Bienvenido

It's the shoes that will give him away. Funny how that's always the case. Manage to come up with jeans and a t-shirt, and you think you'd be set, ready to blend in and just be a kid, just some kid, here in this high school that's full of 'em, at least while you walk down the halls. But it's always the shoes that say, "Hi, I am an exchange student from Germany," or, today, "I am a refugee from Honduras, and I have no idea what this place is, or what I am really doing here," even before, as the saying goes, the mouth opens to remove all doubt. Black dress shoes, by the way, from some Sunday long past.

Before this student arrived today, I admit to wishing he wouldn't. Flipping through his file--indeed, he had one, from the Department of Homeland Security, even--I willed him to someone better equipped, but my influence with the universe is minimal. Either that or whomever's in charge (of the universe, that is) just has too wicked a sense of humor. Too bad the joke's going to be on my new Honduran friend. Who has, best I can tell and according to his brother, never been to school before. In any language. Ever.

Doesn't mean he's not smart. Doesn't mean he's not capable. But dios mio. I so do not have the time. But that's not his fault, and, regardless, all I can do is all I can do. Which, tomorrow, first thing, will have to include a little talk between the new boy and me with the help of one of my dozens of interpreters. I've got some Spanish, but we need to get this right, and it's something those other kids know absolutely. American high school lesson number one: this place is neither what you want or need, not even remotely, but Ms. P. will try.

Help wanted?

If it weren't for the cell phone and department store ads, there'd be no Sunday paper at all, so when I saw it, I figured this photo (minus the bald guy) must be for Macy's, until I saw the text:

GREAT JOBS. AMAZING BENEFITS.
NOW HIRING.

Um, what? I mean, I know slightly drunk girls are always in demand, but this ad wasn't even in the Sports section, where the naked bars advertise. Besides, those places would never spring for three-fourths of a page, and I suspect they have no need. Instead, this turned out to be an ad from the latest riverfront casino, the one they're building across from the Ed Jones dome as part of plan number 1029 to rescue downtown.

Now, I know I'm not the target audience (not that I'm sure who that is), but what exactly is this ad saying? Get a job here, and you'll get to touch random men? Or, conversely, get a job here, and random women will touch you? Or, get a job, and stand around and not work? Maybe they're supposed to be dancing. The small print does say it's "a place that blurs the line between work and play." I bet. I almost have to give them credit for the full-on fantasy mode; maybe that's part of the pre-employment test. If you can will yourself to believe that our clientele will look anything remotely like this, well, then, welcome aboard!

somebody's mom

"Hi, this is Julie. I mean, Willow's mother."

I kind of feel like I should get credit for not just hanging up the phone. Don't get me wrong: I know that in certain circles I'm "Madison's mom," and I'm glad to be, proud to be, even, and given my admitted thing with names, it's nice to have a fall-back position. But to self-correct away from one's own, actual grown-up name? Give me a break. Oh, well. I know who you are, Julie, but it's not like we'd ever be pals.

For one thing, she's a Girl Scout leader, and I'm sure my reputation there is of big time slacker, one who drops off and scoots instead of hovers, but aren't scouts all about independence and accomplishment? I mean, 90 minutes is 90 minutes. And it's probably good for the girl, too.


Now that the girl is ten, I'm deep into these mom years, living our lives in concentric circles. Oh, I'm still me, and that's probably maintained more easily given that she's an only, but I make no apologies, despite the sideways glances of all the professional mothers out there. I'm still a mom. And I still have a few mom-friends, women I only know because our girls know each other. Life's just better when I like some of the people that my child compels me to spend so much time with, and it's good to have someone to easily doublecheck all the endless minutia .

This year I scanned her new class list as eagerly as the actual fifth-grader did, and, lucky for us, we both found what we were looking for in another mother-daughter pair. Oh, the daughter's name is not the first that my own child volunteers when asked to identify her best friend, but it's probably a close second, and we're working on it. They get along great, and so do her mom and I, though she's at home with four and I work with one. Compared to my non-mom friends, I don't yet know her particularly well, but we have the sense that we agree on what matters, and we laugh when we sit at softball or school.

