wish i was taller

Who We Thought They Were

2011-03-04T01:30:00.000-05:00

Several seasons ago, following a particularly embarrassing come-from-way-behind home field loss to the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, then Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green took to the podium during the post-game press conference and made the following statement:

“...The Bears are who we thought they were. That’s why we took the damn field. Now if you wanna crown ‘em, then crown their ass! But they are who we thought they were! And we let ‘em off the hook!”

Democrats, meet me at paragraph four.

Democrats, Democrats, Democrats. Do you remember what you were doing last November? No, you should have been out voting. But you weren’t. Instead you were sitting on the couch stuffing potato chips and complaining about how terrible it was that the only thing a Democratic-controlled Congress could accomplish over the past two years was dig the country out of the deepest recession since 1933, overhaul the entire financial system and pass the first major reform of the healthcare system since the advent of Medicare. Due to that apathy, Republicans now control the U.S. House of Representatives and 29 state legislatures and governorships. In order to prevent Republicans from simply steam-rolling bills through legislatures of which they have complete control, Democrats have had to resort to procedural methods and stalling tactics. Or, as in the case of Wisconsin and Indiana, desperate (and let’s be honest, pathetic) measures, such as fleeing their respective states for the sanctuary of Illinois. Republicans in newly red states are systematically dismantling the Democratic Party, (with the deepest cuts yet to come when the electoral districts are redrawn over the next couple years), and Democrats have helped them do it. Still think mid-terms don’t matter?

Despite threats from Governor Walker to lay off state workers in retaliation, Wisconsin state senators remain fugitives and protests at the capitol building in Madison continue to grow. Using a state budget crisis as a catalyst (a crisis created in part by the almost two hundred million in tax cuts the governor signed into law just days after being sworn into office), Walker pushed legislation through the state house which would allow him to, among other things, sell state assets without solicitation of bids, cut wages and benefits of state workers significantly and strip public unions of the right to collectively bargain for more than wage increases tied to the rate of inflation. In keeping with the spirit of slash and burn that seems to be sweeping the country, Democrats chose to largely ignore the no-bid contracts and public unions agreed to wage freezes, benefit cuts - in fact they agreed to everything but the one item that had absolutely no effect on the budget either way, elimination of the right to collectively bargain. But that wasn’t enough for Governor Walker. For him it seems to be kill collective bargaining or bust. And for about a week he seemed to be holding up pretty well. It was the “common sense, deficit-busting” elected representative, versus the “power-grubbing, treasury destroying unions,” with neither side willing to give in. And then there was that phone call.

Last Wednesday morning a blogger from a website called the Buffalo Beast called Governor Walker’s office pretending to be billionaire industrialist, and Walker campaign contributor David Koch. During the call, Walker admits to - among other things - his demand to end collective bargaining has nothing to do with saving the state money, plotting to trick Democratic Senators into returning to Madison, and considering hiring “troublemakers” to stir up the protesters to make them appear disorganized and violent. Ordinarily, a public exposure of statement like those would shame a public figure into perhaps admitting he may have been something of a jackass in his prior dealings with others. Not Scott Walker. He doubled down. Dug in. Decided he would instead, threaten to have Democratic senators expelled from the Senate and issue warrants for their arrest. Yeah. That oughta bring ‘em back.

The longer this situation drags on, the less popular Walker’s policies - and ultimately his administration become. Polls indicate that were the election to be held now, merely three months after bringing him to power with a four point margin of victory, voters would elect Walker’s rival by a six point margin. But that fact is neither here nor there. Sometimes governing involves doing things that are not popular, and Walker could simply claim he was elected to make tough choices and people are now upset that he’s doing what he said he was going to do, (even thought he isn’t.) The lesson here, is that Wisconsin Democrats (and soon-to-be Ohio, Indiana and Michigan Democrats as well) brought this scourge upon themselves. Scott Walker is who we thought he was. Wisconsin Republicans are who we thought they were. And you let them off the hook. Democrats were so busy bitching and moaning and being depressed over how they didn’t get their public option, and the President wasn’t tough enough with Wall Street, and he didn’t tax rich people enough, and that the wars weren’t over yet, and that Guantanamo Bay Detention Center is still open that they decided they would rather stay home last November and not vote. Well, now we get to deal with the consequences of that decision. All these protests and procedural stalling tactics and fleeing of the state could have been avoided had you learned anything from the past 30 years and understood that Republicans are who we thought they were. But you didn’t. Instead, you let them off the hook. Believe me. They won’t make the same mistake.

In other news, the tide of revolution continues to sweep across the Middle East and north Africa, with Libya the latest to attempt to oust it’s dictator. Following the lead of neighbors in Tunisia and Egypt, protesters first took to the streets on February 17, demanding the resignation of Muammar Gaddafi, who came to power in a military coup 42 years ago. Since then fighting has broken out across the country, resulting in rebel forces now controlling territory in the east and west of the country, leaving a defiant Gaddafi hold up in the capital city of Tripoli, surrounded by several thousand loyal troops. Many of his attempts to utilize the military to quash the protests have been foiled by pilots who took their aircraft and defected to Italy, rather than rain bombs down upon their own citizens. However, he still retains enough support to push hope for a bloodless revolution toward the brink of civil war.

Not all revolutions are as effective, or proceed as (relatively) smoothly as those we witnessed in Egypt and Tunisia only weeks ago. Sometimes things take a turn for the worse. Sometimes bullets are fired and lives are lost. There are many who believe it need not be that way, that the West should step in and militarily decide the outcome in favor of those protesting against the oppressive regime. But advocates of such intervention need to be very careful of what they wish for. History has repeated shown us that there are always unintended consequences that somehow, someway, more often than not, come back to haunt us. Especially in the Middle East. Arming the Mujahideen against the Soviets, arming Saddam Hussein against Iran, demanding Palestinian elections. Whatever the solution to the current Libyan crisis, it must come from Libyans themselves. Not from “outsiders” professing to have Libyan’s best interest in mind. Libyans must decide what type of government they wish to live under, and they must take the necessary steps to achieve it. Anything else will be viewed as order imposed by the West, usurping the right of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. The very last thing the United States needs now is a third active Middle Eastern military conflict.

The Revolution Will Be Televisied

2011-02-17T00:53:00.001-05:00

Wow. I go away for a few weeks and I miss, what, two revolutions? I guess that’ll teach me.

Well, in case you haven’t heard, change has come to Egypt. Following more than two weeks street protests, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resigned his office and turned over control to the country’s military leaders. This, only a few weeks after the tiny North African state of Tunisia ousted it’s own president in similar fashion. And those two acts have sparked popular uprisingings all over the Middle East, including Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and Iran.

Of course, no overthrow of a foreign government – particularly in the Middle East - would be complete without a heaping helping of “Oh-my-god-what-does-this-mean-for-America?” navel-gazing by every talking head with access to a media outlet. But before we prattle on about what change means to us, thousands of miles away, what does a change in leadership mean for Egyptians? For the first time in thirty years, Egyptians will have the opportunity to choose a leader not named Mubarak. Many – if not most – of the protesters in Tahrir Square, in Alexandria and across the country, and the reporters covering the story for the Arab news networks have never known any other leader. Provided the Army commanders are true to their word, six to eight months from now, millions of Egyptians will vote in free and fair elections for the first time, selecting their own leader, instead of having one forced upon them. It is a fantastic moment for Egypt and Tunisia, a triumph of peaceful protest and an awesome responsibility for the citizens of those countries. They will now determine their own future. It will be a difficult process, contentious process and an exhausting process. And they will have to ensure that the results of their efforts will be worthy of the sacrifices made over the past several weeks.

Now, what does a new government in Egypt mean for us? Well, if you’re Glen Beck, it signals the rise of an Islamic Caliphate and the end of Western civilization. But if you are a sane, rational human being, the answer is, we don’t know yet. It depends entirely on the make-up of the new government. Egypt could formulate a government similar to any Western democracy, or they could end up with a situation similar to that of Iran, an “elected” government controlled by a fundamentalist clergy. From our point of view, the former is certainly preferable to the latter, but even among Western democracies, some are certainly friendlier and more supportive than others. Regardless of the outcome of the elections, several things are almost certain. Egypt’s new government is likely to be somewhat less friendly to Israel, end the blockade of the West Bank, and be far more concerned with Egyptian domestic policy than American foreign policy.

Taking the afore-mentioned concerns into account, it was interesting – to say the least – to watch the response of American conservatives to the events of the past few weeks in the Middle East. They seemed to fall into two camps. One group praised the protesters for taking their political fate into their own hand by rising up and demanding the end to a three decade long autocratic regime, and demanding to know why President Obama had not taken a stronger stand in supporting them. The other group, terrified of potentially trading the devil they know and tacitly support (Mubarak), for the devil they don’t (any potential extremist Islamic regime), constantly attempted to cast suspicion on the motives of protesters and protest organizers, and demanded to know why President Obama had not taken stronger measures to support the existing dictator. Had the consequences not been so high it would have been amusing to watch and listen to people who constantly lament the “socialist dictatorship” they claim to live under in this country and who define “real” Americans as those using the word freedom at least twice in every sentence, trying to convince anyone who would listen that we should prefer Egyptians continue to suffer under an autocratic regime, because his successor could be worse.

What struck me about that was how paranoid and paralytic that latter thought process can be. How could a country progress like that, absolutely terrified of everything and everyone around it? How can a country accomplish anything constructive if it believes that all of it’s neighbors are out to get it, and that this, “the greatest republic in the history of the world” is so fragile that the slightest deviation from a myopic world view threatens to bring us to our knees. Either we support the right of people to freedom, self-determination and self-government, or we don’t. There is no room there for support of freedom, only if we the United States are completely comfortable with the determination people have made for themselves.

I’m sorry, I almost just died laughing. Watched Republican Senator Jeff Sessions attempting to explain how the budget cuts outlined by President Obama in the amount of one trillion dollars over the next ten years are insignificant, while budget cuts proposed by Republicans in the amount of one trillion dollars over the next ten years are a serious attempt at deficit reduction. Which brings me to the other topic du jour. This past Monday President Obama released his budget blueprint for fiscal year 2012 to Congress. The proposal calls for a budget of approximately $3.7 trillion, with projected deficit reduction of a little more than one trillion dollars over the next ten years. What it does not include, is any mention of the debt reduction recommendations made by the President’s own debt commission last year. In response to the President’s proposal, Republican Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan commented that, “presidents are elected to lead, and this president just punted.” This may be the first – and only time I will agree with Paul Ryan on anything.

Yes, I understand the politics behind the President’s refusal to tackle the structural budgetary debt in any serious manner. I understand completely that while most Americans claim they want Congress to reduce the deficit, most Americans are also unwilling to stomach cuts to any of the programs significantly contributing to that deficit. Given that fact I also understand that the President gains no political advantage – especially in an election cycle – by proposing unpopular cuts to popular programs. I understand that if he had proposed reductions in Medicare spending or Social Security payments (programs which, in their perfect world, Republicans would like to eliminate), Republicans would have attacked him for trying to pull the plug on grandma and throw grandpa out on the street. I know that if he had dared to advocate reductions in Defense funding above and beyond the $80 billion already proposed by Defense Secretary Gates, Republicans would have insisted he was soft on defense and anxious to see the military projection of American power weakened around the world. And I know that despite all their bloviating about cutting a hundred billion from the budget in their first year in control of the House, Republicans have managed to come up with only $35 billion in cuts, and have not attempted to tackle the difficult issues either. I know all that stuff. I understand it. It is just so utterly frustrating that a President who previously has done such a good job at talking to us like we are in fact adults, decided not to do so this time around.

I am so tired of Democrats ceding tax and budget arguments and allowing Republicans to control the debate. President Obama had an opportunity to wrest control of the fiscal debate from Republicans. He could have laid out a case for why it will be necessary to raise the Social Security retirement age and lift the cap on income subject to the tax in order to keep the program self-sufficient. He could have explained the need to reduce the cost of healthcare and the growth of Medicare in the long term to ensure it is available for the growing number of retirees. He could have championed the merits of a simplified tax code, with lower rates across the board and an elimination of deductions that disproportionately benefit certain segments of society. He could have made the case that this country would not be any less safe accounting for 36% of the entire planet’s defense spending, instead of the 43% we spend currently, when the closes competitor spends less than 7%. But he didn’t. He left it up to Republicans to frame the arguments instead, deciding to play political defense instead of offense. He won the coin flip in overtime and chose to kick instead of receive. Decisions like that often turn out poorly. I really hope this is the exception.

Say It Like You Mean It

2011-01-26T03:14:00.004-05:00

After a lovely bowl of mini ziti a-la marinara and diced tomatoes I thoroughly annoyed my wife by dutifully watching the President’s State of the Union address, and the following Republican responses. So, since I invested all that time in front of the television, I will spend another block of time trying to make sense of it all.

I have never, truly enjoyed one of these things. I find them all inherently dishonest in a certain respect. American is always a great nation, we’re all working hard but need to work harder to get better, and the State of the Union is always strong, with room for improvement. There seems to be a little too much self-congratulation and not enough frank honesty about where we are and what we need to do. But, they are what they are, and once you accept that there is always going to be more cheer-leading than substance you can set that critique aside and examine the overall vision laid out by the speaker.

Overall I thought it was a good speech. The President clearly and concisely laid out his vision for the country during the upcoming election cycle. He advocated an emphasis on education, energy and infrastructure, with a pledge to tackle the tough issues of trimming popular government programs, reducing regulations and reforming the tax code. He spoke of reforms to create a leaner, more responsible government, a government worthy of being trusted to efficiently execute the responsibilities it is charged with. And, of course, made mention of significant administration achievements like trade agreements and nuclear arms reductions. He did not spend much time discussing the past, choosing instead to look ahead to the challenges of the near future, promising renewed educational competitiveness and 80% renewable energy reliance by 2035. But he also did something I haven’t heard a national Democratic political figure do in as long as I can remember. He noted, albeit subtly, that those low-skilled, good-paying industrial manufacturing jobs that have been lost over the past 30 years, are simply never coming back - despite the perpetual lamentations of many liberals and Democratic politicians to the contrary. We are no longer going to pay ten human beings to do the work of one robot, and the sooner we can put that notion behind us and focus on other ways to create jobs, the better off we’ll be.

I would have preferred a little more emphasis on debt reduction than the President provided. I know clean energy is one of his core values, but I think he might have been better served - both practically and politically - by reducing his focus on that and spending more time on deficits and spending. During the current political cycle, comprehensive energy reform is an impossible goal to accomplish. But some mix of tax reform and deficit reduction is certainly achievable. I don’t subscribe to the paranoia that this country is one sub-prime loan away from a collapse of Grecian or Irish proportions. Rhetoric of that sort is disingenuous and irresponsible, and does nothing but obstruct serious debate. There are myriad reasons why America is in vastly superior financial shape than most of its global competitors, all of which we have previously and will continue to explore in upcoming weeks. But persistently high debt to GDP ratios will cause trouble for the country down the road, and therefore must be deal with seriously before they become impossible to control without catastrophic consequences. Late last year the President’s Fiscal Commission released the findings of its year-long study into ways to bring the structural budget deficit under control. Their recommendations included reducing military and Medicare/Medicaid budgets significantly (around 20%) over the next ten years, raising the retirement age to 67, means-testing Social Security, eliminating federal subsidies of all types, allowing the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire and reducing the marginal tax rates while broadening the tax base by eliminating tax deductions across the board. I think many of those were solid suggestions, provided to President Obama under the cover of a bi-partisan commission, and he would have done well to embrace as many of those recommendations as possible. Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan would not have been able to deliver such an eloquent reasonable-sounding argument for thrifty, limited government if the President had stolen his thunder beforehand.

Speaking of Paul Ryan, he certainly did himself and his party a favor by not Jindal-ing or Bachman-ing the official Republican response. By constraining his remarks to a single topic, speaking to the audience like we are adults and avoiding trivial things like “volcano monitoring,” Ryan easily came off as at least the second-most reasonable guy in the room. Agree with him or not, Ryan does have extensive and fairly serious ideas for decreasing the size and cost of government. However, he has, to this point, been able to get a grand total of zero of his Republican colleagues to sign on to any of them. They all seem far more interested in promoting a useless repeal of a needed reform to an industry they have never been interested in reforming until now and drafting legislation in opposition to abortion and marriage equality. So, while the President has a difficult task in regaining the trust of the Independent voters who elected him, Ryan’s task of marshaling Republican support for difficult, meaningful fiscal reform may be almost as difficult.

