Look! Another politician can’t simply admit to making a historical mistake.

As I’ve said before, I’m not happy when lawmakers make simple historical blunders, but I can live with them. Nobody’s perfect.

It’s the refusal to admit that you have made a mistake that I cannot stand, and it only serves to make the initial mistake even worse.

Today’s case in point:

In an attempt to explain away her claim that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery (even though many of them owned slaves), Michele Bachmann attempts to lump our sixth President, abolitionist John Quincy Adams, into the group of founding fathers, even though he was nine years old at the time that the Declaration of Independence was written and a twenty year old college student at the time of the writing and adoption of the US Constitution.

Congratulations, Michele. You just made yourself look even more idiotic.

Just say, “Yup, I screwed up,” and move on. Admit your mistake and it will be forgotten in a day or two.

Otherwise your Good Morning America interview will go viral, thousands of bloggers write about your blunder-to-explain-a-blunder, and the story continues.

Honestly, who are advising these morons?

The rules of golf: Remove shrapnel from the course, take cover during bombing runs and take a free drop if your ball is destroyed by enemy action

Perhaps I just enjoy golfing more, and perhaps I do not require as much sleep as most, but I have a great number of friends who enjoy golfing (and play much better than me) who are unwilling to join me at 6:00 AM on the back nine of our local golf course for a round of early morning golf. It’s quite a deal. If you’re willing to get up early enough, you can lineup at the tenth tee box with the other early risers and play nine holes of golf on a first-come-first-served basis. The first foursome tees off at 6:30 AM, and if you play fast enough, you can be walking off the course well before 9:00 AM with the rest of the day ahead of you.

For guys with little kids at home, this is the perfect way to squeeze in a couple rounds of golf every weekend. Wake up around 5:00 on Saturday and Sunday, grab a quick breakfast, and lineup at 6:00 for a 6:30 start.

Even the most demanding of spouses would have a hard time complaining about the convenience of a round of golf finishing before 9:00.

Yet I only have a small handful of friends willing to do so on a regular basis.

It baffles me.

I suspect that had these weak-willed, pillow-loving men and women lived in England during World War II, they may have stayed away from the golf course after reading this set of wartime rules.

Even I think that this is taking dedication to the sport a bit too far.

Please note the last rule:

"A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty one stroke.”

A PENALTY? A bomb explodes in the middle of your back swing and you still incur a penalty? These Brits take their golf very seriously. _________________________________________

This notice posted in war-torn Britain in 1940 for golfers with stiff upper lips.

German aircraft from Norway would fly on missions to northern England; because of the icy weather conditions, the barrels of their guns had a small dab of wax to protect them. As they crossed the coast, they would clear their guns by firing a few rounds at the golf courses. Golfers were urged to take cover.

Jon Stewart read my blog and stole my bit.

Damn that Jon Stewart. He said the same thing I did, except he was a lot funnier.

Also, did you hear that Palin supporters are attempting to edit Paul Revere’s Wikipedia page in order to make her statements slightly more correct?

Like I said, it’s not the lack of understanding about Paul Revere’s ride that bothers me.

Even I thought that Revere shouted “The British are coming!” as he rode through Massachusetts on that fateful night.

Apparently he did not.

Instead, it’s Palin’s subsequent attempt to explain the mistake away with nonsense and her refusal to accept responsibility for a historical faux pas that upset me so.

Of course, it turns out that Sarah Palin may not be at fault. Several people have suggested that she may be suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect, a condition by which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the meta-cognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes.

Sounds about right.

She was recently spurned by Margaret Thatcher, who will reportedly reject any attempt by Palin to meet with her during Palin’s proposed visit to Britain on the basis that “Sarah Palin is nuts.”

Not a good week for the former governor from Alaska.

But I promise: A little honesty would have helped her considerably.

Sarah Palin teaches 5 important life lessons

First, if you haven’t heard Sarah Palin’s account of Paul Revere’s ride and her subsequent defense of it, please watch. You be the judge.

Five important life lessons to learn from this latest debacle:

1. There is nothing wrong with not knowing something. Even something as ubiquitous as the historical account of Paul Revere’s ride.

2. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you do not know something.

2. There is something very wrong with pretending to know something, and doing so will almost always make you look like a fool.

4. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you were wrong.

5. There is something very wrong with covering up your mistakes with inarticulate lies and fabrications.

Dishonoring the dead with stupidity

From Fox News:

Is Obama Chewing Gum at Joplin Memorial Service?