The fact that, inspired by our family room decor, she just recited the 1980-81 Blues roster, complete with numbers, when she picked up her daughter just endeared her to me forever, but, she's also not nuts or unpredictable or a bigot like the current best friend's mom. Always a plus. And when we pick up the phone or send an e-mail to make plans or bum a ride to girl scouts or to see if the other can take one adorable and intelligent yet crazy-making child, we call ourselves by our names. I'm not sure if I should tell my daughter than she and Maddie will be friends for the next seven or eight years, or just let her figure it out for herself, but that is certainly my intention.

Haven't we all

"Over the past two and a half years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible."

--Alberto Gonzales, having a moment of clarity as he left the Justice Department today.

A Surge, and Then a Stab

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”

Near the top of his list was the promise that “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq’s G.D.P. and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn’t all that surprising, given this administration’s history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Mr. Bush declared Iran a member of the “axis of evil.”

No, what’s interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January — won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures, moving goal posts and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday night.

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that’s my interpretation of something that startled many people: Mr. Bush’s decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

Evel prevails!

Sure, "Big Brother 8" is only down to the final two, but my new hero -- Evel Dick Donato -- is in a can't-lose situation. If his formerly estranged daughter, Daniele, doesn't walk off with the half-mill prize, then he does. Either way, if he hasn't done enough to prove his worth to his snotty daughter, that's on her. I don't pretend to know them at all, but I do have some experience in familial dysfunction. $500,000 would heal a lot of wounds.

$500K

Fine a guy that much, and he might start showing up to work in an old, crappy sweatshirt.

Oh, right.

That's my girl

So my daughter's body has decided to leap into womanhood, despite the fact that she's not even ten and a half. Whether it's the hormones in the milk or a just something insistent in her DNA (she didn't get it from me), she has completed the puberty checklist in what seems like record time. And, oh, how she's grown. On the inside, thank baby Jesus, she's still a kid, not even a wanna-be 'tweener, but the contrast between what she looks like and what she is sometimes makes me think we're in some junior version of the movie Big, just without Tom Hanks.

Today turned out to be her mark-it-on-the-calendar-girl-you-are-a-woman-now day; she got her period--already!--and though she didn't want her mother, she wanted the dog-eared book she'd been reading over and over for the past year or so. By miraculous fluke of sick day timing, I could do that for her, so I did. By the time I got there, or because I was coming, she was fine. It was good to see that growing girl, so confident in those hallways (I'm almost never at her school), even if she had no use or time for the motherly words I'd come up with on the drive over.

But then we had our moment. She still hugs me, any time, anywhere, though she's too tall to fit under my chin--and I'm tallish myself--and when she did I noticed something.

"What's this?" I asked, fingering the stained neckline of the Supergirl t-shirt we found in the Junior department, now that nothing in the Girls' section fits.

"Huh, what?"

"Did you spill something at lunch?"

"Um, no. . . oh, wait. I know! I ran out of tissues. That's where I blew my nose!"

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Appearance is everything. Is that the message I carried out of my parents' home? As I stack up the papers and transparencies, workbooks and notes that have obscured the top of my desk since school began four weeks ago, I wonder. I carry the detritus of the last month across the room and throw it onto a cabinet shelf. At least my aide will have something to do on Friday, I muse. And the sub will have a clean desk to work from tomorrow. Because I'm not coming back, at least not for twenty-four hours.

Oh, it's legitimate. I have at least one doctor's appointment, maybe two, a full-blown migraine in progress despite the daily meds that should make that impossible, and 7.6 weeks of sick time at my disposal. I wouldn't feel guilty if I didn't realize I've brought it on myself. Do the right thing even if it kills ya: that's really what the younger me learned. I look at the classroom clock, read 7:30 for the second time that day, and wish some time management skills had been included in those life lessons.

As much as I am enjoying my job, as much as I'm glad to be here, what I'm doing is not really sustainable. It's not that I'm really working so hard--hell, it's not even midterm. But it takes a while to get home, to have a family and life, and then, suddenly, it's late. So very. Which feels just fine, given my own rhythms, but the alarm goes off at 4:45. You can see the problem here, can't you?