I’m not even going to dignify Michelle Bachman’s attempt at a Ross Perot / Glen Beck imitation with a response.

Last Thursday the New York Times published a poll in which respondents answered questions on how they would prefer to cut the deficit. Poll results were broken down into four categories; All, Republicans, Independents and Democrats. For almost every single question the deviation of Republicans and Democrats from the overall (“All” category) was the same, while the responses for Independents much more closely reflected the general response. On this issue - perhaps more than any other, the President needs to understand his audience. From now until November of 2012, the block of voters that matters most to him are the Independents. According to the latest Gallup survey, 28% of voters identify themselves as Republican, 28% as Democrat and 42% as Independent. Those 42% of Independent voters are the ones President Obama needs to reach in order to continue on to a second term. An examination of these poll results could help give him insight into how far Independents are willing to go on deficit reduction, and how they would prefer to see it accomplished. Some of the results might surprise him.

Two weekends ago, Jared Loughner strolled into a Tucson, Arizona Safeway, interrupted a town hall-style meeting being held there by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and opened fire. By the time he ran out of bullets and was tackled by onlookers as he attempted to reload, he had injured 13 people and killed six, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. Representative Giffords was shot through the head and remains in serious condition at an Arizona hospital.

In the aftermath of the shooting, everyone immediately and continually speculated on the motives of the shooter. Was he crazy? Was he a terrorist? Was he influenced by the overheated political rhetoric so frustratingly common in our day to day discourse? We still don’t know. Due to some YouTube postings and comments from former professors and classmates, most seem to have settled on the as yet unfounded conclusion that Loughner is mentally ill. I’m not sure why this is the case. He has no history of mental illness and has not been recently diagnosed as such. Strange internet postings and outbursts in class might make you weird, but they don’t necessarily qualify you as mentally ill.

Most of those not buying the mental illness angle, engaged in sometimes heated debate regarding the degree of responsibility the purveyors of poisonous political rhetoric should feel for Loughner's actions. Predictably, the political entertainers claimed their venom was merely entertainment, and they could not and should not be blamed for the actions of a crazy man, then accused their accusers of all the same things their accusers were accusing them of. Some even attempted a little revisionist history, claiming rifle scope targets placed over certain congressional districts on web pages during the mid-term election campaign were actually “surveyor’s sights”, having nothing to do with targeting certain members for defeat. All in an attempt to make the point that violent speech and imagery has absolutely no negative impact on society at large. I guess advertisers have been wasting their billions each year trying to influence the public with words and pictures. I wonder if any of them limit their kids’ access to rap music, Dead Space and R-rated movies?

I am also always fascinated by the inevitable gun control discussion that always follows incidents like this. Somebody always says that if there were tougher laws controlling access to firearms, the shooter would not have been able to purchase the legal gun and extended magazine he used in the shooting. That person is countered by someone who claims that if only citizens of insert-state-here were allowed to carry concealed weapons these incidents would never happen. Someone else brings up the fact that in countries like England, Japan and Canada were access to handguns is severely restricted, far fewer gun-related deaths take place than here in the United States. Which then causes another person to note that in countries were handguns are prolific and in some cases required to be carried, like Israel, gun-related crime and fatalities are also substantially less common than they are here. Things continue ad-infinitum in such a manner and nothing is ever resolved. I don’t know which argument is correct, and frankly I don’t care. I have never understood the intrinsically American fascination /fetish for shooting and killing things and I suspect I never will. But in this case, the facts are as follows. When it comes to firearms, Arizona is literally the wild wild West. You can own pretty much whatever you want, however many you want, and take them with you where ever you want to. If you don’t have a leg holster, shoulder holster, gun rack for the Suburban and one for the dog, you aren’t living up to your obligations as an Arizonan. Representative Giffords owned and was licensed to carry a Glock semi-automatic pistol on her person. I would have a difficult time believing that there aren’t more guns residing in Arizona than there are people. Yet, on the day of the shooting, after firing 33 uncontested rounds into a crowd of people, Jared Loughner was subdued while he tried to reload his weapon by first two, then four bystanders, with the help of a folding chair and some blind luck. Not by gun-wielding citizen sheriffs. If this incident could take place in the state with perhaps the least restrictive gun laws in the country, how could restricting access to firearms have possibly made this situation any worse?

Finally, due to an odd confluence of circumstances, next month’s Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers will likely be the first in history played without cheerleaders on either sideline. How can this be, you ask? How can a championship game, played at the home of the world famous Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders not feature any cheerleaders? It seems the Packers and Steelers are two of only six NFL teams (the Browns, Bears, Giants and Lions being the others) that do not have cheerleading squads. I guess it makes sense. Not much point to cheering snow pants and triple-layered down jackets now is there.

Digging Out

2011-01-12T22:45:00.000-05:00

Wow. All of a sudden there is quite a bit to talk about. As today is my birthday, I've taken this week off, so I'll have to wait a few more days to delve into this. Perhaps by that time we'll have a little more information on the Arizona shooting and its ramafications. Until then, stay safe and keep shoveling.

New Sheriffs In Town

2011-01-07T00:30:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to hoping 2011 is a slimmer, trimmer, sexier version of 2010.

This past Wednesday was the first day of “work” for the 112th Congress. A shiny new GOP majority was sworn in to the House of Representatives, introduced a new set of rules by which the House would operate and promptly announced they would break those very same rules next week when they vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That’s right. Not 24 hours into the session, the new majority revealed its fraudulence.

Dissatisfied with the “pay-go” rules instituted by the previous Democratic majority, Republicans announced plans for “cut-go,” a rule by which all spending will need to be offset by spending cuts somewhere else. In and of itself, not a bad idea. But included in the cut-go provision, is an exemption which will allow House Republicans to vote for any and all tax-cuts, trade agreements, and of course, repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Why? Because according to the Congressional Budget Office, enacting the provisions of the ACA will result in a $140 billion reduction in the deficit. A preliminary report by the same Congressional Budget Office notes that repeal of the Affordable Care Act would add between $145 - $230 billion dollars to the budget deficit. When is a vote to increase the deficit not a vote to increase the deficit? Apparently whenever House Republicans say it isn’t.

Several weeks ago I made the statement that Barack Obama and Paul Ryan were perhaps the only two men in Washington interested in actually reducing the structural deficit of the United States. I was wrong about that. Paul Ryan is not serious about reducing the deficit. During the election campaign, Republicans, led in part by Representative Ryan, promised to cut $100 billion in spending in the first year. Less than 24 hours into his new term, Ryan admits that $100 billion in cuts will be impossible to achieve. When asked what he will cut from the budget to bring the deficit under control, Ryan responded that everything is on the table - except for defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and Homeland Security. But I guess if Ryan has to sacrifice Free Taco Tuesday in the Capitol cafeteria to achieve those deficit-busting cuts, that’s one sacrifice he’s willing to make.

In March of this year, the amount of money the federal government needs to borrow to pay its debts will exceed its legal authority to do so. Congress will have to vote to authorize a raise of that limit, or “debt ceiling.” Many House Republicans - as well as several in the Senate - have announced that they are unwilling to cast this vote, as it violates several tenets of their newly (re)discovered austerity religion. In theory, the principle of restricting the government’s ability to borrow money might seem like a good idea. However, in practice - like so many of the “ideas” put forth by the leadership of the 112th Congress - there is a problem. To raise money for the federal treasury, the government sells Treasury Bills. Treasury Bills are essentially a promise to repay the value of the bond plus interest over a fixed period of time. The value of the bills is based not on gold, or silver or grandma’s fresh-baked apple pie, but on something referred to as the “full faith and credit of the United States.” Treasury Bills have value because the people who purchase them believe the government has the ability and the will to pay them back. Unless the 112th Congress can reduce the budget deficit from $1.3 trillion to zero between now and the close of business on February 28th, while failing to raise the debt limit, the United States will default on it’s debts. New Treasury Bills will be worthless. Money - for everyone - will become a whole lot more expensive. Foreign investors and governments will demand much higher rates of return (than the current 3%) to purchase U.S. debt. Our credit rating and our currency will take a dive and our financial markets will give up much of the significant gains they have made over the past two years. The recovery will be over, and it will be left to the 112th Congress to explain to the American public why they were willing to sacrifice American jobs and American capital in a foolish attempt to embarrass the President. It’s an explanation I would be interested to hear, but hope I never have to.

This past Tuesday the Navy permanently relieved the Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise of duty. No, not Christopher Pike or James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard or Data. Wrong Enterprise. Citing “extremely poor judgement,” commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Admiral John C. Harvey Jr. relieved Captain Owen Honors of his command and re-assigned him to an administrative position, effectively ending his career. The move is a result of a series of explicit videos produced by then Executive Officer Owen Honors depicting gay slurs, mimicked masturbation, rectal exams and “chicks in the shower.” Many people - both in and out of the military - immediately jumped to the defense of Captain Honors, insisting that he is a fine soldier, a role model and a really nice guy. They claimed the videos were “light-hearted attempt to entertain the crew” and were “taken out of context” to be used against him. However, there certainly were some on board the ship who were offended, as complaints were registered at the time videos were aired. The Navy then downplayed the significance of both the videos and the complaints, but when they were leaked to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper over the weekend the Navy took a second look and decided they were significant after all.

I’m going to have to side with the Navy in this case. Captain Honors displayed extremely poor judgement in producing and distributing these videos. He wasn’t a cook, or a weapons mechanic, or a signaler or an engineer. He was second in command of the flagship of the United States Navy. His position on the ship required he rise above crude, juvenile humor. Your duty as Executive Officer is not to provide levity for the crew. If you want to make ‘em laugh, hire a comedian. Your duty is maintain order uphold the dignity of your profession. Unless your name is Adam Sandler or Dane Cook, fart jokes are not your profession.

Finally, a little celebrity gossip to brighten your new year. Just one day after leaving rehab and moving into a beach-front mansion next door to her ex-girlfriend, Lindsay Lohan received news that she faces 180 days in jail for violating her probation. According to Riverside police, Lohan may have breached the terms of her probation when she allegedly assaulted a former Betty Ford Clinic staff member during her stint in rehab. Yep. Nothing says rehabilitated like beating up nurses and stalking your ex. Also, actress Mila Kunis has decided to split up with her boyfriend of eight years, Macaulay Culkin, leaving him... home alone. (I know, I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.) Which leaves me with just one question. Mila Kunis was dating Macaulay Culkin? Seriously? For eight years? Are the pickin’s really that slim out there is Hollywood?

Turn the Page

2010-12-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

It's New Year's Eve. Do you know where your champagne is?

With everything going on around the holidays I haven't had much time to reflect on the political and social happenings of the past couple weeks. A few fairly significant items made the news; the repeal of DADT, passage of the new START, Justin Bieber nominated for Artist of the Year (suddenly I remember why I haven't watched an awards show since Steely Dan robbed Radiohead at gunpoint of Album of the Year). Some of those things were probably more important than others, so I'll give them some additional attention in the first post of the new year. So, hope your Christmas was Merry and you New Year is Happy. See you next year!

Seats At The Kiddie Table

2010-12-15T15:48:00.006-05:00

Only 9 more shopping days until Christmas. Remember, if you don’t shop, terrorism wins.

Last Tuesday, President Obama reached a deal with senate Republicans regarding the extension of the Bush tax cuts and unemployment insurance benefits, both set to expire at the end of the year. It certainly wasn’t pretty for Democrats. On the face of it, Republicans got everything they really wanted - including the privilege of re-asserting the very same tax issue just in time for the next election - while Democrats got some additional unemployment insurance and a bowl of grits. But, as additional details began to emerge, several astute observers pointed out that against an opposition united against anything and everything even remotely resembling economic stimulus, the President managed to extract almost $400 billion in additional stimulus, to take effect throughout 2011. On Wednesday, Democrats began to complain that even though unemployment insurance would be extended for 13 months, instead of the three they though they might be able to get, and the tax cuts for the middle class would also be extended - as they all said they wanted - the fact that rich people would also benefit from the deal was difficult for them to stomach. By Thursday, Democrats decided that the best deal they are going to get, isn’t good enough for them, and approved a non-binding resolution stating they would not bring the tax compromise to the floor for a vote. Sigh. Democrats, study the pretty picture below, then meet me at paragraph three.

So. Here we are again. Hope everybody was able to clean the unicorn rainbow crap off their lawn before the snow hit. I’m told that if you don’t its really hard on the grass in the spring. Anyway, about that tax cut deal. Look, I know its difficult to be a Democrat. Its somewhat akin to getting involve in a land war in Asia. Sure, the cause may be nobel and the need may be great, but after a few winters it inevitably turns into a quagmire and you spend the next decade spinning your wheels trying to get out. Believe me I understand that. But throwing a tantrum? Threatening to take your ball and go home? That’s not the way to handle this. I know, I know, Republicans have done that very same thing for the past two years and it worked perfectly for them, I know. But they are children, and children can get away with that. Especially when they have parents as lenient as you are. And the tantrum simply doesn’t have the same effect when it’s thrown by the adults. Unlike children, adults have responsibilities. The family has to eat, the bills have to be paid, and someone has to hide the matches to keep the kids from setting the house on fire. The fact that said someone has to be you, makes all those threats sound bitter and vindictive. Perhaps it would help if we talked things through a little. Maybe that would help everyone feel better.

All day Thursday, Democrats on the Hill complained that they hadn’t been part of the negotiations leading to the compromise. While it certainly is a legitimate statement, there is a reason they weren’t invited to negotiations. They weren’t invited because they are terrible at negotiations. A little less than two years ago, the President came to Democratic House and Senate leaders and said hey, here’s what I’m looking for in a healthcare reform bill. You guys go and negotiate something and get back to me. Eighteen months later, those crack negotiators still didn’t have a piece of legislation they could agree on amongst themselves, never mind anyone from the other side of the aisle. And in that case, over the first 12 months of debate, they didn’t even need anyone from the other side of the aisle! It took Democrats 18 months to “negotiate” a healthcare package they could agree on. President Obama only had 18 days remaining in the legislative session to come up with a compromise that everyone could agree to hate, but pass anyway. Including House and Senate Democrats in that process would only have served to make the improbable, impossible.

Aside from the fact they weren’t involved in negotiations, Democrats primary complaints about the compromise are as follows. People who make the most money will see the greatest benefit (in terms of dollars saved) from extending the Bush-era tax cuts. Cutting taxes for wealthy people - in and of itself - does not necessarily create jobs, as evidence by the close-to-zero net job growth witnessed during the afore-mentioned presidency. A majority of the public actually favors the expiration of the said tax-cuts for the top two percent of income earners. And, extending those cuts will have to be paid for with more borrowed money, adding an additional $700 billion to the deficit. Okay, points taken. All of those statements are absolutely true. For the first two years of his presidency, Barack Obama made no secret about the fact that he wanted to see the tax cuts for the middle class continue and those for the top two percent expire. But what this President seems to have the ability to do - which no other Democrat in Congress seems to share - is to deal with the world as it is, instead of how it looks through the rose-colored utopian Ray-Bans everyone else seems to be using.

The cold, hard reality is this. Three weeks from now, Republicans will take over control of the House of Representatives and gain five additional seats in the Senate. Any tax package designed by a Republican-controlled House to be passed by a Senate split 53-47 is going to be far less favorable to Democratic ideals than the package the President agreed to last Tuesday. That package would likely include bigger tax-cuts, extended for a longer period of time, with little assistance - if any - to the unemployed. In addition to that, waiting for the next Congress to take up the issue would mean that everybody would see their taxes increase on the first of the year, with the poorest workers hit with a 50% jump. There are some Democrats in Congress who feel the Republicans are bluffing, that it is too big a political risk for them to allow unemployment insurance to expire and force a government shutdown. Those Democrats are idiots. They have obviously learned nothing about the Republican Party over the past two years about. Republicans don't care about the deficit. (If they did they would add an additional $4 trillion to the debt by insisting on extending the tax cuts.) Republicans are also perfectly willing to cause working people (and people who would rather be working) real pain in order to make a political paint. Millions of people lose unemployment benefits in an economy where 4-5 people apply for every open position? They should try harder. Tens of millions of government workers don’t get paid due to a government shutdown? They should have found jobs in the private sector. It will be left to Democrats to explain why everyone’s taxes went up on the first of the year when Democrats claimed they wanted to keep the current rates for lower and middle income earners. And this is a political party that couldn’t sell beer to a college frat party, they’ll just talk themselves right out of office!

