The Guild 8-11-04 What Would Ben Franklin Think of John Kerry?

According to Benjamin Franklin himself, many of the proverbs and aphorisms found in "Poor Richard's Almanack" were gleaned from the "wisdom of the ages and nations." In the dictums and maxims that follow, one hears echoes of the Bible, the ancients, and collections of proverbs readily available in Franklin's own time. Yet, in recrafting many older sayings, Franklin, who was among other things an inventor and musician, brought new design and melody to timeworn truisms. Franklin once created a list of 13 virtues to live by. This baker's dozen included temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. The reader will see these virtues emphasized again and again in these quotes culled from Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack."

"Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and cloth, or the Gout will seize you and plague you both," Franklin wrote. Franklin relished his food, basked in the company of women, and at times used items of apparel to influence the way people perceived him. And, indeed, gout plagued Franklin for much of his life.

One thing that makes these aphorisms so compelling is that Franklin, while divine in apprehension, was in action very much a mortal. Take these morsels in moderation -- Franklin would have it no other way.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Tim was so learned, that he could name a horse in nine Languages. So ignorant, that he bought a cow to ride on.(This made me think of Teraaayzza.)

Email from a neighbor of mine:

Subject: A Neighbor Speaks out
Written by B. T. Nicholson a neighbor of John Edwards

Subject: Meet my neighbor

I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor. I'm from
Raleigh, North Carolina, and for several years I've
lived around the corner from Vice Presidential
Candidate John Edwards. My neighbor John has been in
the news a good deal lately, but it's hard to tell
about the man himself from the coverage. Maybe I can
help you get to know him better.

Even several years ago, before he was elevated to the
national stage, my neighbor John didn't socialize much
with other neighbors. He didn't gather with other
neighbors at the Fourth of July and he didn't come out
to the sledding hills to watch the kids play after a
snow. My neighbor John preferred to jog through the
neighborhood by himself. There's no sidewalk on
Alleghany Drive, John's Street in Raleigh, and if you
drove past him as he was jogging on the road and
didn't slow down enough for his taste he'd flip you
the bird.

Even after he became a U.S. Senator, he'd still come
home to Raleigh every once in a while, would still jog
through the neighborhood, and would still flip the
occasional bird to passing cars. He last showed me his
middle finger about four years ago.

Since then, my neighbor John is rarely in town. When
he is home, though, we in the neighborhood all know
it. My neighbor John invited reporters from TV, radio,
and print news organizations to come to his house in
January 2003 for the announcement of his Presidential
bid. He didn't want any news vans parked on his
property -- in fact, he made sure all the cameras and
reporters waited in the street at the bottom of his
driveway. That way everyone could get good footage of
him strolling down the driveway to make his
announcement, young children in tow. The news vans
drove into the yards of John's neighbors and parked
there. I heard two families ended up re-sodding their
damaged yards, and John never apologized to anyone,
much less offered any compensation. The family across
the street from my neighbor John has since put up
posts at their property line to try to keep that sort
of thing from happening again.

The appearance was good for my neighbor John. Nobody
else seems to matter to him. Since then, when my
neighbor comes home (as he did July 10, to be
interviewed with John Kerry for "60 Minutes"), Raleigh
police officers block off the street. Those of us who
live near him end up coming and going to and from our
homes on a circuitous route, on a bad, unsurfaced
road. Forsyth Street has been closed to through
traffic, except when my neighbor is in town, because
the road has been ripped up for installation of new
gas and sewer lines. My neighbor's street is a public,
city-maintained street, and it is the best way to get
to homes just north of his. If my neighbor is around,
though, apparently none of the rest of us can use the
street at all.

It's good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to
matter to him.

My neighbor John has been a very successful trial
lawyer, but his practice of law sometimes seems more
like extortion. A friend of mine is a doctor in
Raleigh. He recently spoke with another doctor, an
anesthesiologist, who was named in a suit filed by my
neighbor John. Apparently a surgeon at a local
hospital had made a mistake, and my neighbor John
represented the injured patient. Not only did my
neighbor John sue the doctor who made the mistake, but
also sued the hospital and a string of others,
including the anesthesiologist. There was no problem
with the anesthesia -- the anesthesiologist had done
absolutely nothing wrong. His attorney said so in a
meeting with my neighbor John. John's neighborly
response was that he couldn't care less if the doctor
had done nothing wrong. That wasn't the point. The
point was that clients come to my neighbor John
because of his record of success and his reputation
for thoroughness. Every defendant in a suit he files
pays, regardless of whether they are actually guilty
or not. My neighbor John demanded a settlement of
$250,000, and said his firm was willing to spend $2
million to get it. The doctor's insurance company
promptly paid the $250,000.

The rate of growth in North Carolina's medical
malpractice insurance rates is among the highest in
the nation. The total cost of health care rises with
those rates. My neighbor John's slimy extortion is
part of the reason.

Forget about right or wrong, guilt or innocence. My
neighbor John did what was best for himself. Nobody
else seemed to matter.

My neighbor John may be a trial lawyer, but in front
of juries he also claims to be something of a psychic.
You see, my neighbor John specializes in cases
involving the death or serious injury of children. He
claims to receive messages from dead or brain-damaged
children, and the messages are much clearer and more
specific than those received by the famous "psychic"
who nearly shares my neighbor's name.

