Light fare this week. My brain still hurts from all the healthcare hysteria from last week.
In the wake of violence and threats to members of Congress following the passage of the healthcare reform bill, some members of the “Tea Party Movement” have expressed irritation with the way they are being portrayed in the “mainstream” (read non-ideologically conservative) media. Their complaint is that the most extreme, racist, violent element of their movement is being used by the press to paint the entire group with the same broad brush. The “movement,” they say, has been, and is being unfairly portrayed as little more than a frantic, baseless, insensitive, racist, paranoid protest by America’s lunatic fringe. Given the actions demonstrated and the rhetoric extolled on behalf of “the movement” since its inception last year, one could argue as to how unfair that description actually is, but the essence of their complaint does contain an element of truth. During the healthcare debate in particular, there have been no shortage of media images of delirious tea baggers and their supporters disrupting town hall meetings, misspelling threats on cardboard signs, forwarding racist e-mails to donors, spitting on congressmen and mocking disabled homeless people. And the media has made no serious attempt to point out the obvious truth that membership in a group does not necessarily mean that the words and actions of one member are condoned by all the others. But that isn’t really the function of the media, is it?
What the Right has yet to understand is a lesson effective protest movements on the Left learned almost fifty years ago. Unfortunately, the media cannot be relied upon to present an accurate, balanced portrait of anything, let alone a protest movement. That’s not their job. Their responsibility is to sell advertising. More eyeballs glued to the screen translates directly into more advertising dollars in the networks’ pockets, which translates into happy network executives, journalism be dammed. And nothing glues eyeballs to the screen quite like representations of the President in whiteface and a group of privileged angry white men mocking a disabled veteran by throwing dollars at him so he can “pay his healthcare bills.”
The Civil Rights movement learned very early on that if you want to be viewed with any sort of legitimacy, you have to take complete control of your own image. Dr. King drilled into every single one of his marchers the importance of conducting one’s self like a civilized human being, regardless of the indignity being suffered. Anyone who engaged in violence during a march was certain not to be present at the next one. Why? Because King knew the newspapers were just itching to print headlines proclaiming white people’s worst fears, that Negroes couldn’t even walk down the street with starting a riot. So, he purged any unsavory element from his ranks, robbing his enemies of ammunition to use against him, and when they had nothing left but to resort to violence against his dignity, the country was forced to accept the fact that black people were in fact people, and deserving of respect like everyone else. The image the media got of his Civil Rights movement was the image he presented to them, not one they created of him. I am assuming that at some point the Right, particularly the tea baggers, will learn this lesson too. Although, if you purged the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, isolationist paranoid element from the “Tea Party Movement,” I’m not sure just how much of a “movement” would be left.
Italian sports car maker Ferrari announced recently that they will no longer produce a fully manual transmission for any of its vehicles. Sigh. First Porsche develops an SUV, then they (among others) market a “four door coupe,” and now this. As if the decline of the sports car wasn’t enough, now, the manual transmission, which has been dying a slow death since the early 80’s has received the first nail in the coffin. I have never purchased a car with an automatic transmission. I hoped never to have to do so. My hope may have been in vain. I have died a little inside.
The Large Hadron Collider is up and running again. Anybody have the Vegas odds on the earth being destroyed by a man-made black hole in the next ten days or so?
On his website early this week, Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin admitted that he has been “living la vida loca” – with men. In perhaps the most stunning sexual orientation revelation since Clay Aiken, admitted that he is indeed, gay. I’m shocked. I really am. Next you’ll want me to believe that Ellen DeGeneres is a lesbian. Come on.
Finally, in news that may interest only me, rumors are swirling that the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes of the National Hockey League (formerly the Winnipeg Jets) maybe, just maybe, might return to Winnipeg. As a native of Winnipeg I must admit, I haven’t been this excited about hockey since Team Canada won the gold medal at the Olympics. (I don’t mean to rub that in, really, I don’t.) I had already moved to Ontario by the time the Jets left for Arizona in 1996, but I remember being thoroughly depressed for weeks at the thought of the pride of my city being transplanted to a place where the only ice people had ever seen was floating in their martinis. At the time, the NHL was in full expansion mode, and was convinced that placing teams in large U.S. markets like Florida and California where people thought hockey was some sort of nifty French pastry would be more profitable for the league than keeping teams in smaller, Canadian markets where the game was a way of life. They were wrong. Perhaps now they’ll have a chance to reverse a terrible error in judgment and bring the Jets home.
3.31.2010
3.24.2010
Delusions of Grandeur
I’m told the world came to an end at about 11:00 p.m. Sunday night. Yet for some reason I still had to go to work today. Doesn’t seem fair.
In case you haven’t heard, the House of Representatives passed the previously approved Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, making it the law of the land once President Obama signs it on Tuesday. For the first time in 45 years, the United States of America has instituted meaningful healthcare reform. And it’s not like we haven’t been trying. Since the passage of Medicare in 1965, seven Presidents have either denied and ignored the problems with the system, or tried and failed to reform it. Only one succeeded. This one.
The day before the vote, House Minority Leader John Boehner claimed the country was “24-hours away from Armageddon.” To hear Republicans and their supporters talk, you could be forgiven if you thought Hitler’s armies were stationed on the Mexican border with Stalin’s armies stretched across the Canadian border waiting for the count to reach 216 so they could begin the invasion. Only minutes after the vote was cast, Minnesota Republican Representative lunatic Michelle Bachmann promised to introduce a bill to repeal the legislation that has yet to become law. Bachmann is apparently unaware that repeal of healthcare reform would require a signature from the same President who signed the bill into law in the first place.
