41 will be missed

George H.W. Bush, our 41st president who died last week, was a great American. Although I didn't vote for him, he was a strong president too. 

A WW2 hero, he was the youngest combat pilot in the Pacific War, who crashed in action and everyone in his crew died but him. Live with that all your life. 

As I reflected on his life, I came to a startling conclusion that he was the last president to project typical American power throughout the world by presiding over the end of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall came down and assembling a coalition to throw Iraq out of Kuwait. He wisely ended the 100-hour war after he destroyed the Iraqi army but before he irrevocably disrupted the fragile status-quo in the Mideast that carried with it an uneasy peace. 

Shockingly, we have been in decline internationally since then for the last 26 years. Clinton foolishly didn't support his Somali mission with armor, whether it was used or not, and when it was desperately needed it wasn't there, and he allowed fatal mission creep.  Dubya Bush was a reckless novice ("Bring 'em on!" " Mission accomplished!"). Obama was weak in allowing his redlines to be crossed and not following up his warning to Putin to stop meddling in our 2016 election with deliverables. Trump is a hopeless, dangerous dotard (I love Kim! You can sleep well at night because I fixed the N. Korean nuclear threat!). None of these served (Dubya was in the National Guard but he was mysteriously AWOL for much of his stateside tour). 

The generation of presidents forged in the crucible of participation in world war (Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41) were respected or at least feared internationally and kept America strong (great). Carter was weak (he should have sent one more helicopter on the abortive Teheran-rescue mission) but he was a one-termer. 

James Polk and George H.W. Bush will be one seen in history as the best one-term presidents. Can America come back from 28 years of steady international decline once Trump is voted or thrown out in 2020?  I hope so!

American military strategists project and plan for our next big war to be with China, in the 2020s. How will we fare, especially if Russia joins in and creates a second front for us?  We have been busy shedding allies under our current president, either deliberately or through insult, like Germany, Japan, S. Korea, Poland, France, the UK, Australia, and Canada, terming them deadbeats who don't pay us. These nations will seek strength through their own coalitions or militarization, perhaps even becoming potential adversaries to us. Will we have to go it alone the next time?

Twelve years ago

Twelve years ago I was on the subway when I heard the PA announce that the Pentagon Station was closed due to the terrorist attack there.  Huh?

I arrived at work shortly thereafter, to pandemonium.  Workers in my building were roaming the halls looking for a safe place to go, because there was a report that another plane was incoming with a DC building as its target.  Huh?

I fired up my computer and saw, to my horror, that the WTC towers had collapsed.  Huh?

We were at war.  With who, Afghanistan?

Federal workers were discharged into the DC streets with orders to go home.  Since it was thought (erroneously) that Metro was shut down, we all streamed towards our homes on foot.

I lived 10 miles away in Virginia, and walked home.  Going over the Key Bridge, looking southward looked like a scene out of Beirut, with a huge plume of smoke curling lazily into the sky over where the Pentagon was.

Booms were heard.  The street rumors were that they were car bombs going off in front of federal buildings (erroneous); I now believe they were sonic booms generated by fighter jets finally arriving over the nation's capital way too late.

America was never the same.  For instance, you can't just walk into a building anymore.

I knew people who were killed in the ensuing (and continuing) war(s).  The misnamed Patriot Act became law and stripped down our personal liberties, casualty rolls are horrific, torture became policy and our drones rain down death from the skies overseas (what goes around...).

At home, our departed liberties are not coming back anytime soon.  And I started paying attention to and learning about a large religion, although I struggle mightily to understand it and comprehend the secondary place it assigns to women.

I'm Afraid

When I was a policeman I learned not to show fear, or to let fear influence my actions, because in that realm fear can get you killed. So although at times I am afraid, I try not to ever show it or act upon it.

I was traveling last weekend and I went through airport security. I had barely made it through the metal detector after taking off my shoes (my toes were poking through my worn socks), my belt (my pants started creeping down my hips), my hat (my bald pate was luminous) and my jacket (revealing my untucked shirt) when a TSA guy boomed, "Sir, is this your bag?"

