Maine Owl

Gone at 77

Sadly, I did not know she was ill. My strongest memory of Odetta is a concert she gave at the First Parish Church on Congress Street in Portland on winter solstice, 1990. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't 1991.) That was incredible. She will be missed...

What's the point?

It's tag line is "They said it. Collected here are statements from hundreds of leading Democrats and other liberals from all over the state of Maine."

I'm reluctant to post any link to this hatchet-job website. At best, it is a misguided collection of innuendo bathed in sanctimony. At worst, it is McCarthy-ist. You almost can hear Ann Coulter or David Horowitz drooling in the background.

Here's an example. They post a piece published in 2003 in the Bangor Daily News by my friend Doug Allen. It begins like this:

Going to War
by Doug Allen

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who does not care about the welfare of the people of Iraq or neighboring countries. In fact, many of us in the peace movement feel more strongly about this than do policy makers in Washington. We questioned why Washington, the military, and certain corporations provided biological and chemical weapons and military and financial aid to Saddam Hussein and continue to supply similar dictators and violators of human rights in the Middle East and throughout the world.

What are we supposed to feel? How is this guy who thinks Saddam Hussein was "brutal" a University of Maine full professor of philosophy (paid lower than most U.S. full professors)?

This is know-nothingism. It illustrates why Republican politics is completely debased from the public good for the people of Maine.

Rest in peace.

George Carlin, gone at 71.

For some reason I have been transmitted back to about 1974, shooting baskets with my high school buddy Jim while reciting Carlin's seven words you can't say on television, Biff Barf, and the Hippy Dippy weather report.