Now, that’s not such a problem, really. I mean, it is and it isn’t. It is, because we’ve essentially hooked our economy basket to a big hot-air balloon and launched ourselves over the cliff. The discovery that there’s nothing in the balloon but air is one thing, but if we can’t keep that air hot, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

On the other hand, the sudden discovery that the houses that were sold for $500,000 aren’t worth half a million dollars, and were never actually worth half a million dollars in the sense that the person who bought the house didn’t have half a million dollars and couldn’t have borrowed the money to buy it if the banks hadn’t been bugnuts crazy, well, the house is still there, the roof still keeps the rain off your head, the deck is still sunny and the windows are still double-glazed. There’s a sense of wealth that doesn’t have much to do with money, and that stuff is mostly still around.

I found Paul Krugman’s mention of Two Kinds of Problem convincing. The problem that I care about the most—people losing their houses, their jobs, and their health insurance, their social security, if you don’t mind my calling it that—is bad, but not the sort of thing we have to address over the weekend. In fact, it’s probably not a good idea to address that sort of thing with any fundamental policy changes four weeks before an election. On the other hand, the financial crisis, which indirectly affects all that stuff I actually care about, is the sort of thing that we really do risk chaos if we lose our moment, and that moment may be this weekend. Or last weekend.

There’s another problem, which is how the fuck did we let ourselves get into this mess, but sadly, answering that doesn’t get us much closer to getting us out of it. I’ll just say that there was a nice little NPR story this morning about Bank-to-Bank loans, and all I could think of was that in corporate capitalism, the fact that the whole system is dependent on short-term loans of billions of dollars from one bank to another is considered a feature.

Corporate capitalism is some fucked-up shit, ain’t it?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Anyway, Strange Angels came out in 1989, when I was a sophomore, and my roommate bought it (on CD!) and we listened to it a lot. I mean, a lot. It’s a terrific album, just taken as a pop album. I mean, for a pop album it’s a bit arty, but it’s no artier than, say, Remain in Light. There are melodies, and the songs are more or less the length of songs, at least within the college alternative music sense of songs, where four or five minutes seems like a perfectly reasonable song length.

“Monkey’s Paw” is a fantastic song riffing off the old story and plastic surgery. “The Day the Devil” is a fantastic song about, well, the day the Devil comes to get you. “Beautiful Red Dress” is probably the best pop song there is about menstruation, and “Hiawatha” is probably the best pop song there is about Longfellow poetry. But my favorite, for some reason, is “Baby Doll”, which is about the relationships between people and their brains.

I don’t know about your brain, she says, but mine is really… bossy. It’s bossy, but also condescending, and definitely male. Baby Doll, he calls her, and he interested in what he wants, and not particularly interested in what she wants. The offhand manner in which he comes to her assistance in the letter-writing. The wrinkled little scraps of paper with insulting comments. And striking closest for me is the way that her brain goes away and comes back, without warning, without sticking to a schedule.

And it’s danceable. Well, funkable. The beat is driving, with just a tad of swing and odd sounding percussion like synapses snapping. Yes, eighties synthesizer.

Oh, one more thing: When she says Do you mean… George?, she’s referring to Our Only President’s father. At some point in 2001, I must have heard the song and griped about how it came back. Nice to think that soon we will have a President with a different name.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Just wanted to share the news.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Anyway, the thing that really stood out for me was John McCain’s hectoring insistence that he knows everything.

And we’ve got to give some trust and confidence back to America. I know how to do that, my friends. And it’s my proposal, it’s not Senator Obama’s proposal, it’s not President Bush’s proposal. But I know how to get America working again, restore our economy and take care of working Americans. Thank you.

Twice there.

You’re going to be examining our proposals tonight and in the future, and energy independence is a way to do that, is one of them. And drilling offshore and nuclear power are two vital elements of that. And I’ve been supporting those and I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas.

That’s three.

We’re going to have to sit down across the table, Republican and Democrat, as we did in 1983 between Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. I know how to do that.

Four.

Look, I—I was on Navy ships that had nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is safe, and it’s clean, and it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. And—and I know that we can reprocess the spent nuclear fuel.

Five.

By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth.

I’m not going to count that one, although I probably should; it isn’t a claim of special knowledge like the others, but it does convey the omniscience that was getting up my nose.

So you have to temper your decisions with the ability to beneficially affect the situation and realize you’re sending America’s most precious asset, American blood, into harm’s way. And, again, I know those situations. I’ve been in them all my life.