We were in Kansas City and the blue-shirted bag-examiner was triumphantly holding aloft a 13 oz. bottle of Arthur Bryant's Original Flavor Barbecue Sauce. Having just spent the weekend in KC, I knew from several days of taste tests that Arthur Bryant's is the preferred Kansas-style bbq sauce, even above Gates or LC's.

This cooking elixir wasn't in my carry-on bag though, it was in the bag of the guy behind me. I think he was trying to sneak this bottle of liquid amber gold past TSA to take it home and liven up his dinner fare.

He owned up to ownership, declined to go back through the onerous security line again after removing the offending item from the security area and offered it to the guard, who put it in a bus pan by the back window. This receptacle of prohibited items was chock full.

I sidled over to that window from the other side once I cleared the security and looked at the contraband through the glass. Inside the brimming pan were a dozen or more sealed bottles and cans of Arthur Bryant's sauce, Gatorade, purified water, Red Bull and Coke, along with shrink-wrapped tubes of shampoo conditioner and sundry makeup.

I was sorely tempted to take a picture through the window of this basket of shame to record what is going on in the fight against terrorism in the heartland of the homeland. But I was afraid that snapping a photo of the bucket of discarded items would be a "suspicious activity" that might get me questioned and perhaps put on a no-fly list.

I was greatly conflicted but I decided against the photograph. The Decider would be proud for having been successful in making me afraid.

Reset

In 2008 I got swept up in Obama's rhetoric for change and hope. I wasn't for Obama initially, because I thought he was too inexperienced, but I came around as the campaign progressed.

He's intellectual and he speaks so well! Complex problems, you would suppose, demand complex solutions. He could do that.

Then I said hello to some Tea Party types on the Mall. Tea Baggers. When I was a cop, we talked about dirt baggers. These particular tea baggers quickly offered to stick their "Don't Tread On Me" flagpole up my, well... . Ehh, not too intellectual, that bunch.

Anyway, a year later, where are we except a year recovered from the Decider? (Thank goodness.)

Back to re-set, I think. If Obama was my laptop, I'd turn it off, remove the battery for ten seconds, then put it back in and restart it.

An African-American President, an idealist, a Democrat, a brilliant guy. Which former president is Obama most like? Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK?

It hit me. He's like Woodrow Wilson. An idealist, a Democrat, winner of the nobel peace prize, a war president, a brilliant guy. He expounded the Fourteen Points upon which to end WWI, that would lead to world harmony. (Go ahead, name even one of the Fourteen Points.)

The French leader Georges Clemenceau privately complained that even God Almighty only espoused ten principles. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI, and the League of Nations failed.

Wilson had potential but got nothing done. An historical non-entity.

Where is the one following W?

Number two has dropped off the board. I used to think, because of his folly in getting us into the quagmire in Vietnam, that LBJ was the worst US President ever. Nixon, who was also a war-mongerer, was a close number two. (He didn't create the mess.)

Somehow, Nixon has achieved stature as a strong president. I always thought he achieved his foreign policy "advances" by the world notion that he was a little crazy. Can you imagine being in a neighborhood where a neighbor is on the street waving around an AK-47? And all you have in your nightstand drawer is a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson? You're not going out there to confront the bully. Unless you're a tough North Vietnamese and you want the bully off of your block.

Then along came the Decider, with his stolen two elections, W (for Worst ever), who is by all measures the worst president ever. Remember Mission Accomplished? How's your IRA? Can you spell Katrina? Did he fix New Orleans like he promised he would? Helluva a job Dubya!

So number one is locked into place. Did you vote for him, ever? If so, you didn't do your homework, and you should be waterboarded. Like to breathe? Not being able to breathe, that's not torture? Darth Vader says it's not.

I was running with some thinking Americans awhile back before Obama's triumph (including a Vietnam era veteran) and we rated the presidents as we ran. The VN era vet said, hands down, the worst president was James Buchanan because he brought us the Civil War. (We disqualified the Decider because he was still president.)

Well, I guess the Civil War was worse than the VN War. Maybe my friend is right. Because after watching all the high drama involved in bringing America into the 21st century by giving all of its citizens access to adequate health care, as is common to the rest of the civilized world, I have to admit that LBJ bringing us Medicare in the sixties was a notable achievement.

