Author Archive: Bill Black

Johann Sebastian Bach

J.S. Bach is my favorite composer. I discovered the breadth and depth of his music with the help of Prof. Robert Greenberg through his Teaching Company audio lectures. Bach’s music is intensely spiritual and moving. His St. Matthew Passion can bring you to tears. The Goldberg Variations sound very modern, almost jazz-like. And the Brandenberg Concertos are among the most familiar classical pieces in existence, but they always sound fresh. And this is just a tiny piece of his life’s work. During the time he was the capellmeister at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, he had to produce a new classical piece every week for that Sunday’s services over the course of three years, a stunning accomplishment. I recently heard advertised a CD collection of all his work. It consists of 140 disks.

So, one benefit of the misguided advice found in the guidebook referenced in the previous post is that I frantically searched for something outside of Berlin to visit before I left the U.S. I discovered that Leipzig is only an hour train ride from Berlin. Moreover, St. Thomas Church continues to hold services and there was one at 3 pm on the Saturday of my arrival. So, I landed in Berlin, dropped my luggage at the hotel and immediately set off for the train station to travel to Leipzig.

In Leipzig, my taxi driver spoke no English, so I took out my biography of Bach and pointed to the picture on the cover. He quickly delivered me to St. Thomas Church where there was a small line for the service. I paid two dollars for a program and found a seat in the middle of the church, which was filling up fast.

What followed was a full Lutheran service with a short reading, a moderate length homily of which I understood not a word and lots and lots of music. Much of which was composed right on that very site.

I have pictures of the visit but the blog is not letting me post them. Hope to be able to in the future.

Marshall Nails It

The best thing about blogs is that, every once and a while, you find some writing that perfectly articulates feelings or opinions you have that you can quite find the words to express. Josh Marshall did that for me today in his blog in describing a disheartening reality check that weighs down my optimistic anticipation of a good day for Democrats next Tuesday. Here’s the key paragraph:

“I hope that when the political history of the last half century is written it will show, as it should, that the Republicans engaged in a brand of divisive electoral politics that pitted Americans against each other: white against black, men against women, rich against poor, native born against immigrant, straight against gay. Republicans deserve to be tarred by history for exploiting our weaknesses, our prejudices, and our lesser selves for their own political gain. But those are still our weaknesses and our prejudices. We own them. And it is our lesser selves that have succumbed to the Republican political pitch and been willing to be exploited. Removing the Republicans from power will only be a temporary fix unless we fundamentally fix ourselves so that no one, no party, no movement can exploit those same weaknesses again.”

I have been saying that my fondest wish in life, beside all the personal stuff about kids and family and stuff, is to live long enough to see the judgment of history on the Bush Presidency. Can there possibly have been a worse President?

Another Divine Rumination

It is fascinating how many bloggers found, like me, divine implications in the Foley scandal. Here’s one that goes beyond the Republicans and conservatives, as per my post below and indicts, appropriately I think, the entire American populous. Very insightful….and sad.

Divine Intervention

It’s amazing that someone besides me thinks the Foley scandal is the work of a benevolent diety. In my case, it just seems like divine justice. To Glenn Greenwald, another blogger, believes it’s just too perfect to be anything but ordained by God. He quotes another blogger as saying it’s been executed way too perfectly to be the work of the Democrats. But here’s some relevant quotes from Greenwald:

Does the Foley scandal prove the existence of a God?
(Updated below)The Foley scandal is so perfectly tailored — one could even say artistically designed — to expose every character flaw of this country’s Republican leaders (and their followers), and it has evolved so flawlessly (like the most brilliantly coordinated symphony), that one is almost inclined to believe that it was divinely inspired….

It is as though Republicans are being punished for all of their serious political sins at once, in one perfectly constructed, humiliating scandal designed to highlight their crimes and exact just retribution for them. The Foley scandal is shining a very bright light on their conduct, not just in this one incident but with regard to how they have been governing the country generally over the last five years.

Hyprocrisy Quotient

Here’ s my theory on what’s going on with Republicans and conservatives. God is putting them to the test to find out just how hypocritical they are prepared to be to hang on to power.

First, they have to accept the worst fiscal mismanagement in the history of the country, turning a $5 trillion surplus into an $8 trillion national debt.

Then, they have to accept “nation-building” on a scale unknown in human history.

