The Voice of Treason

News alert: About half of all Americans will suffer some sort of mental illness at some point in their lives. And this is news?

Are they saying there are that many out there who aren’t suffering from mental illness? That, to me, is the surprising part. The nut-job du jour is Cindy Sheehan. George Bush is right for saying that she can say anything she likes - this is America so she can get in front of a camera and call him a liar and a murderer - but he’s right, too, to refuse to meet with her a second time. Is she a fruitcake who could harm him? Can the Secret Service search her? It’s a no-win situation - he has to say no. If he meets with her, he has to meet with everyone who has a grievance.

I’m sure she’s in pain, but what about the other 1800+ mothers who are suffering in silence? They’re not in front of a camera, racking up their fifteen minutes. There was one from Mountain View, California on Bill O’Reilly’s show. (I lived in Mountain View for many years, incidentally.) I listened to this woman and decided that she was just bitter about her divorce. She was told that the families who lost loved ones would have six minutes with the president. She didn’t want to share those minutes with her ex-husband, the father of her dead son. Madame, your son is dead; can you move past the fact that your husband has a new life/wife?

Uh, no. She had three minutes with Bush and said when she looked into his eyes she was convinced he has no conscience. Cindy Sheehan is bitter because her son was in Iraq for only five days and now he’s dead. She says this country isn’t worth dying for. And how insulting is that to the sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers who believe that it is?

I would be bitter if my son was killed on his way to work by a drunk driver. I would be bitter if he was shot by a gangster in a convenience store parking lot. I would be bitter if the building he was working in was set aflame with jet fuel and crumbled to the ground.

I wouldn’t be bitter if I knew he died as an adult who made the choice to fight a war that he believed in. If he had joined the military, thinking he wouldn’t face combat, then it would have been up to me to convince him to do something else. This sounds cold, but why did Cindy Sheehan allow her son to enlist? Then re-enlist?

Soldiers don’t get to pick and choose their battles. For all we know, Casey Sheehan thought his country was worth dying for. His mother’s ranting is a dishonor.

I quit my job. I gave it four and a half weeks. During the first week there were red flags. By the third week, alarms were going off in my head. I was filled with dread when I thought about going there. I have had jobs that I could have hated and should have hated, but I didn’t until now. This one, on the surface, seemed perfect and wasn’t - for many reasons.

I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that I should have known something was weird when I was looking out the window during lunch and noticed that the cars outside were traveling in packs of color. I saw five burgundy cars pull out of the lot across the street. Then five silver ones pulled out of the lot to the east. Then there were blue cars. Tan cars. White cars would separate the packs of different colors. Three red, a white. Four black, two white. It was peculiar. It was a sign. I pointed it out to a coworker. She wasn’t disturbed by it, but then she majored in Math and was working at this place. She seemed nice enough. At lunch she’d read Dave Barry aloud. I like Dave Barry very much.

She read his stories about New York and pronounced the mayor’s name strangely, but with total confidence. Ed Cook. I stopped chewing. Giuliani, Dinkins, Koch. Ah, she means Koch. She has never heard of him. Should I correct her? No.

I was reminded of the week I was laid off back in 2001. On Monday night I went to the grocery store. The little voice in my head told me to stock up.

“Why?”

The little voice said: “Trust me. Just shut up and do it. Look - Progresso soup’s on sale.”

I filled the cart. And I stocked up on coffee beans. Coffee was on sale, so I filled bag after bag with beans. The next day I lost my job. Last night I went to the store and filled a cart with food, paper products, and detergent, knowing that I wasn’t going to have an income the next day. I’d made up my mind that it was time to cut my losses and run. I’m not a quitter. I take a job and it can last three, five, thirteen years. I endure. This time, I said to hell with it.

I realized I was working for a shrike. I sat at my desk and listened to the VP saying “I’m sorry” and “it’s my fault” over and over again. I don’t know what she kept apologizing about, but she was doing it daily. There was a problem my third week there and I took the initiative to troubleshoot it because I could sense my boss, who was out of town, was freaked about it. But by investigating it and eliminating the possibilities of things that could have been utterly disastrous, it drew attention to the fact that she made an error.

