If you were paying attention last week, you know that biggest news story was the launch of the Apple iPad. Yes, iPad. Not to be confused with feminine hygiene product of similar name. The label aside, I, and many others, were decidedly underwhelmed. So it’s a 10-inch iPhone that doesn’t make phone calls. I’m not seeing the added value. Maybe that’s because I don’t buy books, magazines or newspapers and read them on the go. I’m just not sure it does anything not already done by something else equally as well. But, no company is better at creating a market where there isn’t one than Apple. We’ll revisit this in a year and see which of us was correct.
Last Wednesday President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address. I watched about half of it, during which time I think I heard the word jobs more times than there are people unemployed. So the message was pretty clear. The President wants to put Americans back to work, and he’s going to do everything he believes possible to get business hiring again. This means tax cuts for companies that hire new workers of increase salaries, funneling returned TARP money to smaller local banks to spur small business lending, making it less expensive to go to college, and billions of dollars to increase the quality of education. At the same time, President Obama signaled he wants to begin reigning in the budget deficit created during the course of managing the recession. To accomplish that he proposed a three year freeze on all discretionary, non-defense spending, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for all households earning over $250,000 per year and extracting more blood from many of the large financial institutions at least partially responsible for said economic downturn. At times it was vintage campaign-style Obama, intelligent and confident, stern, yet funny. If you believe the snap polls taken immediately afterward, 78% of viewers responded either very or somewhat positively to the positions he laid out. It is precisely that reaction which left me with a sinking feeling that has carried over to and amplified this week with the release of the White House’s 2010 budget plan.
Last week, the President did exactly what he needed to do politically - give the people what they want. The people wanted to hear about jobs, that he would do something to create jobs. So he told them he would do something to create jobs. The people wanted to hear something about the deficit, that he would take steps to reduce it. So he told them he would do something about the deficit. The people wanted to hear some feel-good mumbo jumbo about the indomitable American spirit, about how Americans never give up and never give in. So he told them that Americans never give up and never give in. The people wanted bumper sticker politics. So he gave them bumper sticker politics. He gave us what we wanted because we had already rejected what we needed.
He tried. I give him credit for that. He gave us the benefit of the doubt. He tried something his predecessor never once did, he treated us like adults. He spoke in complete sentences, with correct pronunciation, using multi-syllable words. He attempted to explain complex issues like financial regulation, healthcare reform and foreign policy in paragraphs, instead of phrases, expecting we would be able to grasp facts, dissect concepts and reject fabrications like “death panels.” He thought that by telling us what we needed to hear - that we need to fundamentally change the way we think about some of the issues in the this country - that we would lend a little time and a little support toward implementing solutions. He was wrong.
Should he have seen it coming? Maybe. He probably should have known that Washington DC is no place for thoughtful, intelligent discussion of issues, and certainly not for actually solving problems. He probably should have know that solving a problem only eliminates using it as an election issue against one’s opponent, and therefore grandstanding against change is always more profitable than actually embracing it. He probably should have known that Congress is no longer a place where ANYONE places the good of the nation above a campaign contribution, and by extension, re-election. But if he didn’t know those things before, he knows them now. And knowing what he now knows, I hope he won’t make those errors again. In recent days, President Obama seems to have slipped back into campaign mode, making stops in cities across the country touting jobs legislation and deficit reduction. People seem to like it. And why not. Campaigning has always been the feel-good, fun part of politics. It’s governing that’s the hard part.
While gushing over the State of the Union address in his post speech commentary, MSNBC analyst Chris Matthews made the following statement: “...I almost forgot he was black for an hour.” What. On earth. Does that even mean. You know what though, that’s okay. For a couple months, I even forgot that Chris Matthews was a MORON.