Then, they have to accept an imperial president who can unilaterally tap your phones, arrest you without charge, throw you in jail for life, torture you or even kill you without recourse, just by declaring you an “enemy combant.”

Then, they have to tolerate governmental incompetence in a disaster that results in the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Americans.

Then, finally, after all this, one thing after another, totally under siege, they get hit with the Big One, the nuclear bomb. Pedophelia! The have to make excuses for leaders who ignore evidence of a sexual predator in their midst in order to protect their majority in the House.

Amazingly, for some conservatives and Republicans, we still haven’t hit the deal breaker. The mind reels when you try to think what it would take.

The Worst President Ever

Let’s take just one day’s news headlines that doesn’t even mention the debacle in Iraq. Today’s Washington Post has these three headlines:

FDA Told U.S. Drug System Is Broken
Expert Panel Calls For Major Changes
By Shankar VedantamWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, September 23, 2006; Page A01

The federal system for approving and regulating drugs is in serious disrepair, and a host of dramatic changes are needed to fix the problem, a blue-ribbon panel of government advisers concluded yesterday in a long-awaited report.

Audit Finds Ethical Lapses In U.S. Reading Program
By Ben FellerAssociated PressSaturday, September 23, 2006; Page A02

A scorching internal review of the Bush administration’s billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.
Page 2

Probe of FAA Contracting Finds Waste
Mismanagement Blamed For Losses in Millions
By Del Quentin WilberWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, September 23, 2006; Page D01

A Federal Aviation Administration contracting program, initially hailed as a way to make the agency more efficient, was so poorly managed that it cost the government millions of dollars in overruns, according to a government investigative report and legislators who reviewed its conclusions. The FAA has disbanded the program.

These are all internal reports by inspector generals within the Bush Administration. That would explain why they all came out on a Friday afternoon, the dead zone when bad news gets released.

But the breadth and depth of the incompetence and corruption in this administration is truly amazing.

But, heh, gas prices are coming down, so what’s the problem?

A Dilemma

Here’s the moral dilemma for Democrats in Congress. Do they let this egregious torture bill pass to avoid the inevitable onslaught of attacks accusing them of siding with terrorists against America which might, for yet the third time, scare enough voters into voting Republican in the Fall? Or do they stand up against this violation against the most fundamental values inherent in being an American. In other words, do they risk the prospect of two years of a Republican Congress that feels vindicated and a completely unconstrained Bush Administration, which could literally bring about the end of civilization as we know it?

Still, this one is completely beyond the pail. Who would have thought that America would come to the point where we’re actually debating what torture is. Torture is for bad guys, we are (or used to be) the good guys. If I was in Congress, this is one I would sacrifice my seat over. But would I sacrifice the country over it? That could literally be the question.

Of course, the big problem here is not that I don’t trust the Republicans, which I don’t. But in this case, what you see is what you get. They want to be able to torture people. Pure and simple. And they apparently think it is more important to protect the geography of America than to protect its values and Constitution. No, the problem is that I don’t trust the American people. I fear that they will fall into Karl Rove’s trap. And that’s really bad. Some smart person once said that people get the government they deserve, especially in democracies, which we still are….at least for a while. Well, we’ve got Bush.

So, this is the one thing that has come up that I think is more important than getting the majority. I just hope the Democratic leadership does the right thing and also finds a political skilled way of doing it.

Sun Tzu says…

I’m still pretty speechless about everything, but I’ve been reading the Art of War and came across this passage about using spies. Truly helps explain Bush’s catastrophic failure of intelligence (in every sense of the word):

15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain
intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence
and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make
certain of the truth of their reports.

Struck Dumb

Sometimes the Bush Administration just leaves me speechless. I am outraged, saddened, disgusted and despairing of our nation on so many fronts that I don’t know how to verbalize my feelings. That’s one of the reasons this blog goes quiet periodically.

Now is one of those times. The news that Bush is now bringing the scariest terrorists we have to Gitmo and demanding that Congress immediately pass his bill to try them takes things to new heights of cynicism. This bill, which would allow us to execute individuals after a trial in which they would be confronted with some evidence that was produced as a result of torture and other evidence that they would never see. It makes my head spin and I cycle between outrage and deep, deep sadness with the indifference of large portions of the American public.

Beyond this, I don’t know what to say.