Earlier today President Obama spoke at a memorial service in Joplin, MO honoring those who lost their lives to the destructive tornado that stuck the region last week. Seen at the last seconds of this video clip it appears as though President Obama was chewing gum. What do you think?

____________________________________________________

I try to avoid politics here, but I can’t imagine even the most ardent Fox News supporters getting behind a story like this. 

And so, in answer to the question that Fox News posed: 

I think that at a time of great tragedy, the last thing that a news organization should be doing is reporting on a non-story that is clearly designed to undermine the credibility of the President in a way that would only be meaningful to the most base, derisive and fanatical elements of our citizenry. 

I can accept Fox News’s Fair and Balanced slogan as cleverly ironic (whether it’s meant to be or not), and I can even accept a news organization so slanted to one direction that they need to nail the news desk down to the floor lest it slide across the set.

Fox News is entirely within their rights to promote any agenda that they so choose, and while I do not believe them to be fair and balanced, they are free to do as they please.   

besides, without Fox News, what would Jon Stewart do?  Or The Onion?

But it’s impossible  for me to accept any news organization that attempts to politicize a memorial service for dead Americans by attempting to make such an inane and meaningless observation regarding the President.

Was he chewing gum?  Perhaps. 

Does it matter?  Of course not.

This is not a story, Fox News.  It is a pandering, pointless and ill-timed attempt at character assassination, and you should know better.

Particularly at a time like this.

It's never enough.

Cecil Rhodes, former Prime Minister of the Cape Colony of South Africa and founder of the De Beers Mining Company, the Rhodes Scholarship program and the state of Rhodesia (later separated into the nations of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and later renamed Zambia and Zimbabwe), uttered these final words on his death bed: "So little done, so much to do."

This is my greatest fear:

Regret for what I could and should have done.

It is also the reason I do not plan on dying.

You made that look easy, George. Well played, sir.

Sucks when one of your core issues gets turned on its head and your find yourself suddenly sleeping with the enemy. 

Great accomplishments in the trenches

“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

That is my favorite quote, and everyday of my life I attempt to live and breathe these words.

I am not always successful. There are times when I get lazy. There are days in which I fail to accomplish my goals. There are hours that I wish I could have back. But the one thing I never do is make an excuse for not accomplishing a goal or completing a task.

H. Jackson Brown was right. I have just as much time in the day as Jefferson or Einstein or Keller. And I have more labor-saving devices than they could ever imagine.

My only complaint with Brown’s quote:

He left two notable people off his list: Lofting and Schwarzschild.

In fact, I think these two men might be more impressive and more apropos than anyone else on Brown’s list.

Here’s why:

When people tell me that they don’t have enough time to write their great American novel or are waiting for a sabbatical or for their kids to get older before they begin writing, I laugh.

If you really want to write, you will find the time.

Lofting and Schwarzschild are perfect examples of this.

Hugh Lofting wrote the first Doctor Doolittle novel, The Story of Doctor Doolittle, from the trenches during World War I when actual news “was either too horrible or too dull to bear.” He wrote the first book as a series of illustrated letters to his children, so that they could continue to hear their father’s voice while he was stationed in Europe, fighting the Germans.

Lofting would write a total of twelve Doolittle novels over a thirty year period, and his second, The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle, went on to win the the prestigious Newbury Award.

It all began in an English trench amidst bullets and artillery shells and mustard gas.

Meanwhile, fighting in the same war on the Russian front, huddled in a trench similar to that of Lofting’s, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity for “the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass,” which led to prediction of the existence of black holes.

In a letter to Einstein written from his trench, Schwarzschild wrote:

As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in he land of your ideas.

In 1916, Einstein wrote back to Schwarzschild on his results:

I have read your paper with the utmost interest. I had not expected that one could formulate the exact solution of the problem in such a simple way. I liked very much your mathematical treatment of the subject. Next Thursday I shall present the work to the Academy with a few words of explanation.

Schwarzschild would die from pemphigus a year later while stationed on the Russian front, but his accomplishments are revered and relevant to physics to this day.

All of this accomplished in the midst of a World War.

During my last book tour, a woman told me that she was waiting for “just the right desk before she got started on her book.”

I laughed at her statement, and I fear that I may have offended her, but what would writers like Lofting or Schwarzschild have accomplished if they waited for the proper seating apparatus to arrive in their trench?

What would they think of someone who was not working for want of a proper desk?

Not much, I would imagine.

We never got to the war part of the Civil War

The problem with American History class was that never got to the good stuff. Take the Civil War. I recall with blinding acuity the days and weeks that we spent studying the causes of the Civil War, many of which are now being debunked by modern day historians who now claim that the war was mostly about slavery.

