming they were crocodile tears. Such nerve!

She shared my own sentiments..."Every moment spent in looking back is a moment wasted for looking forward." Bret Hume says it is all about Obama and whether the US is ready to elect a black man. Republican leaning Fox channel quickly shut off any positive sounding statement about Obama when their token middle-of-the-road (Juan Williams) panelist spoke in any positive way about him.

It is interesting to watch the political talk shows in sequence. None of them can ever admit that they have no idea what is going to happen. William Kristol talked about his reading of the political map and was quickly contradicted by Chris Wallace saying he will believe Karl Rove over any conclusions Kristol would draw.

Chris Wallace went on to show clips pf commencement speakers from all genres whom he desribed as the 'power players of the week'. A. K Rowling spoke about changing the view of millions, not just yourself. Vice President Cheney mentioned feeling jealous of the cadets to whom he was speaking because, after all, they will have a job after eight months! Somehow it will be of interest to see if he retires to a rocker on his Wyoming porch, which seems most unlikely.

While Stephanopoulos had Diane Feinstein on his show saying all the things we have heard repeated for a couple of days on every news talk show. Russert had Jim Webb, a far better choice for discussing issues about which he has some direct knowledge rather than playing guessing games.

Again on Tim Russert with Michael
Duffy, editor Time Magazine, and E.J. Dionne, writer and Washington Post journalist, Russert asks what did Hillary do to lose. What was forgotten was what Obama did to political talk media, Tim Russert, win. He had a message that appealed to more people. I cannot refrain from pointing out the negativity towards her from the press, but no one can ever put it together and say she ran a bad campaign just because Obama won. This country is far too hung up on winners and losers and Monday morning quarter-backing. Hillary Clinton is an amazing woman and will not quit clawing her way out of the trap men would have her in. She will help Obama because her entire past history demonstrates her commitment to making this a better country for people to live a better quality of health, education, family life.

SPAM CELEBRATES ITS 30TH BIRTHDAY

Imagine that more than half of all the world computer users on the Internet using email do not remember a world without spam. It is an Internet scourge and current reports indicate that 90% of all email is spam! "Spam continues to blight e-mail exactly 15 years after the term was first coined and almost 30 years since the first spam message was sent" writes Darren Waters, Technology editor, BBC News website. There is a good reason why we are unable to rid ourselves of spam...it is because the spammers are as technically proficient as those trying to eradicate them. We all curse them daily as we try to sort through our e-mail to rid ourselves of ads for products that promise all sorts of things most of us neither want nor need. To better understand the anatomy of spam e-mail, one can read the site underscored on home computers. Most spammers send through household computers, hi-jacking them so that the owners are not even aware their computer is even being used or has slowed down for good reason.

Of course, too many of us understand the annoyances of spam and really just want to know ways to get rid of it. That solution has not been found nor will it as long as spammers find it profitable. The only way they will stop is if there is absolutely no return on their efforts since even spammers need to eat. That seems unlikely in the near future. At the moment we are only talking about a small amount of their time spent writing the ads, turning them into jpgs, hi-jacking home computers, infecting them with bots to send it out, and collecting money for their service. As long as people are sufficiently deluded by these adds as much as by Bush's campaign promises we will continue to have spam. It is currently as predictable as death and taxes.