Six.

But the point is that I know how to handle these crises. And Senator Obama, by saying that he would attack Pakistan, look at the context of his words. I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him. I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it.

Three more. That’s nine, all before the pseudo-zen question of what he doesn’t know, which of course brings out all the stuff he does know, like, everything.

I know what it’s like in dark times. I know what it’s like to have to fight to keep one’s hope going through difficult times. I know what it’s like to rely on others for support and courage and love in tough times. I know what it’s like to have your comrades reach out to you and your neighbors and your fellow citizens and pick you up and put you back in the fight.

This might be rhetorically convincing if, in fact, Senator McCain actually knew some stuff. The idea that he knows how to fix the economy is preposterous. The idea that he knows how to ‘get’ Osaba bin Laden is not only preposterous but, coupled with his obvious refusal to share that knowledge with Our Only President, offensive. The idea that he knows anything at all about the technical aspects of nuclear power is beyond preposterous, and the idea that he knows it because he has been on nuclear powered submarines is like claiming you know something about international relations because you live near an international border. Or, I suppose, claiming you know how to win wars because you were once taken prisoner in one.

But the connection I made in my own imagination, actually, was with the middle-aged middle manager who strides to the copy machine, shouldering the secretary out of the way, saying “I know how to make copies!” In my office experience, that ends with a paper jam, and sometimes with a call to the service guy.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

And an obvious lie. I mean, aside from everything else, it isn’t even plausible that anybody came up with all the pork-barrel crap in that bill between the House vote and the Senate vote. Seriously, is it within the realm of imagination that a tax break for children’s wooden arrows was negotiated with the Senators from Oregon and inserted into the bill in order to get their votes? And if it was, why did they only get one Senator to vote yes? Was the other Senator holding out for another ten bucks an arrow?

No, look. What happened was this: it is blatantly unconstitutional for the Senate to pass a financial rescue plan that hasn’t already passed the House. All money bills must start in the House. That’s the rule. But the House wouldn’t pass it, and the Senate would. So they cheated.

They took the hundred billion dollars in tax breaks that they already had sitting there and stapled the seven hundred billion dollars onto the back of it, and pretended that it meant that it wasn’t a new bill at all, just a little change in the old one. That’s pretty sleazy. And of course as a result instead of the tax break stuff getting passed on its own, or getting rejected, it was held hostage to the so-called rescue plan (one of those interesting grammatical structures in that it wasn’t a rescue, and it wasn’t a plan, but it sure was a rescue plan) so that anybody who wanted to vote for the pork-barrel stuff had to vote for the plan, and veezy verzy. That’s pretty sleazy, too. And yes, the Senate did just happen to have sitting around a bill for hundred billion dollars in tax breaks for exporters of wooden arrows for toy bows and other worthwhile causes, just in case some controversial bill or other needed to be attached to something nice and porky. That’s pretty sleazy as well. But it’s how the Senate works, and none of it’s a particular surprise.

And I’d also like to say this: if this business of “larding up” the seven hundred billion dollar pork roast is that contemptible, surely the two groups who escape such contempt are (a) Representatives who voted for the bill without the added lard, and (2) Representatives who voted against the bill with the added lard. In other words, there are about twenty people who could seriously be identified as having voted to pass the bill because of the sweeteners. They mostly belong to one political Party, I can’t remember its name, something associated with unpopularity and failure, though.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Score: For each word on the list, YHB has in mind one and only one song that contains the word. Gentle Readers (as a team) get one Bragging Unit for each time y’all come up with the song I thought of, but you get two Bragging Units each time you come up with a song I didn’t think of. Up to a maximum of five Bragging Units per word. YHB gets two Bragging Units for having come up with the list. For every word on the list that y’all blank on, I get two more Bragging Units. For any word that y’all can’t come up with any other song than the one I had in mind, I get one Braggin Unit. Any Gentle Reader who posts his or her own list gets two Bragging Units. Jed gets two Bragging Units for having come up with the game. Any Gentle Reader who posts for the first time with a guess gets one extra Bragging Unit. Any Gentle Reader who is able to identify an instance where YHB has screwed up the lyrics again gets one Bragging Unit.