When a child has been killed or is otherwise unable to
speak for him or herself, my neighbor John says he has
the ability to "channel" that child. He tells juries
he feels the child inside him, and that he has
messages from that child, which he relays to jury
members. He tells juries about the car-accident death
of his own son, Wade, and speculates that he may have
received the ability to "feel" the souls of dead or
injured children because of the close relationship he
still feels with his son.

It sounds hokey and more than a little creepy, but it
seems to play well with juries, and results in very
high jury awards. These awards have made my neighbor
extremely wealthy. He's so wealthy that he created a
corporation of which he is the only member, and pays
himself most of his earnings as corporate dividends,
not as salary or wages. Medicare taxes are not levied
on dividend income, so my neighbor has avoided paying
$600,000 into the Medicare system since 1995 by
setting up this tax shelter. But he says others aren't
paying their fair share of Medicare taxes.

It's good for my neighbor John, and nobody else seems
to matter.

My neighbor made a lot of promises on his way to the
Senate. He promised strong support for our military,
but then voted against body armor, combat pay, and
better health care for our troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq. He promised to support traditional North
Carolina values, but then voted to the left of Ted
Kennedy on partial-birth abortion, taxes, property
rights, and a host of other issues. We in North
Carolina feel betrayed. My neighbor John figuratively
gave his constituents the middle finger while he
ingratiated himself to Tom Daschle and the rest of the
Democratic Party leadership.

My neighbor announced many months ago that he would
not seek reelection, because he knows he's unpopular
in North Carolina and would lose by a huge margin.
According to a poll released this week, when the
Kerry/Edwards ticket was announced, support for Kerry
in North Carolina went down, not up.

We North Carolinians know John Edwards. We've been
betrayed by him, and we do not support him.

But as he broke his promises to us, he gained favor
with the Democratic Party leadership. Now he's a
political star. I guess turning his back on the people
he claims to represent has worked out well for my
neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else seems to matter.

Al "the irrelevant" Gore criticizes choice of Goss for CIA chief, as if anyone gave a rat's rear end what he thought about anything, story here.

Re the NJ Governor:

New Jersey newspapers have been chasing rumors and speculation for years that Gov. James McGreevey, who announced his resignation Thursday, had a special relationship with a top aide, but never had enough information to nail down the facts, editors and reporters said Thursday afternoon. Stories dating back to 2002, the year McGreevey took office, used phrases like "mysterious" and "unusual" to describe the governor's relationship with Golan Cipel, a former aide who resigned from a $110,000-per-year advisory job two years ago.

"There was nothing concrete that we could put in the paper," said Bob Tennant, editor of The Trentonian, the state's only tabloid daily. "If papers could have, they would have reported it." [Translation: He's a Democrat. If he were a gay Republican, you can bet we'd have reported rumors]

McGreevey, who is married and the father of a one-year-old, announced his resignation Thursday afternoon, saying "I am a gay American," and revealing that he had an "adult consensual" homosexual relationship. The announcement followed reports that Cipel planned to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the governor.

Some state capital-based reporters, who requested anonymity, said the lawsuit had been rumored for two weeks, while speculation of an affair between the two dated back to McGreevey's campaign. "Rumors about his sexuality have been circulating since he was mayor (of Woodbridge, N.J.)," said one state reporter.

Gannett New Jersey newspapers, which include the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, conducted a four-month investigation into Cipel in 2002, following his resignation. The review was sparked by ongoing questions about why Cipel, who had little security experience, [not to mention wasn't even a U.S. citizen] had been hired as a homeland security adviser to the governor. "McGreevey relied on exaggerated anti-terrorism credentials to justify Cipel's hiring," according to an August 2002 Gannett story.

In addition, a 2002 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark reported on McGreevey's unusual efforts to help Cipel get an apartment near the governor's Woodbridge home. "McGreevey took time out from his transition plans to accompany Cipel on a last-minute walk-through of the townhouse," the story, by Star-Ledger staffer Josh Margolin, stated. The same article quoted Cipel as saying he "wanted to have a place that was in close proximity to where the governor was because he was a personal advisor on call 24 hours."

Still, none of the state's daily papers -- which are considered more primary sources of news than those in many states because of New Jersey's lack of major broadcast outlets -- wrote any definitive stories about the relationship. In fact, it was a television station, WNBC-TV in New York, that broke the first word of McGreevey's pending resignation Thursday.
editor & publisher.

I was so tired last night I only made it through half of GWB and Laura on Larry King. But you're right, GWB was very good!

My trip to see HLL was great, we had mucho fun! I even got to visit Canada for some great Chinese food. But when we tried to cross back into the U.S. the border guard had lots of questions for me. Maybe his flag went up when he asked where I was born and I told him, Ipswich England. HLL started looking very worried, me being a dummy had no idea he was typing all my info into his little computer. We were allowed to cross back in after much scowling from the guard.

Laura was great as usual. I didn't get any good pictures because I didn't use my trusty 35 mm but instead tried to use a new digital camera, again with the dummy factor.

I met netmilsmom and her two precious little girls and we cheered on Laura. I got separated from HLL and went back to the car to rest my feet and back and missed my chance to meet Laura.

But HLL did take me to her favorite shoe store where I nabbed three pairs!

After getting home I spent the rest of that day recovering (I don't travel well). The next day started unpacking, cleaning up when late that afternoon Mr. B and I realized that Hurricane Charlie was going to hit near Tampa so we went yesterday and picked up my FIL and brought him back here. After an O'dark thirty run to the store to stock up that morning.

Just one more errand this morning before it gets too blustery.

Thanks for the new thread pubmom!

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