Good ol’ Ben sure managed to carry on and on in his opening sequence about working hard and not going into debt, using a lot of Poor Richard’s sayings to drive home the point. Frankly, I haven’t met a whole lot of people who can pay cash for everything they own. Even if they have no credit card debt, most (we working folk anyway) surely have mortgages or rents and car payments to make. The doctor treating you may be paying $6,000 or more a month for the next forever to pay back his or her schooling costs. All is not as it seems for most people who appear to be living comfortably. We’re all one layoff away from everything that Franklin warned of, but the question is–what should one do?

Here, let Ben speak:

And now to conclude, Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct, as Poor Richard says: However, remember this, They that won’’t be counselled, can’’t be helped, as Poor Richard says: And farther, That if you will not hear Reason, she’’ll surely rap your Knuckles.”

I guess I was a fool for betting on an optimistic future and then getting laid off against my will. Now, my knuckles rapped, I can only marvel at how bad Franklin’s grammar was. English, like the times, I guess, keep changing.

As if this is any surprise, my post of yesterday segues nicely into the latest media “bombshell.” Let’s see, Iraq is a center of terrorism. Is this surprising? The Middle Eastern country goes from brutal dictatorship to an experiment in democracy with rival religious and ethnic factions ready to kill one another, and we’re shocked that terrorists would take advantage of this?

As usual, the New York Times has taken the lead in releasing a government report that makes Republicans look “bad” or “stupid,” take your pick. The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says that, according to an unnamed leaker in the newspaper, the Iraqi effort has made terrorism worse.

This is transparently one more liberal effort, obviously, to “get Bush,” ironically at the same time that Bill Clinton bashes an interviewer because, he claims, he was closer to killing Osama bin Laden than Bush ever was. However, closer though he may have been, he was also the bigger coward. He was scared to death of a negative headline, 3,000 or so World Trade Center victims be damned.

Anyway, if the Dems succeed in taking over the government and pulling us out of Iraq, look for the “Greater Iran” effect, whereby a terrorism network–soon to be armed with nuclear weapons courtesy of Iran–stretches from Teheran to the Paris of the East, Beirut, unimpeded, and threatens the destruction of the one bastion of democracy in the area, Israel, then us.

Choices, choices.

Tomorrow, I promise, back to Poor Richard.

I teach a university class on popular American culture, which is of course a misnomer–it’s neither American nor culture, but it is popular. I’ts Michael Jordan wearing and schlepping Nikes so young kids with no money and impoverished parents can “be like Mike.” That phase has passed, but you get the point.

Now, we also cover topics such as media literacy, gatekeeping and agenda setting.
Speaking of which, at least in my hometown of Los Angeles (which rung of Dante’s infernal does this place represent?), the agenda setting is fairly obvious–”Get Bush at all costs!” If the top story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times isn’t body count totals or “failures” in Iraq, it’s generals accusing Donald Rumsfeld of this or that, or the Army chief of staff saying, “Pay up or we’re out of Iraq” (which he never really said), or polls that, though showing Republicans gaining steam, are nonetheless interpreted as a Democratic rout. You don’t even want to go into the editorial pages unless you like onerous taxes, onerous regulations, and onerous untruths. The news sections are tip-off enough.

If these people want out of the U.S., let them go. I’ll be happy to contribute what little money I can afford to see them off to France, Russia, China or North Korea. They can find their kindred spirits there. No, I misspoke, to Venezuela ASAP please!

My Northern Chinese wife (I say northern because her hometown of Shenyang borders North Korea and many Korean expatriates reside there) became a U.S. citizen today in ceremonies in Los Angeles.

As we stood in line waiting to enter the convention center, redubbed a U.S. court for the ceremony, a gentleman mentioned that when his sister became a citizen a few months earlier, the ceremony did indeed commence at the 8 a.m. scheduled start or just shortly thereafter. However, we barely made it in by 8 a.m., being in the first third of the line. Seated in the guest section, I watched a steady stream of new citizens of every conceivable nationality march by to take their seats. An hour later, the gavel finally sounded for the ceremony. A record 4,359 people had joined the ranks of those becoming American citizens. (In fifth place numerically were Vietnamese, fourth Iranians, third Salvadorans, second Filipinas, and first Mexicans.)

