Tagged by Trish

Trish of Liberal Chicks is asking me to say 6 things about myself. Rather honorably, she has already ventured into this task herself and acquitted herself well.

OK

1. Went to Andrew Litton's next to last concert at the Dallas Symphony Saturday evening. He did Copeland's Appalachian Spring and Elger's Enigma variations it is called I think. Two things were different for me in the Copeland. First the liner notes were really helpful and it wasn't 'fanfare for the common man.' I had felt Copeland was puffed up in his titles, his perspective. The piece was written as a ballet for Martha Graham in the 40's, who named it from a line in a poem by Crane. The discussion of the piece suggested thinking of your marriage, your first home; so various milestone firsts including these came to mind through it and it really brought me to tears. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is said to have improved in it's string's and there was a clarity and travel in the music I had never heard in a recording. Sitting in the second row from the stage, for $39, probably didn't hurt. I had heard Nimrod from the Enigma variations at a memorial for Stanley Marcus, which I and my 2 secretaries attended on a work day something never otherwise done, there at the Meyerson a few years ago. That was one reason I wanted to hear the program. The Enigma is Elger's decoding into music of 12 people he knows, sort of an elegant variation of the game Trish has proposed. Nimrod, # 9 I think, I learn is in E flat major which is Beethoven's' heroic key. This person portrayed is apparently his agent, who was German, in London. In part, he recalled his agent's impassioned thoughts, brought into their dialogue, about Beethoven's music. Nimrod is a mythological figure, if I have it right, which translates into Jaeger, or hunter, in German. The piece was written in 1898. I liked the piece but was overwhelmed again by the Nimrod, cried, in part, for all the dead German hunters.

2. A patient, coming off mania, came in today. I had treated his fraternal twin at the VA. Somehow, it came up partially as a joke that he had some of his brother in him. His episode of mania seemed triggered by his disappointment at his brother's circumstances. His brother, he said, 'was killing himself with smoking and eating and no exercise. That's all he does and sleep. He smokes like a chimney.' He says his brother 'still recalled his first sin, ..' From a common perspective, his brother is someone who if you met you would probably think was lucky to have, and perhaps bound up in, his entitlements, but my patient recalls him 'as a boy who threw a paper route. He was the artistic one. He could sit down and draw you the plans for a house. Played trumpet in the band, was serious at school.' He left school 2 weeks before graduation, joined the Navy where he fell apart and came to be where he is. Since I had known the other, it was a revelation I felt.

3. I had a dream a week ago in which I recall the first dream appearance of my grandson Miles. He was crying and mad. I assume like the baby suspicioning Beelzebub as discussed in a recent post. I assume the baby is me and Miles is my reassurance as I feel toward him in the dream. This mechanism is like for the chassid in the Reward.

Agreeing with Mr. Bush, I too might rather be right than be president. Wait? He is president.

As I commented in the blog Catholic Analysis, I think really there is poetry and economic truth in the statement that, in this issue, jobs are created not destroyed. To me, who votes conservative typically, the May Day March was disturbing. I doubt that it was lost on the marchers that this was the traditional day for marches of communist armies. There certainly were the pictures of Che Guevara, the references to an oppressive America, this was 'their country,' so rules of citizenship were invalid philosophically etc. As one commenter said, 'the American flags were all new' (not evidence of an enduring interest). It seems naive to me to talk about protecting the border and view this as a problem of practical geometry. Responding to a criticism from a caller at a radio station, the Dallas mayor said this week that 25 years ago the local police on making a stop for some reason, would look into someone's immigration status if that seemed appropriate, no longer. If once you get 100 miles inland, 'there are no illegal aliens' as it says on the poster, then part of what you have done is emphasize smuggling, which of course has also terrorist implications, at the border. You still have no appropriate relationship with 12 (?) million people here. I think the problem for our country is that those who are for order, if you will, are also too niggardly with the allowed numbers for immigration or guest worker status. After all, there is 4.7% unemployment here but our official standard for entry would have had us with 12 million less individuals, who as a group have the highest labor participation rate. On the other hand the leaders of the immigrants, supported by them, apparently are communists who would destroy property rights, contracts and life as Castro, Chavez and Morales from Hispanic cultures do.