The Republican Party has stepped out onto a ledge they can never crawl in from. They have created a tidy little fantasy world for themselves and their followers. A world in which they can have anything their hearts desire, without ever having to pay a dime for any of it. Throughout the year-long discussion of this legislation, Republicans have repeatedly insisted that they are indeed in favor of some version of healthcare reform. Just for the sake of argument, let’s take them at their word. They claim to be in favor of eliminating the practice of denial of coverage due to illness or pre-existing conditions. They claim to be in favor of creating high-risk pools for people who cannot get insurance. They support tax-breaks to employers to provide insurance for their employees. And they claim to support eliminating the annual and lifetime caps placed on coverage by insurers. All those items are currently covered by the reform bill. What they do not support is any method of paying for all those wonderful ideas.
Mitt Romney gets very upset every time someone points out that the healthcare reform plan he decries as socialist evil bears a striking resemblance to the near-universal coverage, individual mandate, healthcare exchange-laded plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts. He waves his finger indignantly and points out that his plan did not in any way, shape or form cut waste within the system, or increase fees or taxes on the citizens of his former adopted state. And he is mostly right. Romney’s healthcare reform plan contained no mechanism with which to pay for itself. That’s why, only three years on, the program is nearly bankrupt, and will very shortly need to come up with some way to keep itself in the black. Republicans have carefully constructed a narrative that insists they can provide whatever the public demands of its government without anyone ever having to shell out a dime to pay for any of it. Call it the Wal-mart mentality. Buy one get two free. Better yet, buy none get the rest for no price. But the truth is, those two candy bars you bought for 99 cents, were really only worth 49-and-a-half cents a piece. Nothing in this life is free. Everything costs money. And things of value cost a little more money than things nobody cares about. Of course healthcare reform costs money. If it didn’t it would be worthless. So in addition to all those things in this bill the Republicans claim to support, are some measures that attempt to cover the cost of some of those items, instead of simply borrowing money from our grandchildren, like the very same Republicans who are now setting themselves up as the vanguard of fiscal responsibility did with No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and the Iraq and Afghan wars.
For more on what this healthcare reform bill actually is, please see the following article:
www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/obamas-moderate-health-care-plan
One more note on fiscal responsibility. While president Bush was running up a trillion dollar deficit, spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, and funding both wars with borrowed money he refused to include in the federal budget in order to make his numbers look better, Karl Rove got on television and told us all that “deficits don’t matter.” Yet even before Chief Justice Roberts had finished administering the oath of office to President Obama, Republicans were moaning about the terrible debt load of the United States and demanding spending be chopped all over the place to bring the numbers under control. Why it is that there always seems to be plenty of money to blow things up, yet never enough money for a check-up? Why it is so much more palatable for certain people in this country to pay for weapons that kill people in other countries than to pay for medicine to heal people in this country?
In perhaps the most bizarre story of the week, at about 7 p.m. last Thursday evening, a voice came over the public address system of a Wal-mart store in New Jersey calmly announcing the following; “Attention Wal-mart customers: All black people leave the store now.” I will admit to visiting a Wal-mart once or twice in my life, and I don’t recall ever hearing anything like that announced in the store, so more than a few people were more than a little upset. Wal-mart immediately issued numerous apologies and police later arrested the 16-year-old idiot responsible for the prank, but this stands as a lesson to any business with a public address system. Microphones can be dangerous. Keep them away from teenagers at all times.
And now for the lighter side of the news.
Tiger Woods gave his first interview since 2009 to ESPN last week, from which we learned absolutely nothing more than we already knew. He refused to answer (as he should have) questions regarding why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway and what he said in his apology to his wife and all sorts of other things the general public has no business knowing. Following the five minute interview with Tiger, the ESPN anchor in Bristol interviewed the reporter who had just finished interviewing Tiger to ask him for his thoughts on the interview he had just conducted. The reporter proceeded to lament the fact that Tiger had refused to explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, because he felt people really wanted to know that. If he is right, if people really are desperate to hear Tiger explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, I sincerely fear for journalism in this nation.
Anyone else tired of watching the media cover the healthcare debate like it’s a basketball game?
After promising employees at a Cadbury candy factory in England that their plant would not be closed when Kraft Foods purchased the company, Kraft Foods has decided to close the plant. Surprise! If they screw up the Creme Egg I’m filing a lawsuit.
The city of Detroit will close 44 schools within the city limits due to dwindling attendance and lack of funding. This comes on the heels of news that agriculture companies are buying up entire vacant blocks of the city, tearing down the abandoned houses and planting crops on the land. There is a movement is some depressed cities like Detroit to “right size” themselves, to reduce the physical area of the city for which the government will be responsible for providing services, in order to bring costs in line with their budgets. As strange as planting crops in what used to be neighborhoods sounds, I think it might be a good idea. For decades Detroit has been in decline. The remaining population is simply no longer large enough to support the infrastructure of a city with only about half the population it once had. Contraction might give them the breathing room they need in order to recover from years of economic decay.
New England Patriots defensive end Ty Warren will forgo a $250,000 work out bonus to return to school and finish his degree this spring and summer. I realize a quarter of-a-million dollars isn’t much compared to the rest of his salary, or the salaries of many of the other players in the league, but it is still a quarter-of-a-million dollars. In a world where most star athletes leave school early to play sports, it’s nice to stumble across the Ty Warrens and Myron Rolles (Rhodes Scholar) of the world who actually place some value on the education so many others are in such a hurry to leave behind.
NASCAR has given its drivers the green light to intentionally wreck each other during races. Oh yes. This sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong with this? My guess is this will last until somebody’s car goes airborne into the stands and crushes a few people. I can hear the lawyers now.