As for the ceremony itself, it was a tinny-sounding affair because it was held in this monstrous hall with lousy speakers blaring out otherwise fine patriotic songs–except…when it got to the end and everyone was sworn in. The sight of more than 4,000 new Americans shouting and waving miniature American flags was truly a sight to behold for the ages.

My thoughts were two as I watched the new Americans throng by–”My God, does this line ever end?” and “Does Al Qaeda have this many terrorists?”

Truly, freedom was on display this day, and it was the clear victor over terrorism and evil of every ilk.

When I left and assembled outside to congraulate my wife, my final thought was that “the line that never ends” is a clear signal that freedom is the cry of people everywhere and that we can never let terrorist scare tactics put the slightest dent in this wave of humanity yearning–and deserving–to be free.

I came across the old refrain of “What have you done for me lately” yesterday, but not in an employment situation. Rather, it was in the usually routine process of getting a prescription refilled.

In this case, it didn’t involve my family physician but my eye doctor, who refused to renew the prescriptions by phone since I had switched (by dint of being laid off) from a PPO plan to an HMO plan. I plaintively asked what I was supposed to do, and the answer was “find a doctor in your HMO.”

This seemed like a take on “What have you done for me lately?” But in this case, it was more like, “What has your insurance company done for me lately?”
So much for the Hippocratic Oath, eh?

Wouldn’t you know it? Mr. Unlucky strikes again. I went to the Web site containing the copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac that I was using, and I got the cursed “404″ notification! I guess Poor Richard has deserted me. What else is new? I’ll check back later to see if the site comes back up. If not, I guess I’ll be shopping on Amazon.

I opened, on the Web, a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac to begin my journey of discovering wisdom old and, if possible, adding wisdom new to it. Now, wisdom by definition must be old and time-honored, so today what you have is repackaged wisdom, whereby the hucksters doling it out for the big bucks (Anthony Robbins et al.) are merely disguising it with modern jargon and marketing magic. That being said, how does ol’ Ben open his Almanac.
Several different versions exist, as Franklin kept rewriting (and reselling) Poor Richard’s observations, so the one I stumbled on was the 1758 edition, showing that Franklin was well known and successful even twenty-plus years before our nation’s birth.
His musings begin with a discussion of trying times and high taxes, wherein a wise old man, doubtlessly Franklin’s mouthpiece, notes that taxes are indeed bad, but that idleness taxes a person twice as much, pride three times as much, and folly four times as much. Amen. When I look back over my long period of unemployment (still unabated), I think I spent a least a majority if not most of my time caught up in those traps.
After some more ramblings and musings, Franklin makes the interesting observation that: “He that lives upon Hope will die fasting. There are no Gains, without Pains.”
Now, my being a writer, I can criticize the grammar here fairly severely, but we all get the point. However, in this modern-day, shallow, materialistic world of ours, “no gain without pain” now refers almost exclusively to building one’s abs and other bodily parts in the very pursuit of idleness (showing off at Starbucks), pride (bragging about how much one can bench press) and folly (impressing the babes with our flesh). So today, when times are bad—either individually or collectively—it’s much simple to play the blame and litigation game.
My modern interpretation: Franklin is still right, but today you’d better pass it by your lawyer or agent before acting on it. It kind of runs counter to modern times. Instead, for today it should say: “He who lives upon hype will thrive and survive, and there are truly no gains without other people’s pains.
Ouch! Herein lies the perverse and symbiotic relationship between work and entertainment. At work, you get screwed over and pained endlessly by the ambitious, greedy minority, so by the time you get home, you need TV, sports, movies, whatever, to recover from it all. Now you know why, in the absence of the boob tube and sporting events and stupid comedians, our founders turned to hard work and religion. Besides, they didn’t want to be branded with an “A” for fooling around. Sober and straight ruled. Put in that light, I’m not sure which is better.