Normally, I'd just soldier on, but my brain called me on it this time, in front of my class, and then later, in front of some teachers. Aura, seizure, spell, whatever. Panic. Breakdown. Mortification. There's a word. You're overwhelmed, says my counselor friend. Ask for help. Oh, no. I think I can do it, really. I can. But first, I've just got to sleep.

ENG 101n

I'm terrible with names, as a rule. I don't mean to be; I just get so busy meeting the person that the next thing I know I'm muttering to myself behind my smile.

"Crap," I think, "I did it again." I don't even try to fake it. "I'm sorry. I'm Allison. I know you just said, but you are?"

But sometimes the names stick, along with the faces and stories that I carry around, so many people that I'll never forget, whoever they are.

I look at the picture and see the kid from Kenya who taught me about his tribe's weddings, the silent Japanese teenager who wrote about fish. The warmly vivacious woman from Zambia who had a little boy, a job in a grocery store, and a laugh I can hear even now. What's his name--I've almost got it, something with an N--from Turkey. I bet it would come back to me, but man, it's been so long. I see Olga the Russian doctor with the American husband and the plagiarized paper I stumbled upon in a textbook. It was the end of the semester, she knew how to write, and, sleep deprived and overworked, she couldn't come up with a reason not to do it. She may have been right. I see the the sweet girl from the United Arab Emirates and the most unlikely appellation: Melanie Rodrigues! Sometimes even I remember. Especially when it's so hard to forget.

We talked about it at the time, there in the Fall of 2001, how it would undoubtedly become even more complicated to be a guy from Pakistan named Muhammad in the United States of America. Whether being out in the middle of nowhere was in fact a plus; as I recall, the consensus was yes. In mid-September we wouldn't have been a class for very long, but he was already a favorite student: funny and bright and articulate, confident and charming without being overbearing--an engineer or a computer guy who'd put off English 101 until he couldn't any longer. Lucky timing for me; he helped make a good class better, and regardless I was just glad to have met him.

So I wonder, as every teacher does, how he's doing or what became of him. I hope the complications of his post-9/11 world were minor, whether he stayed here or went back home. I hope his talents gave him a visa and a choice. He was from Lahore, I know, where trucks have been known to explode. Given that I cannot ID him more specifically than as being Muhammad from Pakistan, it's safe to say I'll never know. He could be anywhere, even sharing a zip code with me. The world changed that day; I don't dispute that truism. But I also think the odds are--and do we really think of this?-- it changed for some of us more than others.

I hate homework

Am I smarter than a fifth grader? Who's to say; the one who lives in this house is plenty bright. I have, however, finished at least 18th grade, and to be honest I have no desire to even think about whatever the crap kind of homework they're assigning in the upper elementary these days. For one thing, I have my own lessons to do before the tardy bell rings, that being the catch of still occupying a classroom desk, even the big, disorganized one in the corner. If I were a burned out member of the social studies department with a semester's worth of worksheets at the ready, it'd be a different life, but alas and thank God, that's not my lot.

And, in a perfect world, neither would book reports made out of shoe boxes or coffee cans, video taped speeches, place mats about Africa, or hanging mobiles. My daughter's teacher, she's the queen of projects, and I just cringe at what awaits. The unnecessary drama, the pointless angst, the last minute runs to Target. A procrastinating perfectionist? Who'd have thought I'd have spawned one of those.

Ahem.

But, even without the psychological trials, the fodder for therapists and eventual memoirs, I do wish it would all go away, even on a normal night, when the assignment is Xeroxed and not diorama-ed. It's not that she needs much--at all--in the way of help or supervision. I just don't wanna: I'm spoiled. And I'm pretty sure this new-new math curriculum makes absolutely no sense at all. Lattice? Squeeze method? What?

But even when I do understand and am apparently happy to explain whatever has been hauled home in that backpack--my daughter seems to think that having a teacher for a mother gives her some kind of extra "in"; if she only knew--I still wish we could be spending our time doing something else, or even nothing else at all. She's not an over-scheduled kid, but she has an acting class at the Y, and an overactive girl scout troop, and a flute to practice, and a bible class with Grandma, and sometimes a kid needs time to relax, or time to put off 'til tomorrow what could be done today. Or at least her mom does. Maybe I should get her a blog.

