The San Francisco Treat

You can all stop holding your breath now.  There will be another royal wedding.  Our long national nightmare is over.

I was a little heavy on the rage last week.  So I’ve decided to compensate by going light on everything this week.  Who said I don’t know how to cut a deal?

A word on bi-partisanship.  And by bi-partisanship I mean obstruction.  If you truly needed further evidence that the current Republican party has every interest in politicking and no interest in governing, consider the following.  For the past 18 months the administration has been working on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia.  This past Wednesday, Arizona (again?) Senator Jon Kyl, the lead Republican senator on the treaty negotiations announced he will not allow a vote on the treaty during the lame-duck session, or any time after that for that matter.  His claim as to why?  The President has put no focus on the modernization of the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal, as well the usual mumbo jumbo about the President disarming America and being unwilling to work with Republicans to find solutions.  Reality, however, has a different take.  While previous arms reduction treaties - all signed under Republican presidents, reduced deployed nuclear warheads from 12,000 to 2,000, this proposed treaty will reduce the total from 2,000 to 1,550.  And at Kyl’s request, the administration committed $84 billion toward modernization over the next ten years.  Hardly disarmament.  As for the President being unwilling to work with Republicans, White House officials recounted no fewer than 29 meetings, phone calls, briefings and/or letters on the subject involving Jon Kyl or his staff, a number which neither Kyl nor his staff disputes.  Yet, after all that, Kyl still refuses to allow a vote.  Nothing obstructionist about that.

Finally, I know I’m a little late to this story, but San Francisco has decided to ban the Happy Meal.  More specifically, they have banned fast food restaurants from bundling free toys with meals marketed to kids.  I guess kids were getting fat from eating the plastic Buzz Lightyear action figure that came with their bacon double cheeseburger, large fries and large M&M McFlurry.  This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard since Oklahoma voted to ban Sharia law in the midterm elections.  (Seriously, was the implementation of Sharia law becoming a problem in Oklahoma?)  Does removing the toy from the Happy Meal magically make the meal more nutritious?  Is the toy some kind of superconducting child magnet that senses kids driving past the restaurant and rips the Happy Meal out through the drive-thru window and into their tubby little bellies?  Perhaps I’m just too old to remember correctly, but when my mother wanted to keep me from eating junk food, she simply didn’t buy me junk food, plastic Taiwanese lead-painted toy be damned.  I guess it’s too much to ask for parents to act like parents in San Francisco.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

FYE (for your entertainment) - a midterm election proof.  Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter, a man who admitted not too long ago to patronizing escorts and prostitutes in violation of his marriage vows, won re-election to the Senate last week by 19 percentage points.  Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, a lifelong supporter of universal access to healthcare, was defeated in his bid for re-election last week by 5 percentage points.  Therefore, in America today, it is preferable to patronize prostitutes, than to believe that access to healthcare should be a right.

About a week before the midterm elections, there was a mayoral election in my old hometown(ish) of Toronto.  The conservative candidate, Rob Ford, won the election by 11 points over his nearest challenger.  One of Rob Ford’s pet peeves is the streetcar.  He hates them.  As mayor he plans to eliminate them completely.  And replace them with subways.  More expensive, more efficient, subways lines.  It’s nice to see that in the rest of the civilized world, debates on things like public transportation are focused on  what type of public transportation should be built, instead of whether or not public transportation is actually some sort of communist plot hatched by liberals to steal money from hard-working small businessmen to redistribute to poor people who must be too lazy to work hard enough to afford a car.

And now a thought about the midterms.

In a lengthy, but insightful and poignant posting on his blog on Tuesday (available here and here, for those interested in reading), Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Magazine concluded that that past year or so in American politics has represented the triumph of the untruth.  Untruth propagated by a deliberate and systematic campaign to accomplish nothing but the destruction of the Obama presidency.  One need not look any further than public statements hoping for the failure of the President before he even took office, made by the de-facto chairman of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.  But, if you feel you need more evidence, continue reading.  Pragmatic emergency measures taken to prevent complete economic collapse, such as the bank bailouts (administered by conservative Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Bush administration) and the auto bailouts (begun under that same administration), were characterized by the right as steps in the march toward socialism.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has helped keep me and millions others like me privately employed over the past two years, was labeled a failure, despite almost every notable economists assertion to the contrary.  Health care reform - a virtual carbon copy of a program instituted in Massachusetts by one Mitt Romney (except that this plan actually had the audacity to attempt to pay for itself) - sans public option and with 30 million more customers for private health insurers, was described as a government take-over designed to kill grandma.