MFQ Rules: Don’t look stuff up and then post it. You don’t have to know the name of the song, but you have to be able to sing (or in this case type) a chunk of the lyric containing the word. It’s better if you sing that chunk of lyric out loud, though, whilst typing. Eight words is the canonical minimum chunk for the Encore parlor game. If you get the lyrics wrong from memory (as I did four of my guesses over yonder), there will be Scorn and Derision, but not so bad as if you looked the lyric up before posting. Don’t just make up shit up, please, and if you do, make it worthwhile. Within that construct, I’m going to rule that songs written by Gentle Readers are not eligible, even if you realio trulio wrote a song with that word in the lyric five years ago. I mean, if you did, let me know, because that’s a whole separate set of Bragging Units. All the songs are primarily in the English Language; no score for translations and multilingual puns, except, you know, anyone who does something really clever gets one Bragging Unit and one S&D unit.

The List: I'll try to keep this up-to-date. If a word is in bold, nobody has come up with nothing. If a word is in italics, at least one Gentle Reader has come up with at least one song containing it. If a word is struck through, some Gentle Reader has come up with the song that YHB was thinking of. If a word is both italicized and struck through, then y'all have maxed out the five BUs available.

• astonished
• captivate
• ghettology
• Jeddah
• laceration
• monkish
• Occidental
• parquet
• revenue
• Sorbonne
• yardstick
• zooming
• bathing
• distributor
• elevation
• housewife
• ichthyosaur
• kindling
• narwhal
• quintessence
• tax-deductible
• unemployment
• vichysoisse
• wheelchair
• X-Files

At the end of the game, we can all take our Bragging Units and exchange them for valuable… er… Look! Isn’t that John McCain over there?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/vardibidian/2008/10/07/11520.html http://www.kith.org/journals/vardibidian/2008/10/07/11520.html Music Music Music Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:17:50 -0500 Gentle Readers have undoubtedly been waiting for me to blather on again about the candidates for President and the people with whom they surround themselves. What? No? Where’d everybody go?

Perhaps y’all are headed over to Congressional Quarterly’s site, where you can play with their Cabinet Maker. The link there is to the Republican version, which is the one I found really interesting. After all, Barack Obama is running as a Democrat; for all his post-partisan rhetoric, all the stars and hacks of the Democratic Party are available to him. Not so the Maverick. One consequent of actually betraying your party over and over again is that somehow the bench of people on your side gets mighty thin. And then there’s the fact that Our Only President has surrounded himself with a secretive cabal of incompetents and crooks, and that he and the Republicans in the Legislature are so tremendously unpopular because of all their failures. Anybody he picks from that crowd is tainted with the stink of mixed metaphor failure and unpopularity. And yet, who else is there?

So when the CQ reporters cadged together a Top Three for each seat, for five out of the 14 seats they had to include the current occupant in their list. Now that’s change we can believe in.

And can we talk a little about the fact that James Woolsey is on their Top Three for both Secretary of State and Secretary of Energy? No? How about that James Woolsey is clearly the best of the three for State? Seriously, the other two are Joe Lieberman (Asshole-CT) and, believe it or not, John D. Negroponte. Negroponte, Woolsey, Lieberman. Can somebody ask John McCain to comment on that?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

I read a ton of Mr. Vonnegut’s stuff when I was in high school, and perhaps in college as well. Loved it. It was among the first stuff I read to be merciless in calling much of the world’s society bullshit, to say that the ideals we proclaimed were not the ones we lived by, and that the world could be set up on entirely different principles than it is and be no less virtuous and ethical. As I got older, I liked his stuff less well. It’s still funny stuff, and I enjoy the structural wildness more than I probably did as a teenager, but I have found that much of society’s bullshit is not, in fact, bullshit, and that a merciless bullshit-caller is not necessarily wiser than a deluded conformist.

Part of that is connected with my adult choice to believe in the Divine, and to connect myself with my religious tradition. I appreciate the ridiculousness of that choice, and of much of the tradition, and yet I made it because there is more to it than the ridiculousness. By doing so, I let myself in for Mr. Vonnegut’s contempt. It’s easier to read his stuff when you are going through an atheist period. I suspect that for people who go through their atheist period and come out atheists, his stuff is still better when they are going through their atheist periods. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think everyone should probably go through an atheist period, and that reading Kurt Vonnegut books to spark that period or make it brighter is a pretty good thing, actually.

I suppose I don’t mean that everyone should go through an atheist period, in the sense that people who don’t go through an atheist period are in worse shape for some reason. But I think an atheist period is a good experience for a person to have been through; it prepares you to think about religion seriously. A passionately anti-clerical but theistic period might do the same thing, I suppose. Hard to compare notes.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Then, last night, there was the following exchange:

BIDEN: Yes, well, you know, until two weeks ago—it was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o’clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George—we’ve made great economic progress under George Bush’s policies. Nine o’clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o’clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn’t make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he’s out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago.