Hour upon hour dedicated to the study of the economic disparity between the North and the South, the debate over state’s rights, the difference in cultures, and more. I remember sitting in my seat, listening to the lecture, praying that we would turn the page and finally see cannons firing, soldiers marching and battles erupting.

And then it did.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on the federal troops at Fort Sumter. An artist’s rendering of the beginning of the battle was splashed across the page of my history book. I can still see it in my mind’s eye.

Three classes later, the war was over.

Three days.

Since high school, I have read entire books about the Battle of Gettysburg, the use of naval power in the war, Sherman’s march to the sea, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Chickamauga, the changes in military leadership during the war and more.

All this and much, much more was covered in my high school history class in just three days.

I realize that there is a limit on the amount of time that a teacher has to teach the content, but if you want your students to be interested in history, you can’t strip out the best parts.

Yes, the causes of the Civil War are important, and yes, Reconstruction was an important time in our country’s history and in many way still impacts our nation today. These things must be learned.

But for a student, and especially a boy, to study the Civil War and not spend a day or two learning about the weapons used at the time and the tactics that led to the Union’s victory at the Battle of Gettysburg and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth following Lincoln’s assassination is doing a disservice to the student and to the study of history in general.

It’s conflict that makes history so compelling, and sometimes this conflict occurs on the battlefield. Not every student is going to spend his adult life reading about the intricacies of the war on his own, and especially not if the war has been sanitized and abbreviated in high school.

Leaving the guns and swords and blood out of history class is a mistake, and it’s one that I hope does not happen as often as I fear it might.

The French reverse course after 25 years. Proof that “Better late than never” is not always true.

In 1986 the US bombed Libya in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. The discotheque bombing killed three people and injured 229.  Germany and the United States obtained cable transcripts from Libyan agents in East Germany involved in the attack. Prior to the Berlin bombing, Libya had already been connected to several other terrorist attacks, including the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks. In addition, Gaddafi had indicated that he would continue to support the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army as long as European countries supported anti-Gaddafi Libyans.

The Foreign Minister of Libya called the massacres "heroic acts."

Despite the overwhelming evidence indicting Libya’s direct involvement in terrorism, France refused to allow American warplanes to use its airspace during the attack.

I know it’s twenty-five years later, but could someone please explain to me why France is now leading the charge in establishing a no fly zone over Libya? France championed the United Nations resolution like no other country and is now the first nation to have warplanes in the air.

Just this afternoon they began firing on Libyan ground units.

What gives?

We knew this guy was bad in 1986.

And had US warplanes not been forced to fly over Malta on their way to their targets (thus warning Gaddafi of their approach), we could have eliminated Gaddafi for good twenty-five years ago.

The result of missing Gaddafi?

Libyan state-sponsored terrorism continued.

In September of 1986, the Libyan government ordered the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Pakistan, which resulted in the deaths of 20 people.

In May 1987, Australia deported diplomats and broke off relations with Libya, claiming Libya sought to fuel violence in Australia and Oceania.

In late 1987 French authorities stopped a merchant vessel that was delivering 150 tons of Soviet arms from Libya to European terrorist groups.

On December 21, 1988, Libyan agents brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard, and 11 people in Lockerbie.

It’s now 2011 and I’m pleased to see that France is supporting the no-fly zone and protecting Libyan civilians, but aren’t they a little late to the game?

Had they simply allowed American warplanes access to their airspace twenty-five years ago, the world might be watching an entirely different dictator slaughter his people as they wage war for their freedom.

At last

I may not agree with many of Mike Huckabee’s positions, but he is the first Republican who I have heard take a stand against the absurd and lunatic attacks by conservatives such as Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck on Michelle Obama’s recent anti-obesity campaign. Finally, a voice of reason in a wilderness of fanaticism and misrepresentation.

Thank you, Mr. Huckabee.

Sexist pig ladies

Madeline Albright on being a female Secretary of State and a diplomat:

“There is a great advantage to being a woman.  I think we are better at personal relationships and have the ability to tell it like it is when necessary.”

Sarah Palin on her possible Presidential run:

"Nobody is more qualified really to multitasking and doing all the things you need to do as a president than a woman and as a mom."

These statements are notable for two reasons:

1.  Both are clearly sexist, and if made by a men, would immediately be attacked by feminists.

Am I wrong?

If Madeline Albright can claim female dominance in personal relationships and the ability to “tell it like it is when necessary,” would it also be acceptable for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to claim that men make better generals because they think more strategically than women? Or for Joe Biden to claim that men make better Presidents because they handle pressure more effectively?

