The lions of Texas are on the loose. As the ancient African proverb predicts, they have found their historian. The powers that be in the old Republic of Texas, now in name at least a state in the Union called The United States of America, have decided to rewrite the History schoolbooks. They have voted to remove Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia and third President of the United States, from the list of those taught as being influential in forming American ideals and values. Jefferson is being replaced by a contemporary woman from Illinois named Phyllis Schlafly. I'm not kidding. They really did that. Ms. Schlafly is best known for her love of Jesus and her hatred of gays, liberals and progressives of all kinds including feminists. Many people are taking this historical detour very seriously, just as they take History very seriously. They shouldn't.

What exactly is History? And, who writes it?

H.L. Mencken called History "legend." What's more, he defined such legend as "a lie that has attained the dignity of age." Mencken's contemporary, Ambrose Bierce, was a bit clearer. "History," he postulated, was "an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools." The distinction, if such a one existed, was arguably put to rest by George Santayana, who in an attempt to end all discussion on the matter simply said; "History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." Well, what more is there to say?

Like Thomas Jefferson, you probably won't find Mencken, Bierce or Santayana in the History books used in Texas schools. In addition to Ms. Schlafly, it's now mandated that the musings of Newt Gingrich be taught to all of Texas' school age youngsters. Gingrich has nothing in common with Mencken, Bierce or Santayana. He is, however, on the same page — now in Texas anyway quite literally — with Phyllis Schlafly.

What you may think is the real meaning of History is your own business — so long as you're not enrolled in any of Texas' public schools. I find myself in agreement with Ernst Toller, an early 20th Century German poet and playwright, a professor at Heidelberg University who said, "History is the propaganda of the victors." Sadly, Toller thought those victors were sure to be the forces of Nazism and he killed himself in a New York City hotel room in 1939. Those who say Hope lives forever should have told Toller.

What the new Texas History books will say about Ms. Schlafly isn't hard to figure out. While she has nothing at all herself to say about History, the man she's replacing in the curriculum, Jefferson, said this: "A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable." In order to come up with that, don't you think he probably had a good idea that someday he would be kicked out of somebody's schoolbooks?

Screwing around with historical accounts is nothing new. History and Truth have never been mistaken for the same — not by historians. Nineteenth Century French historian Fustel de Coulanges had the clarity (or arrogance) to declare: "I open my mouth and History comes out." Those who have written History have always been aware of their responsibility as well as their opportunity. While no one really knows who was the first to say, "History is written by the winners," the 5th Century BC Greek, Herodotus, wrote this instructive analysis for all future historians: "Very few things happen at the right time," he said, "and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects." So it is in Texas today. An act of correction; a repair of defects. Are they not in the great tradition of the Father of History himself? Those who are so damn angry with the Texas School Board are positive they know what History is. The lions of Texas feel the same way.

The big difference between History in this modern day and History ages ago is technology. We see the changes being made — like in the sausage factory. Another former US President — who as far as I can tell is still in official Texas History books — John Quincy Adams, once wrote: "The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but sort of a mask, richly colored. The interior workings of the machine must be foul." Through the magic of the Internet and the 24-hour news channels, we are all witness to the "interior workings of the machine" in Texas. Some may think it stinks most foul. Others find it a breath of fresh air. Mencken and Bierce, if not Santayana would no doubt be laughing.

In Texas, that Jeffersonian morsel may be shrinking out of sight. But those who object should not be fooled that this was unforeseen. "Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust." So spoke Arthur Koestler in "Darkness At Noon." What else did you expect in Texas — Rachel Maddow?

History is not the only academic discipline being eaten for lunch by Texas' lions. They are feasting on Sociology, Economics and who knows what's next? Can't wait until they get to Music and Art.

For those who don't like conspiracy theory (even without the capital letters), how can you avoid the obvious? All lions in captivity have trainers, don't they? Who's training this herd of Texans? Perhaps we would all do well to remember the foreboding words from Benjamin Disraeli: "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

A word of warning as well to the gluttonous lions of Texas. Don't sleep too soundly after your big meal. There will always be more hunters.