Democrats could have resolved this issue a long time ago. Step in the way way back machine with me if you will, to several months before the midterms elections. House Minority Leader John Boehner was caught on camera admitting that if his choice was between extending tax-cuts only for low and middle income earners or not extending any tax-cuts at all, he would vote for the former. That very same afternoon, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should have headed to the floor with a bill extending tax-cuts for low and middle income earners only and called for a vote. Needless to say, they didn’t do that. In fact, Harry Reid refused to even consider bringing the tax issues to the Senate floor because he and other Democrats didn’t want to explain to voters on the campaign trail why he feels it is necessary for taxes to increase. Democrats didn’t want to do their jobs, but they don’t want the President to do his either. Why does it seem like the Democratic Party is always so much more comfortable in the minority, without the responsibility of governing, where all they have to do is complain?

Fast forward to one week later. The Senate has passed the tax-cut extension package, sending it off to the House, where who knows what will happen. With that piece of legislation taken care of, the Senate was supposed to be able to move on to the remaining issues of the lame-duck session, like the repeal of DADT and the passage of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Of course, whether or not any of that is likely to happen remains hostage to the whims of infantile Senate Republicans. During the debate over healthcare reform, Republicans delighted in citing polls showing 53%-47% opposition to the bill as evidence the President was acting against the “will of the American people.” Now, in the face of a year-long Pentagon study, endorsements from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Republican Defense Secretary and the support of 77% of the “American people,” John McCain appears ready to insist on filibustering the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. As of today, Jim DeMint (R), South Carolina has threatened procedural motions to delay and eventually kill the appropriations bill and the arms treaty. Apparently, the de-facto leader of the Republican Party himself has declared the tax-cut extension agreement struck with the President to be a sellout of “true conservative values,” and absolutely everything on this President’s agenda to be evil incarnate, and his minions have jumped to do his bidding. Welcome to gridlock ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the next 24 months.

Some more news on the economic front, the U.S. trade deficit has declined to it’s lowest level in two years, thanks in no small part to the lower value of the dollar and a growing inflation issue in China. Despite this, some people on the Hill continue to insist the government take steps to strengthen the U.S. dollar. In difficult economic times, maintaining a “strong dollar policy,” for no other reason than the phrase contains the word “strong,” only serves to weaken essential American exports at a time when we cannot internally muster sufficient domestic consumer spending to accomplish a full recovery. Cheap exports help us make up that difference. Drop the macho act and use the weaker dollar to support economic growth.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled a portion of the healthcare reform package - the individual mandate - to be unconstitutional. Lower court decisions on this matter now stand at 2 - 1 in favor of the law, and there is no one who doesn’t not expect this matter to ultimately end up in the Supreme Court. The judge ruled that the Commerce Clause does not grant Congress the power to mandate that individuals purchase insurance. And the judge is probably correct. But if that is the way the government’s lawyers chose to phrase their case, they deserved to lose that case. There are ways to justify a mandate without resorting to the Commerce Clause. The mandate should be structured as a tax. Beginning in 2014, Americans would be required to pay an “Affordable Care Tax,” in the amount of whatever the penalty for not purchasing health insurance is under the current law. However, if people then choose to purchase insurance - either on the individual market, the new exchanges or through his or her employer, they would receive a tax credit for the full amount of the “Affordable Care Tax” paid. No mess, no fuss, no Commerce Clause, no problem.

Several notable passings have occurred over the past seven days. First, Elizabeth Edwards, attorney and wife of former U.S. Senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, passed away after a protracted battle with cancer. She was 61 years of age. Her death was followed by that of the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former assistant Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke. He was 69. Both were dedicated public servants, and both will be missed.

Finally, a team of scientists at Georgetown University successfully transformed immature stem cells into pancreatic tissue to combat Type 1 diabetes. Again, it’s very early, but it really is exciting that we may soon be able to eradicate one of the most pervasive diseases in our society. Yay science!

Surely You Can't Be Serious

2010-12-01T02:55:00.001-05:00

Is it December already? Holy cow when did that happen? Oh well, I hope all the turkey has been digested. Because if it hasn’t, you should probably throw it away at this point.

So, apparently the Transportation Safety Administration has stepped up security at airports across the country. Travelers will have two options; pass through the high-tech, new-fangled X-ray/electromagnetic body imaging scanners, or opt for the old-school, low-tech full-body pat-down by a TSA agent. Some people are upset about this.

In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t fly all that often. And by “don’t fly all that often” I mean about once every three or four years. That said, I am not particularly offended by said security measures. I guess if I can get from South Bend to Seattle in four hours on a none-exploding aircraft and have someone fondle me in the process I’m not really going to complain. I suppose it might depend on whom it is doing the fondling. But I can understand why some people aren’t thrilled about either option. Why should some stranger making $13 an hour get to see me naked at the airport just so I can start my vacation a few hours earlier? In the wake of four hijackings and four thousand deaths in September of 2001, Americans insisted they were ready to put up with more than a little inconvenience in order to ensure public safety. Nine years later we seem to be having second thoughts. What I do find amusing is where we’ve decided to draw the line separating what we are willing to accept in the name of safety. Renditioning people to foreign countries to be “interrogated”, beating them, freezing them, photographing them naked stacked in pyramids, nipping them with dogs and drowning them until they broke were/are all perfectly acceptable security methods. But someone “touching our junk” should be grounds to have them arrested. Is anybody under the illusion that many of the same people demanding a halt to unreasonable bodily searches would be the first people in front of the camera demanding to know why the government failed to provide full body scanners at airports to prevent a bombing, were one to occur?

As part of his effort to focus on debt reduction following the drubbing in last month’s election, President Obama announced this week that he will request a two year wage freeze for all federal employees. The proposal, one among several expected in the coming weeks, would save the Treasury about $60 billion over ten years. Obviously a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, but why not start with the low-hanging fruit. Hopefully future proposals will address more significant, systemic budgetary issues, like the ballooning cost of Medicare, the bloated defense budget and the deficit-exacerbating tax cuts scheduled to expire in three weeks. For a little perspective on how the numbers stack up, see below. (chart from CNNMoney.com)

I remain completely unconvinced that most of those elected to Washington in November on a platform of fiscal responsibility, have any interest in fiscal responsibility - largely due to the fact that the people who sent them there aren’t really interested in fiscal responsibility either. In a Wall Street Journal poll released on November 18, respondents were asked if they preferred Congress use spending cuts or tax increases to balance the budget. A whopping 70% expressed opposition to cuts in Medicare, Social Security and defense (only 27% in favor), while 59% opposed any increase in taxes. Apparently people think we should reduce our debt by increasing our expenditures as we decrease our revenue. No wonder this country is getting it’s butt whooped at math. Barack Obama and Paul Ryan might just be the only two people in DC interested in reducing the deficit. Good luck to you both. Let me know how it turns out.

The Pentagon released the results of its year-long “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” impact study on Tuesday. Absolutely unsurprisingly, 92% of military members surveyed said they did not object to lifting the ban. Additionally, 69% acknowledge they have served or are currently serving with gay or lesbian personnel. Even though 30% of respondents indicated they felt that repeal would affect their unit’s ability to train well together, only 10% felt it would affect their own ability to train well with their unit. That’s the old “of course most people are bad drivers, I’m just not one of them” syndrome. Let’s get this out of the way. This policy is stupid. It is absolutely ridiculous that we tell some young men and women that they can give their lives in service to their country - as long as no one knows they’re gay. In the words of one special ops soldier interviewed for the report,

“We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big he’s mean and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cares that’s he’s gay.”

A lot of people in this country were convinced that allowing blacks to serve in the military would ruin “unit cohesion.” They were exposed as fools and racists. A lot of people were convinced that women had no place in the military, and would ruin “unit cohesion.” They were exposed as idiots and sexists. Far fewer people remain convinced that allowing homosexuals to serve will ruin unit cohesion. Repeal this law and expose those people for the frauds they are as well.

The big news of the weekend was the release of some hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks. Persons who have nothing better to do with their time than to comb through millions of lines of text seem to think there is nothing particularly sensitive revealed in the documents. The information dump mostly seems to be an exercise in an international game of “tell me what you really think of that guy,” which, while amusing for it’s gossip value, has little to no bearing on the price of tea in China. However, there is a broader point to be made. We have entered an age of involuntary transparency. Regardless of whether or not we think secrets should be kept, they won’t be kept. Someone, somewhere, somehow will discover them and post them online for all the world to see, and there is little anyone can do to stop it. This wasn’t the first classified information dump, and it certainly won’t be the last. According to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, several American banks and pharmaceutical companies are next on his hit list. There is no longer any such thing as privacy, no such thing as “off the record.” It’s all out there in the ether, waiting to be consumed by persons who were never intended to consume it. We will have to adapt accordingly.

Finally, actor Leslie Neilsen passed away last week. Although he starred in many serious films during his career, he was perhaps best known and loved as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! and Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad! and the Naked Gun series. Call him an actor, call him a comedian, call him an all around great guy, just don’t call him Shirley.

The San Francisco Treat

2010-11-17T23:50:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-11T13:17:00.002-05:00

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

2010-11-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

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.

Ring My Bell

2010-10-20T01:58:00.001-04:00

I’m sure there’s plenty of whacky political news to harp on about this week. Like Alaska Republican senatorial hopeful Joe Miller having a reporter handcuffed and arrested by private security at a political rally for attempting to ask him some questions. Or Kentucky Democratic senatorial hopeful Jack Conway insinuating that only Christians are fit to hold public office. Or maybe Delaware Republican senatorial hopeful Christine O’Donnell apparently being unaware that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from making any laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof - in precisely those words. Or even the circus of absurdity that is the New York gubernatorial race. (We might actually touch on that one later.) But I don’t want to talk about any of those. Instead, I want to talk about football. I don’t want to talk about scores or which teams are good and which would be better off playing in the CFL (I’m looking at you, Cowboys.) I want to talk about America’s pastime, in terms of life and death.

This past weekend was a bad weekend to be a brain. On Saturday afternoon, Rutgers defensive lineman Eric LeGrand was attempting a tackle on a kickoff return when his head impacted another player at an awkward angle. LeGrand tumbled to the ground, awkward and stiff, his neck broken. The latest word is that he is paralyzed from the neck down. On Sunday, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison twice, in the span of about ten minutes, slammed head first into the helmet of the ball carrier, resulting in both offensive players being removed from the game with concussions. Minutes later at the other end of Pennsylvania, Atlanta Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson speared Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson in the chin with his helmet, resulting in concussions for both men. Jackson’s was so severe he will not be able to return to the field this coming Sunday. Later on in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Patriots safety Brandon Merriweather left his feet and fired the top of his helmet into Ravens’ tight end Todd Heap’s face, knocking him out of the game. And in the night game between the Colts and Redskins, Washington tight end Chris Cooley left the game after another helmet to helmet collision. Penalties were only called on two of those hits.

I know people assume that football is a violent sport, and that things like this happen all the time.. And to a certain extent that is true. But even in a sport were violent collisions are routine, last Sunday was particularly gruesome. Even former Patriots safety turned NBC analyst Rodney Harrison, voted “dirtiest player in the game” by his peers during his playing days, went on air during halftime Sunday night and called for the league to start suspending players for the type of hits that had been dished out all day long. If Rodney Harrison thinks you’ve gone too far, it’s time to pay attention.

We are a violent nation. We live for conflict and we love to fight. We were born of war, we came of age in war, and we couldn’t survive barely more than a decade of the 20th century without engaging in one - hot or cold. We glorify battle and lionize soldiers, irrespective of their conduct, choosing to believe that whatever actions they take on the battlefield must be justified because they because they are risking their lives so the rest of us don’t have to. We prefer to have a select group of people fight our wars for us, and agree it would be a nice bonus if none of our guys were killed in the process.

Sports are war games for civilized people. Two opposing sides, risking their health and safety in combat until one defeats the other. And no American sport is more analogous to combat than football. Even the terminology is barbaric. The offensive and defensive lines are said to “battle in the trenches,” quarterbacks are “gunslingers,” throwing “bombs” from “shotgun” formations. Defensive players patrol the field like “heat-seeing missiles,” “blowing up” receivers who venture into their territory. And it is this mentality that has lead to the current situation.

I typically avoid qualifying my statements, but in this case I feel I have to. I love NFL football. I own six jerseys, primarily of defensive players. I have two fantasy football teams, one chock full of defensive players. I pay a ridiculous amount of money for NFL Sunday Ticket so I can spend ten solid hours every Sunday watching every single game played between September and February. I accept that it is a violent game, that it is inherently dangerous, and that sometimes really bad things happen to the people who play it. But this business of hitting people in the head to knock them out of games has got to stop. And if the players aren’t interested in stopping it, the league has to step in and do it for them.

Defensive players are going to complain - they’ve already started. Steelers assassin James Harrison - guilty of knocking out two Cleveland Browns last Sunday - admitted in an interview Monday morning that he is indeed “out to hurt people.” In reference to the hit that briefly knocked Joshua Cribbs unconscious, Harrison said, “I thought Cribbs was asleep... he’s knocked out, but he’s going to be okay.” He has already announced - through his agent - that he plans to appeal the $75,000 fine levied against him, claiming he is now “confused about how to play football.”

James Harrison is not the sharpest pencil in the box. This is the genius whom, when invited to the White House two years ago as part of the Super Bowl winning Pittsburgh Steelers (as every president invites the winners of every major sports championship to visit every year), refused to attend because, “if the President wanted to meet the Pittsburgh Steelers, he should have invited us before we won the Super Bowl.” Perhaps he doesn’t understand that people who are knocked unconscious are not just “asleep,” that an impact hard enough to bounce the brain off the side of the skull is infinitely more hazardous to one’s health than the act of taking a nap. Perhaps he doesn’t know that science now confirms that repeated blows to the head can lead to loss of motor function, dementia, Alzheimer's or worse, and do so much more quickly that previously thought. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Perhaps he’s not interested in being able to remember the name of his wife, or where his kids go to school, or how to put on his socks before tying his shoes.

But I do. I care. I think that even the remains of James Harrison’s questionable intellect deserve to be protected from idiots like him. People watch football games to see incredible athletes do incredible things; a sixty-yard tackle-breaking touchdown run, a forty-yard toe-tapping sideline reception in double coverage, an interception returned for a touchdown against Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl. But incredible players can’t do incredible things sitting on the bench for weeks on end after being hit in the head by some jackass trying to make an ESPN highlight reel. This nonsense has got to stop. The head is not a battering ram, and the helmet is not a weapon.

I’m not sure what the solution is. The league has decided that effective immediately, helmet-to-helmet hits will result in suspensions - for multiple games if necessary. That’s probably a good place to start. Obviously fines weren’t working. What’s five or ten thousand dollars to guy making ten million a years? But taking them off the field for a game or two, that means something. If you are a great player, and you have to sit because you cracked someone in the head with your helmet, you’ve not only forfeited your game check, you’ve let your teammates down by not being there for them when they need you. In the culture of football, that means more than a couple grand. And if that doesn’t work, maybe we go back to playing the game without helmets altogether. I guarantee that the first time a linebacker leaves his feet and slams his skull into the head of an opposing running back will also be the last time.

And now for something completely different. Where the primary season gave us gems like Basil Marceaux Dot Com, the general election has gifted us Jimmy McMillan, of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, candidate for governor of the great state of New York. Where Basil Marceaux Dot Com’s platform was, let’s say, complicated, and loosely federated (“ending the slavery of traffic stops”, planting “vegetation on vacant land and selling it for gas”, investigating “why democracy invaded the U.S State on July 16, 1866, and so on), Jimmy McMillan’s message is plain and simple. Yup, you guessed it. The rent is too damn high.

A roof over your head, food on the table and money in your pocket. The rest will take care of itself. You gotta love an honest politician. The manicured mutton chops don’t hurt either.

Housekeeping

2010-10-15T01:13:00.000-04:00

Usually I try to update this blog once a week, on Tuesday or Wednesday night. For the next several weeks that will shift to Wednesday or Thursday night, to accommodate the schedule of my paying job. That being said, the paying job is siphoning additional time this week, and as such, I will forego an update this week. Check back next week.