Finally, remember the E-Trade commercials, with the creepy digital baby with the adult voice telling you to get with the program and start investing with E-Trade? Remember the one where he’s talking to the other digital baby over the internet and he trying to explain that he didn’t call her the night before because he was checking his E-Trade account? And the other baby says, “And that milk-a-holic Lindsay wasn’t over?” Then a third digital baby - I guess Lindsay - pops up on screen and says, “Milk-a-whaaaa?” Lindsay Lohan (remember her?) has filed suit against E-Trade for 100 million dollars, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing, “milk-a-holic” baby in the commercial is actually modeled after her and is defaming to her character. Sigh. There are at least three pretty obvious reasons - among oh so many others - why her lawsuit has no merit. First, baby Lindsay steals boyfriends, not girlfriends, a fairly significant difference for adult Lindsay. Second, baby Lindsay wears a diaper in public, whereas adult Lindsay can’t seem to remember to wear her underwear when she leaves the house. And third, baby Lindsay is reportedly a “milk-a-holic,” not an alcoholic as adult Lindsay is reported to be. I understand that money is tight in this economy. But there must be less embarrassing ways for Miss Lohan to make ends meet than to claims she’s been parodied by a digital baby.
In case you haven’t heard, the House of Representatives passed the previously approved Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, making it the law of the land once President Obama signs it on Tuesday. For the first time in 45 years, the United States of America has instituted meaningful healthcare reform. And it’s not like we haven’t been trying. Since the passage of Medicare in 1965, seven Presidents have either denied and ignored the problems with the system, or tried and failed to reform it. Only one succeeded. This one.
The day before the vote, House Minority Leader John Boehner claimed the country was “24-hours away from Armageddon.” To hear Republicans and their supporters talk, you could be forgiven if you thought Hitler’s armies were stationed on the Mexican border with Stalin’s armies stretched across the Canadian border waiting for the count to reach 216 so they could begin the invasion. Only minutes after the vote was cast, Minnesota Republican Representative lunatic Michelle Bachmann promised to introduce a bill to repeal the legislation that has yet to become law. Bachmann is apparently unaware that repeal of healthcare reform would require a signature from the same President who signed the bill into law in the first place.
The Republican Party has stepped out onto a ledge they can never crawl in from. They have created a tidy little fantasy world for themselves and their followers. A world in which they can have anything their hearts desire, without ever having to pay a dime for any of it. Throughout the year-long discussion of this legislation, Republicans have repeatedly insisted that they are indeed in favor of some version of healthcare reform. Just for the sake of argument, let’s take them at their word. They claim to be in favor of eliminating the practice of denial of coverage due to illness or pre-existing conditions. They claim to be in favor of creating high-risk pools for people who cannot get insurance. They support tax-breaks to employers to provide insurance for their employees. And they claim to support eliminating the annual and lifetime caps placed on coverage by insurers. All those items are currently covered by the reform bill. What they do not support is any method of paying for all those wonderful ideas.
Mitt Romney gets very upset every time someone points out that the healthcare reform plan he decries as socialist evil bears a striking resemblance to the near-universal coverage, individual mandate, healthcare exchange-laded plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts. He waves his finger indignantly and points out that his plan did not in any way, shape or form cut waste within the system, or increase fees or taxes on the citizens of his former adopted state. And he is mostly right. Romney’s healthcare reform plan contained no mechanism with which to pay for itself. That’s why, only three years on, the program is nearly bankrupt, and will very shortly need to come up with some way to keep itself in the black. Republicans have carefully constructed a narrative that insists they can provide whatever the public demands of its government without anyone ever having to shell out a dime to pay for any of it. Call it the Wal-mart mentality. Buy one get two free. Better yet, buy none get the rest for no price. But the truth is, those two candy bars you bought for 99 cents, were really only worth 49-and-a-half cents a piece. Nothing in this life is free. Everything costs money. And things of value cost a little more money than things nobody cares about. Of course healthcare reform costs money. If it didn’t it would be worthless. So in addition to all those things in this bill the Republicans claim to support, are some measures that attempt to cover the cost of some of those items, instead of simply borrowing money from our grandchildren, like the very same Republicans who are now setting themselves up as the vanguard of fiscal responsibility did with No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and the Iraq and Afghan wars.
For more on what this healthcare reform bill actually is, please see the following article:
www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/obamas-moderate-health-care-plan
One more note on fiscal responsibility. While president Bush was running up a trillion dollar deficit, spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, and funding both wars with borrowed money he refused to include in the federal budget in order to make his numbers look better, Karl Rove got on television and told us all that “deficits don’t matter.” Yet even before Chief Justice Roberts had finished administering the oath of office to President Obama, Republicans were moaning about the terrible debt load of the United States and demanding spending be chopped all over the place to bring the numbers under control. Why it is that there always seems to be plenty of money to blow things up, yet never enough money for a check-up? Why it is so much more palatable for certain people in this country to pay for weapons that kill people in other countries than to pay for medicine to heal people in this country?
In perhaps the most bizarre story of the week, at about 7 p.m. last Thursday evening, a voice came over the public address system of a Wal-mart store in New Jersey calmly announcing the following; “Attention Wal-mart customers: All black people leave the store now.” I will admit to visiting a Wal-mart once or twice in my life, and I don’t recall ever hearing anything like that announced in the store, so more than a few people were more than a little upset. Wal-mart immediately issued numerous apologies and police later arrested the 16-year-old idiot responsible for the prank, but this stands as a lesson to any business with a public address system. Microphones can be dangerous. Keep them away from teenagers at all times.
And now for the lighter side of the news.
Tiger Woods gave his first interview since 2009 to ESPN last week, from which we learned absolutely nothing more than we already knew. He refused to answer (as he should have) questions regarding why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway and what he said in his apology to his wife and all sorts of other things the general public has no business knowing. Following the five minute interview with Tiger, the ESPN anchor in Bristol interviewed the reporter who had just finished interviewing Tiger to ask him for his thoughts on the interview he had just conducted. The reporter proceeded to lament the fact that Tiger had refused to explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, because he felt people really wanted to know that. If he is right, if people really are desperate to hear Tiger explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, I sincerely fear for journalism in this nation.
Anyone else tired of watching the media cover the healthcare debate like it’s a basketball game?