A blog, conservative in their lights, which has been kind enough to keep up with me, offers that a Zogby poll says that Americans 2 to 1 prefer the House immigration bill version to the Senate, prefer enforcement to guest worker status being granted. That's nice, and if that is the democratic decision, like William Faulkner, I know which side I'm on; but it may be a significant boon to Muslim jihadists who will see us then engaged in a 2 front war. Tongue in cheek, I see the Senate moving to an alternative to capital punishment. It has provisions for citizenship track status if you have been 2-5 years in the country. Can you imagine working for the INS and having someone sitting in front of you presenting WalMart receipts from 5 years ago, and you are asked to decide, 'Are these for this person? Are they real or are they fake?' Wash and repeat 25 times a day. A few days of that and you might wonder whether lethal injection wouldn't have been better. So there certainly is something to disagree with in the Senate version even though it touches on a guest worker status other than that status itself. A carrot and stick approach I think is appropriate. The carrot, guest worker status period, that's really what the illegales sought; the stick, DHS, and perhaps other, raids and deportation if not documented.

Update: Mike Pence (R-Indiana) has a bill pretty much like the above. I like it's feature of no limit on guest workers for the first 3 years.

May Day follies

The illegal immigrants are announcing their presence today. A British colleague was reminded of his medical school days when after a rugby game, he and his friends would go to any party any one of them had been invited to. Not invited they would crash one. One of them would knock on the door and, when someone came to the door, would engage or be engaged by the person answering. Meanwhile another would slip by and tap the owner of the house on the back and, when he would turn around, say, 'They're all right I know them,' and thus all would come in. In this case our guest workers are saying, 'We are this group over here who have broken into the party. You don't want your furniture smashed do you.'

It would have been a better sign of wanting to be an American if they had chosen July 4 for the demonstration rather than May Day, a day of communist power. Even the 'oppressed Vietnamese' who liberated VN proved to be quite the torturers. Che Guevera banners and all are demonstrating how glad they would be to bring their paranoid, grandiose, expropriating preferred form of government and enduring poverty to us. I was going to punish my Republican Senators for their hostility to nice illegal immigrant legislation. Not to put to fine a point on it, now I would say, "Unleash the dogs." The blacks won with some of these methods, less emphasis on their hostility. Here it won't work. We don't feel guilty for their being here. As for their not working, the Canadian land the Mcarthy's, my ancestors, moved to in 1823 wasn't missing them but was available and more productve with Irish farming techniques. Similarly here, the U.S isn't missing them. If they don't want to 'work the land,' Va a la casa in sud America.

In the Mouth of Beelzubub

'May the face of G-d shine upon you' Israel. The ego of the infant is said to believe it has two mothers, one capable of absolute protection, the other wishing it to be absolutely destroyed. The analyst Giovachini references this. The Palestinian government takes the destructive mother as god, identifies with her in destroying those who have not already succumbed to her death.

Conservative Republicans Declare Wrong Political War

I had to admire the clash of democratic forces and their potential resolution in the latest immigration reform bill. Conservative Republicans procedurally stopped it as a minority in the US Senate. They could have chosen a better war. 'Jane Galt' had recent blog about the 72% of AAM under 35 in this country unemployed or in prison. Our energy would've been better spent abolishing AFDC and the spurning of shame that leads eventually to unemployment and prison. Only 8% of black Americans voted for Bush. With new Hispanic allies, we could have taken that fight. But we spurned people who are hard working, productive who, yes, we have a disagreement with over not following our laws. But with 11 million illegal immigrants only dropping the estimated wage for a high school drop out 8% per Laura Ingraham, our legal structure, quota has obviously seriously underestimated how many people should be newly accommodated in this country.

Update: But see also the McCain Immigration video, scroll down a bit. Glenn Reynolds has also a good take. I wonder what the head of Cemex, a world class cement concern out of Monterrey, Mexico, which exports to the US, recently buying a firm in Britain would have to say.

'Give me Liberty or Anarchy (so called) by way of the Fourth Amendment (in practice)'