Although they'd like to dismantle it, now the GOP defends Medicare as if they had anything to do with bringing it about. They're more than a little hypocritical. It was an accomplishment that LBJ brought us, senior serenity (the Great Society), along with the VN war. So now I insert Buchanan into position number two, as the worst ever after the Decider. Perhaps LBJ has dropped out of the bottom five list even.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

I find myself lately telling a lot of people I'm 57 now. As if that's an excuse for no longer having a plan in place to be able to run a sub-21 minute 5K, or a sub-46 minute 10K.

It's true that my mantra of running five times a week is harder now than it was when I was in my 40s. I find myself taking analgesics for more than their blood-thinning qualities. (I started taking aspirin to address my elevated blood pressure.)

I think back to the olden times. Last year I listed the 10 best albums (don't know what an album is?) ever on my profile page. The best of the best is Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones.

My musical taste stopped in about 1971, my sophomore year at CU-Boulder just before I dropped out of school to work as a committed 20-year old for the McGovern campaign. You probably don't know who George McGovern is.

These days, we're trying to get past the "mess" that the Decider/Bird Hunter/Rummy/Condi and Yoo-the-quaint left us with. Back in the 70s, we were stuck with getting past the mess that LBJ left us with, which gave us those crooks Nixon and Agnew. Nixon killed McGovern in 1972, which turned me into a cynic, a trait that received its vindication in 2004. (It was the Pogo comic strip which said, We have met the enemy, and they are us.)

Anyway, the Stones came out in 1969 with an album (CD), Let It Bleed, that Rolling Stone magazine described at the time as a fin-de-siecle masterpiece. At the end of the 60s, the convergence of the antiwar (Vietnam) movement and the civil rights movement promoted profound changes in American society and produced extraordinary results.

I would call Let It Bleed an era-changing masterpiece. I still listen to it all the time. It's my rock-solid mantra that you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need. That's how life goes. And the LP (CD) contains one of my favorite songs of all time, Gimme Shelter. War is just a shot away. So what do we have left from here before the next really big war happens? 20 years? 40? Did I tell you I'm a cynic?

Yeah, we all need someone we can dream on.

The FBI?!

I never thought I would ever defend the FBI. As a cop in the field from 1980-1987, I hated it when FBI Agents showed up on my scene. Excuse me, Special Agents. They were so arrogant. Hey, copper, just wave me on through and let me take over, if I feel like it (it it could garner beneficial publicity for the Agency) and you can relax, son. Naturally, there was always some resistance to this approach by the coppers on the ground.

Besides, I was one of the few Troopers who had a college degree (CU, History, 1978). I had been through the crucible of student protests against the [Vietnam] war in Boulder, and we feared the FBI. I was on the highway bridge in Boulder the night Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor, blocking the bridge in protest and snarling rush hour traffic the next morning. We all knew the FBI were building dossiers on us. I fancied I might have one. The CIA, you see, were forbidden to conduct domestic surveillance.

Fast forward to 2002. After the attack upon western values that radical Islam launched against Americans on September 11, 2001, some of the usual suspects were rounded up. Abu Zubaydah, the logistics chief for anti-western terror training camps in Afghanistan, was captured after a gun battle. (I hope he rots in hell.)

Long story short, an expert FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan, who was extraordinarily effective at extracting information from international suspects using traditional interrogation methods (think--gain their trust through simple kindness), interrogated Abu and using time-honored American police methods, gained much valuable intel quickly, including who this guy named Mohammed was (see my last post).

Then the CIA showed up, armed with the torture memos the syncophant charlatan lawyers in the Justice Department had concotted to please their oily masters, the originally asleep-at-the-switch Decider and Great Bird Hunter, justifying torture of American detainees in the War on Terror.

Harsh techniques followed, including waterboarding Abu over eighty times and building a mock coffin in which his handlers were going to bury him alive, reportedly. The flow of information from Abu stopped.

Soufan threatened to "arrest" the rogue torturers and complained to his superiors at the FBI. The FBI was being bested at the time by the goons at the CIA, who had the complete attention of the American Executive branch. Soufan was ordered home. The FBI would have no part in this game.

I understand this. As a lawyer, as in many endeavors, when you are losing badly on a particular day, you don't flail around uselessly, you suspend your efforts in order to come back stronger on a better day. Often you win then. If the American people are as I think they are, the FBI will come out of this a lot better than the CIA.