And if Sarah Palin can claim that women are better qualified to handle the multitude of duties on the Presidential plate, would it also be acceptable for Mitt Romney to counter with the claim that men forge more effective partnerships because we are less catty and mean?

Of course not.

Yet both Albright and Palin get away with these statements unscathed (and almost unnoticed) because of a second, equally notable reason:

2. Most men don’t give a damn if Madeline Albright, Sarah Plain or anyone else wants to claim female superiority in any realm.

Talk is cheap.

When your country is one thousand years old, things can get quite complicated

With the sale of my new book to a British publisher, I felt it was time to finally understand one of the great mysteries of life: United Kingdom versus Great Britain versus England:

What’s the difference?

Where in hell does Canada and the Falkland Islands fit?

I want this guy on my team

Regardless of your position (and I don’t pretend to know enough about the Wisconsin budget situation to possess an informed opinion), you have to admire Wisconsin state representative Gordon Hintz’s passion.

I don’t think he’s faking it.

Obama and Dicks simpatico

It took me more than two weeks, but I finally sat down to watch President Obama’s live interview with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly prior to the Super Bowl.

I didn’t think O’Reilly was nearly as disrespectful as some have claimed.  He interrupted the President on several occasions and dismissed some of his responses, but it seemed like a frank discussion to me.

Little transpired by way of substance, but I credit the President for agreeing to the interview.  I didn’t doubt that he would hold his own on such a large stage, but this wasn’t exactly a fair and balanced journalist asking the questions. 

The highlight for me came in Obama’s decision to conduct a nationally televised interview without wearing a tie and the two shots he took at O’Reilly for his decision to wear one himself. 

Obama also answered that one of the worst parts of his job was the need to wear a jacket on Super Bowl Sunday. 

Upon assuming the Presidency, Obama dispensed with the jacket and tie formality in the Oval Office, and since then, he has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to challenge and dispense with the nonsensical authority that society has bestowed upon a necktie  and jacket.

Having decided to never wear a tie again, it is nice to see that the leader of the free world seems to at least be leaning toward my seemingly lonely end of the bell curve on this issue. 

An education to most certainly brag about

Sarah Palin said: "I want the mainstream media, and I've said this for a couple of years now, I want to help 'em. I want—I have a journalism degree, that is what I studied."

—in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Feb. 4, 2011

It is true.

Sarah Palin was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis on journalism, after attending, over a period of five years, the following institutions of higher learning (in this order):

1. University of Hawaii
2. Hawaii Pacific University
3. North Idaho College
4. University of Idaho
5. Matanuska-Susitna College
6. University of Idaho (again)

This may seem like a lot of schools and a variety of degree programs, but fear not. I am quite certain that there was universal alignment in the core curriculum between each of these schools, even though they spanned three different states and are not affiliated with one another in any way.

Even if a person wanted to attend five different schools (including enrolling in one twice) over a period of five years, I am quite certain that a student could ultimately receive a fully cohesive, high quality education in communications and journalism that would most assuredly result in the unimpeachable ability to improve upon mainstream media’s standards and practices.

Given all that we know about Palin so far, I think the quality and depth of education that she received in earning her Bachelor’s degree is fairly evident.

And how generous of her to offer such expertise to help the professionals currently running what she now refers to as the lame-stream media.

Lame-stream media. Hardy har-har. I assume that she learned her flair for hyperbole in college as well.

Or colleges as well.

I’ll grant you that it’s a little odd that Palin is so anxious to help an institution that she insults on an almost daily, but perhaps this is simply an expression of her multi-faceted skill set.

Expertise in journalism beyond reproach, a desire to help her fellow man, and an acerbic wit to rival the best.

A deadly combination.

Sometimes you’re wrong, and sometimes you’re REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WRONG.

I’m an independent, but if I were a Republican, I’d demand a new news network immediately.

Fox is a constant embarrassment to conservatives everywhere.   

Your attempt at deflection simply reiterates your original ignorance, Mrs. Palin.

I try not to get too political on this blog, but when it comes to Sarah Palin, it’s rarely about politics and more about common sense. In a Fox News appearance following the State of the Union address, Sarah Palin was asked what she thought of President Obama’s declaration that it is now America’s “Sputnik Moment,” a moment similar to 1957 when the U.S. government, shocked by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, redoubled its efforts to win the space race.

Palin’s response left some room for interpretation (and sounded slightly mangled, as always):

"When [The President] so often repeated the Sputnik Moment that he would aspire Americans to celebrate. He needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it led to the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

Was Palin suggesting that the Soviets won the space race?