Say it ain't so

It's true that he was a pitcher then, and a recuperating one at that. A doctor's signature did validate the prescription, and no anti-HGH rules were in effect. My heart breaks nonetheless.

I've been accused of being a baseball cynic, and sometimes that label rings true. Despite last October's miracle, there's only so much credit I've been willing to give a team that's struggled to find .500 in a division that nobody's seemed interested in winning. Mudville's always right around the bend. The last month has been something else, though, an exception to the doomed rule, mostly thanks to the kid in right field. "Feel-good" is the cliché no sports writer has been able to resist, and no thanks to the mental Mötley Crüe soundtrack it inspires, the adjective did fit. Witnessing Rick Ankiel's unlikely ascent back to the majors has been quite literally a joy; I don't remember enjoying any August game as much as the one I watched him play against the Dodgers. It was just so fun. Only yesterday I nearly posted his stats from this last home stand--capped by a 7 RBI rain-shortened game--just to marvel at them. And then today, when the dawn cracked, so did the dream.

I have no I told you sos, no I knew it all alongs. I did say, here and elsewhere, that I hoped that no pharmeceuticals were involved, but that wish was little more than reflex. I didn't really expect it would come to this, whatever this may prove to be. A blip on the radar gun. A harmless foul, deep into the stands. A runaway fastball to the gut.

Has this whole month been a sham? I don't think so, or at least can't bear to. Add an -e, though, and I'm your girl. For a shame it is at the very least that this sporting miracle now carries the tragic stink of cheat. His career will never quite be what it could have been, either for him or us, no matter how successful he may yet become. How sad. How reality-based. All I wanted, I've come to realize, was to watch, and to cheer, and to believe.

Double eviction night (squared)

Tonight’s double eviction on Big Brother 8 was well advertised (more on that later), but who knew I’d be in for a twofer when I headed for my son’s 9th grade football game in Iowa City.

While I was pleased, at least, that there was no admission charge, (though I had cash in pocket, just in case) I would gladly have paid West High parents to work the chains. Instead, we were given jersey-wearing West High sophomores who made up the most ill-equipped chain gang I’ve ever seen. These guys made the referees look competent – no small feat.

Anyway, I brought my work camera and opted to roam the sidelines shooting photos. The first three quarters weren’t very photogenic as the Warriors battled the Trojans to a 0-0 tie. The green-and-gold clad chain gain grew increasingly vocal – and partisan – as the game wore on.

The game ended with a fourth quarter flurry. West strikes first with a three-yard touchdown run. Extra point makes it 7-0 with maybe five minutes left. The Warriors answer with an eight-yard touchdown pass and take timeout before failing to convert an unimaginative two-point conversion attempt with two minutes left. West 7, Wash 6. West works the clock to :20 and, facing a fourth-and-five, opts to punt for the first time in the game.

You know the rest. The punt is blocked. Wash inherits the ball in striking distance. Center snap is fumbled, but the electrifying quarterback picks it up, scrambles, heaves a prayer into the end zone to the biggest hands-of-stone player on the team. Touchdown! Warriors win 12-7.

Meanwhile, two friends of the chain gang have joined their teammates on our sideline. I see them talking smack to our players – oh the profanity these days – and roaming our bench at will. Not surprisingly, they address our star player directly, and within arm’s reach.

Instinctively, I shoo them away, noting they have no business on our sideline. They suggest that they’re helping the chain gain, but we all know it’s not true, and they comply. That was before our first score.

As the play clock winds down, they become increasingly brazen to the point I have to shoo them away again, only this time they’re less threatened by the old man with the camera. Short of calling one of them a punk, I maintained my cool (thank you blood pressure meds) even as they asked me to take their picture. (In hindsight, that would have been good evidence to send along with my e-mail to the athletics director.)

A post-game meal at The Vine (not the neighborhood bar where I spent most of my student loans but the mega-sports-bar one on the strip) allowed us to rehash higher aspects of the game and watch Indianapolis and New Orleans kick of the NFL season on larger-than-life screens.