If you still need proof that the name of the Congressional Republican game is obstruction, look no further than the reaction to President Obama’s 2010 budget proposal. It was to be expected that the opposition would claim the hundreds of billions in spending cuts scheduled to take effect in August of this year are too small, the temporary increases in spending for job creation and education are too large, and that the real solution to solving a budget crisis is to cut taxes and eliminate the federal government. The truly telling part of the cacophony surrounding the budget is the fact that Republicans are objecting to budget cuts and shooting down idea they themselves have proposed. Last Friday, the establishment of a bipartisan commission with the power to make deficit reduction recommendations and have them voted on - an idea proposed by numerous Republican senators on numerous occasions - went down to defeat in the Senate, garnering only one Republican vote. This afternoon Republicans vowed to vote against billions of dollars in cuts to farm subsidies and and hundreds of millions in cuts to things like NASA’s moon mission, something many of them laughed at when President Bush proposed it near the end of his second term. Apparently, while Americans should have no right to meaningful healthcare reform, they sure as hell should be forced to pay farmers to grow crops nobody wants and fund missions to outer space, so long as those things are based in Republican districts.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Toyota has recalled more than two million vehicles and stopped selling 10 of its 16 models to repair accelerator pedals that could become stuck and cause the cars to lurch out of control. There has been quite a bit of debate as to whether or not the company acted quickly enough in recognizing a problem and bringing the vehicles in for servicing. Reports indicate that over the course of ten years, 19 people were killed in accidents where unexpected acceleration occurred. About two accidents per year. Considering all the accidents that take place each year and their myriad causes, it’s difficult to say if that should have been recognized by company officials as a design flaw earlier on. A fix for the problem has been developed and parts are being shipped to dealers to begin repairs this week. The company claims that the manufacturing freeze alone is costing them $200 million a week in the United States alone, and the process of rebuilding customer trust will be an arduous one. The big winners in this debacle are the domestic manufactures. Ford (which turned its first profit since 2005 last quarter) and GM dealers have been offering customers discounts on new models if they trade in a recalled Toyota product, and with most of Toyota’s products off the market for three to four weeks, customers are more likely to look in another direction. If you’re General Motors or Chrysler, sometimes it’s better to be lucky.
I am a regular viewer of the Maury Povich Show. That’s okay, laugh it all out now. It’s on when I come home for lunch and its good for a laugh while microwaving my macaroni and cheese. Anyway, there is something you pick up on after watching for a few segments. Most of the time, when a man says, “there’s no way I could be that baby’s father,” what he really means is, “there’s no way I want to be that baby’s father!” The only way they couldn’t possibly be the baby’s father, is if they never actually slept withe the mother, which none of them ever deny. Therefore, “cannot” becomes a euphemism for “don’t want to.” Today on Capitol Hill, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the Senate that it is his believe that the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding homosexuals should be abolished. That is a bold statement for anyone in uniform to make. A statement not enough people in - and out - of uniform have made / are making. I am usually the last person to draw comparison between gays’ struggle for equal rights and the struggle of people of color for civil right, but in this case, the analogy is valid in the following sense. Many of the same arguments made against integrating the armed forces are being made against gays serving openly in the military. It was said that mixing black and white soldiers would be too disruptive to unit cohesion, that it was a bad idea in a time of war, that it would reduce enlistment and keep qualified (white) soldiers out of the military. Yet once the executive order to integrate was issued, it was carried out with positive results. In fact, it is an achievement military brass are still proud of today. In an interview with NPR, one Army general said the military was a shining example of the benefits of integration and the effectiveness with which it could be accomplished. When asked why the military could not then do the same with homosexuals, he replied that it simply couldn’t be done. With all due respect to the general, and the members of Congress that share his view, that’s a load of BS. The only reason it can’t be done, is because you don’t want it to be done. And that’s never a good enough reason to enforce bad policy.
No football update this week, as there was no meaningful football played. Go Saints.
Finally, inventor Douglas Hines unveiled his new $7,000 talking female sex robot at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas last month. According to Hines, “There’s a tremendous need for this type of product.” Really? Tremendous need for a $7,000 talking sex doll? I don’t know anything about Douglas Hines, but I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb in saying that perhaps if he put as much effort into relationships as he has put into his sex robot, there would not be a tremendous need for the sex robot. Perhaps it would help if we could see...
Ah, there we go. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
2 comments:
The sex doll looks like she is having a stroke...and her maker looks like a creep. they are PERFECT for each other.
Toywatch are beat by abounding persons, all of whom wish to attending their best and up to snuff for styling. Patek Philippe watches angle at the top of the account for adorable watches, and our replica Patek Philippe watches are just the appearance accent you can adore cutting about as abundant as the absolute thing.
Post a Comment