When she got back on Monday morning, she reamed me. Later the VP explained: “She doesn’t make mistakes.” The writing was on the wall. I had to start thinking seriously about leaving. I don’t want to work for someone who “doesn’t make mistakes.”

I’m an adult and I don’t like people shrieking at me for no apparent reason. My siblings and I endured verbal abuse from my mother, who seemed to be pissed off the entire time we were growing up, but we figured we could bear the brunt of her bad choices then escape one day. It’s like me screaming at my dogs because I chose to spend several thousand dollars on doggy daycare when they were puppies instead of installing a dog door and putting the money into real estate. They had nothing to do with my poor judgment, so I don’t scream at them. They’re dogs, we were kids. Just because you make poor choices, don’t blame your kid or your dog. Take some personal responsibility.

When I worked in the wonderful world of corporate training (I’m being facetious if you haven’t figured that out) I attended seminars with other Boomers. They fretted about the Gen-Xers and their attitude about work.

“They have these crazy ideas about how it should be fun, purposeful, and rewarding. I say, ‘Why do you think they call it work?’”

The consensus was that it has to be a miserable experience so you feel like you’re earning your paycheck. You have to be filled with dread. You stick with it because it’s better to have a job than no job at all. You give up your integrity, swallow your pride, put up and shut up.

I’m so tired of that. Is there something out there that doesn’t take advantage, wear you down, kick you in the teeth?

There are days I want to be a farmer. I want to grow food and flowers and have chickens pecking at my feet. I don’t want to sit in commuter traffic or stupid meetings. I want to sit on my front porch and watch the sunset with a pack of big dogs. I want to drink wine and eat cheese and listen to the radio. I want to wear comfortable shoes.

Well, actually, I kinda have that. I do have flowers growing and if I planned better, I’d probably have a decent vegetable and fruit garden. I suspect the birds would get to it before I could even make a decent salad, but that’s okay. I have fake chickens in the yard, but real pigeons and doves. I can watch the sunset with my big dogs. I can listen to the radio, eat cheese, and drink wine. I can wear shoes that don’t hurt. Now if I can earn money by doing all this, I’m cool.

I was driving the other night, listening to the radio, and heard a local sportscaster admit he’d do steroids in a heartbeat if he were playing professionally. To stretch a career? Break a record? Win a series? Sure! Why the hell not? He said he didn’t care what havoc it wreaked on his body, it would be worth it.

Hmmmm. Maybe I’m naive. After all, my favorite team is the 1969 Cubs. I actually thought that Banks, Hundley, Santo, Williams, Beckert, Holtzman, Kessinger, and Jenkins were going to the World Series. Hey, hey - holy mackeral, no doubt about it. It was Cub Power. I didn’t have a clue that my hero, Ernie Banks, was despised by his manager Leo Durocher. Durocher thought Banks was a dinosaur and wanted someone newer and younger, but Banks was Mr. Cub and Durocher was stuck with him. Years passed and I never knew that Greg Maddux begged Cubs management to keep him on the team, but they rejected him. He went to the Braves and the Braves went to the World Series. Repeatedly.

I thought it was a game. Without sounding like Field of Dreams, I thought baseball was special. Holy. Yeah, there were scandals here and there, but those were anomalies. Baseball was…pure. Perfect.

Okay, maybe I’m old and cynical, but I’ve changed my opinion. I can see the sportscaster’s point. It’s about competition, breaking records, winning. Selling tickets and stuff. Lots of stuff. If steroids make you a better player, why not? Actors and models get plastic surgery - isn’t that similar?

I used to think it was about talent, natural ability, skill. You trained and practiced to get better. Naive. For years I hated the Giants because Willie Mays slid home and slammed right into Randy Hundley at the plate. He hit him hard and Hundley couldn’t make the play. He was on the ground, writhing. Everyone knew he had the worst knees in baseball and every day was agony for him. I hated Willie Mays from that day forward. He’s a cheater. He cheated. He ran into Hundley on purpose. The Cubs don’t play like that. They don’t cheat.