Richard Greener, a critically acclaimed author and former broadcast industry executive, blogs at PAPADABLOGGER and the Huffington Post.

Considering the profound influence that Tolstoy's ideas about non-violence had had on Mohandas, aka "Mahatma", Gandhi (they corresponded for about a year before Tolstoy's death), and subsequently on many others — including Nobel Peace Prize laureates Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. — we should properly consider Tolstoy, in addition to being a writer, a seminal political philosopher, most overtly so in later phases of his life. He was also clearly crazy.

For Tolstoy's later gospel his implicit taxonomy of the individual is our key to understanding how, and why, we should narrow our horizons in the pursuit of divine salvation. Tolstoy thus marks one terminus of an extraordinary dichotomy. At the other end we find Friedrich Nietzsche, a political philosopher who extols the glory and the power of the individual to the exclusion of all else. Apparent opposites — Tolstoy, for example, considered eleemosynary activity the essence of life while for Nietzsche it was anathema [1] — in fact their affinities are more consequential. Neither Tolstoy nor Nietzsche understood that an individual has multiple sources of inspiration, that ideas and intentions flow from complex social inter-dependencies, and that, moreover, the ideal is not to be found in the preeminence of any one explanation, but through balance. Theirs is a spectrum of taxonomic failure. Atomized individuals, shorn of compassionate attachments, are of interest only for the purity and qualia of their will. Perhaps more to the point, Tolstoy and Nietzsche both sought the truth through the dark side, through Dionysian mysteries rather than Apollonian reason.

The spectrum, or syndrome, of taxonomic failure reverberates strongly throughout the history of ideas. Sorting out its real world effects, however, is a daunting and often confusing challenge. When we credit Tolstoy, for example — and credit him deservedly — for fathering good works, by offering up that credit we tend inadvertently to obscure or misdirect responsibility from the damage caused by a Nietzschean apotheosis of self. Taxonomic failure, one might say, breeds taxonomic failure...

Nowhere is such confusion more evident than in America, with the debased "philosophy" of Ayn Rand. In a recent, magnificent essay Mark Ames demonstrates persuasively that Ayn Rand was a textbook sociopath. Indeed, what else to call someone who built her career on crude, explicit exhortations to trample the weak, to curse the afflicted, and to cause injury for no other purpose than the exercise of power? Yet, astonishingly, Americans report in survey after survey that Rand's writings are among the most influential in their lives, running only narrowly behind the influence of the Bible. [2] What's gone wrong here?

The premises of American political life contain a number of unexamined assumptions of singular toxicity. In the first place, we were never meant to have a democracy: the very word "democracy" does not appear once in the Declaration of Independence, or in the Constitution, or in the Bill of Rights. Instead, what the founding fathers gave us was a blueprint for rule exclusively by establishment elites. The essence of that deal hasn't changed much in over two hundred years.

Furthermore, by grafting the institution of slavery into fundamental constitutional structures, e.g., the undemocratic Senate, the founders unintentionally ensured that even after the abolition of slavery the dominance over American politics by minority political power would survive unscathed. In short, the game is pretty well rigged.

No wonder, then, that at a popular level people think, "let the devil take the hindmost." Rand's pathological "philosophy" — in reality naught but a shadow of a shadow of Nietzsche's complete insanity — corresponds perfectly to the example set by American elites for the servile classes. Accepting Rand, people are simply giving voice to what they've been unconsciously trained to believe.

It's difficult to imagine how those beliefs can be corrected without also fixing the underlying problem.

[1] H. L. Mencken wrote that Nietzsche believed the sole effect of charity "is to maintain the useless at the expense of the strong." The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Luce & Co., 1905, pg. 108.

[2] See, for example, "Book Notes," Esther B. Fine, New York Times, Nov. 20, 1991; a Zogby poll from 2007; and "Is Rand Relevant?", Yaron Brook, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2009.

