Vitamin T

Our snow finally melted this week. You’re forgiven Indiana. Until Thursday when it snows again.

Note to CNN.com: “Obama Bumps His Head,” is NOT news, and is certainly not a headline. Seriously, what’s next? Biden takes a dump? Get a hobby people.

Got a headache? Take a tax cut, it’ll make you feel better. Lose your job this week? Here, have a tax cut; don’t spend it all in one place. Run your airplane into a flock of geese killing both your engines and think you need to ditch that bird in the Hudson River? Don’t worry; a tax cut will get you back to cruising altitude in no time. Haven’t you heard? They’re the new penicillin.

President Obama held his first primetime news conference this week. He answered 13 questions in about an hour – including the obligatory sports question – which apparently wasn’t good enough for some members of the media. Apparently they would prefer single sentence answers to 50 questions in 60 minutes, which they could then later criticize as glib and inadequate. I thought he was serious, thoughtful and thorough with his answers, carefully explaining his position in complete sentences. After eight years of press conferences in which we were treated to incoherent answers revealing nothing, I found Obama’s parlance refreshing.



After a week of bickering, Senate Democrats and the three Senate Republicans that don’t despise the American worker finally passed a version of an economic stimulus package. Following that breakthrough, the revised bill headed to conference committee, where in less than 24 hours, House and Senate negotiators honed it into a $790 billion morsel they believe will survive votes in both chambers. House Republicans continue to perpetuate their fraudulent claims that no GOP ideas were considered – let alone adopted by negotiators, while Senate Republicans insist that none of the spending present in the bill can really be considered stimulus. They are, at best, either ignorant or stupid, and at this point it matters little which. But at worst, they’re walking the very fine line between stretching the truth and outright lying. The stimulus bill, in its original form, was comprised of approximately 30% tax cuts and 70% spending. The current version of the bill is approximately 40% tax cuts and 60% spending. To my knowledge, Democratic representatives didn’t demand a reduction in spending and an increase in tax cuts, and 600-plus page legislation simply doesn’t edit itself. And the idea that things like replacing the federal fleet with hybrid vehicles and funding school construction and/or renovation do not amount to economic stimulus is just preposterous. Allow me to demonstrate.

When the government authorizes the construction of a new school building, the school corporation goes out and hires an architectural firm – like the one I work for. We have about 14 employees. The architecture firm then hires consultants to help plan the project, a civil engineering firm, structural engineering firm, mechanical engineering firm, information systems firm, lighting designer, and so on and so one. Each of those firms employs maybe ten or twelve people. Once the building is designed and the construction drawings have been completed, the project is turned over to a contractor to build. For something like a school, the contractor will need to employ several hundred workers of various disciplines in order to complete the job. Each of those carpenters and glazers and drivers and roofers eat lunch at local restaurants, sometimes stay in local hotels, purchase new jeans and work boots from the local Wal-Mart and go out for drinks at the local taverns – all of which employ people raising families in the community. Every single person in that chain owes some portion of his or her paycheck to the fact that the local government provided funding for the construction of a new school.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the spending of money – regardless or who is doing the spending – stimulates economic growth. The same Republican politicians now arguing against that fact, admitted it as recently as last year. In fact, for five years, Congressional Republicans insisted that it was our moral obligation to rebuild the country we had blown to smithereens the year before by dumping hundreds of billions of American dollars into Iraqi infrastructure, security and education. They told the nation that those dollars would put Iraqis to work building roads and bridges and power plants and schools and help improve their standard of living. How can these clowns get up on television and with straight faces insist that infrastructure spending creates jobs in Iraq, yet absolutely WILL NOT create jobs in America? The answer is, they can’t. Not with any credibility. Instead, they continue to peddle tax cuts as the panacea for all that ails the economy. News flash: people without jobs don’t have any income, and therefore don’t pay taxes. Your proposed tax cuts provide absolutely NOTHING for the 600,000 people who lost their jobs last month! Why do so many people still take these charlatans seriously?

This past Monday, New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez admitted he used steroids during his stint with the Texas Rangers early in this decade. Surprise! The highest-paid player in the history of baseball cheated the game on his way to the top. Does this surprise ANYBODY? Anyone? Didn’t think so. Baseball is a fraud. It always has been, always will be. For decades the Powers-That-Be in Major League Baseball have known players were taking illegal substances and done absolutely nothing about it, because the game desperately needed the fastball and the long ball. Baseball sold its soul for ratings and deserves every single line of bad press it gets.

Brett Favre retired from football today. Again. We’ll miss you Brett. But please, stay retired this time.

The Grammys were awarded on Sunday. No one cared. The real drama apparently took place on the way to the awards show. Some dude named Chris Brown (I’m told he’s some sort of pop star) and his girlfriend Rhianna (another pop star – apparently with no last name) got into an argument in her vehicle as they were heading to the event. Brown reportedly physically assaulted Rhianna, and then fled the scene before the police arrived. Brown has since been charged with making criminal threats and released from jail on $50,000 bail, with additional charges pending. Much of the subsequent ink devoted to this story has discussed whether or not Mr. Brown has permanently tarnished his image. No one seems to remember the woman in this story with the bruises on her face. The moral of this story? Stop beating up your girlfriend! Among other things.

Finally this week, a group of fisherman decided to bridge two Lake Erie ice flows in order to gain access to water further from shore. (You know where this is going, don’t you?) After about a hundred or so fisherman made the pilgrimage, the flow broke away from the ice pack and began floating out into the lake. (Un)Fortunately, someone had a cell phone and called for help, forcing the Coast Guard to rescue a hundred people who probably should have been left to float across the lake to Canada, be denied entry by Canada Customs and sent back to where ever it is they came from on the iceberg they floated in on. Once again nature attempts to weed out those unfit to procreate and we interfere to stop it. When are we going to learn?