IFILL: Gov. Palin, you may respond.

PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.

Now, is the disagreement about fundamentals the same as the one about preconditions? In both cases, the candidate said something that was widely understood to be a gaffe, or at least a statement worth mocking. In both cases, the candidate now claims that the word he used is now being misunderstood by the mockers. So is it the same?

I honestly don’t know. I am inclined to think that they aren’t. I have a sense that the term precondition in the context of diplomacy did have the meaning that Barack Obama now claims. The other interpretation requires the interpreter to believe that Barack Obama is has a policy that doesn’t jibe with his written policies, nor with common sense. But perhaps that interpretation only requires it to have been a misstatement, or perhaps the sort of slip that reveals a deeper disorientation with the topic. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be charitable. I like the man.

On the other side, I don’t actually know what the fundamentals of the economy are. The GDP? The labor market? Productivity? Per capita savings and debt? I don’t think there’s any wide agreement about the term. So in that sense, when John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, he wasn’t really committing himself to any actual meaning that could be empirically checked. Maybe he did mean what Sarah Palin says he meant. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be uncharitable. I don’t like the man.

See, I think there’s a difference, and here’s what I think it is: If you accept Barack Obama’s explanation after the fact, it means something. It’s a policy you can agree with or disagree with, and it is connected with his other foreign policy positions. If you accept John McCain’s explanation (via his running mate) after the fact, it means nothing.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

With the warning that I have no idea if these are even remotely accurate, here’s Sarah Palin’s:

First thing you spot, I hope, is John McCain. Then there’s the idiosyncrasies of her speech patterns: also, going, just, know. The stuff she wanted to get across: America/American/Americans, energy, can, will. Then it gets muddy.

Now, here’s Joe Biden’s side:

What jumps out? John McCain. And then Barack Obama. Then going and said, which I assume is his own speech pattern coming into play, and then what do you see? one, people, get, change, policy, know, voted, Afghanistan, billion. I can’t think either Sen. Obama or Sen. Biden would be at all disappointed in that picture.

Mostly, though, I’m impressed by his restraint. He was quite right to be restrained, partially because he doesn’t want to be perceived as picking on his opponent, but mostly because his side is winning and that’s the winning side’s strategy. Still, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. When Gov. Palin said

Up there in Alaska, what we have done is, with bipartisan efforts, is work together and, again, not caring who gets the credit for what, as we accomplish things up there. And that’s been just a part of the operation that I wanted to participate in. And that’s what we’re going to do in Washington, D.C., also, bring in both sides together. John McCain is known for doing that, also, in order to get the work done for the American people.

YHB would have said something like Really? Does anybody in Alaska think you worked well with bipartisan efforts? ’Cos that’s not what I’m hearing.

And when Gov. Palin said

Well, the nice thing about running with John McCain is I can assure you he doesn’t tell one thing to one group and then turns around and tells something else to another group…

YHB wouldn’t have been able to help saying something like You mean, except David Letterman, right?

And it would not have helped Sen. Obama at all.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

The book is far too heavy. If one of the priests had magic powers, it would be a trilogy. Seriously. Much too much book. I know part of the point of the book is its sprawl, although it covers only a few decades and despite a few scenes in France and Italy and in London and some other port town, it mostly confines itself to the interactions of a handful of people in one area of England. Those people come back into contact with each other again and again in different ways, as each takes on different roles in the community. Sadly, it all feels a bit artificial: one character is a single woman in a bourgeois family, then a businesswoman, then an accused heretic, a nun, a physician, an Abbess, and then mayor of a medium sized town. Another is a poor landless descendant of minor nobility, then a squire, then a soldier, a knight, a junior officer in a war, lord of a minor manor, a substantial lord, and then Earl. That’s a fairly logical progression, and it happens with lots of incident (sex and violence, usually both together), but it feels artificial, as if the promotions are imposed so that we can learn something new about the economy of the fourteenth century.

On the other hand, we do learn an awful lot about the economy and politics of the fourteenth century. Mr. Follett does it very well, binding the temporary goals of his characters to the limitations of their political and economic situation. Often those limitations overwhelm his characters, which is depressing but realistic. On the other hand, often his characters unrealistically break through those limitations, which is uplifting and fun. Save the town from the plague! Build the highest tower in England! Invent a new loom and dying process! Write a bestselling healthcare book! Grow valuable herbs in your spare time and make money from home!