PARIS — For Europe's poorest countries, European Union membership has long held out the promise of tranquil prosperity. The current Greek financial crisis ought to dispel some of their illusions.

There are two strikingly significant levels to the current crisis. While primarily economic, the European Union also claims to be a community, based on solidarity — the sisterhood of nations and brotherhood of peoples. However, the economic deficit is nothing compared to the human deficit it exposes.

The crisis broke last autumn after George Papandreou's PASOK party won elections, took office and discovered that the cupboard was bare. The Greek government had cheated to get into the EU's euro zone in 2001 by cooking the books to cover deficits that would have disqualified it from membership in the common currency. The European Treaties capped the acceptable budget deficit at 3% and public debt at 60% of GDP respectively. In fact, this limit is being widely transgressed, quite openly by France. But major scandal arrived with revelations that Greece's budget deficit reached 12.7% in 2009, with a gross debt forecast for 2010 amounting to 125% of GDP.

Of course, European leaders got together to declare solidarity. But their speeches were designed not so much to reassure the increasingly angry and desperate Greek people as to soothe "the markets" — the real hidden almighty gods of the European Union. The markets, like the ancient gods, have a great old time tormenting mere mortals in trouble, so their response to the Greek problem was naturally to rush to profit from it. For instance, when Greece is obliged to issue new bonds this year, the markets can blithely demand that Greece double its interest rates, on grounds of increased "risk" that Greece won't pay, thus making it that much harder for Greece to pay. Such is the logic of the free market.

What the EU leaders meant by "solidarity" in their appeal to the gods was not that they were going to pour public money into Greece, as they poured it into their troubled banks, but that they intended to squeeze the money owed the banks out of the Greek people.

The squeezing is to take the forms made familiar over the past disastrous decades by the International Monetary Fund: the Greek State is enjoined to cut public expenses, which means firing public employees, cutting their overall earnings, delaying retirement, economizing on health care, raising taxes, and incidentally probably raising the jobless rate from 9.6% to around 16%, all with the glorious aim of bringing the deficit down to 8.7% this year and thus appeasing the almighty invisible gods of the market.

This just might propitiate both the gods and German leaders, who above all want to maintain the value of the euro. The financial markets will no doubt grab their pound of flesh in the form of increased interest rates, while the Greeks are bled by IMF-style "shock treatment."

And what about that great theater of human rights and universal brotherhood, the European Parliament? Well, in that august forum everyone gets to speak for a carefully clocked 1, 2, or 3 minutes, but when it comes to the most serious matter, the budget, the authoritative voices are all German.

Thus the chairman of the EP's special committee on the economic and financial crisis, Wolf Klinz, has called for sending a "high representative" of the EU to Greece, an "economies commissar" to make sure the Greeks carry out the austerity measures properly. The Greek crisis can allow the EU to put into practice for the first time its "Treaty instruments" concerning "supervision of budgetary and economic policy." Interest rates may go up because of "risk," but there is to be no risk. The pound of flesh will be delivered.

There was no such supervision of the financial fiddling which caused this mess. The EU statistics agency Eurostat recently discovered and revealed that in 2001, Goldman Sachs secretly ("but legally," protest its executive officers) helped the Greek government meet EU membership criteria by using a complicated "currency swap" that masked the extent of public deficit and national debt.

Who understands how that worked? I think it is fair to guess that not even Angela Merkel, who is trained as a scientist, understands clearly what went on, much less the incompetent Greek politicians who accepted the Goldman Sachs trickery. It allowed them to create an illusion of success — for a while. Success meant being a "member of the club" of the rich, and it can be argued that this notion of success has actually favored bad government at the national level. Belonging to the EU gave a false sense of security that contributed to the irresponsibility of incompetent political leaders.