Yeah, and they don’t win, either. That was the difference — Mays was playing to win.

I often compare politics to baseball. I like a team that plays fair. To me, the Republicans have always rolled over and have been too “nice.” I know Liberals are choking as they read this, but it’s true. The Democrats are much better at playing dirty and playing to win. The Republicans still think it’s how you play the game. I don’t suggest Republicans start cheating and slinging muck, but if they don’t start becoming better players they’re not going to win the series. Steroids? No, that’s cheating. But they better start sharpening their skills now if they plan to win in 2006 and 2008. Oh — and let’s not forget that there’s a war to be won.

Shopping has become a challenge. I don’t go the malls. I’m not sure when I stopped, but I just know it was long enough ago that I don’t remember the last time I entered a local shopping mall. I avoid Big Box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. And it’s not for all the political reasons you might think. True, I’d like to avoid buying products from China, but that’s not the number one reason. The reason, really, is made up of three reasons:

1. I don’t want to spend the better part of my life circling the Wal-Mart parking lot in search of a spot.
2. I don’t want to spend the better part of my life standing in line at the register at Wal-Mart behind 500 other people. With kids.
3. I don’t want to shop where there are some items that are ridiculously inexpensive, causing me to stockpile bargains. If I can avoid temptation in my life, I will. Sorry, Mr. Wilde, but it’s good for me to just say no to myself.

I’ve bought a few items recently. At the liquor store. There’s a shop, conveniently located down the hill, but sometimes I prefer to drive past the car wash ‘ho’s to the other place. The place that has an amazing selection and such good prices. I was in the mood for wine, and discovered that they have an extensive Italian section. In an effort to support our allies, I chose some interesting Italian reds and picked up some wonderfully priced Australian wines. I’m convinced that I’ll never drink white wine again because it’s just awful. Really it is. Red is better. Red is truly satisfying.

I also broke down recently and ordered hair products from QVC. I wrestled with this. I told myself they were overpriced and I didn’t need them. It’s marketing again. They had this whole story about how the primary ingredient was harvested by small people who lived in a remote part of the rain forest. I didn’t really care about that. But when I discovered that the ingredient somehow ended up in Italy and was transformed into hair product, I picked up the phone. Supporting the Italian economy again.

Closer to home, I decided to buy some yogurt. I was at a local natural food type market, looking at lesser-known varieties. (You can tell when you’re in one of these stores because they don’t sell TV Guide or The National Enquirer at the register, and all the produce looks like it fell off the back of a truck and it’s expensive. And, oddly, the patrons who are there to buy health foods look suspiciously unhealthy.) This particular store is a little different in that it’s not one of the popular chain stores, so they manage to keep their produce prices pretty reasonable. It’s a good mix of stuff that looks like it fell off a truck and stuff that looks edible. I can fill a cart and get out without feeling like I was molested.

I picked up some yogurt. It’s very tasty, but proceeds go to environmental groups. On the surface that sounds like a good thing, but where exactly is that money going and what am I funding? I bought milk for T. It’s kinda pricey, but I realized after seeing an article in our newspaper, that it is a local product that comes from local cows. But as pricey as it is, it’s not an organic product. The farmer would like to go completely organic but he can’t afford it. So he’s semi-organic and semi-unaffordable.

I generally don’t shop at these stores because they’re expensive. But now that there’s competition locally (Whole Foods has arrived), prices at the other markets have plummeted. I look at the ads and some of the “natural” foods are priced lower than the regular foods at the big chain supermarkets. This is fascinating. And it allows me to have more options. Competition…more options. I can shop at several stores instead of one or two. But I still haven’t gone into Whole Foods. I know there are taste treats there, but I just don’t want to pay for them. My fear is that I’ll find some brand of gorgonzola handmade by Sicilian monks (is there such a thing?) that tastes like heaven and is priced like Manhattan. I don’t need that in my life right now. After all, I’ve got overpriced hair products coming.