All of these little untruths combined to create one overarching falsehood - that Barack Obama is some kind of angry, an-American Marxist rebel foreigner bent on turning the United State into cold war communist Russia.  It is a falsehood fairly easily exposed by an intellectual examination of the facts.  But the Republican Party is no longer interested in intellectual honesty.  Not entirely unexpected from a party now openly hostile to learning, but distressing none-the-less.  For example, last Sunday, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint appeared on Meet the Press to discuss the new GOP congressional agenda.  When asked what ideas the party had for cutting the budget, DeMint replied that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act (health insurance reform).  When asked what his issue with the Act was, he attacked it for cutting $500 billion dollars from Medicare.  DeMint, I’m guessing knowingly, admitted that his plan to reduce the deficit, actually increases the deficit!  A deficit that, according to one Richard J. Cheney, “don’t matter.”  Unless there’s a Democrat in the White House.

Republicans claim that President Obama raised taxes during his first two years in office.  Polls taken prior to the election reveal that a majority of conservatives and independents are under the impression that their taxes have increased during the Presidents first term.  The fact is that taxes are lower today than they were on January 20, 2009.  A full third of the stimulus package was comprised of tax cuts.  That amounts to $280 billion in tax cuts.  Not including the payroll tax cuts that followed.  Republicans have claimed that illegal immigration and related crime is out of control.  The fact is that both illegal immigration and violent crime - especially that committed by illegal immigrants - has declined significantly during the Obama presidency.  Believe it or not, there are still Republicans claiming the President wants to take away your guns.  The fact is, even in light of the drug cartel-related violence in northern Mexico and the recent Supreme Court decision ensuring the Second Amendment does indeed apply to the states, the administration has made absolutely no attempt to regulate weapons whatsoever.  But the facts don’t matter anymore.  The only currency the GOP appears capable of utilizing is that of irrational fear.  The fear that the conservative white Christian majority in America is somehow, suddenly, an oppressed minority.  It’s an incredible achievement for the GOP talk radio/cable news propaganda machine.  Can you imagine if the Democratic party had a fraction of the ability to shape and stay on message as their counterparts on the other side of the aisle.        

Every time I come across someone angry about the passage of the Affordable Care Act, I make certain to ask them exactly what it is about the bill they want repealed.  The conversation then tends to go something like this:  (chart from the Kaiser Foundation, via The Daily Dish)

On his appearance on The Daily Show this past Monday night, Texas governor Rick Perry tried to make a point about the over-reach of the federal government.  He made the statement that through the use of a state program of “flexible permitting” Texas has cleaned up its air “significantly” over the past two or three decades.  However, the EPA has recently come along and told the state that their flexible permitting process isn’t doing enough to combat air pollution and is threatening to replace the permitting process with one designed by the agency.  Perry insisted Texas was doing fine on its own, achieving great results and didn’t need bureaucrats in Washington interfering with them.  The wording of his statement bothered me, so I did some cursory research.  While Perry’s statement, that Texas has significantly improved its air quality over the past thirty years under their flexible permitting process, may in fact be true (as I found nothing to dispute that claim), the following is also true.  According to the most recent aggregated EPA data I could find (2004), Texas ranks worst of all 50 states in emissions of volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides (ozone) and known carcinogens, second to last in emissions of carbon monoxide and overall atmospheric pollutants, and 30th out of 50 in added cancer risk to individuals form said pollutants.  Which begs the question; if the air quality in Texas has improved significantly over the past 30 years under this terrific state permitting process, just how pathetic was the air quality to begin with?  And on what planet is an increase from worst to second worst a “significant” improvement?