After promising employees at a Cadbury candy factory in England that their plant would not be closed when Kraft Foods purchased the company, Kraft Foods has decided to close the plant. Surprise! If they screw up the Creme Egg I’m filing a lawsuit.
The city of Detroit will close 44 schools within the city limits due to dwindling attendance and lack of funding. This comes on the heels of news that agriculture companies are buying up entire vacant blocks of the city, tearing down the abandoned houses and planting crops on the land. There is a movement is some depressed cities like Detroit to “right size” themselves, to reduce the physical area of the city for which the government will be responsible for providing services, in order to bring costs in line with their budgets. As strange as planting crops in what used to be neighborhoods sounds, I think it might be a good idea. For decades Detroit has been in decline. The remaining population is simply no longer large enough to support the infrastructure of a city with only about half the population it once had. Contraction might give them the breathing room they need in order to recover from years of economic decay.
New England Patriots defensive end Ty Warren will forgo a $250,000 work out bonus to return to school and finish his degree this spring and summer. I realize a quarter of-a-million dollars isn’t much compared to the rest of his salary, or the salaries of many of the other players in the league, but it is still a quarter-of-a-million dollars. In a world where most star athletes leave school early to play sports, it’s nice to stumble across the Ty Warrens and Myron Rolles (Rhodes Scholar) of the world who actually place some value on the education so many others are in such a hurry to leave behind.
NASCAR has given its drivers the green light to intentionally wreck each other during races. Oh yes. This sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong with this? My guess is this will last until somebody’s car goes airborne into the stands and crushes a few people. I can hear the lawyers now.
Finally, remember the E-Trade commercials, with the creepy digital baby with the adult voice telling you to get with the program and start investing with E-Trade? Remember the one where he’s talking to the other digital baby over the internet and he trying to explain that he didn’t call her the night before because he was checking his E-Trade account? And the other baby says, “And that milk-a-holic Lindsay wasn’t over?” Then a third digital baby - I guess Lindsay - pops up on screen and says, “Milk-a-whaaaa?” Lindsay Lohan (remember her?) has filed suit against E-Trade for 100 million dollars, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing, “milk-a-holic” baby in the commercial is actually modeled after her and is defaming to her character. Sigh. There are at least three pretty obvious reasons - among oh so many others - why her lawsuit has no merit. First, baby Lindsay steals boyfriends, not girlfriends, a fairly significant difference for adult Lindsay. Second, baby Lindsay wears a diaper in public, whereas adult Lindsay can’t seem to remember to wear her underwear when she leaves the house. And third, baby Lindsay is reportedly a “milk-a-holic,” not an alcoholic as adult Lindsay is reported to be. I understand that money is tight in this economy. But there must be less embarrassing ways for Miss Lohan to make ends meet than to claims she’s been parodied by a digital baby.
3.20.2010
And the Emmy Goes To...
If you haven't seen it yet, here it is. Thirteen minutes and five seconds of inspired parody.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Conservative Libertarian | ||||
| ||||
3.17.2010
Short Shift
I get two Fridays this week. Somehow that still doesn’t make up for the loss of that hour of sleep Sunday morning. So Tired. Will try to keep this one short.
This afternoon (Tuesday) Senator Chris Dodd unveiled his proposal for financial regulatory reform. A full 18 months after the near complete collapse of the global financial system. Sigh. I do not have the vocabulary to express how utterly exasperating it is that almost two years after we found out how throughly Wall Street ripped us off, we still have no agreement on setting up rules to prevent this disaster from happening again. If you have a little time to kill and a rage quotient to fill, read “The Big Short,” by journalist and author Michael Lewis, (perhaps best known as author of “The Blindside”). If you have that much time and need the Cliff Notes version, see the following:
Apparently there’s going to be some kind of vote in the House on the healthcare reform bill sometime this week. Maybe. You know what? I don’t really care anymore. In the words of one of my favorite columnists; Pass. The Damn. Bill. Wake me up when the voting’s over.
In a related story, this “deem and pass” strategy the House leadership has come up with in an effort to appear as though they are not voting for something they are voting for is absolutely ridiculous. At a time when Democrats’ own constituents are bemoaning all the horse-trading and the back-room deals and the sausage-making process of legislation, the House leadership is considering utilizing a tactic that doesn’t make any sense and that nobody can explain. Do Democrats really think that if they simply declare the bill passed, Republicans will go easy on them and neglect to mention the whole healthcare thing in their election campaigns this fall? What planet are you people living on?
Several weeks ago, Google announced that they were considering shutting down their Chinese operations in response to the hacking of their Gmail service. This week it appears as though Google might actually be serious. Chinese-based employees of the company have begun circulating their resumes and hundreds of advertisers are looking for alternative search engines on which to advertise. Some have signed letters to Google claiming their livelihood depends almost solely upon the company’s presence in China, begging them to stay and work something out with the government. It remains to be seen whether or not Google is listening. But the entire experiment of American-style internet pseudo-freedom in China has allowed for an interesting study in corporate motivation. The reality of government censorship - a complete anathema to everything the internet stands for - was not enough to cause Google to rethink its Chinese operations. Corporate espionage however, that was a whole different story. Once again, money talks. B.S. walks.
Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education revised its guidelines for statewide social studies curriculum. Among the changes are a new emphasis on the Second Amendment, (amendments one through nine be damned), the removal of the word “democratic” from any description of the federal government, and study of the decline in value of the U.S. dollar in relation to the abandonment of the gold standard. Even Thomas Jefferson failed to make the cut as an influential thinker in the founding of America. The board also declined to include any new references to any contributions from prominent minorities - in a state where if minorities are not currently the majority, they soon will be. Ordinarily, the educational decisions of a single state would be of little to no consequence to the 49 others. But, this is Texas. And together with California, they comprise the two largest school districts in the country, and because of this, very important to the textbook publishing industry. In an industry in which money is scarce, publishers have little interest in printing 50 slightly different versions of the same book. So what they do instead is print only a few versions, based on the standards adopted by the largest school districts, and distribute them across the country. Thus in many respects, as goes Texas, so goes a significant portion of the country. Now, it takes a special kind of crazy to deny that the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson - author of the Declaration of Independence - played a significant roll in the founding of America, or to claim as one board posit as one board member did, that the civil rights movement led to “unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes.” But it would be nice if we could keep this kind of crazy out of the educational system. I know, it’s Texas. It’s hot, and the heat does terrible things to human brains. (Sorry Chris, I kid because I love.) But certainly we owe our kids a better social studies guide than episodes of the Glen Beck show.