Promises to Keep

2010-10-06T03:14:00.002-04:00

Is it Friday yet? It’s not? Really? Sigh.

I checked the opinion polls today. Apparently my previous post had absolutely no impact on Democratic voter enthusiasm. In fact, if Gallup’s latest voter tracking polls are to be believed, I may have consigned the Party to an 87-seat loss in the House of Representatives. Now I know things aren’t great out there, but 87 seats? Come on.

But that was last week. This is a whole new seven-day period. As such, I would like to mention something that failed to get the attention it deserved during my fruitless search for rainbow-crapping unicorns. About two weeks ago, Republicans released something they called a “Pledge to America.” Standing in front of a palate of pressure-treated lumber at a hardware store just outside of D.C., House Minority Leader John Boehner declared this pledge to be a blueprint for Republican fiscal responsibility should they take over Congress in November. I would like to take this opportunity to call shenanigans on John Boehner. What he calls a “blueprint to restore America,” I might call, quite generously, intellectually dishonest.

In short, the Republican “plan” aims to reduce the deficit by repealing any unused TARP funds, trimming 100 billion dollars of discretionary spending, de-funding healthcare reform, and, or course, cutting taxes. The idea is that “…with common sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and defense…” these steps will set the United States back on sound fiscal footing and reverse the march toward socialism we’ve apparently been on since January of 2009. If you are partial to that worldview I suppose all that sounds pretty good. But even a cursory evaluation of the details reveals the absolute fiscal fraud the self-proclaimed party of fiscal responsibility has become.

First, as we discovered late last week, funds expended under the TARP program have been almost completely repaid. The amount currently outstanding totals approximately $50 billion, and by the time the Republicans retake the House, the taxpayers may even have turned a profit on their investment. There isn’t going to be any unused TARP money to repeal. Strike one.

Second, I know it sounds like a lot of money, but $100 billion worth of discretionary spending amounts to virtually nothing in a 3.5 trillion dollar budget. It is, in fact, less than 3% of the annual budget. No Republican seriously believes that cutting 3% from the budget will set America’s fiscal house in order. But the reason they can get away with it is because so few people actually understand where their tax dollars actually go. There is a common misconception that if we simply trim a little from the welfare budget and reduce the amount we spend on foreign aid; we wouldn’t need to borrow money from anybody. Sadly, like so many other things about politics, it isn’t that simple. Below is a pie chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, quantifying what tax dollars actually pay for.

Taken together, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense/Security (including veterans benefits) total nearly 70% of Federal spending. If Boehner’s statement regarding “common sense exceptions for seniors, defense and veterans” implies that the programs making up more than two-thirds of the budget are off limits to anything but token reduction, (and that certainly is what it implies), it’s pretty easy to determine how less-than-serious he is about deficit reduction. Add that to his comment to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday two weeks ago about not wanting to talk about solutions, and this “pledge” becomes comical. Strike two.

Finally, Republicans propose to cut costs by de-funding healthcare initiatives and lowering taxes. The healthcare initiatives they propose to cut have yet to be funded. Pretty easy to take back something you haven’t yet delivered. But refusing to fund healthcare changes would leave Republicans with no way to address the current almost (and in some cases actual) double-digit growth in healthcare expenditures. Add to that the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for all income earners (about 750 billion dollars), and the continuation of at least one foreign military conflict and we could likely have a budget deficit under a Republican House that was larger than it was under Democratic control. Strike Three.

The truth about the “Pledge to America” is that it isn’t. There is only one fiscally honest Republican in the House of Representatives and his name is Paul Ryan. Ryan’s solutions for reducing deficit and debt are not my solutions, but at least he understands that in order for anything to be accomplished without any sort of tax increase (if that is even possible), Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense must all endure dramatic cuts, all of which would be deeply unpopular. And it is telling that not a single other Republican on Capitol Hill has signed on to Ryan’s proposal.

It would be nice if Americans could talk about these things like adults, instead of fourth graders throwing rocks at each other on the playground. If your family was to encounter financial hardship and needed to take additional steps to make ends meet, you could either reduce your expenses, increase your income, or some combination of both. I would suggest that reducing expenses AND pursuing employment offering higher levels of compensation might be the best course of action to take. A similar approach of decreased expenses and increased revenues would probably be beneficial to America’s current fiscal situation. But the further down the road of nonsensical pledges we travel, the harder it is going to be to return to any semblance of fiscal sanity.

Pots of Gold

2010-09-23T01:24:00.002-04:00

Primary season is finally over. The candidates have been selected, the match-ups have been set, and now the real mud slinging can begin. Word on the street is; things look bad for the Democratic Party. They will likely lose control of the House of Representatives in November, and if they try really really hard, they could lose the Senate too. Nice work Democrats. Is there nothing you can’t screw up?

I guess none of this is particularly surprising. In mid-term elections – especially those coming in the midst of an economic downturn – the party in power always loses seats. People get angry when things aren’t going well and lash out at those they feel are responsible. There are only so many ways to express my incredulity at the fact that so many “independent” voters are so willing to return control of the government to the party and principles that spent the previous decade running it into the ground, so I’m not going to try to find another way this week. This week I want to focus on Democratic voters.

That’s right donkeys; I’m talking to you. Why the long faces? What’s got you so depressed that you would rather stay home on Election Day than vote for a Democratic candidate? Did you like it better when you were in the minority, and all you had to do was complain? Life was so much simpler then, wasn’t it. Are you playing a little rope-a-dope? Attempting to lull Republicans into a false sense of pomposity, then slug ‘em hard with the left hook of enthusiasm two weeks before the finish line? Because on the scrap heap of bad ideas, that one is somewhere below choosing to kick the ball away at the start of overtime in the Super Bowl. Are you perhaps convinced that midterm elections just don’t matter all that much anyway? I’m sure President Clinton could quickly disabuse you of that notion. Or is it that many of you are suffering from a near fatal case of unrealistic expectations?

This past Tuesday, President Obama hosted a town hall meeting with a group of supporters in Washington D.C. hoping to pump up the troops and get a little feedback. What he got was a room full of well-dressed people complaining that in the first 40% of his presidency, he simply had not done enough for them. I don’t fault them for being well dressed; it would be silly to show up to a meeting with the President in flip-flops and pajamas. But I would like to take issue with this idea that Barack Obama has somehow failed his supporters.

This President has accomplished three things that no Democratic president in the last 50 years (or more in some instances) has achieved. Burning an enormous amount of political capital in his first month in office, he passed an $800 billion economic stimulus package that kept many of us working when we otherwise would have lost our jobs, and according to an overwhelming majority of economists, kept this economy from sliding into the abyss. Burning whatever political capital he had left, he then signed into law the first major healthcare/health insurance reform since the passage of Social Security. Seven other presidents have attempted that and failed. He succeeded. And after that, running on fumes, he managed to slip through a financial reform bill, attempting to ensure that Wall Street can never again take us for the ride they took us on two years ago. Barack Obama accomplished an astonishing amount given the dung heap of an economy he had to work with and the absurd level of resistance he faced from his opponents.

But you wanted more than that, didn’t you, Democrats. Sure, you got healthcare reform, but you wanted a single payer system. You got financial reform, but you wanted Wall Street broken up like AT&T in 1984. You got $800 billion in stimulus money, but you wanted $1.5 trillion. You wanted an end to our foreign wars, but you got a reduction in one and escalation in the other. You wanted Guantanamo Bay detention center closed, but you got a Congress that refused to do it. You wanted comprehensive immigration reform, but you got a Congress that would rather demagogue and campaign on the problem than attempt to solve it. You wanted 10% annual economic growth and a Rolls Royce in every garage, but you got four consecutive quarters of 3% annual growth and a garage in foreclosure. In short, you wanted unicorns that crap rainbows, and what you got was a dose of reality.

During the Presidential election campaign you claimed you wanted to be talked to like adults. You claimed you could, indeed, handle the truth. It appears as though those statements were inaccurate. Nobody said recovery would be easy. In fact, it was made abundantly clear to everyone that climbing out of the most devastating recession since the Great Depression was going to be pretty damn hard. The fact that we haven’t recovered eight million lost jobs in 18 months is not a knock on the President; it’s third grade mathematics. The reason you didn’t get a Citigroup break-up, or a Gitmo closure, or a public health insurance option is because there simply were not 60 votes in the United States Senate to give them to you. The President doesn’t get a vote, and he can’t force any Senators to vote a certain way. It’s not his fault you belong to a party that couldn’t vote unanimously to back out of a parking space. The reason you didn’t wake up to a unicorn crapping a rainbow in your backyard January 21, 2009, is because unicorns don’t crap rainbows, and there is no such thing as a unicorn. Welcome to the real world. It sucks. Deal with it. Quit moping, get off the couch and vote.

Finally, Jon Stewart has announced that he will be holding a “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Mall in D.C the day before Halloween. Not to be outdone, Steven Colbert revealed 4 minutes later that he would host a “March to Keep Fear Alive” at the same time and location. Regular readers of this blog know that I have great respect for Jon Stewart. I find it absolutely incredible that the most intelligent political analysis on television comes from a guy who makes fart jokes for a living. And accordingly, I wish him success with his rally. But I can’t help but worry that there simply isn’t much sanity left to restore.

A Hard Day's Night

2010-09-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

Just finished a throughly engrossing conversation examining why I seem to be the only person on the face of the earth who doesn't think the Beatles were the greatest thing since high-fructose corn syrup. And on that note, I am on vacation, for the final time this fiscal year. Check back next week for an election season update.

Headless Horsemen

2010-09-09T01:36:00.001-04:00

Only 19 hours until football people!

A Discovery Channel special debuted this week. One full hour of Rudy Giuliani explaining how frightened, yet poised and decisive he was during the events of 9/11. How is it that nine whole years after the incident this man is still allowed to exploit that tragedy for his own personal gain?

According to poll results released early this week, voters think Republicans would be better at handling the economy than the Democrats. No word on whether or not those are the same respondents who 18 months ago told pollsters they thought Democrats would be better at handling the economy than Republicans, but that’s neither here nor there in this conversation. The point is that voters seem to have the memories of goldfish. People really trust the Republican party - the party that doubled the national debt in eight years, oversaw the near complete collapse of the American financial system, and supervised zero net growth in both employment and net income - to better handle the economy? Really? Are all those people masochists, or just plain stupid? It’s perfectly reasonable to tell a pollster that you trust neither party to handle the economy. It is the height of absurdity to claim you trust the people who broke the system more than the people who have at least made some attempt to fix it.

Nevada Republican senatorial hopeful Sharon Angle announced this week that she will “be a mainstream senator.” Huh? Sharon Angle based her entire Tea Party-supported primary campaign on the idea that mainstream senators were ruining the country. If she intends to be a “mainstream” senator, why should any of her supporters vote for her? I suppose Sharon Angle’s idea of “mainstream” might be a little different from everyone else’s. It would have to be. In the universe most of us live in it certainly isn’t considered “mainstream” to pay your doctor for your kidney surgery in chickens and goats?

Speaking of crazy people, Arizona (I know, I know) Governor Jan Brewer found herself in the news again last week after a dismal debate performance against her Democratic challenger. Things went bad from the opening statement, as Brewer got lost in her notes, fumbled with her words and stared awkwardly through several long, unintended pauses. And that was before anyone asked any questions. During the debate, she attacked her opponents closeness with labor unions as the reason the state has experienced a decline in convention tourism this year. When her opponent responded with a much more plausible explanation, that it was actually the Governor’s signing of the now-famous anti-immigration legislation, and false stories of decapitations in the Arizona desert repeated by Brewer on multiple occasions, she found herself at a complete loss. After the debate, when reporters asked her multiple times why she refused to recant the false allegations of decapitations in the desert, Brewer pretended not to hear them, ended the Q&A session and walked away. The next day the Governor announced she would not participate in any more debates prior to the election, because she doesn’t “believe things come out in proper context in an adversarial atmosphere.” Nice. Just what is the proper context for a 20 second pause, and fairy tales about headless bodies in the desert?

Of course, the pathetic part about this is that none of it matters. As weak as her performance was, we’re talking about Arizona here. The only qualification you need to win as a Republican is a pulse. In fact, according to one poll taken after the debate, Brewer’s lead over her challenger actually increased by three points, 60% to 38%. Seriously. Can’t we just cut that state loose and call it a day?

Rumor is that following Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s announcement this week that he will not run for another term, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel will step down to run to replace him. When was the last time Chicago had a mayor not named Daley? Isn’t it written into the city by-laws or something, that the mayor must be named Daley? This is going to be weird.

Finally, following an investigation into improper receipt of gifts while at USC, it appears as though New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush will be stripped of his Heisman Trophy. This comes on the heels of an NCAA disciplinary ruling against USC in which the school lost scholarships, was forced to vacate wins and was banned from bowl and tournament appearances for the next several years. I am slightly conflicted about this. Universities make tens of millions of dollars off of these players, yet the players aren’t allowed to accept any form of compensation whatsoever. But, Bush knew the rules, and chose not to follow them. Due to that fact, he forfeits the trophy. It’s pretty simple. What I don’t understand is why the Heisman Trust has decided not to award the trophy to the runner up. They have instead decided that for the first time in over 70 years, the 2005 Heisman Trophy will remain unawarded. Why? Why bother having a first and second runner up if you aren’t going to award them the trophy if the winner is disqualified?

Don't Tread On (My Perception Of) Me

2010-09-02T02:10:00.001-04:00

I had the day off today. Woke up late, went in to pick up my cheque, grabbed a Slurpee from 7-Eleven, and dropped in on a Chevy dealership to check out the new(ish) Camaro. So far so good. Came back home, flipped on the television, noticed the market finished the day up 250 points, feeling okay. In the process of changing the channel, accidently punched in 360 instead of 390, and instead of Alex Trebek, stumbled across Glen Beck. What a way to ruin a perfectly nice day off.

There really isn’t much more I can say about this clown that hasn’t already been said. It’s mentally exhausting to try to cut through the madness, fear-mongering and absurdity perpetuated by this man on a daily basis. But as cancerous as he is to American society, I have to give credit where credit is due. Glen Beck has managed to so something very few people in history - especially in wealthy, modern civilizations - have managed to do. He has created an alternate reality.

This past weekend Beck held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, given at the same location. Something Beck claims was merely a coincidence. (And if you believe that, there’s a really nice bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.) Reports very on number of attendees. Independent crowd estimating agencies estimated between 87,000 and 100,000 people showed up. Resident conservative crazy person Michelle Bachman “...will not allow the media to claim less than a million...” people in attendance. So, between 87,000 and one million people came to Washington to listen to Beck reveal his plan to “put American back on the right track.” He was a little light on specifics, but the impression I got was that it had something to do with “turning back to God”, and investing with Goldline. But underneath all the self-aggrandizement and the Obama derangement syndrome, there is something very powerful he has managed to tap into. Fear.

Glen Beck lives in a bizarro world. A world much like the one the rest of us live in, yet opposite. In Beckworld, whites, Christians and conservatives are persecuted minorities, threatened with extinction by liberal elites and minorities, intent on transforming America - the last outpost of freedom in the world, into a socialist utopia. In a country in which 65% of the population is non-Hispanic white, Beck feels white people have lost influence and their values have been abandoned in favor of others. Despite the fact that 77% of Americans identify themselves as Christian, Beck insists Christianity is under attack, persecuted by the godless masses trying to rid the country of religion. Even though conservatives are the largest single ideological group in the United States (at 40%, with only 21% identifying as “liberal”), Beck would have us believe that the political system is out to get them. In spite of the fact that Fox News pulls in more viewers that all other cable news channels combined, he insists the “mainstream media” is out to distort the facts and withhold the “truth” about whatever the “scandal” of the day is. In Beckworld, white Christian conservatives are an endangered species. The rest of “us” are out to get them, and it’s his responsibility to shepherd the flock through the valley of the shadow of death. And purchase a little gold along the way. It doesn’t matter if the facts contradict anything or everything he’s preaching. Those facts are agents of the conspiracy against him. There are no facts, there is no truth, outside of that delivered by Beck or any of his disciples. Regardless of how false it is. And the fact that so many people believe in him and his gospel says a lot about the mindset of a certain segment of this country.