Somehow, it all feels more forced than the last one. Also, where in the last one, Mr. Follett really enjoyed getting into the details of artistic movements and so on, the degenerate fourteenth century stuff in this one quite rightly gets short shrift. Our artisan decides to carve something different on a door, and does, and it pisses off the old guard, but there’s no real sense of it being part of a movement. He goes to Florence and becomes a wealthy architect and comes back all continental and educated, but we don’t get lovingly detailed description of what he learns while he’s away, because, frankly, who cares? It’s all downhill after the pointy arch anyway.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Chris Difford writes some lyrics about being married and on tour with zillions of available groupies. It’s a melancholy song, full of lists, the narrator seeming to focus on listing whatever he sees in an attempt to fill his mind with banal images so that he doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. Not very pop. Glenn Tillbrook likes the lyrics but can’t come up with a melody. Eventually he gets something, but isn’t happy with the sound of it.

The recording for the new album isn’t going well. They’ve got a new keyboardist, Paul Carrack, and they’ve got Dave Edmunds producing, and it is going very badly. So they ditch him and get Elvis Costello to produce. He takes over, rearranges the song to sound more R&B, and not only demands that Mr. Carrack take the lead vocals (pissing off Mr. Tillbrook), but takes a good chunk of the vocals himself.

And, somehow, it works.

Although the video is one of the great examples of bad 80s music videos in the category band pretends to be performing in concert whilst lip-synching to the studio recording. It’s particularly egregious due to (a) the sulkiness of the band members as they lip-synch to Mr. Costello’s vocals, and (2) the inexplicable presence of three shimmying women who at first appear to be backup singers, but do not actually sing (or lip-synch) the backup vocals at all. At one point, they appear to be sitting down and having a rest. Well, all that shimmying must take it out of a girl.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Anyway, I wanted to talk a trifle about some of the Rosh Hashanah prayers. But before I begin on those seems like an appropriate place to talk about adonai, s’fatai tiftach, ufi yagid t’hilatecha, a prefatory phrase that is slipped in front of the Amidah. I don’t think it was ever said out loud when I was growing up in a conservative shul. When I was in Virginia, the Rabbi would chant it in a quick loping tone while those of the congregation that tended to do that sort of thing would mumble it underneath and the rest would listen. I didn’t know that it has become popular, at least among the Reform synagogues, to make an actual song out of it. I suspect that it’s a very old idea, and that my Conservative shul didn’t do the undignified chasidic business of singing before the Amidah as a reaction, but I don’t really know.

Our cantor has taught the kids a lovely nigun for it. TSOR didn’t turn up the tune for y’all’s listening pleasure, which means you won’t get a sense of it. For those who will be able to guess (and any Gentle Reader who knows the tune from his or her own shul please let me know) something close to the tune from this, it goes: ya-la-la-la-la-la-la-la adonai, ya-la-la-la-la s’fatai tiftach, ya-la-la-la-la ufi yagid, ufi yagid t’hilateh-eh-cha-ah, ya-la-la-la-la-la-la-la adonai… and so on, around and around. I love it as a separate prayer, as a swaying ecstatic song. The words are simple: Divine, open my lips, so that my mouth can declare your glory.

It’s a prayer of supplication, asking for the ability to pray in praise. Usually in such prayers we pray for strength or courage or patience, things that will help us in our daily lives. Or we ask for tangible things, our daily bread or a pony. I recently found out that one common Yiddish prayer said over the Shabbat candles included a petition for the family to prosper enough that the men wouldn’t have to profane the Shabbat by working; that struck home, of course, because YHB works on Saturday. But this is more direct: Give me the ability to praise the Divine. And where should such an ability come from? Where else but from the Divine directly?

I find myself singing that tune over and over again. Partially because it’s just an earworm, of course; ya-la-la-la-la-la-la-la adonai, ya-la-la-la-s’fatai tiftach. But also as a prayer for myself and for Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe.

Hm. And just as I am using it as its own prayer, rather than as a lead-in to the Amidah, evidently I’ve made this its own note, rather than as a lead-in to talk about the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. Which seems right.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian. ]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/vardibidian/2008/10/01/11505.html http://www.kith.org/journals/vardibidian/2008/10/01/11505.html Scripture Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:01:35 -0500 In a few hours now, it’ll be Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year. May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, Gentle Readers, for a good year, and a healthy year, and a sweet year. We could use one, couldn’t we?