Read the Newsweek issue dated May 4, 2009.

W's Legacy

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a high-ranking al-Qaeda official, is a bad guy. I hope he rots in hell. I grieve for the 3,000 Americans murdered on September 11, 2001 by him and his ilk.

But America has lost its moral compass over him and the rest of the al-Qaeda crew.

Imagine drowning. Sputtering, tired, terrified, helpless. I imagine when it happens, you just want it to be over with, to have your suffering end. Imagine being miraculously revived, then you drown all over again. Imagine that happening over and over and over and over again. You can't comprehend it.

Or imagine your brave, strong son, and he's a soldier now in America's wars. He's caught by the enemy and they tie him down onto a board, close his nose, cover his mouth with a wet cloth and slowly pour a heavy volume of water onto the cloth, right where his open, gasping mouth is. That's waterboarding.

When he passes out from near-asphyxia, imagine them reviving him, letting him catch his breath for a moment, so his larynx stops spasming, and then they do it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

In 2003, after Mohammed was stripped, given an enema, shackled standing for hours on end, deprived of sleep, put in a horse collar and slammed repeatedly into a plywood wall, doused frequently with cold water and kept for days naked and restrained in a cold environment, he was waterboarded 183 times.

The CIA did that to him. On orders issued by the White House. Justified by self-serving, made -up ridiculous (and wrong) legal opinions issued by Justice Department lawyers like John Yoo, now a law professor at a prestigious school on the left coast.

While the Decider was off somewhere scrambling syntax to everyone's merriment, and the Great Bird Hunter was shooting his friend in the face, Mohammed was sputtering and dying 183 times.

Mohammed wasn't the only captive treated like that by Americans. Mohammed and his ilk succeeded in making Americans to be just like the al-Qaeda people they are battling, repugnant and utterly adrift morally.

Did you vote for that guy? Maybe twice? Shame!

Yes We Did

Keepers of our own legacy again. Yea. Thank the Lord that the long dark winter is over. Yes we can. Yes we will.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more." President Obama

Adding Up the Damage

I will not be sorry to see Dubya leave office next week. That's capital "W" as in "Worst ever."

I was amazed recently to read Bob Herbert's op-ed in the NYT describing the Decider as "the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantanamo and torture and rendition; who turned Clinton's economy and the budget surplus into fool's gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let [the Great Bird Hunter] run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job." Once the piece got warmed up by this spot-on characterization, it really got critical.

He has been ruinous in every way. Well over four thousand Americans dead in a war he started to avenge a slight to his daddy. Tens of thousands more grievously wounded and receiving inadequate care for their injuries. The economy in shambles.

This is the man who said he was going to work towards privatization of social security with his political "capital" from his second stolen election. Fortunately, "saner heads prevailed." I know fellow workers who have lost $150,000 or more in only a few months from their Federal TSP (401K) plans.

I looked at my private portfolio, containing all those little IRAs I have assiduously paid the maximum into every year since the eighties. On June 30th it was worth $62K. On September 30th it was worth $49K. On December 30th it was worth $32K. I put it all into government securities on that day. I should have been putting those contributions all those years into a mattress, because then I would have been ahead of where I am now.

You could probably guess my political orientation. When our children were growing up, Sharon and I tried to teach them to be good little Democrats. After all, when you're young, you're supposed to have a heart, right?

You know how kids fight. When they were all in grade school, my oldest son was once teasing my youngest son. He hurled the ultimate insult at him, "You're a Republican woman!"

My youngest shook with rage at this terrible slur. He was so furious that he was incapable of refuting this dastardly characterization all at once, so he flung off the worst part first. He shouted, "I am not! I'm no Republican!"

The Old Soft Shoe Routine

I agree with Jay Leno that we finally found something the Decider is really good at, dodgeball. I'll bet he was a schoolyard whiz at dodging in grade school. I'll bet at Yale he could really execute those cheerleader flips. If he had been around during the Vietnam War, when he was a pilot in the National Guard but seemingly absent, I'll bet he could really corkscrew those jets into tight turns and dizzying dives.