Finally, in case you haven’t heard, Tiger Woods is returning to golf. This coming April, Woods will return to the tee at Augusta National in an attempt to capture his fifth Masters Championship. And no one is more excited about his return than the president of CBS. Since Tiger left the tour last year the ratings for golf on television have been abysmal. In no other sport is the absence of a single athlete so detrimental to the game. Oddsmakers have already made him the favorite to win the tournament, after what will by that time will have been a more than six month hiatus from golf. Looks like the head of CBS won’t be the only one rolling in dough the following Monday.
This afternoon (Tuesday) Senator Chris Dodd unveiled his proposal for financial regulatory reform. A full 18 months after the near complete collapse of the global financial system. Sigh. I do not have the vocabulary to express how utterly exasperating it is that almost two years after we found out how throughly Wall Street ripped us off, we still have no agreement on setting up rules to prevent this disaster from happening again. If you have a little time to kill and a rage quotient to fill, read “The Big Short,” by journalist and author Michael Lewis, (perhaps best known as author of “The Blindside”). If you have that much time and need the Cliff Notes version, see the following:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| In Dodd We Trust | ||||
| ||||
Apparently there’s going to be some kind of vote in the House on the healthcare reform bill sometime this week. Maybe. You know what? I don’t really care anymore. In the words of one of my favorite columnists; Pass. The Damn. Bill. Wake me up when the voting’s over.
In a related story, this “deem and pass” strategy the House leadership has come up with in an effort to appear as though they are not voting for something they are voting for is absolutely ridiculous. At a time when Democrats’ own constituents are bemoaning all the horse-trading and the back-room deals and the sausage-making process of legislation, the House leadership is considering utilizing a tactic that doesn’t make any sense and that nobody can explain. Do Democrats really think that if they simply declare the bill passed, Republicans will go easy on them and neglect to mention the whole healthcare thing in their election campaigns this fall? What planet are you people living on?
Several weeks ago, Google announced that they were considering shutting down their Chinese operations in response to the hacking of their Gmail service. This week it appears as though Google might actually be serious. Chinese-based employees of the company have begun circulating their resumes and hundreds of advertisers are looking for alternative search engines on which to advertise. Some have signed letters to Google claiming their livelihood depends almost solely upon the company’s presence in China, begging them to stay and work something out with the government. It remains to be seen whether or not Google is listening. But the entire experiment of American-style internet pseudo-freedom in China has allowed for an interesting study in corporate motivation. The reality of government censorship - a complete anathema to everything the internet stands for - was not enough to cause Google to rethink its Chinese operations. Corporate espionage however, that was a whole different story. Once again, money talks. B.S. walks.
Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education revised its guidelines for statewide social studies curriculum. Among the changes are a new emphasis on the Second Amendment, (amendments one through nine be damned), the removal of the word “democratic” from any description of the federal government, and study of the decline in value of the U.S. dollar in relation to the abandonment of the gold standard. Even Thomas Jefferson failed to make the cut as an influential thinker in the founding of America. The board also declined to include any new references to any contributions from prominent minorities - in a state where if minorities are not currently the majority, they soon will be. Ordinarily, the educational decisions of a single state would be of little to no consequence to the 49 others. But, this is Texas. And together with California, they comprise the two largest school districts in the country, and because of this, very important to the textbook publishing industry. In an industry in which money is scarce, publishers have little interest in printing 50 slightly different versions of the same book. So what they do instead is print only a few versions, based on the standards adopted by the largest school districts, and distribute them across the country. Thus in many respects, as goes Texas, so goes a significant portion of the country. Now, it takes a special kind of crazy to deny that the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson - author of the Declaration of Independence - played a significant roll in the founding of America, or to claim as one board posit as one board member did, that the civil rights movement led to “unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes.” But it would be nice if we could keep this kind of crazy out of the educational system. I know, it’s Texas. It’s hot, and the heat does terrible things to human brains. (Sorry Chris, I kid because I love.) But certainly we owe our kids a better social studies guide than episodes of the Glen Beck show.
Finally, in case you haven’t heard, Tiger Woods is returning to golf. This coming April, Woods will return to the tee at Augusta National in an attempt to capture his fifth Masters Championship. And no one is more excited about his return than the president of CBS. Since Tiger left the tour last year the ratings for golf on television have been abysmal. In no other sport is the absence of a single athlete so detrimental to the game. Oddsmakers have already made him the favorite to win the tournament, after what will by that time will have been a more than six month hiatus from golf. Looks like the head of CBS won’t be the only one rolling in dough the following Monday.
3.10.2010
Last Rock
I think I'm experiencing Olympics withdrawal. Seriously, where do I have to go to find some curling?
Late last week another man with a grievance against the government drove from California to Maryland, took the subway to the Pentagon and opened fire on the guards at the entrance. Fortunately, despite being wounded, both guards were able to return fire, fatally injuring the assailant in the process. For those of you keeping count, that’s two anti-government nut cases attacking federal employees and institutions in three weeks. Fortunately, this time, no one was killed. Although we’re not quite there yet, at what point does this cease to be a collection of random acts of violence and begin to be something we need to pay closer attention to?