Was she implying that the 1957 launch of the world’s first satellite was a bad idea and eventually brought down the Soviet Union?

Was she suggesting that the collapse of  the Soviet Union was the result of America’s 1957 Sputnik moment?

No, Palin said the next day, quickly backtracking after apparently misunderstanding the context of a 1957 Soviet space launch and its universally acknowledged non-existent impact on the collapse of the Soviet Union more than thirty years later.

I think we can all agree that the Sputnik launch was not the straw that broke the proverbial camels back of the Russians. A massive and costly military build-up, a nuclear arms race, a failed invasion of Afghanistan, and a lack of a free market system are the factors that likely doomed the Soviets.

Palin absorbed quite a bit of ridicule for this misunderstanding of history in the subsequent days.

So imagine her utter joy when one of her staffers, or perhaps a supporter, alerted her to Spudnut, a coffee shop in Richland, WA that’s name is close enough to Sputnik to allow her to spin the story away from her ignorance of history and back upon “the heartland of America.”

I don’t often think as Washington state as the “heartland of America,” but perhaps she was being metaphorical.

She writes (using the incorrect abbreviation for Washington while doing so):

"So I listened to that Sputnik moment talk over and over again, and I think, No, we don't need one of those. You know what we need is a Spudnut moment. … The Spudnut shop in Richland, Wash., it's a bakery, it's a little coffee shop that's so successful, 60-some years, generation to generation, a family-owned business, not looking for government to bail them out and make their decisions for them. It's just hard-working patriotic Americans in this shop. We need more Spudnut moments in America, and I wish that President Obama would understand in that heartland of America, what it is that really results in the solutions that we need to get this economy back on the right track. It's a shop like that.”

That Sputnik moment?

You understand that it existed before the President referenced it.

Right, Sarah?

It’s not that Sputnik moment. It’s the Sputnik moment. It’s a universally acknowledged moment in American history.

And “that Sputnik moment talk”?

You mean the State of the Union address, the one that the Constitution requires the President to deliver once every year?

“That Sputnik talk?” Who is she kidding?

And really? We couldn’t use another Sputnik moment? Another moment in  history when Americans share a common vision that propels us and the world forward in terms of technology, national defense and innovation?

Oh, and lands a human being on the Moon.

That’s no good?

We really need more coffee shops instead?

Improving Ice Road Truckers

Ice Road Truckers would have been a much better show if just one truck had crashed through the ice just once. Just one catastrophic accident and I would have been hooked.

Instead, all I got was lots of talk about the dangers of the ice and the hazards of the job, but not even one uneventful fender-bender.

All it amounted to was one great big tease.

I watched six episodes and was done.

It was like watching a NASCAR race without a single multi-car accident.

Or attending a hockey game and not seeing a fight.

Or watching John Boehner deliver speak in public without crying.

King Phillip was the best we could do?

My wife attended King Phillip Middle school as a child. There are two other schools in the United States that take their name from King Phillip. I continue to be astounded by the use of his name for any school.

King Philip Middle School was named after King Philip, which is the English mispronunciation-bastardization of the Wampanoag tribal chief Metacomet, who led a war against the Puritans from 1675-1676. Proportionate to the colonial and Native American populations at the time, it was one of the bloodiest and costliest wars in the history of North America. More than half of New England's ninety towns were assaulted by Native American warriors, and one-tenth of all Puritans were killed.

Yet for some reason, three schools in America have named themselves in honor of this Native American chief and have used the English version of his name rather than the guy’s actual name while doing so.

This seems stupid enough, but even more so considering there is little historical record in relation to King Philip. He led a Native American tribe, fought Puritan expansion, and died at the hands of another Native American while hiding out in the swamps of Rhode Island.

I guess he could have been a great man, but who knows?

Maybe he was lousy leader. Maybe he was a jerk.

After all, he only ascended to the role of chief after his brother died. It wasn’t like anyone elected the guy to office. The Wampanoag chose their leaders just like the English chose kings.

He also failed to handle the conflict diplomatically and was outmaneuvered by several other Native American tribes which forged alliances with the English in order to undermine Wampanoag power in the region.

Weren’t there more verifiably worthy Native Americans to consider when naming a middle school? Or at least Native Americans with actual Native American names?

And if you are going to use a guy you know little about, why not at least use his actual name instead of some foreign-tongue ruination?

The other two schools using King Phillip's name are in Massachusetts. It is a school district comprised of a middle and a high school which both bear King Philip’s name (as does the district itself).

This is the district’s logo, which may or may not be an accurate representation of the seventeenth century Native American chief.

I’m guessing not.