Nationwide, 200,000 incidents are reported each year involving school employees and children. And we’re not talking tutoring. No, “inappropriate behavior” is happening. You send your kid to school to get an education, and does he ever!

Florence King wrote something years ago that pretty much summed up how I feel. She didn’t understand why someone would be attracted to a child, why something like pedophilia would be so common. She didn’t even want to be in the same room with a child. Being sexually stimulated by one of the obnoxious little snots was unimaginable.
Hear, hear! So, like Florence, I really don’t think normal adults want to be around children. I mean, I knew after a year of student teaching in a high school that even if they looked and acted like adults, they were still children and I didn’t want to be in a room with fifty of them at a time.

I remember my male peers were paralyzed. We were teaching high school kids and when we’d meet up in our classes back at the university, they’d confess that teenage girls didn’t look like that when they were in high school.

“What are you saying?”

“We’re saying that we’re having inappropriate thoughts.”

There’s that word again. Inappropriate. A friend of mine was so bothered by his inappropriate thoughts that he dropped out of the program and started working towards an MA so he could teach at a community college. That was probably a good decision.

Had he been smitten with a fourteen year-old student and engaged in inappropriate behavior, he might still be in prison today. If I had the same relationship with one of my male students, things might have been different. Sure Mary Kaye Letoureau ended up in the big house, but what about all these busty blonde Britney look-a-likes who are engaging in hands-on instruction with their boy students? I hear the double-standard:

“That kid will never get so lucky again. That was the pinnacle. It’s all downhill from here.”

No one would think of saying that to a thirteen year-old girl who had just been molested by her fifty-six year-old male Geometry teacher. I suspect there will be a short term in prison for these women, then - upon release - a layout in Playboy or Penthouse. Maybe a book deal or a TV series. It’s disturbing that it’s sexual abuse when it’s a young girl and a lucky break when it’s a boy.

I think it’s natural for students to develop crushes on some of their teachers. I think it’s criminal when teachers molest their students. Male or female. Kids talk. I knew which teachers were “having inappropriate relationships” with what students — homosexual and heterosexual. It isn’t some new thing. It happened in college, too, and even though the people involved were consenting adults there was still something wrong with it. Teachers shouldn’t have sex with students, politicians shouldn’t have sex with interns, priests shouldn’t have sex with altar boys, bosses shouldn’t have sex with subordinates.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Is it me, or does it seem like the reporters are hoping for a disaster? The Discovery astronauts are on their way home…or are they? Will we have another accident that charbroils our brave space travelers? Will this be the end for NASA — which can send a man to the moon but can’t repair a tile?

Meanwhile, we have seven Russians at the bottom of the ocean, stuck in a submarine. They have food, but in a few hours they’ll be completely out of oxygen, so all that food will be wasted — and so will they. The Russian navy is scrambling to get the sub to surface and Americans and Britons are offering help. This is like the kid stuck in the well or the puppy in the pipe or the cat in the tree. Can we save the day?

It’s difficult to imagine anything worse. Under water, knowing you’re trapped and running out of air. Kinda like being on a burning tower, trapped and running out of time.

Then again, isn’t this a daily event for Chinese coal miners?

If I’m in the shower at night, I listen to our local radio station. After all the local sports shows that wax poetic about our college and high school teams (city life sucks when you don’t have a professional sports team) Michael Savage comes on. Savage claims he’s neither Republican nor Democrat; he’s an independent thinker, and smarter than all the Republicans and Democrats put together. He likes to talk about himself and recite his resume…endlessly.

Personally, I do not care for him. There are people in the talk radio business that do the job a whole lot better. I prefer someone like Rush Limbaugh. Rush was a pioneer and he made talk radio. First of all, he’s pleasant to listen to. I mean, he has a great voice. Michael Savage can grate on my nerves. Rush is funny. He’s witty and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Humor is a huge part of Rush’s program. It always confused me when Liberals accused Rush of being hateful, racist, misogynistic, shrill, and dangerous. Rush? My Rush? Whenever I’d hear a comment like that I’d have to assume that it came from an individual who had never actually heard Rush. But then at my last job, where I was surrounded by Liberals, sometimes they would walk into my office and I’d be listening to Rush and they’d freeze. “What’s that? What’s that sound?” That’s Rush. “Why is he screaming like that?” He’s not. “I can’t bear to listen to that racket!” And then they’d run out of my office.