He exhibited extraordinary reflexes in deftly dodging both on-target shoes thrown at his face from a short distance away by an enraged Iraqi journalist. I presume that fellow is not representative of his countrymen and women, and how did he get both shoes off so quickly?

I stand with the Decider on this one. He done us proud in his moment under actual fire. I guess he has HTFU a little since that day in September seven years ago when he flew all over the country, perhaps following the Great Bird Hunter's orders, looking for the deepest bunker he could hunker down in until the all-clear sounded.

What division he has introduced into the country! I recently saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that read, "[The Decider] Runs The Country." I didn't exactly know what message the guy was trying to convey and felt like asking him if the saying wasn't missing an "i," as in "[The Decider] Ruins The Country." But change is coming so I kept silent.

The recent election didn't help the divisiveness much (aside from the outcome). I was recently running with a fellow I don't know really well and we were talking about Sarah Palin's church in Wasilla being firebombed. I said I thought it was absolutely despicable, dangerous, destructive and potentially deadly, and the perpetrator should be prosecuted. My running mate agreed and said how magnanimous Palin showed herself to be in issuing a statement apologizing if the arson was connected to the "undeserved negative attention" she garnered by running for national election. I disagreed with this characterization of her and said the statement showed that she won't let any opportunity pass to sling aspersions at the press. We fell into silence and he shortly remembered a cut-off just ahead that he had always meant to explore.

Thanks Decider. Or is that Divider?

Dimwits

Wednesday at noon I ran five miles on the Mall with my work running group. We talked presidents as we trotted past the statues of Grant and Garfield below the Capitol, by the FDR and Jefferson Memorials over on the Tidal Basin, past the Washington Monument and up to the Lincoln Memorial, with the Kennedy Center visible off to our right.

Between the four of us, we all agreed on the Worst President ever. That's spelled with a capital W. Did anyone ever vote for this guy? Twice?

Being federal workers, we all have a personal stake in this administration's performance, in that the centerpiece of our retirement plan is our TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) account, along with social security. I know many federal workers who have lost over $100,000 out of their TSP plans since the end of the summer. Some accounts have diminished by 40% or more in a few short months, after years of assiduous buildup. Hello Social Security!

It is unbelievable to me that the current guy thought he had "political capital" immediately after stealing the 2004 election in Ohio and he was going to spend it by privatizing social security. Events overtook him and he never got this cherished Republican agenda done. Imagine if he had! The financial carnage these looters foisted upon us through their lax enforcement and reckless deregulation could have impoverished all of us for the rest of our lives.

What amazes me is that as we impatiently wait for the Decider and his crowd to leave, mainstream pundits speak blithely about their vast shortfalls as if they are absolute givens. Joe Klein of Time writes of this administration's "stupefying ineptitude." Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes that we "lionized dimwits." I don't know why these columnists thought it was necessary to sugarcoat the situation.

What was interesting to me, being a history major, was how quickly the running group dispensed with their unanimous judgment on the Worst ever and started squabbling about the next Worst. There was no consensus here. One had it for Buchanan, for leading us up to the Civil War through his astonishing inaction. One had it for LBJ for giving us Vietnam in his astonishing arrogance. Another had it for Hoover for giving us the Great Depression. The last one argued for Nixon for leaving us with a legacy of duplicitous crookedness and meanness in modern politics.

It's apparently a toss up between Buchanan, Hoover, Johnson and Nixon for the second-worst president ever. W has clearly separated himself from this pack.

The Bard on Peace

You could learn a lot about a blogger by reading his or her profile. I took care a year ago when I listed my favorite books. (Wouldn't a Favorite Magazines category be especially revealing?) I just hadda start with a Shakespeare play.

Othello is my favorite of the bard's four great tragedies. In 2004, I put a Shakespeare quote from Othello on my photo Christmas card, which showed me crossing the finish line that October at the TCM in 4:29 (gun time) while wearing my John Kerry t-shirt.

The quote (below) depicted peace to me, which I certainly thought Americans were interested in, at least until they voted the Decider back in that year (well, maybe that's not true since he stole Ohio that time around).

Keep up your bright swords
for the dew will rust them.
Good signior, you shall more command with years
Than with your weapons. (I:ii)

Othello says this when we first meet him as he breaks up a civil fracas in the streets of Venice. I have always treasured this quote.