Then it was home for two weeks of Big Brother wrapped into a single episode (has the TIVO/DVR inventor won the Nobel Prize yet?). Finally, the pace quickens! “Someone’s going to have a panic attack,” I tell my wife, not sure if I mean Jameka, Eric or me.

In a made-for-reality-TV series of events, cheerleader Jessica and “America’s player” and oddball boyfriend Eric are sent packing – finally!, mercifully! (Given US voting history, I can’t believe CBS would leave it in our hands to decide such things as who he should kiss or vote to evict .)

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Woo, woo, woo!

The perfect job

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who'd pay $600 for a cell phone gets exactly what she deserves, especially if it falls into a puddle in the parking lot on the way out of the store. I'm not malicious--okay, maybe a teeny bit;schadenfreude is fun--but come on! It's a phone! Even if a pretty one.

Despite how attractive the products may be, I just don't relate to the iPhone fixation or any Apple mania. While there are three iPods in the house, including one with video, mine is the discontinued $29 Shuffle, a model so outmoded I'm surprised that Steve Jobs's Asian minions didn't scrape the logo off before they shipped it out. It's an item that this guy would have been thrilled to own a few years ago but horrified by today, and thus doesn't he--quoted here discussing today's surprise iPhone price drop-- have the absolutely perfect job? Perhaps someday he will cure himself.

"If they told me at the outset the iPhone would be $200 cheaper the next day, I would have thought about it for a second - and still bought it," said Andrew Brin, a 47-year-old addiction therapist in Los Angeles. "It was $600 and that was the price I was willing to pay for it."

No Counterfeit Bill

Add another story to Cedar Rapids' list of underdog athletes who took harder paths than most to get to the major leagues of their sports. Fredrick Jackson’s long and winding road to the National Football League came to a fairy-tale end Saturday, when his name was on the final 53-man roster of the Buffalo Bills.

Jackson, a 2003 Coe College graduate and two-time Iowa Conference MVP from Fort Worth, Texas, defied serious odds by advancing to the NFL as an undrafted free agent out of the NCAA’s Division III. He joins Carey Bender ’95, who showed up on Buffalo’s active roster for one game in 1996 and spent two years on the Bills’ practice squad, as the only Coe graduates to advance to the NFL as players.

It didn’t hurt to have Marv Levy (Coe class of 1950) in their corner – as Buffalo’s coach when Bender was added to the team and as general manager when Jackson signed a free agent contract in 2006. But both players earned their NFL paychecks. (In Jackson’s case, the NFL minimum for a first-year player is $285,000. Not bad for a sociology major four years out of college.)

In 2004, Jackson began a two-year stint with the Sioux City Bandits of United Indoor Football. He was the league’s MVP in 2005 with 1,770 rushing yards, 442 receiving yards, 1,467 return yards and 53 touchdowns.

After signing with the Bills, Jackson was allocated to NFL Europe and led the Rhein Fire in rushing with 731 yards. He spent the 2006 season on the Bills’ practice squad.

This summer, Jackson led the Bills in four preseason games with 130 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 30 carries. He also led the team with 10 receptions for 142 yards. His five kick returns for 114 yards also led the Bills.

After making the most of his opportunities in Buffalo, other NFL teams took notice and it was clear the Bills could no longer hide him on their practice squad. A few other NFL clubs – including the Green Bay Packers – let Jackson's agent know they'd be interested in picking him up if he didn't make Buffalo's active roster.

The Bills’ cuts were announced shortly after the NFL’s 5 p.m. Saturday roster deadline, and Jackson’s name was not on the list. Instead, he was one of five running backs retained by Buffalo.

"It's definitely fulfilling," Jackson told buffalobills.com lead journalist Chris Brown. "It was a long road traveled and not the most common road traveled but it was definitely worth it to put in the work. I met a lot of great people along the way and I'm glad about the opportunity I'll have now."

Jackson first spoke to his mom by phone after getting word that he made the team. That was followed by phone calls to a host of family and friends. In a conversation with Coe Head Coach Erik Raeburn, Jackson was reportedly more interested in Saturday’s two-touchdown performance by junior cornerback, receiver and returner Tom Breitbach than his own great fortune.