Having euros to buy imported goods (notably from Germany) pleased rich consumers, while the euro priced Greek goods out of their previous markets. Now the debt trap is closing. The traditional way out for Greece would be to leave the euro and return to a devaluated drachma, in order to cut imports and favor exports. This way, the burden of necessary sacrifices would not be borne solely by the working class. But the embrace of EU "solidarity" is there to prevent this from happening. German authorities are preparing to lay down the law to the Greeks, after reducing the income of their own working class in order to benefit Germany's export-oriented economy.

Austerity measures are the opposite of what is needed in a time of looming depression. Rather, Keynesian measures should be used to stimulate employment and strengthen the domestic market. But Germany is firmly attached to the export model, for itself and everyone else ("globalization"). For a country like Greece, which cannot compete successfully within the EU, exports outside the EU are crippled by its use of a strong currency, the euro. Bound to the euro, Greece can neither stimulate its domestic market nor export successfully. But it is not going to be allowed to extricate itself from the debt trap and return to its traditional currency, the drachma. Poverty appears to be the only solution.

There is discontent within the German working class at their country's policies aimed at shrinking wages and social benefits for the sake of selling abroad. In an ideal "social Europe", workers in Germany would come to the aid of workers in Greece by demanding a radical revision of economic policy, away from catering to the international financial markets toward building a solid social democracy. The reality is quite different.

The Greek financial crisis exposes the absence of any real community spirit in the EU. The "solidarity" declared by the country's EU partners is a solidarity with their own investments. There is no popular solidarity between peoples. The EU has established a surrogate ideology of internationalism: rejection of the nation-state as source of all evil, a pompous pride in "Europe" as the center of human rights, giver of moral lessons to the world, which happens to fit in perfectly with its subservience to United States imperial foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond. The paradox is that European unification has coincided with decreasing curiosity in the larger EU states about what happens to their neighbors. Despite a certain amount of specialized training needed to create a Eurocrat class, the general population of each EU member is only superficially acquainted with the others. They see them as teams in soccer matches. They go on holiday around the Mediterranean, but this mostly involves meeting fellow tourists, and study of foreign languages has declined, except for English (omnipresent, if mangled). Mass media news reports are turned inward, featuring missing children and pedophiles ahead of even major political events in other EU member states.

Northern European media portray Greece practically as a Third World country, peripheral and picturesque, where people speak an impossible language, dance in circles on islands, and live beyond their means in their carefree way. The crickets in the Aesop fable, scorned by the assiduous ants. Media in Germany and the Netherlands imply that IMF-style shock treatment is almost too good for them. The widening polarization between rich and poor, between and within EU member states, is taken for granted.

The smaller indebted countries within the EU are amiably designated by the English-speaking financial priesthood as the PIGS — Portugal, Italy (perhaps Ireland), Greece, Spain — an appropriate designation for an animal farm where some are so much more equal than others.

Diana Johnstone is a widely-published essayist and columnist who has written extensively on European and international politics. She is the author of The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe's Role in America's World (Verso, 1985). Her writings have been published in many publications such as New Left Review, In These Times, The Nation, Counterpunch, and Covert Action Quarterly. Her latest book is Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2003; ISBN: 1-58367-084-X). She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr.

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

There exists a widespread and mostly true perception that politics in America has become a relentlessly negative exercise in demonizing and defaming not only one's specific political opponent, but also any group, straw man, or bugaboo that campaign pollsters say it is profitable to attack. That, however, is not the sum of the political art as practiced by elected officials. One must also have a positive archetype to extol: a repository of virtue so far beyond reproach as to immediately engage the sentimental reflexes of the politician's audience.

The identification seems clear: the fiscal and economic nostrums of Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and the rest of the Chicago Gang are what is best for the average hardware store owner in Remsen Corners, Ohio. If the United States, in a fit of insanity, were to adopt the policies of effete, socialized Old Europe, the small business operator, the backbone of job creation, would sink under an intolerable burden of taxes and regulation. Or so the conventional wisdom.

Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has written an interesting refutation of that widely held notion. [1] He asserts that the last 30 years' of so-called free market doctrine have not aided, but rather retarded the cause of small business. Intriguingly, he cites, but does not expand upon, the following finding: "One recent study, based on data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, placed the United States second to last out of 22 rich nations in the percentage of workers who run their own businesses. Only Luxembourg ranked lower."

It is an almost universal popular assumption in the United States that this country is much more entrepreneurial and individualistic than the purportedly lazy, pension-sponging socialists of Old Europe. Yet U.S. small business development is at the bottom of the heap of the OECD countries. Once again, our flattering self image is so wildly at variance with reality it verges on schizophrenia.

This schizophrenia is evident in how it works its way through our political practices: the very politicians who endlessly invoke small business are generally the same people who invoke the culture war when extolling small town or exurban America — a presumed venue of small business activity — as the sole repository of genuine, healthy American values, à la Sarah Palin. Yet these same elected officials will vote in Pavlovian fashion to uphold trade and other economic policies that have resulted in the destruction of independent business and a resultant hollowing-out of small town America in favor of the Wal-Martization of the countryside. Likewise their opposition to reforming the intolerable economic burden on business of healthcare, which consumes 16 percent of the nation's gross domestic product — a percentage certain to rise inexorably if not fundamentally reformed.

Consider the overall thrust of "free market tax policy." It is difficult to argue that the two rounds of Bush tax cuts did anything for small business or for anyone else other than Wall Street and plutocratic rentiers: for the record, the first decade of the twenty-first century was the worst decade for the economy, for job creation, and for median real income growth, since modern record-keeping began.

Lynn argues that a key inflection point in government policy towards small business came in 1981, when the Reagan administration essentially stopped enforcing anti-monopoly and small business-protection statutes. That administration's hitherto unprecedented accretion of peacetime debt and the deregulation of savings and loan institutions are frequently cited in many commentators' bills of indictment, but the gutting of anti-monopoly law is usually overlooked. It is also overlooked by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the self-proclaimed "voice" of small business which boasts 350,000 members, and whose policy positions generally make the U.S. Chamber of Commerce look like the Petrograd Soviet.

No doubt the political views of the average small business person are less "conservative" than those of the NFIB's board, but the fact remains that small business entrepreneurs do tend to have more pronounced "free market" views than the average wage slave, and they vote accordingly. And, in any case, their "voice" in Washington is by default the NFIB: it is reckoned by the elected officials whom they lobby as one of the more effective pressure groups in Washington politics, along with the NRA and AIPAC. [2]

All the previous data leave us with a psychological problem: how can so many people be so ignorant of facts that they carry locked-in stereotypes which simply do not comport with the real situation: that small business creation in the United States is lagging relative to other industrialized countries? How is it that people fail to perceive the relative success or failure of policies that directly and deeply affect their economic interests? How is it that people may advocate for policies that are contrary to their own interests, or at least passively allow others to advocate those positions for them?

One does not have to believe in utopian Marxist claptrap to suspect that in coining the term "false consciousness," Marx, or more likely Engels, scored a bull's eye. Why do people believe the things they do, even when their cherished ideas may be contrary to their own material interests?

In the United States, possible answers lie readily at hand for those who would look:

• American Exceptionalism: most advanced industrial counties, at least since the Second World War, no longer have an overarching system of socializing their young in a mystical national creed. They do not have a social belief system that says, subliminally, "my country is ipso facto and by the laws of God and Nature the best in the world. Accordingly, if other countries appear to have an advantage in some industrial technique, governmental policy, or social custom, I shall not study what they are doing with a view to improving my own country's position. No, I shall rearrange the facts to fit my preconception that America is the chosen nation."

• American anti-intellectualism: the United States periodically undergoes bouts of anti-intellectual sentiment, as Richard Hofstadter documented in his book Anti-intellectualism in American Life. Facts are stubborn things, and so often they puncture fond illusions. Best to ignore them, and stick with folk wisdom, or the "gut." This sort of behavior reached an apotheosis during the Bush administration, where militarily invading countries based on gut instinct, rather than ascertainable facts, was elevated to the level of a national security strategy.