To me it shows the desirability of exercising wisdom over resorting to violence, or using diplomacy in lieu of warfare. If you bring out your shiny weapons and use them, you'll wreck them ("the dew will rust them"). But if you use good judgment and lay deep plans, you'll get further than you will with shock and awe ("you shall more command with years").

And I thought the Decider said awhile back that he read Shakespeare.



The Decider's "ecelectic" reading list includes "three Shakespeares."

Shakespeare as a Birthday Treat

It's my birthday today. I turned 55 so I'm moving up an age group. I'm leaving behind people I can't beat, but joining others whom I also can't beat. Moving age groups just poses different problems, particularizes your poison. As the late Vonnegut said, So it goes.

There was a steady drumbeat of rain all day today, so I didn't go out to run today. This is the same system that is going to bedevil the runners at the Boston Marathon tomorrow. A few years ago I would have ventured out in the blustery raw conditions and run, but not today. So it goes.

A friend of mine gave me a birthday present of two tickets to anything I wanted to go see. I chose the Royal Shakespeare Company's presentation of Coriolanus at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater.

Coriolanus is a play I haven't read nor had I ever seen it. I knew little about it other than that it takes place in Rome. We didn't study it or discuss it in my two semesters of Shakespeare in college.

It was pricey, $138 for two seats in the balcony. The accents of the English actors took a couple of acts to get used to. I grumbled to my companion that they should have learned American accents before they came over. I saw from the look of disbelief she gave me that she didn't realize I was kidding. She's originally from Long Island where they're much more cultured than us provincial kinds who hail from Staten Island.

The Eisenhower Theater, although it is a soaring arena, has a cozy seating area consisting of a main floor section and a balcony, with loge boxes in between. The stage is deepset with an apron that projects out into the audience. The sight lines are good and the sound is fantastic in the balcony.

The production was excellent. The sword fights were fast-moving and ringing. Larger battles were well depicted by noise and projecting giant shadows upon the wall from somewhere off-stage. William Houston as Caius Martin (Coriolanus) was very good. The aristocratic Coriolanus, a strong heroic character, a pure noble warrior, is the foil used to show the populace, the rabble, as either clownish, or dangerous, or properly wary of meglomaniacs, depending upon the era of the producers.

The lighting was superb. Scene changes were accomplished by focusing a spotlight upon a character as the set was changed, then suddenly the rest of the stage would be illuminated to show the complete scene. Until the denouement, the deep stage was always partitioned by curtains that limited the sweep of the presentation and channeled the action. The penulimate scene used the entire stage for the first time, lit with an erie dimpled effect to simulate night just before dawn. The hero, Coriolanus, a formidable warrior and past savior of Rome, is a proud, stubborn man, autocratic and unbending. He abhors the common people and makes known his contempt for them. He so despises them that he refuses to answer any of their questions about his actions or his deeds. He is a decider who owes no explanations to anyone.

But Coriolanus in his blindness and headstrong ways gets banished from Rome. He has turned treasonous in reaction to these personal slights by Romans and led an enemy army to the very gates of the defenseless city. However, Coriolanus' strong-willed mother, Volumnia, successfully implores him during a nighttime visit to act properly and give up the war and throw over his new allies in order to save Rome. The opening up of this proud man's narrowset and stubborn mind is eloquently symbolized by the scene's wide visual sweep.

Volumnia tells her rigid son: Thou know'st, great son, The end of war's uncertain, but this certain, That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name, Whose repetition will be dogg'd with curses; Whose chronicle thus writ: 'The man was noble, But with his last attempt he wiped it out; Destroy'd his country, and his name remains To the ensuing age abhorr'd.' Speak to me, son: Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour, To imitate the graces of the gods; To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air, And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak.

Thus moved, finally, the inflexible Coriolanus replies: O my mother, mother! O! You have won a happy victory to Rome; But, for your son,—believe it, O, believe it, Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd, If not most mortal to him. But, let it come. Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars, I'll frame convenient peace.

He suspends the unjust war and achieves peace. It costs him his life but he suffers his death nobly, inflicting it upon himself in order to right his wrong. Even his enemies mourn his passing.