Breitbach’s family all-but adopted Jackson and his twin brother, Patrick, while they were at Coe and those ties remain strong.

Those close to Coe are tickled pink about Jackson making the rare leap to the NFL, where fewer than 10 former DIII players are among the 1,700 on NFL rosters. But we knew then that he was special.

``He was completely unselfish when he was with us,” Raeburn told Gazette sports columnist Mike Hlas. “One game, we kind of used him as a decoy on a screen pass to the other side of the field to Matt Wycoff. One guy was about to make a tackle, but he got blindsided. Here was Freddie, getting down the field to make the block.''

One play is seared into the memory banks of my son and I. We were viewing from the press box when Coe ran Freddie on a sweep to the right into a sea of defenders. Though we knew he was capable of running over each and every one of them, he turned on a dime and reversed field before scoring from about 40 yards out.

That was 2002, Jackson’s senior year. He led the Kohawks to a 10-2 record, a share of the conference championship and a second round appearance in the playoffs. He was so talented, Coe went the entire season without so much as attempting a field goal. Coach knew his odds were better with Freddie.

``Now that he's in the NFL,'' Raeburn said, ``I think there's a lot of former Iowa Conference players who feel a little bit better about themselves after trying to chase him down.''

I’m sure thrilled to have had the opportunity to watch him play for two years. I wonder if Zach still has that autographed program.

Looking ahead

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is the withered arm of our government that's been so busy lately sending out recall notices for the entire inventory of Toys "R" Us. Technically, I exaggerate, but if any of the imported product that flows in and out of our stores actually meets the safety standards our government claims to uphold, it would seem to be nothing more than a fluke. It's not as if they actually know.

The CPSC is less than half the size it once was and has, get this, one part-time inspector to cover the 15 million containers that move through the Port of Los Angeles--just for one example cited in the article linked below. The reductions started, not so shockingly, under Reagan, but Bush has continued to cut its staff, and thus the number of investigations it has been able to complete has fallen precipitously even as the amount of shoddy merchandise on store shelves has continued to increase. Remember when conservative Grover Norquist said he wanted a government so small he could drown it in the bathtub? I detect a change in tactics. I think they're going to try to either burn it or choke it to death, given the state of the art conditions at the Commission's testing labs:

"One lab worker used a magnifying glass and a mechanical stop watch to help conduct a fabric flammability experiment — the same equipment she has used for three decades. The toy laboratory, down the hall, is an office so cramped that the only space dedicated to a drop test to see if toys will break into small pieces and cause a choking hazard is the spare space behind the office door. “This is the toy lab for all of America — for all of the United States government!” said Robert L. Hundemer, the one agency employee who routinely tests toys, as he held up his arms in the air. “We do what we can.”

As an agency, though, the CPSC is not doing what it can, since, as is the Bush way, most of the top posts are now filled by pro-industry types who work to protect business, not you and me. Bush's nominee for commissioner was withdrawn back in March, so indefensible were his blame-the-baby's parents-for-his-unsafe-baby-walker attitudes, but something tells me that leaving the post empty was no accident. Since nobody's filling that top spot, action on mandatory recalls and regulation cannot proceed. Imagine. Foot-dragging has become official policy, maximizing profits as it does, whether for a hair relaxer that burns kids (but warning labels would cost a few cents a bottle, and pennies make dollars, and dollars make stock options) or an unsafe-at-any-speed Chinese-made ATV that cannot be taken off the market without a permanent commissioner.

But, there is a bigger problem here, even for those of us who feel as if they'd be smart enough not to suck the lead out of Thomas the Tank Engine or buy a gasoline-powered anything from China even without the government telling us it's a bad idea. The federal government is historically staffed with thousands upon thousands of people who are experts in whatever it is their agencies are responsible for, from product safety to justice. Thanks to the Bush misAdministration, thousands of them do not work for the government anymore, and after January 20, 2009, they still will not work there. A certain number of cronies and political appointees may be cleared out, assuming the voters don't get all irrational again next year, and the way back to functional may begin, but we'll still be left with this decimated shell of a government, and where's the recall notice for that?

An equal opportunity copy and paste: George Will

From this week's Newsweek, because anyone who recognizes AG the outgoing AG es un idiota grande is welcome here.

