Batshit crazy in fact

So let me get this straight.

A Gallup Poll late in August found that 81% of the American people were “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.” 18% were satisfied, and 1% don’t know what the hell they think.

Right now the election is seemingly close; Gallup says 45% favor John McCain.

We’ll grant that the 18% who say they are satisfied will vote for the incumbent party. That still means that 27% of the American people who are dissatisfied intend to vote for the party that got us here. (18+27=45)

Or, put another way, 27% of the electorate are insane — that is, doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

The world’s best-known and best-loved woman

Jane Addams was born on September 6th in 1860.

Miss Addams has been called “the greatest woman in the world,” the “mother of social service,” “the greatest woman internationalist” and the “first citizen of Chicago.” With her idealism, serene, unafraid, militant, was always paramount. Devoted to the cause of social and political reform, to the betterment of the economic condition of the masses, to world peace and to internationalism, Miss Addams’s influence was world-wide. She was, perhaps, the world’s best-known and best-loved woman.

She made enemies. Her views were sometimes considered dangerously radical. Socialists and other radicals met at Hull House, and her opponents sometimes forgot that her liberal attitude in permitting such meetings did not include a membership in the groups she tolerated. In the World War her efforts for peace were unabated even when the United States entered the struggle and the wartime hysteria which ensued obscured for a time the American public’s realization of Miss Addams’s purity of purpose and character.

Above from Ms. Addams New York Times obituary in 1935.

Here’s some more:

Miss Addams moved into Hull House in September, 1889, and it was her home thereafter. It was then between a saloon and an undertaking shop, and there was an annex to a factory in its rear. Thousands of the foreign born–Miss Addams always held welcoming arms to the strangers–including Poles, Jews, Russians, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Irish and Bohemians were welcomed there. Negroes were also cordially received.

Persons later to be famous lived there in those early days. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Swope, who were married there, Mackenzie King, later Premier of Canada, Francis Hackett, and Professor John Dewey, dean of American philosophers, and his family.

Hull House grew to be known as one of the largest and best-known of the nation’s settlements. It commenced with the ordinary activities of children’s clubs and free kindergartens and later it sponsored courses in languages, literature, music, painting, history, mathematics, elocution, dancing, wood-carving, pottery, metal work, bookbindery, dressmaking, lacework, cooking and basketwork. A labor museum was also established at Hull House.

Dozens of clubs were organized to aid working women. A lunch room was opened, as was a nursery for the children of employed women. There was also a gymnasium, a natatorium, a penny savings bank, a lodging house, as well as a circulating library and an employment bureau. Miss Addams personally directed all these activities, which were models for hundreds of others throughout the world.

Of course, she was just a community organizer.

September 6, 2008

Jane Curtin is 61.

Jeff Foxworthy is 50. Some Foxworthiness:

• “I’ve been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family.”
• “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.’”
• “You may be a redneck if… your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.”

Rosie Perez is 44. Ms. Perez was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar in 1994 for Fearless.

Macy Gray is 41.

Author Alice Sebold is 45.

She was a freshman in college when one night she was attacked while she was walking home, dragged into an underground tunnel, and raped. She thought that she was going to be murdered throughout the experience. When she later talked to the police, they said that a girl had recently been murdered in that same tunnel, and so she should consider herself lucky for having survived. A few weeks later, Sebold spotted the rapist on the street, and she went to the police. He was arrested, and Sebold testified against him at the trial. The rapist was convicted and received the maximum sentence, and Sebold thought that the end of the trial would put the experience behind her.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Follow The Writer’s Almanac link to learn how the aftermath led to Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the best-selling book of 2002.

Author Robert M. Pirsig was born on this date in 1928.

In 1968, [Pirsig] decided to take a trip by motorcycle from Minneapolis to California with his twelve-year-old son. He thought he’d write a travel essay about the journey, but the travel essay turned into a book about using Eastern philosophy to come to terms with his life. He called the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). It was rejected by 121 publishers before one publisher finally took a chance on it. It went on to become the best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s, selling more than 4 million copies.

Robert Pirsig said: “I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was born on this date in 1757. Not yet 20, Lafayette was commissioned a major general in the American army by the Continental Congress. (It helped that he served without pay and funded his own troops.)

Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, served Washington loyally at Valley Forge and during an attempted cabal against the Commander-in-Chief, saved American troops and supplies in Rhode Island, was instrumental in obtaining vital French assistance from Louis XVI, and was on the field at Yorktown in 1781 when the British surrendered. By then Lafayette was 24.

Best line of the day, so far

I’m finding the Republican attempts to derail the conversation from the actual state of the country really depressing and disgraceful this year. They practice Orwellian politics of the crudest sort. They are trying to sell a big lie–that the election is about the social issues of the 1960s, or Barack Obama’s patriotism or his eloquence, or the “angry left,” when it’s really about turning toward a more moderate path after the ideological radicalism and malfeasance of the past eight years.

Joe Klein, Time

If you’re on-board with what the GOP is doing, fine — but at least admit it to yourself.

But as for NewMexiKen, their America is not the America I live in.

Charlie Brown has never knowingly taken steroids

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (2006). Funny stuff. A couple of excerpts:

DISTRICT ATTORNEY OTHMAR: Wah wah-wah wah, wah, wah wah-wah-wah wah?

CHARLIE BROWN: I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t knowingly lie to the grand jury.

D.A.: Wah-wah-wah-wah?

BROWN: I did not knowingly take steroids, sir. Period. Snoopy gave me something to make me throw harder, but he said it was flaxseed oil and vitamin drops. I was tired of having the ball hit back up the middle and all my clothes torn off.

BROWN: My head’s always been this big. Ask Sally. And I’m not going bald; I’ve never had more than three hairs, sir.