Early Wednesday afternoon, a man walked into the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Springs, Maryland and took several people hostage. Several hours later the situation came to a close with police shooting the hostage-taker, James Lee, to death. As usual, media coverage of the event consisted of breathless, fact-less speculation and hours of helicopter video of the mechanical equipment on the roof of the building. Fascinating. It seems Mr. Lee had some grievance with humanity, referring repeatedly in his online manifesto to humans as “filth” and claiming the only way to save the planet is to eliminate the “human pollution.” He apparently felt Discovery was not doing enough to advance environmental concerns. So, he decided to advance the cause himself by strolling into the building with a gun. Note to Mr. Lee: taking hostages is rarely an effective way to advance your agenda.

Finally, Washington Nationals (or “Natinals,” as they refer to themselves on occasion) rookie phenom Steven Strausburg will miss the rest of the season with an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery. A couple months ago when Strausburg make his major league debut, ESPN declared his first game to be more significant than the Chicago Blackhawks breaking a 49-year drought winning the Stanley Cup about a week earlier. Of course, they said similar things about Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, before they blew out their arms and dropped off the face of the earth. Yet somehow, nobody saw this coming with Strausburg. Until it happened. Apparently, the human body simply isn’t designed to consistently throw a baseball at 102 miles-per-hour. It just isn’t. I certainly don’t mean to gloat, but ha ha. Okay, that isn’t true. I’m gloating. And I’m perfectly okay with that.

Bi-Centennial

2010-08-25T23:43:00.000-04:00

This is my 200th post! Okay, that isn't true. The last post was my 200th post. But, aside from me, who's really counting. Anyway, to celebrate, I'm taking the week off. I know I know, that's exactly what I did the last time I celebrated. Someday I'll vary the act, perhaps by nodding my head and waving my arms while I... take time off. Yeah, I'll work on it. See you next week.

Team Evil or Team Stupid

2010-08-24T11:31:00.000-04:00

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. The hits just keep on coming.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Parent Company Trap

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Highlights

2010-08-20T09:05:00.000-04:00

Once again, the most rational, reasonable discussion on television, of an issue relating to Islam, comes from a Jewish man who "make(s) fart jokes for a living."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition

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One More Time Around

2010-08-19T00:37:00.000-04:00

I've been busy writing other things this week, so just a couple quick hits.

It's official. Brett Favre is returning to the Minnesota Vikings for his 20th season. I know, I'm as stunned as you are. Perhaps more-so. According to Favre, this will be his last season. Fifty bucks says we get to do this all over again next August.

Doctor Laura Schlessinger made some headlines last week. Honestly, I thought she'd retired to Cancun ten years ago. But apparently, she is still on the radio, continuing to tell people who already know exactly what they should do, exactly what they should do. Well, she found herself in a little trouble this week after telling a woman who called to complain about her husband's racist friends that black people just need to lighten up. It might have been considered typical Dr. Laura fare had she not insisted on using the N-word eleven times during the conversation and complaining that if black people get to use it, white people should get to use it too. Later in the show she took herself off the air and the following day issued an apology. Again, she might have fared better had she simply stopped there. Instead, she made an appearance on Larry King Live Tuesday night (presumably so no one would actually see her) and announced she would not renew the contract for her show at the end of this season because she doesn't want to have to "prune her words." According to Schlessinger;

"(I) want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors."

Sigh. Are there really white people walking around desperate to throw up the N-word every chance they get, and upset because it has been deemed socially unacceptable for them to do so? Besides Dr. Laura?

At a Tea Party rally earlier this week, Phoenix area sheriff Joe Arpaio actually suggested stationing the U.S. Border Patrol on the Mexican side of the fence to curb illegal immigration. Apparently it's not enough for Arpaio to arrest Mexicans in Arizona, He now feels he needs to arrest Mexicans in Mexico. I guess that would take care of any racial profiling issues.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of Judge Walker's ruling two weeks ago overturning California's ban on same-sex marriage and have issued direction to hear the case immediately. In their comments the Court seems to doubt whether opponents of same-sex marriage even have standing to challenge the ruling. In order to have standing to appeal a ruling, the party issuing the challenge must show that they have suffered actual harm as a direct result of the ruling. And the definition of actual harm has narrowed even further under the current Supreme Court. Seeing as how opponents managed to produce only one witness and almost no evidence to support their claims during the trial, I certainly am interested to see what they present to support their appeal.

Finally, in a bizarre decision announced this week, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted of only one of the twenty-four Lincoln-would-be-rolling-over-in-his-grave bribery and extortion counts he was charged with last year. The jury couldn't agree on the other twenty-three, many times split 11-1 in favor of conviction. In what was perhaps the dumbest post-trial press conference ever broadcast on television, Blagojevich's lawyer Sam Adam emphatically insisted that even though he had provided his client with "absolutely no defense whatsoever," the government had still failed to convict him. I hope Blagojevich emphatically insists on paying his lawyer absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Going to the Chapel

2010-08-13T00:22:00.004-04:00

Of all the rubber heads you could have worn to your wedding, you chose General Akbar? Really? Akbar? (Image reposted from The Daily Dish)

Comedian Ron White bases part of his routine on the idea that, “you can’t fix stupid.” He’s right. Ignorance can be combated with education. Foolishness can be countered with wisdom. Nothing can turn back stupid. Stupid just is. It is self-perpetuating. It exists independent of facts and/or evidence. And even after it has been completely and systematically dismantled by logic and reason, it somehow manages to persist as some form of folklore or legend. It really is a remarkable thing, this, stupid.

There’s a whole lot of stupid swirling in America right now. Much of it seems to be centered around the issue of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” which curiously is neither a mosque, nor at Ground Zero. One might think that these two facts alone might negate any controversy, but one who thought that obviously doesn’t understand the value of demagoguery in an election year. I have avoided writing about this up to now because I find the whole discussion mentally exhausting. But, stupid seems determined to make and issue out of something that shouldn’t be, so, here we are.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb in saying that much of the stupid being perpetuated by the talking heads on Fox News and Twitter comes as the result of attempts by certain political figures to out-maverick other political figures on the road to the 2012 elections. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the rhetoric any less disturbing or depressing. The common thread running through the hysteria seems to be the equating of “Muslim” with “terrorist.” For the peddlers of paranoia, there is no distinction. Muslims are terrorists. There is no such thing as a follower of Islam seeking to live in peace in these United States of America. And since they are all murders, they have no business constructing cultural centers/houses of worship two blocks from where their terrorist brothers destroyed 3,000 lives and a very expensive piece of real estate. That’s “hallowed ground” don’t you know. And that “hallowedness” extends all the way to the former Burlington Coat Factory building in which this cultural center is to be built.

In attempting to argue for the freedom of persons to worship where they like, reasonable people (if you’re lucky enough to find one) might point to a somewhat quaint folly of American law and political tradition commonly referred to the Bill of Rights, a collection of the first ten amendments to the original United States Constitution. I understand that a certain segment of the population seems to believe that said Bill of Rights actually begins with amendment number two, skips over amendments four and five and makes no mention eight. But in fact the Bill of Rights does begin with the aptly named, First Amendment. That amendment is quite clear (certainly more so than the Second Amendment) in demanding, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” American have generally understood that to mean that the government can neither force anyone to worship a certain way or in a certain place, nor prevent them from doing so, provided they are not violating the law in doing so. As it is not illegal to construct a cultural center containing a house of worship on private land in New York City, this would seem to be an open and shut case.

But this is where the intransigence of stupid just begins to sap the will to live. Since at least Roe vs. Wade - if not Brown vs. Board of Education, those making an issue of the proposed NYC Islamic cultural center have been adamant that the U.S. Constitution means exactly and only what it says, nothing more, nothing less. In this case, textualism and strict constructionalism don’t work in their favor. The First Amendment does not read, “Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free expression thereof, unless one worships Allah.” It treats all religions equally by cleverly failing to mention any of them by name. But instead of admitting they have no case, some have devised a work-around. They’ve simply decided to claim that Islam, a religion of 1.4 billion followers, with 1,400 years of history, is in fact, not a religion at all. Standing in front of a fully functional television camera, the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee tried to make the case that Islam is merely a cult. You know, like the Branch Davidians, or the Manson family. Republican presidential candidate and serial monogamist Newt Gingrich has gone so far as to claim there should be no talk of religious freedom for Muslims in America until Saudi Arabia allows Christians to build churches in their desert. Because why should America be any more enlightened and modern than Saudi Arabia? You know what would really stick it to them? If we reverted to a monarchy until they decided to allow free democratic elections. Yeah, that’ll show those SOBs we mean business! No rights in America until there are rights everywhere else!

Sometimes it’s difficult to see the real issue hidden in the smoke screen of fear mongering, paranoia and political posturing. This time it’s pretty simple. The mind-numbing stupidity of this controversy boils down to this; the far right cannot function without an external enemy. Therefore, in order to survive they must create an enemy - many enemies - even where there are none. They must create “others” in order to foster an ideology of “Us” vs. “Them.” They’ve done it with President Obama, (“He’s not one of us, he was born in Kenya!”), they did it with healthcare reform, (“The socialists want to pry my precious evil government-provided healthcare from my cold, dead, killed-by-a-death-panel hands!), they’re doing it with immigration, (They took our jobs! - that we didn’t want anyway.”), and Muslims are simply the next target. This is about a clash of cultures. White evangelical protestant pseudo-conservatives, vs. everyone else. It just so happens that during midterm elections, those are the only people that vote. So while this particular culture war may bode well for some during this election cycle, it’s going to be difficult to backpedal when all those “others” hit the polls two years from now.

Two weeks ago a federal judge in Arizona issued an injunction against the most controversial provisions of the state’s new anti-immigration law. The injunction covers the portions of the law the judge felt were most likely to be found unconstitutional in an upcoming court challenge, like the profiling provision, and demanding people produce papers on demand. I have little doubt that those parts of the bill would be tossed by a federal court on merit alone. What worries me is that the government will try to get too cute in prosecuting the case. In this situation, the simplest argument against the bill is also the most effective. Article 1, Section 8 makes it clear that immigration and immigration law are the exclusive purview of the federal government. I know discrimination is the sexy argument, but it is also the weaker one.

Last week, federal Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, then immediately issued a stay of his own ruling. Today (Thursday) he revisited that stay and decided that same-sex marriage will be allowed to resume in the Golden State on August 18, provided no additional stay is issued by a higher court. It is an incredibly well reasoned decision, detailed here if you care to read it for yourself. The next stop for this issue will be the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where I’m guessing the ruling will be upheld, then on to the Supreme Court. Personally, I don’t think the Supreme Court is ready rule on this. But if the Ninth Circuit upholds the decision, they may have no choice. It’s going to be an interesting few months.

Headline found on CNN.com two days ago; Justin Bieber hit by water bottle. Yeah. That isn’t news. If Justin Bieber gets hit by a truck (is it too early to make a Christmas wish?), that might be considered news. Are nine-year-old girls perusing CNN.com anyway? Why even bother posting that?

Levi Johnston, on-again off-again fiancée of Bristol Palin, and thorn in the side of Sarah Palin, is running for mayor of Wasilla. And, just to rub salt in the wound, he’s made a reality show out of it. A camera crew will follow him around Alaska and film him while he does this. I love this idea. There’s no way in hell I’ll watch the show, but I have to admit that anything that annoys Mama Grizzly makes me so very happy. If he wins the race for mayor, what are the odds he quits halfway through his first term to fun for governor of Alaska?

Finally, have any of the ladies out there ever been on a bad date? I don’t mean bad like the entrée took too long or the movie was sold out and you had to see something else. I mean bad. Bad like you got hit with a baseball because instead of catching the foul ball, like every six-year-old at the ballpark tries to do, your punk boyfriend dove out of the way and let it hit you, then picked it up off the ground and kept it for himself. Well, it happened to Sarah, at a Houston Astros game this past Monday night. See video below.

Her boyfriend, Bo (which should have been her first clue), claims he “lost it in the lights.” Sure you did buddy. You and Bill Buckner. Rumor has it that Sarah is currently reconsidering her relationship with this loser – as well she should. If this dude wasn’t willing to stick out his hand and snag a baseball to keep you from getting beaned, there was no way he was stepping in between her and the drunk guy sitting next to her at the bar repeatedly trying to grab her ass. Seriously, the LEAST he could have done was give her the ball for cryin’ out loud! Get out now Sarah, while you still can. There are plenty of second-graders who would have caught that ball for you, let alone men your age.

Motown Blues

2010-08-04T13:47:00.002-04:00

No update this week, as work (specifically Detroit) is seriously cutting into my blogging time. Additionally, I need a break from the madness that is Arizona. Plenty of good stuff lined up for next week though, so make an appointment to stop by.

Game. Blouses.

2010-07-28T02:51:00.002-04:00

“...So I took them all inside and made them pancakes.”

I was a little long-winded last week. So this week, just a light breeze.

The story of the week so far ( aside from Jon Stewart’s new beard) seems to be WikiLeaks dumping 92,000 classified documents related to the Afghan war on the Internet for everyone to read. The content ranges from America soldiers venting frustration to assertions that the Pakistani intelligence services are funding terrorism in Afghanistan with money provided for other purposes by the U.S. government. According to experts who seem to have nothing better to do than read through almost 100,000 pages of coded Times New Roman print, there really isn’t anything new in these documents - nothing we haven’t known for at least the past couple years. But finding new information really isn’t purpose of dumping that much information into a medium as vast as the Web. The point of an information dump on this scale is to simply bludgeon people over the head with the idea that this whole war is pointless. The overarching thread running through all these papers is the fact that we’ve been blowing things up and putting them back together in Afghanistan for almost 10 years and very little has actually changed. When Soviet tanks rolled into that country in December of 1979, we in the West ridiculed them for underestimating their enemy and failing to follow the old axiom of never getting involved in a land war in Asia. Thirty years and hundreds of billions - perhaps trillions of dollars later, we seem to be unable to admit that we may have made the very same mistake.

From the desk of What-the Hell-Took-So-Long, Tony Hayward is stepping down as Chief executive officer of British Petroleum. Usually when a company announces that replacing a CEO was a mutual decision, it means the decision was anything but mutual. However, in this case, I think I believe them. It’s pretty clear to anyone with a television that from the the very first day of the spill, Hayward has been clumsy, awkward and completely lost in dealing with the government, the media and the local interests. I don’t think anyone outside the Gulf Coast region wants this disaster to be over and done with more than Tony Hayward. He said he wanted his life back. Looks like he’ll get it. Which is more than we can say for the people of Louisiana at this point.

The Utah Supreme Court overturned two rape convictions of polygamist FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and ordered new trials. According to a CNN report,

“In Jeffs' trial, Elissa Wall testified that she repeatedly told him at the time that she did not want to be married and was uncomfortable with sexual advances from her husband, Allen Steed. She said Jeffs advised her to pray and submit to her husband, learn to love him and bear his children, or risk losing her "eternal salvation."”

I tend to think that men who like Warren Jeffs who prey on people searching for meaning and fulfillment in their lives are pretty despicable human beings, deserving of the punishment dealt to them for their acts. Apparently Utah disagrees. I guess there’s a reason I live far away from Utah.

Finally, four years ago a Fresno, California man purchased a box of small glass photographic plates at a garage sale for $45. He has since discovered that his small box of negatives are actually images shot by the one and only Ansel Adams, and may be worth about $200 million. That’s right. He made a 4.4 million percent return on his $45 investment. You know, I wonder how much that “Dogs Playing Poker” print I got at the flea market two years ago is worth today?

Don't Call Me Shirley

2010-07-22T22:15:00.003-04:00

What’s worse than being awake for 24 consecutive hours? I don’t know. What was the question again?

The well is capped. Bet you never thought you’d hear those words, huh. Almost three months after the initial explosion, British Petroleum has finally fitted its blown-out well with a containment cap, effectively sealing off the well. At some point within the next week, BP will attempt to permanently seal the well bore with concrete via the relief wells. They will then be able to turn their full attention to cleaning beaches, paying claims and bickering about how much money they owe the country in compensation. Of course there is the small matter of an accurate well flow measurement. Part of the purpose of getting this new cap in place was supposedly to finally get a precise measurement of the flow of oil. Once the flow could be accurately determined, the government could figure out exactly how much money BP would have to pay in compensation. But once the well was capped, and the spill cam showed nothing but blue water, The oil company had no interest in reopening it to collect the oil, and the government certainly didn’t want to be the one responsible for plumes of oil and methane gas reappearing on the spill cam. While the physical spill may now be over, the legal battles have yet to begin.