Last month, RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart delivered a PowerPoint presentation to top Republican donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Florida. Last week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele could be seen on television attempting to distance himself from the contents of that presentation. Why? It seems the presentation detailed, in very simple, straightforward terms, the Republican fundraising strategy for the upcoming midterm elections. “What can you sell when you don’t have the White House, the House or the Senate...” the presentation asks? Simple. Socialism. Create a boogeyman where there isn’t one, and make people afraid of it. You know, sort of like Republicans have done with healthcare reform, financial regulation, climate change, and so on and so on and so forth. Several of the slides went on to depict Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo, Speaker Pelosi as Cruella DeVille, and the now ubiquitous (courtesy of tea baggers) image of President Obama in whiteface as the Joker. What irks me about the last one in particular is that the people carrying these ridiculous signs can’t even get their metaphor correct. The Joker - fictional though he is - is an anarchist, not a socialist. There is a significant difference. In fact, you can’t get much further from socialism than anarchy. I’m don’t know if I should be upset with people for disseminating patently erroneous (and tasteless) criticism, or pitying the fact that they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about yet seem to delight in their ignorance. However, since merely one day after denouncing the afore-mentioned tactics, Steele debuted television commercials promising that donations to the Republican Party would help fund a bulwark against socialism, I’m inclined to go with the former.
I’m not stupid enough to believe this is the first time Politicians will base a political campaign on nothing more than white-knuckled fear. The strategy of terrifying voters into voting a certain way is as old as voting itself. But that is the problem, isn’t it. Particularly at a time when we need frank honest discussion, all we can get from the opposition is unsubstantiated hysteria. Grow up! Let’s pretend we all graduated junior high and debate these things like adults.
In a 180 degree reversal of policy announced earlier this year, the Justice Department appears likely to now try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in military court, instead of federal court in New York City. This decision marks one of the rare moments in which I find myself disappointed with this administration. The difference between the Cheney world view and the Obama world view was that due process and the rule of law are not OBSTRUCTIONS to American tradition and values, but STAPLES of American tradition and values. Unlike Richard Cheney, Barack Obama had enough faith in the American judicial system to actually utilize it to prosecute those who violate our laws, instead of torturing them and sending them to the kangaroo court the original military tribunals, as conceived of by the Bush administration were. Apparently the President has lost some of that faith in the system. Granted, the military tribunal system has been substantially improved since the Supreme Court intervened in the process in 2004. It is no longer the rubber stamp for indefinite detention it was designed to be, and therefore the argument could be made that it is now a viable vehicle with which to try terror suspects. I guess I was just hoping the administration would continue to pursue the right course, and not simply the easy one.
On his program today, Rush Limbaugh threatened to leave the country if healthcare reform is passed and implemented. Leave the country and move to Costa Rica. With their socialized medicine. I’m distraught. I can’t bear the thought of losing him. If the Democratic Party needed any additional incentive to pass the damn bill, now they have it. If only Limbaugh was a man of his word.
Lee Boyd Malvo, the surviving member of the DC sniper duo a letter to one of his victims last week, apologizing for his actions. While I’m sure it’s good to apologize for one’s actions if one truly regrets taking them, I’m never sure how well it goes over with the family of the victim. It’s nice that you’re sorry, but I doesn’t bring their their loved one back.
Finally, a woman in New Zealand sold two ghosts over the internet for $2,000. Apparently, the woman had endured enough of the spirits haunting her home and was somehow able to trap them in a bottle. She then proceeded to put them up for auction, I guess in the hope they would go haunt someone else’s home. The bottle of ghosts sold for two grand, minus an undisclosed “exorcism fee” imposed by the woman, for removing the ghosts, from her own home. Lady, I’ve got some Congressmen in Washington that I need you to sell some legislation to. The incomparable Al Bundy once said that the garage sale - and by extension the auction - is based on the bigger idiot theory. There will always be a bigger idiot willing to buy whatever crap you have to sell. We may have just located the biggest idiot of all.
Late last week another man with a grievance against the government drove from California to Maryland, took the subway to the Pentagon and opened fire on the guards at the entrance. Fortunately, despite being wounded, both guards were able to return fire, fatally injuring the assailant in the process. For those of you keeping count, that’s two anti-government nut cases attacking federal employees and institutions in three weeks. Fortunately, this time, no one was killed. Although we’re not quite there yet, at what point does this cease to be a collection of random acts of violence and begin to be something we need to pay closer attention to?
Last month, RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart delivered a PowerPoint presentation to top Republican donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Florida. Last week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele could be seen on television attempting to distance himself from the contents of that presentation. Why? It seems the presentation detailed, in very simple, straightforward terms, the Republican fundraising strategy for the upcoming midterm elections. “What can you sell when you don’t have the White House, the House or the Senate...” the presentation asks? Simple. Socialism. Create a boogeyman where there isn’t one, and make people afraid of it. You know, sort of like Republicans have done with healthcare reform, financial regulation, climate change, and so on and so on and so forth. Several of the slides went on to depict Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo, Speaker Pelosi as Cruella DeVille, and the now ubiquitous (courtesy of tea baggers) image of President Obama in whiteface as the Joker. What irks me about the last one in particular is that the people carrying these ridiculous signs can’t even get their metaphor correct. The Joker - fictional though he is - is an anarchist, not a socialist. There is a significant difference. In fact, you can’t get much further from socialism than anarchy. I’m don’t know if I should be upset with people for disseminating patently erroneous (and tasteless) criticism, or pitying the fact that they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about yet seem to delight in their ignorance. However, since merely one day after denouncing the afore-mentioned tactics, Steele debuted television commercials promising that donations to the Republican Party would help fund a bulwark against socialism, I’m inclined to go with the former.
I’m not stupid enough to believe this is the first time Politicians will base a political campaign on nothing more than white-knuckled fear. The strategy of terrifying voters into voting a certain way is as old as voting itself. But that is the problem, isn’t it. Particularly at a time when we need frank honest discussion, all we can get from the opposition is unsubstantiated hysteria. Grow up! Let’s pretend we all graduated junior high and debate these things like adults.