And speaking of the tone-deaf, Alberto Gonzales could not even leave high office without advertising his unfitness for it. As he habitually has done, he reminded the nation that he has "lived the American Dream," which he evidently thinks is epitomized by his success in attaching himself to a politician not known for demanding quality in assistants. Gonzales then demonstrated how uncomprehending he is of essential American values. He said: "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."

Well. His father married and had eight children—nine wonderful days, days even better, one would have thought, than any of the days his son spent floundering at the Justice Department. Furthermore, Gonzales's father had the fulfillment of a lifetime spent providing for his family. But what is any of that, Gonzales implies, compared with the satisfaction of occupying, however unsatisfactorily, a high office? This implicit disparagement of his father's life of responsibility and self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out. It is going to take conservatism a while to recuperate from becoming associated with such people.

Just between you and me, George, I think it might take this nation of ours a while to recuperate from being associated with such people, too.

Where every day is labor day

My dad was indeed a union man, a master machinist who worked forty-plus years for a pension even my fifth-grader wouldn't need a calculator to figure. I'll work far less hard for a far better retirement if I complete even half that many years, but I hesitate to credit the NEA, if they're even identifying as a union these days. They certainly pocket the dues. At any rate, the workers I most admire are not card-carrying members of any such association, though wallet-sized cards to carry are what they covet most.

Like any teenagers working their first jobs in America, the kids I'm thinking of spend some on gas and clothes and movie tickets, but they also hand most of it over to their parents or uncles or older brothers for food and rent. Everybody takes care of each other, and thus, everybody works. All. the. time. Life, here in the promised land, is hard.


I don't know that the details that this op-ed writer proposes are the right solution, but I know we need some solution, and sending them all back home--or to their former nations; their homes are here-- ain't it. Our economy is built on the backs of illegal labor, and if you bristle at that thought, I suggest you stop eating anything you haven't harvested or killed or cooked yourself, to start, because otherwise I guarantee you that undocumented hands have touched your dinner. But I digress.

The bigger economic picture is important, and, in the end, what the policy makers should be considering, though they could do worse to think of the younger generation, these kids who grow up in this adopted country, living a typical life, nearly as American as their neighbors, though, in my experience, more respectful and with a better work ethic. "Land of opportunity" has always been a more complicated idea than that three word phrase implies. And, certainly, these families are existing on a much higher standard of living than they were in Chihuahua or Michoacán. After all, their homes are not made of "stuff [her] dad found," and the children's makeshift playground is not on the grounds of a lead smelter. To escape that is, undeniably, an opportunity. But for these kids to be refused opportunities found in their new communities seems un-American, especially when it creates a drain on the nation as a whole.

But, frankly, the nation as a whole is outside my purview. I just wish I had more to offer the kids who are looking for a reason to stay in school when they know there really isn't one. Indentured servitude requires no diploma, not even a GED.

Immigrants' Labors Lost

By MARK LANGE
Published: September 3, 2007
NY Times.com

IMAGINE we wanted to create a huge Latino underclass in this country. We would induce more than 500,000 illegal immigrants to enter annually. We would see Latinos account for half of America’s population growth. We would turn a hardened eye toward all 44 million Latinos, because 12 million jumped our borders to meet our labor demand.

We would financially motivate but morally deplore illegal immigrants’ determination to break our laws and risk their lives to work for us. We would let nativist, xenophobic amnesiacs pillory the roughly 25 percent of Latinos who were here illegally, at the expense of the 75 percent who were legal. CNN and Fox News would reduce Latinos to fodder for fear-mongering, and the documentariat would make them objects of pity, when they wanted and warranted neither.

We would know that if we paid them, they would come, but we would offer no legitimate employment. We would adopt a let’s-pretend labor policy in our fields, yards, factories and restaurants, and for child care, construction and cleaning, with a wage fakery worthy of the Soviet Union. There, the joke was “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Here they would work, hard — and we would pay them, sort of, but pretend not to, denying ourselves the future tax revenue needed to pay for services we faulted them for needing.