Goldman Sachs announced early this week a quarterly profit of $250 million. This was, of course, less than “analysts” expected, and therefore drove the stock price down a little bit. But that $250 million profit was the change left over AFTER Goldman Sachs made a one-time pay-out of almost $1.2 billion in fines to the federal government. At a time when 9.6 percent of Americans are desperate for work, Goldman Sachs is making half-a-billion dollars EVERY MONTH gambling with their futures. I guess it’s good to be the king.

Overshadowed by another event I will get to later, President Obama signed the financial reform bill into law this past Wednesday, almost two years after the financial collapse. The bill is significantly weaker than it had been only several weeks ago, due in part to the deft legislative maneuvering of one Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, and for reasons yet to adequately be explained by anyone, does not cover loans made by automobile dealers (often some of the worst offenders when it comes to predatory lending), but it is a significant improvement over what he had in place two years ago. Will it prevent another financial crisis? Probably not. The financial industry is pretty good at evading whatever rules are created to restrain them. But it should prevent the taxpayers from having to shoulder the burden of the industry’s poor decisions. It should also prevent many bad decisions from being kept secret. To repeat an overused cliche, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the fact that all complex financial transactions will now be required to take place on public exchanges will afford market-watchers an opportunity to spot disturbing trends and bubbles before they become large enough to take down the economy. Of course, there is no shortage of people willing to do stupid things in full view of others, NBC’s entire prime time lineup is a testament to that fact. But at least now we will be able to point, laugh and escort them away before their stupidity infects/affects the rest of us.

Last week at it’s annual meeting, the NAACP issued a resolution calling on the Tea Party movement to denounce any chapters or members perpetuating racist opinions or ideology. Of course, any moron could see the resolution was doomed to fail before it was even drafted. Tea drinkers have no respect for the NAACP or its resolutions. The only thing that could happen, did happen, as the Tea Party movement took offense to being called racists (even though the movement was not called racist) and accused the NAACP of being the real racists. Everything was proceeding as scripted until one Mark Williams, spokesman for the bus-riding, flag-waving Glen Beck idolizing Tea Party Express outfit decided to try his hand at comedy. Williams wrote what he claimed was a “satirical” letter to President Lincoln in the “voice” of the NAACP. In his “satire,” Williams ran the whole gamut of racial stereotypes, from laziness and welfare dependance to “things really were better under slavery,” unmasking himself more efficiently and more effectively than the NAACP ever could have. His blatantly offensive rant was too much for the rest of the national movement, who issued a statement saying that neither Mark Williams nor the Tea Party Express was welcome in the movement any longer.

I relayed that story to provide the context for this one. Some on the right were not happy with the NAACPs proxy takedown of Mark Williams. Count among them influential conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. Like many in the conservative echo chamber, Breitbart loathes the civil rights establishment, the current administration, democrats, liberals and any media outlets not beginning with the word “fox” and ending with the word “news.” So, this past Tuesday, when someone sent him a “scandalous” edited, un-vetted two minute clip of a forty-plus minute address at an NAACP meeting earlier this year, he did the only thing he could do. He published it to his blog. In the edited version of the clip, Shirley Sherrod, a black woman employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as head of Rural Development in Georgia is speaking about how a white farmer who came to her for help in saving his farm. She states that she did not “give the full force of what (she) could do” to help said white farmer save his farm. At that point, the clip ends. Eager to validate claims of the Tea Party and the rest of the echo chamber who had countercharged the NAACP with racism, Breitbart posted the video, claiming liberals and the “mainstream media” was covering up the true racist nature of the NAACP and the Obama administration. Fox News immediately ran with the story, and merely hours later, Shirley Sherrod had been fired by the U.S.D.A., denounced by the NAACP and the clip was making the rounds on cable and network television news.

Fortunately, somebody remembered how actual journalism used to work in this country and started asking questions. People began standing up for Sherrod, including the white farmer in the story. The local chapter of the NAACP Sherrod was speaking at dug up the entire, unedited tape and released it to first the national organization, then to the rest of the media. Turns out that what Sherrod was actually doing on that video tape was telling her own redemption story. Early in 1965, when she was 17-years-old, Shirley Sherrod’s father was shot and killed by a white farmer in a dispute over several cows. An all-white grand jury brought no charges against the shooter. That summer when she went to register to vote at the courthouse, she was denied that right by the local white establishment. After earning her masters degree she returned to rural Georgia to help minority farmers retain their land, and has been doing so for the past forty years. During the late 80's, the white farmer mentioned in the video came to her for help. And at first, as she said in the edited clip, she did not do everything she could to help him. She sent him to get help from “one of his own.” What Breitbart’s clip excluded, of course, was the most important part of the story. Sherrod ran into that farmer again, not long after she had sent to a white lawyer for help, and found that the lawyer had done nothing for him. Realizing that this white farmer was in much the same boat as many of the black farmers she had devoted her life to representing, she then did everything she could - going above and beyond the call of duty by some accounts - to help that man save his farm. She and that farmer have since become friends, and Shirley Sherrod has expanded her life’s work and embraced the idea that white farmers, as well as black farmers and poor farmers of every persuasion are valuable and deserve to be treated as such.

But for about 12 hours, nobody knew any of that. Why? Nobody bothered to look for it. They saw a “gotcha” moment and seized upon it. Once they discovered they’d been had, hoodwinked, bamboozled by a blogger and activist by the name of Andrew Breitbart, there were plenty of red faces and stammering apologies, from the Secretary of Agriculture to the head of the NAACP to the network news anchors. Talking heads from across the spectrum were demanding an explanation from Breitbart, and the return of Sherrod to her previous position. Even Charles Krauthammer and Glen Beck implored the U.S.D.A. to apologize and reinstate Sherrod. Seriously. If Glen Beck thinks you’ve unfairly maligned someone not named Palin, you have REALLY screwed something up. To their credit, Secretary Vilsack called Sherrod to apologize and offered her a promotion. Breitbart, on the other hand, insisted on taking the low road. At first he questioned the legitimacy of the unedited version of the tape turned over by the NAACP. Then he claimed the farmer’s wife who came to Sherrod’s aide was a plant, and demanded to know what kind of research went into determining if she was indeed, the actual wife of the person mentioned on the video. Then he claimed he never maligned Sherrod, and that this whole episode was a media distortion of the point he was trying to make. He rounded out his discreditation by admitting he eagerly published a piece of video given to him by an anonymous source he knew nothing about, did nothing to verify it’s authenticity, didn’t know that the incident referred to in the clip happened 24 years ago, and really didn’t care that the point of the full story was the EXACT OPPOSITE of what his two minute clip lead people to believe.

Is the Department of Agriculture hypersensitive to issues of race? Yes. They have good reason to be. They have quite the checked track record when it comes to such issues. Did that hypersensitivity lead to the premature firing of Shirley Sherrod? You bet. Is this administration hypersensitive to issues of race - particularly reverse discrimination? Uh huh. Do they have good reason to be? Sure. Should they have waited for more facts before involving themselves at all? Of course. Lost in all of this (in addition to the signing of the financial reform bill) is the disgusting, shameful, absolute failure of the media to perform it’s basic function; provide the public with accurate, vetted information. A popular conservative blogger posted a clip purporting to demonstrate reverse racism and accused the “media” of covering it up and refusing to report on it due to their “liberal bias.” Not wanting to appear irrelevant in the face of the Internet, and super-ultra-mega-sensitive to any charge of “bias,” regardless of who the accuser is, the rest of the cable-verse picked up the story and ran with it.

Once upon a time, in the good old days, somebody would have maybe called Shirley Sherrod, or the white farmer for comment, BEFORE plastering the clip all over the six o’clock news. Or perhaps called the NAACP and requested the full tape the clip was taken from. Somebody might have tried to verify and corroborate the hysterical blather of an internet rabble-rouser before going to print with the story. But those were the good old days. That was the old media. This is the future. New and improved. Where reputations are made by ruining people’s lives with lies and baseless accusations. And no apologies or retractions are made for supermarket tabloid behavior. Instead of issuing a mea culpa once they realized they’d been taken for a ride, the media immediately pivoted to accusing the administration of being too quick to jump into action without sufficient evidence. It’s called displacement. When my dog gets upset and can’t bite me, she attacks her brother instead. Sadly, cable news has been reduced to a pack of dogs fighting over scraps. Several years ago, Dan Rather ran a story featuring false documents relating to then president Bush. Dan Rather was fired from CBS. Who’s going to fire Andrew Breitbart from the Internet?

Race has always been a difficult subject for this country. No one likes to be discriminated against due to the color of their skin. And no one likes to be accused of discriminating against people due to the color of their skin. So, victims have developed organizations to protect them from discrimination. And the perpetrators have developed subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways of discriminating. Especially when politics are involved. The tactic of choice currently seems to be reverse discrimination. I’m sure you’ve heard the theories. Healthcare reform is really just “reparations” to black people. Tax increases are a plot to steal money from hard-working white people to give handouts to lazy minorities. Refusing to prevent a group of New York City Muslims from for exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of worship is an attack on American values. The boogeyman of the moment is the New Black Panther Party. Yes, Lee Atwater is alive, and his name is Megyn Kelly. For weeks now, the Fox News daytime anchor has devoted an enormous amount of time to the case of two members of the New Black Panther Party arrested in Pennsylvania during the 2008 election on charges of voter intimidation. According to police reports and video recordings, the men were picked up outside a Philadelphia polling station, dressed in black and pacing back and forth, one of them brandishing a nightstick. Recently the Justice Department dropped most of the charges against the men, as there was no evidence anyone was denied entry to the polling station, or was dissuaded from entering due to their presence. But according to Kelly, these men, and the group to which they belong, are the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, trolling the back roads of American cities in search of poor, unsuspecting white people to lynch. While it is easy to to unequivocally identify the New Black Panthers as a “hate group,” to compare them to the Klan is laughable. The Panther’s membership is limited to MAYBE a few hundred people, and their political actions have amounted to disrupting school board meetings and verbally assaulting Jews and Michelle Malkin. In comparison, the Klan boasted upwards of four million members at its peak, (about ten thousand now), has a long and sordid history of intimidation, abuse and murder. But, like Andrews Breitbart, the facts don’t matter all that much to Megyn Kelly. What matters is the narrative. Kelly understands that there is no image more frightening to white America, than a dark-skinned man with a weapon. And the image is all the more effective when painted daily by an attractive platinum blonde working for the “most trusted name in news.”

Goal!

2010-07-14T12:58:00.001-04:00

Ole ole! Congratulations to Spain overcoming a gritty Dutch side for their first ever World Cup victory! Enjoy the party for the rest of the week. Next week it’s back to that pesky debt crisis.

Just when you thought it was safe to point the intercontinental ballistic missiles somewhere else, the Cold War returns baby! Early last week the Justice Department announced they had arrested 10 Russian citizens accused of espionage against the United States, on behalf of the Russian government. Russia, of course, denied the accusations. What self-respecting nation would admit to espionage against another. (To co-opt a phrase, the first rule of spy club is; you don’t talk about spy club.) But by the end of the week, the accused spies were on an airplane back to Europe, to be exchanged for several persons convicted of espionage against Russia, on behalf of the United States.

Much ado about very little? Probably. In fact, the whole story is a little disappointing. It’s like the “Evil Empire” isn’t even trying anymore. According to the DOJ, the accused spies were charged with collecting information like attitudes toward Russia and American’s feelings regarding the election of Barack Obama. Apparently they don’t get CNN in Moscow. But perhaps the most amusing part of this saga was the reaction of people who for some reason seemed to think that espionage was somehow a thing of the past. Nations spy on other nations, regardless of how warm the relations might be. This country spends 700 billion dollars a year on defense. You didn’t think that was all bombs and bullets, did you?

Speaking of war, two weeks ago Republican National Committee Chairman and perpetual comic relief agent Michael Steele stumbled over what was either a miserable attempt at revisionist history, or the most incredulous case of selective amnesia ever recorded. Speaking at a fundraiser, Steele launched into an attack on the President’s war policy, claiming that Afghanistan was Obama’s “war of choice,” and not something the United States had “actively pursued” prior to Obama taking office. I never cease to be astounded by the ability of the Republican leadership and sympathetic talking heads to completely forget/ignore eight full years of history. It’s as if January 2001 to January 2009 never happened. Just to refresh Steele’s memory, we have been engaged in Afghanistan since October of 2001, seven years and eight months before the current President took office. Steele went on to admonish the President for remaining engaged in Afghanistan, insisting instead that we withdraw and leave Afghans to their own devices, even throwing in a Princess Bride reference about never getting involved in a land war in Asia. I’m sure that sentiment accurately sums up the feelings of many Democrats who voted for the President a year-and-a-half ago. Not only did he “misremember” eight years of history, he also forgot which party he currently claims to lead. At this point I’m actually a little worried about him. I think he would forget his brain if it weren’t locked so securely inside his shiny, shiny skull.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009, 24-year-old Oscar Grant and several others were detained by two Bay Area Rapid Transit Officers at a train platform in Oakland, California, following a fight aboard the train. Following some sort of altercation, (what actually took place is the subject of dispute), officers - of which there were now seven - attempted to arrest Oscar Grant. According to the officers, Grant resisted arrest. He was forced face down to the ground and restrained by Officers Tony Pirone and Johannes Mesherle. Feeling Grant was still refusing to comply, Mesherle directed Pirone to back away, then rose to his feet, drew his weapon and shot Grant once in the back. Oscar Grant died in hospital seven hours later. Mesherle maintains he intended to draw his Taser, not his firearm, and never intended to kill Grant. Last Thursday, a Los Angeles jury agreed. Johannes Mesherle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of either second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.

Was justice served in this case? I don’t know. It seems to depend on what color you, and/or what side of the proverbial track you live on. The supporters of the police claim Oscar Grant’s death was an accident, that he was resisting arrest and Officer Mesherle simply made a tragic mistake. Supporters of Oscar Grant’s family claim Mesherle lost control of his emotions and murdered an unarmed, restrained man. On one hand, I certainly don’t think Johannes Mesherle intended to kill Oscar Grant on that train platform. I don’t think Mesherle intended to put a bullet through Grant’s back either. But, on the other, it’s clear that Mesherle intended to shot Grant with something. Hypothetically, if Mesherle had intended to say, rob someone, but ended up shooting and killing said person in the process, he would be guilty of murder in the first degree. The fact that Mesherle may have intended only to stun Grant with 50,000 volts of electricity, then somehow failed to notice he had instead drawn his firearm before he fired warrants something more than a verdict of simple negligence.

The disturbing aspect of this verdict for me is this. We as a society have given the police license to kill in order to protect us from those who would do us harm. But with great power comes great responsibility. Those with the power of life and death must be held to a higher standard when exercising that power. “Oops I wasn’t paying attention,” isn’t good enough when someone’s life is at stake. At least it shouldn’t be. A uniform, badge and a license to kill should not be a shield against fatal acts of carelessness.

Headline in the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal; Limbaugh Gets Mega Millions on Condo Sale. I’ve spent the last hour trying to understand why the Wall Street Journal thinks that is news.

In an incredibly embarrassing display of self-aggrandizement last Thursday, LeBron James announced he will spend the next five years in South Beach, playing basketball fro the Miami heat. During those five years with Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and nine other chumps, James promised fans not three, not four, not five, not six (whaaa?), but seven championships. I guess that’s the new math.

I typically don’t write about basketball. I haven’t paid much attention to the NBA since Michael Jordan retired the second time. But this James free-agency business isn’t really about basketball. It’s really about the difference between being a first-class businessman and a first-class jerk. In less than sixty minutes, LeBron James managed to transform himself from one of the most popular athletes in the country to the most hated man in basketball, primarily because either he or his “people” couldn’t exercise a little self control.