It’s just beginning to be autumn here in central Connecticut. The trees are mostly green in my leafy town, so the dozen or so that have begun to show fall colors stand out. One on Prospect with a lot of red, one on Arnoldale all orange, and the ones over by the athletic center are all yellow. Mostly, though, it’s green, green, green—but not for long.

The days are getting shorter, too. We’ve passed the equinox; we passed below twelve hours of daylight last week. By Hallowe’en it’ll be down to ten and a half hours or so, and then we’ll be back on standard time and the sun will be down at quarter to five. The workday is still ending in daylight, but not for long.

Perhaps that’s why this Rosh Hashanah feels to YHB more like the winding up of the old year than the opening of the new one. The image that we play with for this holiday of the Book of Life (on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur, it is sealed) doesn’t usually deal with last year’s volume. We’re getting to the last few words, I imagine, of whatever was written for us this last year. Was it a sweet year? A healthy year?

We do, traditionally, look back on the year, for the purpose of arguing our case before the Heavenly Judge, and we run around apologizing to everybody for whatever harms we may have occasioned, for our sins to each other of omission and commission. We forgive each other, more or less sincerely, hoping to be forgiven ourselves, more or less sincerely. That whole human forgiveness thing has to come first, before Divine forgiveness, both in traditional rabbinic teaching and modern psychological understanding. But that backwards look is largely unconnected to the Book. We don’t submit a subpoena to have the Book admitted in evidence. Perhaps because we feel it wouldn’t on the whole do our cause much good.

Anyway.

Gentle Readers, I do hope you forgive me for my various failings, both as Vardibidian and (as many of you know me) in the Real World.

I suppose this would be a good holiday season to talk about the traditional Mishnaic financial structure, under which it is absolutely forbidden to charge interest on loans, and similarly forbidden to lend money (or lease real property) for longer than seven years. Such rules, even if routinely broken as we can assume them to be, would clearly have prevented the modern world entirely, not just its sudden dissolution this month.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

John McCain: What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a stinking corpse, and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments. This is dangerous. It isn’t just naive; it’s dangerous. And so we just have a fundamental difference of opinion. Blah, blah, blah. And we ought to go back to a little bit of Ronald Reagan’s "trust, but verify," and certainly not sit down across the table from—without precondition, as Senator Obama said he did twice, I mean, it’s just dangerous.

YHB pretending to be Barack Obama: John, I’m sorry, but it seems like you think that when I say I won’t demand preconditions for negotiations, I mean I’ll have an open door and any maniac or tin-pot dictator can just waltz in, stand on my desk and give a speech on worldwide satellite TV. That’s just wrong. That’s not my policy. And if you misunderstood it, well, I need to take responsibility for that and fix it. So I’d like to explain what my policy will be, and how it’s different from the Bush policy you’ve been supporting for eight years. And then, John, I’d like you to respond to my actual policy, not to whatever you’re talking about. All right?

John McCain: You said without preconditions! No backsies!

YHB pretending to be Barack Obama: Here’s the Bush policy, John. If we want some concession from somebody—we want Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program, we want Russia to recognize the territorial sovereignty of the Ukraine and Georgia, we want a trade deal or cooperation of any kind with another nation— President Bush has been demanding all those concessions as a precondition for negotiation. In other words, we won’t negotiate with Iran about their nuclear weapons program unless they give up their program before we even start!

Now, that would be a great policy. If it worked. If we got everything we wanted before we even sat down at the table, that would be great. And if it worked, then sure, I would support it. But it doesn’t. It didn’t work with North Korea—and even George W. Bush had to agree to come to the table eventually—it didn’t work with Iran, it hasn’t worked with Russia. It doesn’t work. People will not give up all their bargaining chips as a precondition of bargaining.

My policy is this: My State Department will engage with other countries at all levels. I will welcome chances to negotiate for what we want. And I will do that without preconditions for that negotiation. The Bush policy, which you’ve been supporting for eight years, is to demand those preconditions. Mine is, simply, not to. That’s what I’ve been talking about, and that’s what I would like to hear you respond to.

John McCainBut you said no preconditions! It’s dangerous! Blah, blah, blah.

…anyway, it’s not like John McCain would have broken down and wept, or that he would have stopped claiming that Barack Obama’s first day in office would involve tea with Hitler, Stalin and Peter the Hermit. But people who didn’t know what the hell either one was talking about might get the sense that (a) John McCain is lying, and (2) Barack Obama does know what the hell he’s talking about.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.