In a 180 degree reversal of policy announced earlier this year, the Justice Department appears likely to now try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in military court, instead of federal court in New York City. This decision marks one of the rare moments in which I find myself disappointed with this administration. The difference between the Cheney world view and the Obama world view was that due process and the rule of law are not OBSTRUCTIONS to American tradition and values, but STAPLES of American tradition and values. Unlike Richard Cheney, Barack Obama had enough faith in the American judicial system to actually utilize it to prosecute those who violate our laws, instead of torturing them and sending them to the kangaroo court the original military tribunals, as conceived of by the Bush administration were. Apparently the President has lost some of that faith in the system. Granted, the military tribunal system has been substantially improved since the Supreme Court intervened in the process in 2004. It is no longer the rubber stamp for indefinite detention it was designed to be, and therefore the argument could be made that it is now a viable vehicle with which to try terror suspects. I guess I was just hoping the administration would continue to pursue the right course, and not simply the easy one.
On his program today, Rush Limbaugh threatened to leave the country if healthcare reform is passed and implemented. Leave the country and move to Costa Rica. With their socialized medicine. I’m distraught. I can’t bear the thought of losing him. If the Democratic Party needed any additional incentive to pass the damn bill, now they have it. If only Limbaugh was a man of his word.
Lee Boyd Malvo, the surviving member of the DC sniper duo a letter to one of his victims last week, apologizing for his actions. While I’m sure it’s good to apologize for one’s actions if one truly regrets taking them, I’m never sure how well it goes over with the family of the victim. It’s nice that you’re sorry, but I doesn’t bring their their loved one back.
Finally, a woman in New Zealand sold two ghosts over the internet for $2,000. Apparently, the woman had endured enough of the spirits haunting her home and was somehow able to trap them in a bottle. She then proceeded to put them up for auction, I guess in the hope they would go haunt someone else’s home. The bottle of ghosts sold for two grand, minus an undisclosed “exorcism fee” imposed by the woman, for removing the ghosts, from her own home. Lady, I’ve got some Congressmen in Washington that I need you to sell some legislation to. The incomparable Al Bundy once said that the garage sale - and by extension the auction - is based on the bigger idiot theory. There will always be a bigger idiot willing to buy whatever crap you have to sell. We may have just located the biggest idiot of all.
3.03.2010
...A Thousand Words
What a difference a week makes.
I spent most of last Sunday night lamenting the early demise of my national hockey team, and by extension, the nation of my birth. I said they were slow, inefficient and more than likely, overwhelmed by the burden of a country expecting nothing less than perfection on home ice in a sport they proudly call their own. I predicted that even if they made it through the qualifying game unscathed, they would likely be quickly dispatched by a formidable Russian squad waiting eagerly in the wings. Well, to paraphrase the words of a very wise man, may the words you speak always be sweet, because you never know when you may have to eat them.
Turns out I was wrong. Despite shaky goaltending and lackluster defense from some veteran players, Team Canada figured out how to score goals just in time to knock off Germany and Russia. The youth that was so sorely lacking four years ago in Torino came up big against the best offensive player in the game (Russia’s Alexander Ovechkin) and restored some measure of the confidence lost in the shootout to Switzerland and the loss to the United States. And after withstanding a last second Slovakian surge for a 3-2 victory, Canada found itself in a rematch with the United States for the only gold medal that truly mattered to Canadians. (I in no way mean to belittle any of the 13 other gold medals won by the host country, but if you asked ten Canadians if they would give up all those other golds for a single gold in men’s hockey, nine of them would answer yes, and the tenth would be silently offended that you even bothered to ask the question.)
They insisted on doing it the hard way, playing 50 minutes of solid Olympic-caliber hockey, then put an entire nation into cardiac arrest by allowing the United States to come back and tie the game with only 24 seconds left to play. Eight minutes into sudden death overtime, I watched Team Canada captain Scott Niedermayer turn the puck over in front of his own net covered my eyes, waiting for Team U.S.A.s celebration to begin. But it never came. Luongo knocked down the shot and Canada regrouped. Less than a minute later, a diving Jarome Iginla slipped the puck out of the corner to Sidney Crosby, who put immediately put it through the pads of tournament MVP Ryan Miller (no one has been more deserving of that honor in at least 30 years) to cement his place both in history and as a legend to his country.
Sidney Crosby had a rather quiet tournament. Often referred to as the heir to Wayne Gretzky, the superstar spent most his time doing work usually reserved for less distinguished members of a hockey team. He dug pucks out of corners, poke-checked pucks off the sticks of attacking forwards, blocked shots from the blue line and checked opposing forwards from in front of his net. In fact, Crosby only scored two goals in the entire tournament. The first to win the shootout against the Swiss. The second to win the gold medal in overtime against the United States. Paul Henderson, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and now, Sidney Crosby. That’s some damn fine company.
As great a story as hockey was for Canada, was there a more inspiring story for the rest of the world than that of figure skater Joannie Rochette? Merely hours after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter skate, Rochette’s mother - and by all accounts her best friend - suffered a heart attack and passed away. Distraught, Rochette considered withdrawing from the competition, and not one person would have second guessed her decision. But after consulting her father and her coach, she decided to stay and skate, to honor the memory of her mother in her own way. So, last Tuesday night, Joannie Rochette took to the ice following a record-setting performance by South Korea’s Kim Yu-Na and skated the performance of a lifetime. She totally Brett Favre’d her short program. And I don’t mean Favre’d in that she took an eternity to decide what she was going to do. On Sunday, December 21, 2003, Favre’s father died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car in Mississippi. The following night, through tears of grief, Favre threw for four first-half touchdowns and 400 yards in a 41-7 thrashing of the Oakland Raiders - in Oakland, for which he earned a standing ovation from notoriously hostile Raider fans. What Rochette accomplished was no less impressive. Not one Canadian would have been disappointed had she decided to leave the games and return home to grieve with the rest of her family. Instead she chose to skate, to do what she had come to Vancouver to do. Her grief played out in front of the whole world, and the whole world cried along with her. Yes, two skaters outperformed her and finished ahead of her in the standings. But the color of her medal didn’t matter to anyone in that arena or anyone else watching on television. Joannie Rochette proved to the world that she has the heart of a champion. And for at least one night, that was better than silver or gold.