Yesterday, General Motors announced a two billion dollar quarterly profit, suggesting they will finish the year as the second most profitable auto manufacturer in the country.  What a miserable failure that auto bailout was, huh.

In an interview promoting his new autobiography, former President George W. Bush revealed that his “worst moment” as president was having rapper Kanye West accusing him of not caring about black people, in the wake of Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  Really?  The worst moment of his presidency?  Not watching two skyscrapers collapse from aircraft impacts in New York City?  Not invading a foreign country under false pretext, beginning a war that has raged now almost eight years and counting?  Not failing to regulate the financial system and prevent the greatest economic disaster since 1929?  The worst moment of the eight years of your presidency was when an egomaniacal rapper in stupid plastic glasses got up on stage at an awards show and called you a racist?  Wow.

According to a recent Gallup survey on attitudes toward the death penalty, even though 81% of respondents believe innocent people have been executed in the United States, 64% continue to support capital punishment.  Is it just me, or is that statistic actually disturbing?

The co-chairs of the President’s Debt Commission, Senator Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles released their draft proposal for reducing the national deficit and debt to manageable levels over the next 25 years.  (Review it for yourself here.)  I have skimmed the document and read some initial reaction and the plan seems to basically give the people what they say they want - massive spending cuts and minimal tax increases.  In addition to the easy cuts in discretionary spending, the proposal reduces the defense budget by five times more that suggested by the current Secretary of Defense, trims hundreds of billions each from Medicaid and Medicare, and raises the retirement age and adds means testing for Social Security.  On the revenue side, the plan proposes to reduce income tax rates to 8% (from 10%), 14% (from 23%) and 23% (from 33%) while eliminating all deductions.  Personally, I think this is a pretty good place to start.  If we truly want to reduce the size of government and tackle the debt, everything has to be on the table and difficult choices have to be made.  In order for congress to be forced to take up the recommendations of the commission, 14 of the 18 commission members must agree on a proposal, so the chances of this document - or anything like it actually making it to the national debate are slim to none.  But one thing this report will do for certain is determine which of these new and improved “fiscally responsible” tea party Republicans are truly serious about reducing the size of government. 

Finally, the National Hockey League has announced it will revamp the way it selects teams for the league all-star game this coming winter.  Players will be selected as they usually are.  But then the league will choose two captains, and the captains will select the players for their team, regardless of nationality and/or conference.  Pond hockey.  On a professional level.  I love this idea.  One of the things I have always disliked about professional sports is the conference/division system of organization - especially when it comes down to playoff and all-star games.  As a fan, I want to see the best teams and the best players play against each other when it matters, regardless of what division or conference they are in.  If the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks are the best teams in the league, then they should have the opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup, regardless of the fact they play in the same conference.  If If the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens are the best teams in football, they should have a shot to play in the Super Bowl.  Who cares if they both come from the AFC?  The best should play the best, end of story.  Congratulations to the NHL for taking the first step down this road.

The Crimson Tide

So, I voted this morning.  I know, the three of you reading this are saying to yourselves, “so what, I vote all the time, big freakin’ deal.”  I understand completely.  But I have to admit, it was actually, a little exciting.

I became a citizen of these United States late last summer, so this was my first opportunity to perform my civic duty.  Well, there was something last year about raising a tax to establish a commission to study the possibility of extending passenger rail service to some counties that couldn’t be bothered to vote on it themselves, or something like that.  But this was the first election of consequence I have had the opportunity to participate in.  Granted, it would have been better if there were candidates I felt good about supporting, instead of a list full of candidates I felt I had to vote against, but, I’m told the democratic process isn’t always pretty.

Warm and fuzzy feeling aside, by the time this is posted it will likely have been a pretty depressing day for the party in power.  Projections, made apparently by people who project things, have Democrats losing between 50 and 75 seats in Congress, and up to 12 state governorships.  Ouch.  Essentially, every gain Democrats have made since 2006 will have been wiped out.  There really is no way to spin that complete and total a loss into a positive.  Some people will try, but they’ll only look foolish doing so.