The Virginian Patrick Henry was never so specific. In understanding a sacred text, it is sometimes useful to abstract the axioms and consider how they effect the defined set. One thing that I have seen in terms of significant social changes that was not considered in a government course or discussion is that the right 'for people to be secure in their persons.. against unreasonable searches and seizures' (the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution) has really had the effect of trumping or at least mitigating attempts at governmental controls on behavior. It is perhaps an unacknowledged balance in the 'checks and balances' of our government. No one can remember when any intoxicant was legal, except alcohol, but Ricky Williams can never seem to pass an NFL urine drug screen. Similarly with the 'migrants,' as they are termed in Spanish in Catholic prayers. Can you imagine a police vehicle going 'hooahh, Hooahh' like the Gestapo cars in an old movie, followed by doors crashing and people yelling, 'No somos criminales!' No what happens instead is that they can't file a small claims suit for wages or a contract because they have to have a driver's license, papers, to file the suit. (The 'migrants' are not 'home free.') Perhaps we could unpretzel ourselves slightly were we to allow them to be what they have as an identity for themselves, 'migrants,' and not answer an unasked question re: their immigrant status. Under the protection of the Fourth Amenment, a growing divergence from official policy presents political issues that are not really solvable by the right citizens saying essentially 'I never agreed to this (illegal but de facto permitted by the Fourth Amendment) situation so change it all back.' The Fourth amendment has had the effect, even during 'back alley abortions,' of allowing minorities of people to create facts on the ground independent of the intransigence of the King or, in the view of the nonrespondent, a 'tyranny of the majority.' To refer to my previous post and derivative of the idea of 'tryanny,' these transgressions tend to happen when people do not find nurturing and empathy in the legally allowed situation. Glenn Reynolds brought up this brouhaha.

Speaking of heirs

This is huge, the finding that children improve in their depression if mother is treated and improves. Augustus John Rush proves an heir to Benjamin Rush, MD, signer of the Declaration of Indepenence, in proving a mechanism of not only independence from psychic pain but toward, in seeing God given inalienable rights, humanity. I think of my favorite psychiatrist joke, which is about our, the psychiatrist's interest, in proving 'You (no, really) hate your mother.' The psychoanalysts, in my understanding, see depression as a regression to the oral sadistic phase, think of the baby with teeth who can bite and hurt the breast. The psyche of the infant is seen as both having and destroying the desired object. Such a mechanism may be explored in the movie Psycho, and why we relate to it. The man keeps his mummified dead mother, no longer able to nurture. He keeps her because he was not able to take life from her but the memory of the hope, ? and guilt, compels. He seeks a new object but treats her like he would have his mother when an unfulfilled infant in sadistically killing her after uncovering her nakedness and having the nurturing breast. The child as we do ambivalently in the movie in identifying with the creepy character feels guilty and thrilled. If mother is really damaged, depressed, we as the infant or child don't know that we didn't do it and feel guilty, regret our sadism, draw back unfulfilled, depressed. Like the religious faithful who are relieved that G-d is not injured, the child is reassured that mother is not injured when he regresses to such a phase. So it is helpful that she is not depressed. But this is an idea, John has presented you with data and you may grow your own elaboration.

Ahmed Chalabi says something interesting

On CNN's Sunday show, Wolf Blitzer asked Ahmed C. to 'name the person who failed leading to the present problems in Iraq.' Ahmed said Paul Bremer, 'our procounsul' there for the first year after overthrowing Saddam. Ahmed C. went on to say that his insistence on seeing violent acts as isolated incidents led to a growing insurrection. I ran into someone who had been there who told me that a lot of people died there that you don't hear about. Prominent Republicans got their children a spot on Paul Bremer's staff. Sometimes they would decide to go off on a road trip and not come back. The implication with the juxtaposition of these 2 events is that indeed it was true that there was a 'party line' as it were, which misled these people about the true tactical situation in Iraq. Kissinger asked about Chalabi's statement said that Bremer had worked with him and Bremer would 'never do anything on his own,' which just shows how cleverly Ahmed C. made his statement. In controlling a school, the Jesuits, an heir to consuls, say you have to exert your biggest control beginning the school year. Which just makes the debate about what the Army Chief of Staff said was the proper figure to occupy the country and what really happened to him something of greater interest. Greg Jaffe in Monday's WSJ, some kind of subscription required, had an article on the lessons of counterinsurgency, in part form VN, as the Army is now looking at it which would overlay this discussion.

Update:

Sociology Professor Michael Schwartz points out that Iraq was a statist economy and our shutting them down, refusing to even allow state companies to bid on reconstruction projects, for example, was an act of creative destruction producing the latter without the former. The department chairman over my field liked to quote Napoleon in his aphorism 'Careers for Talents.' It looks like what we needed was someone at or somewhat below the rank, present or retired, of Central Committee, China to manage the transition from a statist to a capitalist economy.

We are honored that he should wear green

Karl Haas died last year in February. He had programs recorded before release. As it should happen his last is a program of Irish music, which would be played March 17, 2006.