The parallels of Coriolanus to the current Decider who owes us no explanations for anything are obvious. My sage theater-going companion said there's a reason that this production, about a rigidly autocratic leader subjecting his country to ruin through his misplaced hubris, was selected by a British ensemble to be presented a mere eight blocks from the White House.

At one point, in discussing whether to elevate the imperial Coriolanus to consul, the mob receives this caution from the tribunes appointed for them: Or let us stand to our authority, or let us lose it. Shakespeare is timeless. Echoes of this counsel can be heard in Benjamin Franklin's warning: Any society that would give up a little liberty to attain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

I think the key difference between Coriolanus and the current Decider is that Coriolanus was truly valorous and duty-bound, whereas I can't assign valor to the Decider (everybody saw him fly desperately around the country for hours on 9/11 looking for an ever deeper hole to hunker down in) and his sense of duty hasn't always been strong (nobody knows where he was during his duty days with the National Guard while Vietnam was raging) and now he seems more hidebound than dutybound (repeat after me-stay the course). Coriolanus in the end was able to own up to his mistaken ways which saves his county and restores his own honor and glory. However, we all remember the current Decider's knit brow as he tried to think of one single mistake he had made during his tenure (he was stumped). Coriolanus deserved at least to be heard out, this present Decider, not so much anymore.

The Kennedy Center is a wonderful place, situated on the Potomac with nice views from its broad outside veranda of Georgetown, the Watergate and Roosevelt Island. Inside are wonderful venues for the opera, music, the theater and other cultural mediums as well as historical exhibits.

I had a wonderful birthday. And thanks, Coriolanus was splendid! (Oh boy, Shakespeare at the Kennedy Center! That's a statue of Don Quijote in the background.)

And no, on my birthday I didn't hear from any of my three sons ages 18 to 21, the same as on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Father's Day, my last birthday (shall I go on?). They reside nearby with their Mother and I haven't seen them for years now, even though I always had full joint legal custody, have always supported them and have plain vanilla visitation. Running is a huge reason why I have been able to get through this.

Stop here if you don't want to be depressed by a bunch of divorce stuff. My children stopped seeing me on March 26, 2003. That was the day the court, after a full evidentiary hearing, termed a lawsuit "they" filed against me "harassment," tossed it out and sanctioned their Mother almost $9,000. The lads as minors had been made parties to a "fiduciary" suit which had brought them into the on-going divorce action five months earlier. (The then-13 year old was too young to be suing his father, so he was represented on the papers by his Mother as "next friend.") The court found the petition to be an attempt by their Mother to interfere with my relationship with my children and called it "unseemly, unconscionable, and totally uncalled for."

Litigation would go on for another two years when their Mother filed an appeal. The appellate court, labeling the appeal "procedurally barred or without merit," affirmed the sanction and remanded to the trial court for an award of my "reasonable expenses in defending this unjustified appeal." Although I can never get back the four wrenching years I spent ensnared in nuclear litigation, after another full evidentiary hearing on my costs, during which the court found my lawyer's fees to be "both fair and reasonable," I collected almost $40,000 more from their Mother in 2005.

In my opinion, the down-the-rabbit-hole world of domestic law was revealed when one of the lawyers, who signed the appellate brief that led to the extraordinary fee assessment, sent a letter to my lawyer afterwards calling his fees "a disgrace." My lawyer, who prevailed, charged $300 an hour and submitted his bills to me, an adult. The lawyer with the unbelievable chutzpah, who also mostly conducted the hearing that led immediately to the large sanction and largely argued the losing appeal as well, charged $425 an hour and submitted his bills of over $22,000 to my children.

The case, in my opinion, epitomized what the domestic law arena has become, at least in Arlington County, Virginia. A place where mere lip service is paid to best interests of the children while everyone lines up at the trough to extract money as rapidly as possible until the estate is utterly depleted and the family is utterly destroyed.

My children don't speak to me anymore, an absolute verification, in my opinion, of Parental Alienation Syndrome ("PAS"). So it goes.

As for me, I cope by running. As for my sons, unfortunately the Opinion is on-line and comes up on the very first page whenever anyone Googles the full name of any one of my children. Good luck with future dates, fellas.