I’m sure there will be plenty of navel-gazing and analysis of what went wrong for the Democratic party.  If they’re interested, I’ll save them a little time.  Democrats are staring down the barrel of 60 seat losses for three reasons.  First, they spent more time cannibalizing each other than sparring with the opposition.  Typical Democratic behavior.  Why hunt wild game when you can eat your own young?  Second, they are the worst political sales team in the history of history.  They couldn’t sell water in the Kalahari Desert.  “Well sure this water will prevent you from dying of dehydration, but the bottle is only 15% post-consumer recycled plastic, and it may contain traces of Bisphenol A which may or may not cause cancer, and the water may have come from an over-burdened aquifer somewhere in Arizona, and 35 tons of carbon dioxide were produced by the truck that delivered it the store, not to mention the airplane that flew it out here, so we would really prefer if you didn’t buy - or drink it for that matter.”  And finally, they spent too much time waiting for unicorns to crap rainbows and not enough time making it rain, forgetting that it is in fact rain, and not unicorns, that produces rainbows.

What I do find endlessly amusing about this election cycle is what voters say they expect out of the upcoming Congress.  The results of a New York Times/CBS poll last week indicate that even though the entire media establishment is pitching this election as a referendum on the President, only 10 percent of respondents blame him for the current state of the economy.  Ninety percent said they considered government spending to be an important issue, yet majorities were opposed to significant spending cuts and/or any tax increases.  A pillar of the midterm Republican party platform has been repeal of healthcare reform.  Yet by a margin of 45% - 41%, respondents indicated healthcare reform should stand.  And most bizarre of all, in a cycle where the Republicans that will be swept into power are significantly more partisan than those ousted in 2006 and 2008, 78% of voters said they Republicans should compromise some of their positions to get things done.  All this (particularly that last result) can’t help but beg the question, are we all stupid?  In what universe should people expect less partisanship from more partisans?  Probably the same universe in which they expect lower deficits from higher spending and reduced tax revenue.

In a curious, non-political piece of news, as of November 1st, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange began selling rain futures.  That’s right, rain futures.  You can now gamble on whether on not it will rain during your Memorial Day barbecue in 2036, and make a killing off those bastard cumulonimbus clouds if it does.  The exchange already sells snow futures, fire futures, and all kinds of other exotic “products” to compliment their agricultural futures, so I guess rain insurance really isn’t that big of a stretch.  Apparently there is absolutely nothing in the world you cannot gamble other people’s money on.  Quick, who wants to be the first to organize rain futures into collateralized debt obligations and sell credit default swaps against them?  What?  Why are you looking at me like that?  What could possibly go wrong here?

A commercial for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” just flashed across my television screen.  At one point Palin is shown riding an ATV and in the voice-over she can be heard saying, and I quote, “I’d rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office... I rather be out here being free.”  You and me both Sarah.  You and me both. 

Finally, as my wife gleefully attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this weekend, at some point between another disappointing Fighting Irish football loss and the complete waste of time that was the first 30 minutes of Sunday’s slate of NFL games, I stumbled across Chiller’s “72 Hour Horror Movie Marathon.”  For those of you without cable or satellite (I’m told you do indeed exist), Chiller is a channel dedicated to thriller, suspense and horror movies, primarily those not quite good enough to achieve theatrical release.  As Chiller and I crossed paths, “Assault of the Sasquatch” was ending and “Halloween Night” was about to begin.  Between the two films I lost count of how many arms were severed, eyeballs were stabbed, kneecaps were shot out, heads were smashed beneath the wheels of pickup trucks and torsos were run through with “Dead End” road signs.  But I did happen to notice that the very first time an uncovered female breast popped up on screen (no pun intended), it was subjected to the disappointing white digital fuzz of censorship.  Forgive me for asking, but what kind of society do we live in, in which it is perfectly acceptable for adults to view dismemberment and mutilation of human beings, but completely unacceptable to for those same adults to catch a peek of a  female nipple?  I just don’t know how to make sense of that.  I guess, the rent is too damn high.