We would ensure that the education system failed them, lamenting a dropout rate more than twice that of blacks and four times that of whites. Keeping incomes impossibly low, we would sanction Mexican-American welfare receipts twice those of natives. We would let the states launch loads of legislative half-fixes. We would have the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Homeland Security Department start an “even tougher” and more futile paper chase. We would see desperate workers fake new Social Security numbers or go underground for the next boss seeking this shabby labor discount.

We do all of this — and let it cost us more as a country — because it is a little cheaper for us as individuals and employers. And whether we knew it or not, we are deliberately fencing in our own economy.

It is in our self-interest to support labor mobility, development and advancement. Growth in productivity, fundamentally, is how we raise everyone’s standard of living. It starts with the first rung.

This month, Congress can avert a replay of the 1986 amnesty debacle by reserving permanent residency and citizenship for those who get in line and play by existing rules. Let nobody’s status be “adjusted” or “granted.” Instead, have employers sponsor anyone on their shadow payrolls to apply for a tamper-proof holographic guest worker card. Deport, adequately south of the border, anyone not sponsored. That won’t mean all 12 million. In 1954, when illegal Latino immigration was twice what it is now, a manageable number of deportations motivated the majority to repatriate.

To enforce sanctions against employers, grant the states (who bear the social costs) federal transfer payments for every undocumented worker they find, which will keep Congress and future administrations honest about paying for enforcement. If agriculture needs a lower minimum wage, negotiate and legislate it. To address the supply side, in the next trade agreement insist that Mexico adequately ensure its workers’ right to organize — to support wages and worker retention there, and a fairer fight for American exports.

The strength of an abstraction like “the economy” comes from the hands and minds of motivated and prepared people. Whether or not the left is committed to social equity — or the right, to equality of opportunity — we have at least 12 million pragmatic reasons to turn a potentially permanent underclass into a productive asset. Rather than fencing aspiring contributors out, comprehensive reform means Congress getting serious about entry-level job training and midcareer education programs for all workers. They deliver better economic returns than border patrols do.

The guy with the leaf-blower not only can learn English, he — like the unemployed steelworker — should have a chance to learn auto repair or programming. He’ll start with the jobs “ordinary Americans” won’t do. But we impair our economic future if we leave him there, imagining that’s all he or his children will ever do.

Mark Lange was a presidential speechwriter from 1989 to 1991.

Ah, who needs summer

Appalachian State Stuns Michigan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Julian Rauch’s 24-yard field goal with 26 seconds left put Appalachian State ahead of Michigan and Corey Lynch’s blocked field goal in the final seconds sealed one of college football’s biggest upsets.

The long weekend

Although I have no personal experience with this particular Fall phenomenon, I'm told that school traditionally starts after Labor Day, and indeed I have some friends who are either preparing to start teaching or sending their kids to the bus stop this Tuesday next. My first impulse was envy, considering we've been back in the homework/permission slip/lunch box swing of things for weeks now as they've just summered on, but, for this weekend anyway, I think we may have the better end of the deal.

For all of us, I suppose, Labor Day marks the last days of summer, if not the end (kudos to anyone who actually pauses to recognize the workers), not that in these parts September still won't be hot. One of the last cookouts or ballgames or trips to the lake. If only we lived close to an actual beach, I'd be there, count on it, from sun-up to sundown. But if I had to head back to school the next day, I'd be a little antsy with the anticipation and the unknown, with a thousand and twelve things I'd need to get done before that Tuesday, and some version of that must be true for our friends who've had the extended break. That's no holiday, at least not to me.

But for us, it is, and I'm exceedingly grateful, even though there's no sand awaiting my toes. Transition is too gentle a word to describe the leap from summer to school year; it's zero to sixty in no seconds flat. So yes, I'm a little too glad to have this early holiday, that extra 24 hours that I hope seem to last much longer. As I sit here, trying to determine what feels different this Saturday, I realize it's the utter lack of tension. I've been behind for three weeks, and I still am, but this one bonus day gives me both some breathing room and some time to not think about it.
All weekends should be three days: a day to relax and recover, a day to enjoy, a day to maybe get something done. Perhaps I'll move to France. In the meantime, I hope all my friends appreciate this long weekend as much as I will, but you're really going to have to try.