Let’s be very clear about this. Nobody - except maybe the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers - has any problem with James shopping his talents to the highest bidder. Most people would jump into a pool of piranas for a guaranteed $16 million a year, I can’t imagine just sitting in my living room and having ten guys in thousand-dollar suits walk in and throw suitcases of money at me. What people object to is the manner in which the whole affair was handled. He could have announced his decision on Sportscenter, al-la his new teammates Wade and Bosh. He could have called a press conference at his house. He could have “tweeted” his intentions to his followers. He could have made any number of courteous, professional, business-like decisions. Instead, he attended some parties in Florida and Connecticut, then rolled up to perhaps the only Boys and Girls Club in America where the families of the kids there make more money than he does, and conduct an hour-long special consisting of video highlights of his greatness, the announcement of his decision, and then interviews during which he explained how difficult it was for him to leave Lake Erie winters for sunny South Beach. In fact, he didn’t have the where-with-all to inform his current team he was leaving. One of his associates sent a text message to the team only seconds before the live announcement was made.

It’s one thing to break up with your high school sweetheart. It’s another thing entirely to break up with your high school sweetheart for her younger, sexier, rival on national television. It was selfish, classless, and a really bad idea. And on top of all that, James has now set expectations so high, that if Miami does not win a championship this season - and multiples before his new contract expires - this will go down as the biggest failure/worst blunder in the modern history of the sport. Perhaps winning will cure all ills, perhaps it won’t. One thing is for sure. Losing will make he persona non-grata in two cities, instead of just one.

Many of the Dutch soccer fans attending the festivities in South Africa over the past month actually DROVE there. All the way from Holland. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a road trip.

Finally, there really is nothing like the feeling of going out on top. Congratulations to Paul the Oracle Octopus on his retirement from the World Cup prediction business with a perfect 8-0 record. Maybe he’ll transition into predicting election outcomes in his spare time, provided he can avoid the menu at some fancy German restaurant.

The Sweet Smell of Freedom

2010-07-06T21:07:00.002-04:00

This past Sunday was my first Independence Day as an American citizen. In honor of said achievement, (and the fact only two things of interest occurred last week), I will be taking this week off. Michael Steele madness can wait a few days. So, Happy Birthday America! You don't look too bad for 234. Not quite as fresh as your younger, sexier cousin to the north, but pretty good none-the-less.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2010-06-30T20:54:00.006-04:00

Senator Robert Byrd, longest serving member of the United State Senate, passed away on Monday at the age of 92. He was in his 51st year of Senate service to the people of West Virginia. Since nobody who has lived eight years shy of a century could be fairly eulogized in a paragraph, I won’t bother to attempt it. Legislatively, he was remarkably effective at directing federal funding to his State, managing - among other things - to get Coast Guard offices stationed in West Virginia, which is nowhere near the coast of anything. Personally, He was a reformed segregationist with a love of poetry whom some people liked and some people didn’t. The Senate will certainly be different without him.

Nearly two years after the triggering events of the financial collapse and subsequent recession, Congress has finally reached agreement on legislation to reform the financial system. Maybe. Chances for passage seems pretty good after Democratic negotiators bought the vote of Senator Scott Brown by carving out exceptions to the bank tax for several Massachusetts institutions. Then, the wheels started to come off. First, Senator Byrd, Democrat from West Virginia passed away. Then, in a move that is fast becoming a pattern for him, Scott Brown pulled his support for the bill, claiming he had additional concerns that weren’t addressed during the previous negotiations, the outcome of which he previously supported. Following that, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe decided that if Brown could score a windfall by weakening the bill and still not voting for it, they wanted in on that jackpot as well. By Wednesday morning the Democrats had caved and dropped the entire bank tax from the bill. This seems to have appeased Brown and company for the moment. But it is only Wednesday. Since the Senate won’t vote on the bill until after the Independence Day recess, Brown and company will have another week to fabricate additional objections and withdraw their support yet again. The most moronic part of all this is that the Scott Brown appeasement could largely have been avoided if the two Democratic holdouts had learned not to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good and agreed to vote for the damn bill to begin with. But I guess hoping for Democratic unity on ANYTHING is a little like hoping the Cubs will win the World Series. There’s always next year, right?

As an aside however, let’s give credit where credit is due. It didn’t take Scott Brown very long to the formula of how to roll over the Democrats and get what he wants, without having to give up anything in return. Of course, it’s not that complex of a formula. Feign interest in bipartisanship, demand concessions in exchange for vote, receive said concessions, then deny vote citing “additional concerns.” Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s brilliant strategy really. If the weakened bill eventually passes without his support, he claims to his base that his involvement in the process removed all the “egregious” elements from the legislation. And if the bill goes down in flames, he claims to moderates that he tried to work with Democrats, they just weren’t interested in addressing his concerns. I envy that sort of genius.

Among the many decisions rendered by the Supreme Court on the final day of the term Monday morning was the decision to overturn Chicago’s ban on the ownership of handguns within the city limits. The ruling effectively nullifies - at least for the time being - any restriction on the ownership of firearms anywhere in the country. While it surprised absolutely no one in the wake of a similar court decision regarding the handgun ban in Washington D.C. over a year ago, it does set up an interesting set of circumstances for the upcoming deluge of gun rights-related lawsuits. Up to this point, all the other amendments comprising the Bill of Rights have been subject to time place and manner restrictions. You have the right to speak freely, but you cannot yell fire in a crowed theater is there is in fact, no fire. In striking down the Chicago law, the Court essentially struck down the long-standing presiding view of the right to “bear arms” as a collective right, instead asserting that right to be an individual one. Under this new interpretation, there are no such time, place and manner restrictions. The Second Amendment is freer than the First. The people have the right to “bear arms.” Does that mean, all people? Including persons convicted of crimes? What about those who are mentally ill? Where can said arms be borne? In the office? In the classroom? In stadiums at sporting events? And what exactly are these “arms” anyway? Automatic weapons? Grenades? Mortars? Surface-to-air missiles perhaps? (Will the Constitutional originalists on the court argue that the right of the people to bear flint-lock rifles and pistols shall not be infringed?) We’re starting from scratch on this one people.

I know I’ve asked this before, but I still haven’t received an answer. Could someone please explain to me the American fascination with guns and shooting people? Immediately following the Second Amendment decision, several of the plaintiffs in the case found some television cameras to inform the rest of us that “open season on the citizens of Chicago is over.” They served notice that now that Chicagoans will be allowed to have handguns in their homes, crime in the city will soon be a thing of the past. If I recall correctly, the ban only applied to handguns. Rifles and shotguns were still legal. That didn’t seem to deter the criminals? Why would the addition of a handgun to the inventory make a significant difference? If the number of handguns present in a city was some sort of indication of its relative safety, the city of Houston, and by extension the State of Texas, would, by far, be the safest in the Union. They are not. Handguns have one purpose, and one purpose only; to shoot people. Again. What is the American fascination with shooting people?

In an interview last week, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona (again?) made the following statement:

Well, we all know that the majority of the people that are coming to Arizona and trespassing are now becoming drug mules," Brewer said. "They're coming across our borders in huge numbers. The drug cartels have taken control of the immigration. … So they are criminals. They're breaking the law when they are trespassing and they're criminals when they pack the marijuana and the drugs on their backs.

I believe today and in the circumstances that we are facing, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming in the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels, and they are bringing drugs in.

If the Governor of the State of Arizona has no qualms about making such a ridiculous statement - completely devoid of any factual basis, let alone common sense - and still enjoy 70%+ support for her anti-immigration policies, then I certainly feel comfortable saying this. It’s blatantly obvious that the majority of Arizonans are morons at best, paranoid fear-mongering racist xenophobes at worst. Everybody knows that.

Apple officially released the newest version of its iPhone last week. They have since sold almost two million phones. There is however, one slight problem. If someone actually decides to use their iPhone to, say, make a phone call, (can you believe people still do that with their cellphones?), holding said phone the way most human beings would hold a phone, significantly decreases reception quality. Oops. The issue appears to be the design of the integrated antenna in the metal band surrounding the phone. Touching the band at any two points on the lower half of the phone seems to disrupt its ability to receive a signal. Thus far, Apple’s response to consumer complaints has been, “Well, don’t hold it that way.” Hmm. Not sure that’s going to fly. For a company that typically introduces advanced, reliable, quality products to market, this hardware issue is a major problem. But even more problematic has been their lackluster, somewhat condescending refusal to even acknowledge that there is indeed an issue. Typically, consumers would reward such a non-response by refusing to purchase the products of said company. It remains to be seen whether of not that fate will befall Apple in this case.

Finally, Pampers is set to introduce a new line of laid, striped and ruffled designer diapers, to be sold exclusively at Target stores. They are designed to compete with a new line of Huggies denim printed designer diapers that cost about 40% more than “regular” diapers. In an interview with NPR, marketing consultant Amy Colton explained that diapers have always been kid-oriented.

...It was really more about them. But this is more about mom, to have a little more fun and infuse a little fashion into their mominess.

You know, because your child is really little more than a high-priced fashion accessory. Sigh.

I Got Your Evidence Right Here

2010-06-23T00:34:00.005-04:00

What’s worse than three days without power in 85 degree heat and humidity? Being kept awake by the lights of the neighbors across the street.

In a related story, from the online edition of Tuesday’s Seattle Times:

Seattle is on a stretch of 271 days and counting without reaching 75 degrees, said Dennis D'Amico, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The previous record was 254 days.
"We have crushed that," Mass said, adding it's likely temperatures won't reach 75 until July.
It's not just that it's not warm — it's been far colder than June's usual high of 70.
At 56 degrees, Sunday's high was just 1 degree above the lowest high ever recorded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on a June 20. That's a typical mid-April high.

Seriously. Where do I sign up?

Not much this week. For some reason, very little of interest takes place between May and September. I suppose there are three nuggets of interest.

It seems General Stanley McChrystal has found himself in something of a SNAFU. It seems he has been caught on the record disparaging nearly the entire civilian command structure of the military. From the ambassadors all the way up to the President, no one was spared his cutting sarcasm and dismissive nonchalance. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, the leaders of the opposition party do worse than that multiple times a day every day. The issue in this case is that Stanley McChrystal is an active member of the U.S. military. A G.I. Government Issue. And by a strange quirk of U.S. law, the First Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of political speech, does not apply to government issues while they are on active duty - and especially in the theater of war. According to the UCMJ, use of contemptuous words against the President, Vice President, and so forth, is grounds for a court martial and whatever punishment may result from that.

Am I surprised at McChrystal’s apparent contempt for the civilian command structure? Not really. In the same way many civilians view the military brass as trigger-happy cowboys itching for the next thing to blow up, military brass view civilians - politicians in particular - as soft, lazy busybodies, always getting in the way of crushing the enemy. However, as an active duty general, he is not at liberty to disparage the Commander-in-Chief or the chain of command. He knew that. And if he didn’t, he should have. Now he has to face the consequences. If I had money to burn I would wager that the President will choose to retain him in spite of his actions. This isn’t the first time McChrystal has “gone off the reservation.” But Democratic administrations are notoriously paranoid of taking any actions whatsoever that might be construed as “failing to support the troops,” regardless of how those necessary those actions may be. The smart money here is on the Afghan war continuing with McChrystal at the helm.

Last week, in a televised address to the nation, President Obama announced he had instructed British Petroleum to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to provide compensation and clean-up funds for the ongoing spill. Two days later, BP CEO Tony Hayward made the trek up to Capitol Hill for his turn at punching bag before the dog and pony show that is the United States Congress. The act was proceeding largely according to script, with House members raising their voices and waving their arms and Hayward apologizing profusely while insisting he knew nothing about anything, until the microphone was turned over to Representative Joe Barton, Republican, of Texas. A fool without corneas could see where this was going. Barton proceeded to apologize to Hayward for his company’s “treatment” at the hands of the government, calling the White House’s demands for the escrow fund a “shameful act... of extortion” by the President, and expressing his dismay that a private company would be forced to cover the costs of the damage caused by their negligence. Before the words had even left his mouth, the minority leaders in the House and Senate were scrambling to find a television camera into which they could distance themselves from Barton’s idiocy. And only minutes later, after apparently being struck by a bolt of, “wow-did-I-really-say-something-that-stupid-out-loud,” Barton attempted to clarify himself, claiming his remarks were “misinterpreted,” and “taken out of context,” and that he certainly didn’t mean to imply that BP should not be held responsible for the clean-up.

Unfortunately, stupidity travels faster than common sense, and before they could get the memo to shut up and keep their moronic, baseless criticism to themselves, several Republican party leaders including the Republican Policy Committee (consisting of 115 House Republicans) and the Governor of Mississippi rallied around Barton’s comments. Well, they rallied until someone informed them that the only entity involved in the oil spill less popular than the government is British Petroleum, and most Americans still feel as though BP hasn’t done enough to compensate the region for the disaster, and given the opportunity, will refuse to do so. Once they were made aware of that fact, most of them retreated, claiming they never actually said the very things they’d said on camera and in print merely hours earlier. Why did they have to be made aware of that fact by other people?

Finally, on Tuesday afternoon a federal judge in Louisiana overturned the Obama administration’s six month moratorium on new deep water drilling. The oil and gas industry argued, somehow successfully, that there is “no evidence that deep water drilling operations pose a threat to the Gulf of Mexico.” Excuse me? No evidence? Really? Then what the *bleep* is this?

And this.

And this.

(Images from Boston.com/bigpicture)

I guess I might argue that the 80 millions gallons (and counting) of oil sloshing about the Gulf of Mexico could be considered “evidence” of the threat posed by deep water drilling. Look. If you as a judge believe that the short term danger to the Gulf coast economy by a drilling moratorium outweighs any possible danger to the Gulf coast ecology, just say so. Don’t lend credibility to an obviously absurd argument with an even more ludicrous justification for your decision.

Idiocracy

2010-06-16T01:44:00.002-04:00

Hockey is over for at least two weeks and football is still almost three months away. Good thing I’ve got the World Cup to save me from watching baseball. My completely uneducated prediction, based solely upon the highlights I’ve seen so far: Argentina vs. Germany in the final.

A programming note off the top. I am through talking about oil. Let me know when the well is capped. At that point we might have something to talk about again.

Oh South Carolina. How do we love thee. What other group of philandering, scheming and racist politicians could make us forget - even temporarily - about the whack-jobs in Arizona. Last Tuesday, former South Carolina state legislator Vic Rawls was defeated in the Democratic senate primary by one Alvin Greene, a previously unknown, middle-aged, unemployed military veteran with a pending obscenity charge, living in his father’s basement. Better yet, in a barrage of interviews since his victory, Greene seems completely incapable of articulating his position on any issues, failed to demonstrate even rudimentary knowledge of any issues, and at times, appears unable to maintain a coherent conversation. He spent no money on advertising, raised no money, did little to no campaigning, yet somehow defeated a seasoned - albeit little-known - state politician. How? The best explanation anyone can come up with is that his name happened to come first on the ballot. That’s right. The alphabet handed Alvin Greene a 20 point primary victory. Sigh.

Is it possible Alvin Greene defeated Vic Rawls because voters determined Greene’s stance on the issues to be superior to that of Rawls? Sure. Is it likely? About as likely as Paris Hilton wearing underwear out in public. Is Alvin Greene to blame for this farce? Not really. It’s hard to fault a guy down on his luck for attempting to make something of himself. Even if that something is a complete, unadulterated fool. Typically, the political system counts on the electorate to weed out the Alvin Greenes of the world, ensuring that only reasonably qualified candidates make it to the general election. But obviously, South Carolina voters are idiots. This wasn’t a contest for county commissioner or city council stenographer. This was for a shot at the United States Senate. Ineffective as it may be it’s still a pretty big deal. It should have occurred to... well, everybody, that if the only thing you know about a candidate is his name, the responsible thing to do might be to leave that segment blank. What’s that saying? The problem with common sense is that its not all that common?

Which brings us back to Arizona. South Carolina’s got nothing on you. Not satisfied with demanding to see citizenship papers from “suspicious-looking (brown) people,” firing English teachers with accents, eliminating ethnic studies courses and verbally abusing third-graders painting a mural, legislators in this backward wasteland are attempting to draft legislation to deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. This, of course, is in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In spite of everything they claim the Constitution means nothing to these yahoos. In their opinion, only two Amendments, the Second and the Tenth are worth the paper they are printed on. The rest can burn in hell with their liberal defenders. In order to enforce any law they would pass to strip citizenship from American-born children of illegal immigrants, Arizona would first have to assert state control over immigration, which it is Constitutionally (there’s that word again) prohibited from doing so. Then, they would have to successfully make one of the following arguments; babies (newly born human beings existing outside their mother’s womb) are not persons, the definition of the word “born” is something other than, “brought forth by birth,” Arizona is not a state of the Union, or that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States government. All of those arguments are obviously preposterous. But sound reasoning does not seem to be something at which Arizona politicians excel. Instead their twisted drive to foster and sustain fear and loathing among a certain group of people toward another group overrides even their stated reverence to the founding documents of this nation. At this point it’s so pathetic I’m running out of adjectives to describe how stupid these scenarios are. Maybe we can cut them loose, release them back to Mexico or something.