• Evangelical religiosity: if things will all be set right in heaven, why bother about the stubborn inequities of this vale of tears? Especially when the Apocalypse looms. If a poll by the Pew Forum is to be believed, [3] 68 percent of U.S. respondents believe in angels and demons. Such a cross section is not likely to have a sharp appreciation of the principle of Cause and Effect.

In his book What's the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Franks pondered why so many American voters voted contrary to their own economic interests, and he did not give an entirely satisfactory answer. Perhaps the reason why Americans think the United States is an entrepreneurial paradise, when it is in reality dead last among the advanced countries save for Luxembourg, is to be found in the annals of psychopathology.

Or maybe the mindset of many small business persons — and more broadly, Americans generally — can best be summed up by literary, rather than scientific, insight. George Orwell noted the political implications of persistent delusional thinking by his countrymen at the time. In Coming Up For Air, the fictional protagonist, George Bowling, a technical member of the English middle class who thinks like the proletarian of his origins, muses about his suburban London housing development:

Merely because of the illusion that we own our houses and have what's called "a stake in the country," we poor saps in the Hesperides [the housing development where he lived], and all such places, are turned into Crum's [the developer and mortgage holder's] devoted slaves for ever. We're all respectable householders — that's to say Tories, yes-men, and bumsuckers. Daren't kill the goose that lays the gilded eggs! And the fact that actually we aren't householders, that we're all in the middle of paying for our houses and eaten up with the ghastly fear that something might happen before we've made the last payment, merely increases the effect. . . . [yet] every one of those poor suckers would die on the field of battle to save his country from Bolshevism.

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

[1] "American small businesses needn't go extinct," Barry C. Lynn, Washington Post, February 21, 2010.

[2] "Outside the Big Box," Nicole D. Kazee, Michael Lipsky, and Cathie Jo Martin, Boston Review, July/August 2008.

[3] "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, Summary of Key Findings," [.pdf] Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, (Undated, 2007?).

Sharon wants me to take Buster back to the hospital. My problem is, he's eleven, he's basically a very introverted cat — contemplative, I like to say — and I know from reading up on the procedure on the internet that ear surgery for cats can easily have complications. Buster definitely wouldn't want an operation. Plus which, it's expensive. Wouldn't it be easier just to give him antibiotics whenever his ear gets an infection? After all, he's managed to not have an ear infection for eleven years and I find it hard to imagine that the structure of his ear would have suddenly dramatically changed. But I don't want to get into a big argument with the vet over whether to prescribe antibiotics. Plus which, the last visit was expensive and I don't want to pay a lot more money for nothing. Nor do I want to start over under these circumstances with a new, completely unfamiliar clinic. What to do?

Experiment. I looked up several natural treatments for cat infections, compared ingredients, and decided to try a combination of tea-tree oil, rosemary oil, garlic extract, and mullein leaf extract, mixed together, squirted and/or swabbed into his ear.

First results weren't bad, but the infection kept coming back. I tried a mixture of the oils by themselves, but that didn't work at all. Then I tried a mixture of the two extracts by themselves, which seemed to work, so I wondered whether maybe it's the garlic and continued with that, but by itself it didn't do anything except stain his ear canal brown. Oh, well. Long story short, a week of swabbing out his ear with mullein leaf and garlic extract has cleared up the infection. His ear is still grotty, it's still producing itchy, scaly ear wax, but it otherwise looks clean and smells clean. Buster's acting very pleased with himself.

Great.

Then Ginger has problems. She's a very different kind of cat, very slight, a lap-cat, purrs a lot, probably the smartest cat I've ever had. I really love Ginger a lot.

She's been on a decline for a while. Same age as Buster, but last year I noticed swollen glands in her neck and the color of one of her eyes had changed. Not good. I took her last August to the aforementioned veterinary hospital, where the vet told me nothing was wrong with her. I was skeptical, but kept my misgivings to myself. Besides, I wasn't about to inflict eye operations on her or start up with all sorts of cancer treatments, if that were the problem. In short, I've been waiting for Ginger to shuffle off her mortal coil.