Is it something with ears? The only time I want to run out of the room when Rush is speaking is when he’s talking about golf or football. I didn’t mind the discussion of cigars back in the day when he’d go on about smoking big fatties or what new techo-toy he’d pick up, but the sports stuff was just …well, a little dull.

But it’s odd that Liberals think he’s loud and abrasive. Rush? My Rush? Quite honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to his show. In fact, since I started this new job I haven’t listened to any daytime talk radio. I had been listening to a new local conservative station that had some serious technical problems. They probably still do. I should check to see if they’re still on the air because they did have a pretty decent line-up. Except that they’d change it around…a lot. Neal Boortz in the morning was fun, then Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. But frankly, knowing I’d be catching those guys on FNC in the evening, it seemed like I was spending way too much time with them. Michael Savage claims his ratings are better than the rest of these guys. Says he’s beating Rush and Sean. (For what it’s worth, I like Sean Hannity but he just needs to ease up a little. He’s getting redundant and abrasive and he’s much more effective when he’s charming and amusing. Think Rush.)

I don’t really care about the ratings, but it’s interesting that Savage has an audience. Once in a great while he says something that makes good sense and sounds genuine. Most of the time I can’t help think he’s a complete and utter fraud. I bristle when people refer to him as a conservative. Unless I’m smokin’ dope, I remember listening to his show when I lived in the Bay Area, and he had a whole different platform. I wouldn’t call it conservative. But when it was obvious that shows like Rush’s were cleaning his clock, he suddenly lurched to the right. I cringe sometimes when that man goes off on a topic. I don’t like being told repeatedly that he’s brilliant then hear him get a fact wrong or mispronounce a common word. It makes me wonder if he’s doing this on purpose. Masquerading as a quasi-conservative to make conservatives look bad.

But he said something last night that I’ve been saying for years. Running is unnatural and bad for you. He was talking about the president’s health and mentioned that he’s backed off on running because of the knee injuries. I know a lot about knee injuries and I think Dubya is smart to switch to bicycling.

I loved to run when I was a kid. I was the fastest in my class in elementary school. But I slowed down considerably after I developed large breasts and eventually came to a halt. I don’t even run now to avoid oncoming vehicles. I figure it’s easier to get hit and driven to an emergency room. I imagine I’d run if I was being chased, but I know I wouldn’t like it. And I used to fantasize endlessly about running marathons. I thought I’d take up running again when I was in college because my boyfriend ran marathons. I tried it and it made me vomit. Literally. It was so physically awful, I’d be nauseous afterwards. This is healthy, this feeling? Another friend of mine was a serious runner and he’d be so deep in the zone that he’d run right in front of trucks. He was almost killed one day.

I digress. Anyway, I do agree that “Liberal infiltration” has the potential to bring down America. Here I agree with Savage and his “enemy within” theory. Boomers are running/ruining the country. I remember when everyone was happy about Bill Clinton being the first Boomer president. A child of the sixties in the White House! Far out!

The sixties and early seventies were interesting times, but I resent the current nostalgia. It was a bad time in America. Think civil unrest, acid rock, Woodstock, anti-war movement, Watergate, Jimmy Carter. Think ugly clothes. The kind they’re selling in the stores today. I wore bell bottoms in the sixties and super bells in the seventies. If you wear them you can’t peddle a bicycle — how are you supposed to lead the free world?

The Lord was on FNC again, and I’m not talkin’ Jesus. I know FOX is smitten with the guy - we conservatives love exotics. Everyone likes to think we’re all old rich fat white guys, so when someone young or female or homosexual or poor or brown or yellow or artsy comes along who isn’t a Liberal, we get all excited. (”Look! A conservative with a turquoise Mohawk!”) And we like to be well-represented. Lord Taylor looks good, sounds good, and he’s charming and calm. So when he smiles and says to the Muslim population in Britain to either “fit in or fly out,” he sounds perfectly reasonable. If Newt Gingrich said it - and it really wouldn’t sound all that different - people would call for his lynching.

