"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." - A. Einstein

Beautiful day here and I ruined it by playing golf badly. Definitely not my best work.

Here's an interesting site with before/after satellite pics of the tsunami. Drag the line from right to left with your mouse.
ABC News

You'd think someone with no clue about filling out a bracket would do well in a first round that defied all conventional wisdom. Nope.

The lily pond is filled with 845 gallons of water. By tomorrow morning I'll know if my modifications hold water. If they don't you'll hear me screaming. If they do the mosquito fish, still alive in a 5-gallon bucket, will go back in the pond. Lilies will follow this weekend.

I occasionally go digging through the pile of dress shirts at Costco looking for an addition to my wintertime Sunday morning wardrobe. It didn’t take me long on this last trip to realize I wouldn’t be buying anything. I start with a set of filters that eliminates most shirts pretty quickly. Because I’m tall and skinny I need a 15 1/2 neck and 34” sleeves, an uncommon size. Short sleeve shirts are out (tall and skinny). I look stupid in anything with even a hint of pink (yet another downside of being tall and skinny) and whatever the color it has to go with either my gray, blue or khaki slacks.
I’m obviously not a clothes horse. I own three pair of slacks.

I realized this morning that even in this early stage of the shopping experience I approach potential Presidential candidates the same way. I shop on the Conservative table, but that’s no surprise. What dawned on my as I read last week’s issue of TIME is that one of my elimination criteria is a pattern of gaffes, verbal blunders of a particular sort.

All of us who speak publicly as a primary part of our job know we WILL step in it from time to time. I want to grant the same slack to politicians that I need for myself when it comes to the careless comment. I’m not talking about those slips. Most listeners recognize those for what they are and can - or should - overlook them.

I’m talking about public statements that are serious misrepresentations of the facts that any objective observer would understand come from an agenda. For example, when a potential candidate says the President was raised in Kenya and therefore has a skewed and un-American view of social and political dynamics I smell a rat. Pres. Obama was not raised in Kenya. As most 6th graders know, he grew up in Hawaii. By itself that would be a bush-league factual error. But I can’t escape the suspicion the politician-turned-news commentator-turning candidate started with a desire to paint the President as an outsider and less than patriotic, and this goal led him to grab a “fact” out of the air to support it. In biblical studies we call that eisegesis (eyes/eh/jesus) - starting with a conclusion and finding the needed support in the text (or biographical data) even if it’s bogus. I don’t want a President who will make those kinds of mistakes or do so from those kinds of motives.

I also don’t want a President who will make factual errors and then grasp at the most ridiculous straws to divert attention from the mistake.

Do you know where the “shot heard ‘round the world,” the opening salvo in the Revolutionary War was fired? I’d get that question wrong on a test. So would another of the aspiring candidates. The difference is that I’m not taking that test but she chose to use that historical event as part of a public speech delivered in New Hampshire where she sought to endear herself to the audience by crediting the early residents of that state with taking that courageous action. Oops. The shot was actually fired in Massachusetts.

OK, don’t use facts in P.R. speeches unless you know they’re facts. But if you do get one wrong do NOT shift blame the press who report it, accusing them of a double standard. “...as we know all 3,400 members of the mainstream media are part of the Obama press contingent.” Seriously?

In this case I don’t think she started out with an agenda like the earlier example. I think she’s careless - also not a good trait for the leader of the free world - and has an incompetent speech writer. (So much for putting together a quality staff.) Intellectual lightweight. But at least have the integrity to own your gaffe, taking full responsibility for it. Passing blame works if you’re six and your brother is four, but not for Presidential candidates who want to be taken seriously.

I’ll keep digging through the pile. I’m optimistic that somewhere in there I’ll find a candidate who fits and isn’t a doofus (or worse). But so far I’m wondering how some of these shirts even made it onto the table.