And now, back to Washington. I’m depressed already.
Last Thursday, President Obama hosted an healthcare summit with congressional Democrats and Republicans at Blair House, across the street from the White House. It might as well have been held at Little House on the Prairie, or House of 1,000 Corpses. While the President wanted to talk policy, Republicans - most the most part - wanted to talk process, and how because they had been left out of it (even though they hadn’t) they were content to take their ball and go home. Of course, everyone has known since the summit was announced, that the purpose of this meeting was to give each side one final opportunity to draw their lines in the sand before moving forward. Tomorrow (Wednesday) the President will do just that. And if the Democrats have learned anything at all over the past fourteen months they will pass some measure of reform and move on to other business. Because if you you’re going to get hit for throwing a jab, and you’re going to get hit standing still, you might as well come out swinging.
In a related story, news organizations spent considerable ink discussing the findings of recent polls in which the popularity of the Senate healthcare reform bill was pitted against the individual elements of said bill. When asked if they supported the Senate bill in its current form, a majority (mid 50% range) indicated they did not. However, when asked about whether or not they supported individual reform measures contained within the bill, (for example, no denial due to pre-existing conditions, expansion of hig-risk insurance pools and applying strategies to reduce fraud and waste in the Medicare system), an overwhelming majority - in some cases in excess of 70% - claimed they did. So, this could mean one of two things. Either a majority of Americans are idiots and don’t realize they are opposing the very same initiatives they are supporting, or there is something about the form of the bill itself that turns people off. In an interview with NPR Wednesday afternoon, Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander summed it up this way (to paraphrase): “of course people are in favor of all those ideas, but when you tell then that in order to get them they will have to pay higher taxes, cut medicare, reduce the quality of service and add hundreds of billions to the federal debt they turn against it and say we should start over.” In other words, when you take any set of good ideas and lie to people telling them that those good ideas will bankrupt their children, pull the plug on grandma and usher in armageddon, most will completely freak out and act against their own interest. No organization is better at peddling fear of things we need not be afraid of than this crop of congressional Republicans. Unfortunately, no organization is worse at selling the merits of positive change than congressional Democrats.
The opposition continues to tout this number of more than 50% opposition to the Senate healthcare reform bill. But, like almost everything else Republicans have peddled during this entire process, that majority opposition is a little disingenuous. The polls do not ask that majority why they oppose the bill. And buried in that number is a significant number of respondents who oppose the current Senate bill because they feel it does not go far enough to control costs, expand coverage and limit the power of the insurance companies. There are many who are opposed to this bill because it never bothered to discuss the concept of a single-payer system and eliminated some sort of public option very early on in the process - an idea that continues to poll much more highly in many, if not most districts than the bill itself. It is not a stretch to say that those people - in spite of their distain for a bill sorely lacking in terms of their core issues - would still prefer some measure of reform to pass as opposed to no reform at all. Right now, Democrats have absolutely nothing with which to rally their base. Healthcare legislation would give them at least ONE thing to fight for in November. Passage of some type of healthcare reform will be far more beneficial to Democrats than abandoning the process altogether.
This past Friday the Senate was scheduled to pass an extension of unemployment benefits to over a million people that were due to expire over the weekend. This were going well. Majority Leader Reid worked out a deal with Republicans to pass the extension and brought it to the floor for passage under unanimous consent. Enter Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning. While complaining about the college basketball game he was missing by making the motion, the former hall-of-fame Major League pitcher decided to object to the passage of the bill, demanding that Congress either cut spending or raise taxes by 10 billion dollars to pay for the extension. Bunning’s action stalled passage of the legislation, causing the furlough of 2,000 federal transportation employees and denied the unemployed the ability to apply for benefits or for the COBRA health insurance extension. Bunning claimed he was not opposed to the $10 billion extension, he just didn’t want it to add to the deficit. Now while the merits of Bunning’s argument are certainly debatable, it seems somewhat, “cold” to bicker over process while firing 2,000 more workers in an economy where 9.8 percent of the work force is currently unemployed. I’m sure all those people who were told not to bother showing up for work Monday morning are just broken up over the fact that you missed that Wildcats game while signing their pink slips.
General Motors announced last week that they will be shutting down the Hummer brand after a deal with a Chinese firm interested in purchasing it fell through. I have only two words to describe my feelings toward the demise of Hummer. Good riddance. I sincerely hope General Motors rebounds substantially and soon, so that all the workers displaced by the closing of Hummer plants (particularly here in Indiana) might find work. But I have never been happier to see a vehicle disappear than I will be when Hummer is gone. They symbolized the worst General Motors had to offer. Hopefully, by relegating the Hummer to the same scrap heap as the Hyundai Pony and the Ford Pinto will do for GM what it did for Hyundai and Ford.
Finally, last week a trainer at Sea World was killed when a killer whale grabbed hold of her ponytail and dragged and held her underwater. As much as we as spectators enjoy watching these animals do tricks and flips and splash us with their tail flukes during their shows, we need to remember that they are indeed, wild animals. And perhaps the wild is where they belong. Although they may seem cute and cuddly from a distance, they are bigger, stronger and faster than we are, and they really don’t understand how frail we human beings actually are. They aren’t mean, or cruel, just wild. Wild animals are unpredictable, and in working with them, bad things are going to happen. All the evidence points to incidents like this being rare. Let’s pray that is indeed the case.
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