It’s amusing that the ACLU has its shorts in a bunge over the random searches in the subway. I like Liberals who pull out quotes from our Founding Fathers (you know, those old rich fat white guys with slaves?) when they want to drive home a point about liberty.

The one I hear a lot lately comes from Ben Franklin. And it’s one of the quotes that appears occasionally on this site. You know - the one that says those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety?

I know what they’re trying to say, but we on the right know they’re full of sh*t. Liberals talk about liberty but if you live in a liberal area you’ll know there’s nothing that remotely resembles freedom. They love government regulation. There’s a little village nearby (we call it a suburb, they call it a village), and there’s a suburb (they call it things I won’t repeat here). The suburb happens to be one of the fastest growing, best run cities in the country. A well-run city is unusual in this state, but it’s a fact. The nearby village is charming and rural and overpriced and over-regulated. The state has speed laws, but they don’t apply to those passing through this village. You have to drive much slower here (not really a problem for me because I’m one of those annoying people who obeys the speed limit) because there are coyotes who have a right to live in the village. (Pets, be on the alert! Where are your rights?) Anyway, this village has a whole set of rules. Ex-Californians, fleeing the rules they created in California, have come here and set up a whole new batch. Go figure.

If I had a little time and a lotta dollars I’d fly to new York for a slab of Carnegie Deli cheesecake. And if one of New York’s finest wanted to look in my bag, I’d oblige. When I’d go to Candlestick Park to see the Cubs and Giants play, I’d have to open my purse. When I’d go to a concert, I’d have to open my purse. And what did I learn from this? I learned to carry a smaller purse. No one asks to look inside because it appears that I can’t put anything in there besides a wallet, checkbook, pen, keys, and lip gloss. Glass bottles? Nail bomb? No way - no room. Let’s all just trim down on our daily baggage and relax a little, okay?

But I do see the irony. Here we are pushing the idea of freedom on other people and we’re limiting our own. I say end the searches and let citizens blow up freely. Then when someone does blow up a train full of people, their relatives have the freedom to sue the officers who didn’t look in the backpacks and satchels.

When I think of all the things I cannot do, I wonder about the freedoms I do have. I think I need to look at Libertarianism again. When are they going to come up with an interesting 2008 candidate? It might be, I’m afraid, before the Republicans find one…

In Frankfurt An Der Oder, Germany, a woman has been arrested for DWD. Driving while drunk? No, delivering while drunk. Pizzas? No, babies. Police, I guess, had suspected a problem because they’d found nine tiny bodies buried in flower pots and in a fish tank filled with soil in a village near the Polish border. The 39-year-old woman, arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, admitted that she hadn’t wanted the children. That she knew. The part that was fuzzy was how they died. It appears the infants were born between 1988 and 1999. In at least seven of the nine cases, the woman remembers putting a “covering” over the child. And that’s all she can remember because then she’d pass out drunk. When she’d wake up the baby had been buried and then she’d go have another cocktail.

Locals are trying to come up with a reason to explain the grisly story. Her husband was domineering and they had marital difficulties (obviously nothing so difficult that it kept them from having sex and conceiving nine children in one decade). But there’s evidence that he was unhappy about all the pregnancies. (Ever hear of contraception? Even good Catholics have ways to avoid pregnancy.) Also blamed is politics. The woman lives in a low-rent apartment in squalid conditions. Now there are allegations that the former Communist regime created an atmosphere of violence and squalor in eastern Germany and she and her dead babies are merely a by-product. It’s the government’s fault.

Anyway, the police haven’t yet determined how the children died, and the suspect hasn’t been much help. Ish all a blur. Jush a blur.

And that’s just one way a woman can kill her child. Another way, as we have discussed before, is to become romantically involved with a sexual predator. In this case, the little girl wasn’t murdered, but it’s the same old story. The mother was lonely. She met him in church. He seemed nice. But quiet. He liked children. He moved in immediately. Then the girl disappeared. Hmmmm.