Over the past few months she's been eating less, has lost a lot of weight, and has had a runny nose. But I didn't want to take her back to the hospital. A mistake!

The last couple days she had a dramatic downturn, was breathing heavily, stopped eating (even when I finely diced up some ham for her — her favorite), and started drooling most of the time. I figured she was dying from a persistent illness, maybe feline leukemia, maybe a cancer. She seemed relatively content, would sit amicably with me, and I didn't want to inflict all sorts of unpleasant end-of-life treatments on her. I was prepared to let her go.

"Not so fast," says Sharon. She gets back from work yesterday, takes one look at Ginger, and insists we see the vet. I figure for Sharon's peace of mind it's worth it, but I don't have much hope the vet can do anything. OK, once you start with this sort of situation it's not like you can pick and choose what tests you want: you get everything. So Ginger has an x-ray, blood work, gets hydrated, etc., while we wait. To my surprise her blood work all seems normal. She hasn't got feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus. No obvious signs of cancer, though her eye is still suspect and some specialists in Minnesota will take a second look at her x-ray tomorrow. What she has is pneumonia and it seems like she's probably had it for several months!!

Poor Ginger. She's still strong enough to put up an impressive resistance against having nose drops administered (I prevailed), and she doesn't much care for her oral antibiotic either, but she's looking much better already. I'm hoping this morning she may want to eat some ham.

Sharon saved her life. Ginger may yet be found to have an underlying condition, maybe cancer, but she might live for quite a while longer despite that. We'll see. I consider this affair a cat miracle...

Between my guilt over having not taken Ginger back to the vet earlier when I should have done, and my growing irritation at how unreliable this particular veterinary hospital has become, I'm thinking that so long as we're discussing health care reform for people it might make sense to also consider some sort of socialized veterinary medicine. Why does putting veterinary care on a purely for-profit basis make it any less problematic than having purely for-profit health care for humans?

Just a thought...

Dropping difficult subjects down the memory hole, however, does not necessarily make them go away, nor does rationalizing the abnormal into normality. Indeed, it's precisely such efforts on the part of U.S. authorities that are likely to galvanize international lawyers outside the U.S. to take matters into their own hands.

And that's what kitchens are for. The other day as I was passing the meat counter at Whole Foods I noticed some very nice looking — unusually nice looking — chuck roasts. "Where are these from?," I ask. "Local," the butcher says. "Where local, exactly, could you tell me, please?," I say. She disappeared for a minute. "From Maine," she says. "But Maine," I say, "isn't local." She stares at me. Anyhow, they are exceptionally nice so I take one. Meanwhile, I've miscommunicated with Sharon about dinner so she's gotten her own provisions. 'What about Sauerbraten?' I think to myself. So I put the roast in a large plastic bag with two thirds of a bottle of Guigal Côtes du Rhone, for a day and a half.

On the side, small Yukon gold potatoes, peeled, steamed whole, then finished with olive oil and butter in a frying pan to crisp the outsides. And some boiled broccoli. (I don't know why people don't like broccoli, I can't get enough of the stuff.) Store bought cherry pie for dessert. Dinner served with the Guigal Côtes du Rhone, 2006. When will Guigal put out their 2007, I wonder? That should be an exceptional value!!

The winter blues fade away...

But the idea of national borders, national identity, protectionism, and possibly profoundly anti-capitalist development models are such anathema to "liberals" like Paul Krugman that they won't be part of the policy conversation. Not, that is, unless the Greeks make them so.

The other thing generally to keep in mind as we watch the Greek crisis play out is that a corrupted government in cahoots with insanely corrupt international banks will everywhere and always contrive to wreck its economy in terms of the interests of the vast majority of its citizens, while the rich get richer. True in Greece. Also true in the US of A.