She has since been reunited with her (stupid) mother after being found in Mexico with the pervert who had been shacking up with mom. I’ve said it before. Mothers can’t date. And if they do, no sleepovers. Dinner and a movie, a trip to the zoo, intense background checks, and supervision when he’s with the kids.

Sorry - no life for you! You’re not a swinging single - you’re a mother. A parent. Someone in this relationship has to be the responsible adult, and that’s you! If you don’t like that idea, why did you breed?

First question for mothers is this. Put vanity aside for one freaking moment and ask yourself the hard question. “I’ve got kids. Why does this guy want me when he could find an unencumbered single woman?” If the answer is that the guy genuinely wants to take on the responsibility of a family, fine. But until that can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, it might be better to assume that your kids are at risk.

But try to tell that to a woman who’s not thinking with her brain. They arrest women for leaving their kids in hot cars or alone at home. When are they going to start arresting them for subjecting their kids to abusive boyfriends?

John Bolton has been appointed U.N. ambassador. Liberals are upset because they think he isn’t nice enough to hold the position. He has been known to yell at people. He lacks diplomacy. Republicans are upset because they don’t want to support someone the Liberals dislike because they don’t want to be accused of not being nice. Nice is important to Liberals. Fidel Castro is nice. Newt Gingrich is mean. Why can’t everyone be nice?

Charles Krauthammer (Have I mentioned lately how much I adore this man? He wrote an essay about his dog Chester that I’ll cherish forever.) says you could put Winston Churchill in the U.N. and he’d fail. He might have a point. It’s a corrupt system and I don’t envy Mr. Bolton. I just want to see him kick some ass.

And now permit me to offer passages from Mr. Krauthammer’s essay. From 2003:

“The way I see it, dogs had this big meeting, oh, maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting — an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that’s when they decided that humans were the up-and-coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest….

I must admit that I’ve been slow to warm to dogs. I grew up in a non-pet-friendly home. Dogs do not figure prominently in Jewish-immigrant households. My father was not very high on pets. He wasn’t hostile. He just saw them as superfluous, an encumbrance. When the Cossacks are chasing you around Europe, you need to travel light. (This, by the way, is why Europe produced far more Jewish violinists than pianists. Try packing a piano.)

…My introduction to the wonder of dogs came from my wife Robyn. She’s Australian. And Australia, as lovingly recounted in Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, has the craziest, wildest, deadliest, meanest animals on the planet. In a place where every spider and squid can take you down faster than a sucker-punched boxer, you cherish niceness in the animal kingdom. And they don’t come nicer than dogs…

When our son Daniel turned 10, he wanted a dog of his own. I was against it, using arguments borrowed from seminars on nuclear nonproliferation. It was hopeless. One giant “Please, Dad,” and I caved completely. Robyn went out to Winchester, Va., found a litter of black Labs and brought home Chester.

Chester is what psychiatrists mean when they talk about unconditional love. Unbridled is more like it. Come into our house, and he was so happy to see you, he would knock you over. (Deliverymen learned to leave things at the front door.)

…But it was Chester, who dispensed affection as unreflectively as he breathed, who got me thinking about this long-ago pact between humans and dogs. Cat lovers and the pet averse will just roll their eyes at such dogophilia. I can’t help it. Chester was always at your foot or your hand, waiting to be petted and stroked, played with and talked to. His beautiful blocky head, his wonderful overgrown puppy’s body, his baritone bark filled every corner of house and heart.

Then last month, at the tender age of 8, he died quite suddenly. The long, slobbering, slothful decline we had been looking forward to was not to be. When told the news, a young friend who was a regular victim of Chester’s lunging love-bombs said mournfully, “He was the sweetest creature I ever saw. He’s the only dog I ever saw kiss a cat.”

Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal, indeed, deeply human to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision — a creature — of the purest sweetness?”

Ah…now that’s nice. Thank you, Charles, again.