Finally, according to a two-year-old U.S. geological report, Afghanistan is sitting on what might be a trillion dollars of untapped mineral wealth. Oh yay. Now we can never leave that god-forsaken desert.

50 Years In The Making

2010-06-10T11:50:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks on winning their first Stanley Cup in 49 years. Yes, you trounced my Canucks in the process, but at least you knocked off the pain-in-the-butt Flyers in their hideous neon orange Hamburger Helper mascot-looking jerseys. One should never be able to score against an NHL goaltender from twelve feet out at a five degree angle perpendicular to the net. Yet somehow, four minutes into overtime, Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane managed to do exactly that. So I guess that just leaves the Cubs as the losers in Chicago.

The New Math

2010-06-08T23:54:00.002-04:00

I have a new favorite television show. Top Gear, on BBC America. Three middle-aged British guys that love cars, love engineering and love to drive. And they have British accents. Everything is better with a British accent. I don’t know why, it just is. And I would like to know where they managed to find a Nissan 300 ZX Twin Turbo with only 103,000 miles on it for $3,000. I tried today. Wasn’t happening.

Although the relief wells will not be completed until at least August, British Petroleum now claims they have partially fitted a siphon over the severed pipe and is containing approximately 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day. While this sounds like significant improvement over containment of zero barrels a day, it also provides a little bit of clarity to some of the dubious accounting BP was attempting to feed the public as recently as a week ago. Prior to “operation top kill,” BP’s oil leakage estimate was 5,000 barrels a day. According to their own press release, cutting the top off the pipe in order to install this siphon increased the flow of oil into the water by about 20%. Today they claim between one-third and three-quarters of the oil is being piped to their surface containment ships. So, a couple quick calculations, and we have an interesting scenario. Five percent of 5,000 barrels is 250 barrels. And one-third or three-quarters of 5,250 barrels is either 1,733 or 3,938 barrels. Both of those numbers are significantly less than 10,000 barrels per day, which is what BP claims they are currently collecting. Obviously, 5,000 barrels a day was a gross underestimation of the spill. A more accurate estimation of the spillage, according to British Petroleum’s most recent capture claims, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13,334 to 45,000 barrels a day - much closer to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration estimates BP spent so much time and effort disputing. Only to inadvertently confirm them in the process of trumpeting their progress.

Last week, a prominent South Carolina Republican lobbyist came forward claiming that he too had an affair with Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. Then, in a radio interview discussing the primary race, Republican State Senator Jake Knotts said of Haley, “We already got one raghead in the White House. We don’t need another in the governor’s mansion.” “Raghead” is a racial slur referring to people of Arab decent. President Obama is Hawaiian. Nikki Haley is Indian. Jake Knotts later claimed he was “joking.” Jake Knotts is an idiot. When did it become acceptable for idiots who make racist comments in public to be elected to public office in South Carolina. Wait. We are talking about South Carolina, right? Perhaps I’m asking the wrong question.

For the past 2 months, artists have been painting a mural on two walls of the Miller Valley Elementary School in Prescott, Arizona. The purpose of the mural is to promote environmentally friendly transportation, and prominently features the images of four children - all students at the school the largest of which is an Hispanic boy. Of the 380 K-5th grade students attending, 179 of them are Hispanic. This, apparently, was too much for City Councilman Steve Blair, who used his radio show to launch a campaign to have the mural removed. Three guesses as to why. Don’t worry, you’ll only need one. During his May 21st broadcast, Blair complained to his audience that the most prominent child in the painting was black, (which, he isn’t), saying, “I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families - who I have been very good friends with for years - to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, 'Why?’” Shortly following this outburst, Principal Jeff Lane asked the artists - who claim they and the students helping them paint have been subjected to months of racial epithets hurled at them by some passing drivers (Blair listeners perhaps?) - to “lighten” the faces of the children depicted in the mural.

Fortunately, saner heads seem to have prevailed, and the principal has apologized to the artists, the kids and the community and insisted the mural go forward as originally planned. Good times, noodle salad. But there are also three life lessons and at least two good questions we can take away from this incident. First, if ever someone starts a sentence with the phrase, “I am not a racist, but...,” that person is probably a racist. Second, if ever someone utters the phrase, “I don’t hate black people, I have black friends,” that person does not have any black friends. They may know of some black people, or have seen some black people in the frozen food aisle at Walmart that one time, but they do not have any black friends. Third, it doesn’t matter to Steve Blair that the boy in the mural is Hispanic, and not black. His point is perfectly clear. Steve Blair doesn’t like people who don’t resemble Steve Blair. The fact that in this case those people are only eight years old is irrelevant to Steve Blair. Fourth, how morally bankrupt and devoid of humanity do you have to be to yell racial epithets at K thru 5th graders painting a mural on the walls of their school? How miserable is your life that you get pleasure from verbally abusing an eight-year-old? And finally, what the HELL is the problem with Arizona? Almost every week - sometimes twice a week - someone in Arizona does something stupid enough to make the state look like a 21st century version of George Wallace’s Alabama. Seriously. Is it the heat? Is it the lack of water? What is it? Help us Arizona. Help us, so we can help you.

Finally, Apple released its fourth generation iPhone on Monday, to the collective orgasm of billions of people. During the demonstration of several of the new features, Steve Jobs experienced trouble getting an Internet web page to load on his brand new super phone. To may iPhone users, this came as no surprise. What was surprising, was AT&T’s announcement that it will no longer offer an unlimited data plan for any of its smart phones or the iPad. Plans will now cost $25 and have a 2GB limit, with a $10 charge for each additional GB after that. People who purchased iPads with the intention of burning up Netflix and streaming Internet radio and all those wonderful modern conveniences are going to have to pay significantly more for the privilege, and many of them are not happy about it. They claim that AT&T should use some of the profit they make from charging their customers ridiculous overage fees and upgrade their network. But the company is sticking to it’s guns and making no apologies. Bandwidth, they claim, is a finite resource, and when a few people utilize so much bandwidth, they slow down the network for everyone else.

I would like to postulate a theory. Is it possible that the iPhone’s exclusivity to AT&T is the proximate cause of its decision to move away from an unlimited data plan model? According to Steve Jobs, 58% of smart phone web browsing was done on iPhones, and 100% of that browsing was done over the AT&T network. If that browsing had been shared across the other two major networks (Sprint and Verizon), would AT&T be experiencing the bandwidth crunch it currently has to deal with, especially in high-traffic areas like New York City? It seems like a little less exclusivity might have benefitted everyone in this case.

Killer Bees

2010-06-02T23:45:00.009-04:00

...comic from The Daily Dish

Operation “Top Kill,” is dead. Almost 50 days out and no end in sight. And what many experts feared from the beginning is now almost certain: this well is going to continue to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico until both relief wells come online to relieve the pressure in August or September. Three or four months into hurricane season. Drill baby drill.

If it isn’t obvious to everyone by now, British Petroleum - and by extension, every other petroleum company operating in deep water - did not and does not have ANY IDEA how to deal with an accident in deep water. They claimed they did, but they lied. Should the government have done a better job verifying their claims? Absolutely. I guess if you tell a government agency it is a miserable failure and completely unnecessary for eight years it will act like a miserable failure. Stupid is as stupid does, right?

Last week, former vice presidential candidate/train wreck Sarah Palin accused President Obama of “not doing enough about the oil spill because he is in the pocket of big oil.” It might be amusing if it weren’t so stupid. In the two years prior to that little gem, Palin and her cohorts have spent every waking moment accusing Barack Obama of establishing himself as the second coming of Vladimir Lenin, driving the country toward socialism. But as soon it it became evident that BP did not have and could not get a handle on their oil spill, Palin and company tried to paint the President as some sort of capitalist pig, refusing to commandeer a private corporation and replace it with the awesome omnipotence of the federal government. Government can be either impotent or omnipotent. Not both.

For 50 years, conservatives have insisted on beating the tar out of the idea of competent, responsible government. The conservative icon himself, Ronald Reagan was elected twice on the platform that “government is the problem.” He didn’t say big government was the problem. He didn’t say bad government is the problem. He said government is the problem. All of it. In the 30 years since then, Reagan and his disciples ran whatever branch of government they controlled as if government were indeed the problem. And instead of attempting to improve it, they simply attempted to downsize and eliminate, competence be damned. Well, at some point that mantra was bound to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is a lot of chatter among the talking heads in the media about the “reality of the narrative.” Proof that once again, the media has failed - and continues to fail in it’s primary responsibility, reporting the news. According to the heads, the “reality of the narrative” is that the President must “do more.” More what, nobody seems to know, but he must do something. He must stop the leak, presumably by donning his secret Iron Man armor and descend to the bottom of the ocean to crimp the pipe with his repulser beams. He must single-handedly prevent all the oil from reaching shore, I guess by skimming it from the surface with a magic pooper-scooper and filling all our gas tanks at a ridiculous discount. He must maintain his cool in a crisis, while simultaneously conveying that he is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, scowling and wringing his hands and stamping his feet like a petulant child. You know, so people can feel assured that he “feels our pain.” Because if he isn’t running around like a chicken with his head cut off, he’s really not “doing enough.” Bull. Forget the reality of the narrative. How about reporting the reality of reality. Regardless of the level of weeping and gnashing of teeth, the well will continue to leak until either the internal and external pressures equalize, or it is capped by British Petroleum. No amount of “feeling our pain” is going to change that. Fretting on camera about a now threatened seafood industry isn’t going to stop all that dispersed oil from settling in the oyster beds and ruining the crop. This just in: reality bites. Always has. And it’s never been as fun and sexy as the “narrative” the media likes to peddle. But it is what it is. And last time I checked, the truth - or at least some reasonable facsimile - is what the news media has been tasked to deliver to us. Are we really at the point as a nation where we allow the voices in our heads and our fact-deficient narratives to crowd out the cold harsh light of reality?

Violence erupted in Kingston, Jamaica last week as police attempted to arrest and deport notorious cocaine trafficker and arms dealer Michael Christopher Coke to the United States. The shooting started when police appeared at the Tivoli Gardens garrison to take Coke into custody after news broke that Jamaican president Bruce Golding had hired a lobbying firm to lobby the U.S. government against extraditing Coke to Miami to face trafficking and murder charges. Many people in Jamaica believe - and perhaps rightly so - that if Coke were to be taken into custody by the police he might never make it to the United States to stand trial. For decades the country has been plagued by political corruption and the incestuous relationship between the government and the drug trade. Eighteen years ago, Coke’s father, Lloyd Lester Coke burned to death in his prison cell just days before his scheduled extradition to the United States on trafficking and murder charges. Speculation is that he knew too many things about the government/drug dealer relationship, and that his son now faces the same fate. Though negotiations are ongoing, Coke has thus far refused to turn himself in. I used to wonder why my Dad hasn’t returned to Jamaica since he left it at the age of 18. I don’t wonder anymore.

Researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, utilizing technology developed by a small Canadian bio-tech firm has developed what might be a cure for the Ebola virus. When administered to the group of test monkeys, the anti-viral agent proved 100% effective in neutralizing the Ebola virus. Human trials have yet to be conducted and more research is being made into extending the window for administering the drug beyond 48 hours, but if it holds up to testing, we may be looking at the ability to control - if not eliminate - the threat posed by one of the most deadly strains of virus known to man. How’s that for some good news.

In advance of a ridiculously positive earnings report, Toyota announced last week that it is entering into a 50 million dollar partnership with Tesla Motors to build electric cars. For those who do not follow the automobile universe, the Palo Alto-based Tesla produces all-electric vehicles for public consumption. Their flagship vehicle is the Tesla Roadster, a 2-seater sports car that travels 245 miles on a single charge and shreds 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, as seen below.

All this with a 7-year, 100,000 mile battery that charges in 3.5 hours from a 240V outlet. A couple years ago, the company announced plans to produce a 4-door luxury all-electric sedan with a 300-mile charge range in the $50,000 price range, about $14,000 less than what one might expect to pay for a Cadillac Escalade. (As a point of comparison, the Chevrolet Volt travels only 40 miles on a single charge and is estimated to cost about $40,000 prior to the $7,500 energy rebate.) Reference the following image.

The announcement of the Toyota partnership and the Toyota production factory that goes along with it means that perhaps Tesla will be able to reduce that $50,000 price point and bring the all-electric vehicle to a wider audience. I am very interested.

Did a double take at this statistic when it flashed across my screen the other day. Apple Computer is now worth more money than Microsoft and Wal-mart. That is not a misprint. In fact, the only company in the United States worth more than Apple is Exxon. And with 2 million iPads sold and counting, and a new iPhone set to be unveiled next week, That may be only a short term deficiency. Seriously. How many iTunes downloads can they possibly be selling!

Al and Tipper Gore announced that they are separating after 40 years of marriage. Come on, forty years? After all this time? What's the point?

Finally, late last week, Lower Manhattan, Wall Street in particular, was attacked by a swarm of bees. Yes, bees. After a brief panic, the bees were sedated and captured by the NYPD’s resident beekeeper. I don’t know which is more frightening. The fact that entire swaths of New York City are attacked by bees, or the fact that it happens often enough for the New York City Police Department to keep a beekeeper on staff. Rumor has it the bees were upset over Bank of America’s refusal to renegotiate the adjustable rate mortgage they used to purchase that new hive in Hoboken.

Under The Knife

2010-05-25T20:53:00.005-04:00

Damn you Montreal Canadiens. Damn you.

Still recovering from the surgery, and facing an over-nighter in Detroit later this week, this update will be short and sweet. Sort of like me. Without the sweetness.

In case you're keeping score, it's oil spill 37, British Petroleum, zero. It's been over a month since the exploratory well in the Gulf of Mexico began leaking thousands of barrels a day into the water, still with no end in site. BP will attempt a "top kill" on Wednesday, forcing pressurized mud into the well in an attempt to clog it, then seal it completely. However, to this point, nothing has worked, and if this maneuver fails, which is certainly possible - if not likely, the next plausible response is the completion of the relief wells at least 30 days from now. Add that to the fact that independent analysis of the leak has determined the flow rate to be significantly higher than the 5,000 barrels/day BP has touted thus far, and we have what can only be described as a disaster of epic proportions.

There has been some grumbling suggesting the federal government should simply seize control of the clean-up and well-capping effort from British Petroleum, removing them from the equation. Setting aside the delicious irony that some of the people engaging in the grumbling could be found as recently as a few weeks ago searching out television cameras to whine about how awful it is that the federal government interferes in private business, it's pretty obvious that these people have little to no understanding of how the government actually works. Unlike say, hurricane relief, in which the government has unfettered access to its own rescue equipment, like helicopters, transports, communications and security, the U.S. Navy does not have any deep water drilling equipment. In fact, the government doesn't own any oil drilling, containment or rescue equipment at all. So demanding they take over is really what? A demand they remove BP from the operation, then hire Exxon to come in and do exactly what British Petroleum is doing right now? Come on. Despite what the right-wing talking heads would have you believe, this is not a socialist country. The government does not own the means of production. Private industry does. And when private industry screws up, we have to wait for private industry to rectify the mistake. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Sometime this week Congress will consider a bill to delay a 20% cut in Medicare payments to doctors for at least three more years. Said cuts were supposed to kick in several years ago to help reduce the cost of the Medicare program and save the government money. But due to a "flaw" in the formula used to arrive at the reduction amount, everyone in Congress seems to agree that the size of the cuts, and the short period of time during which they would be implemented would cripple the program and leave many Medicare patients without coverage. A reasonable person might conclude that if there was a "flaw" in the reduction formula, the smart thing to do might be to revise the formula in order to arrive at the correct scale of reductions over an adequate period of time. However, Congress is not filled with reasonable people. So instead of fixing the problem, they will, again, simply postpone them, setting up the next Congress for an even larger potential cut, combined with three years of healthcare cost escalation. Brilliant. Lest you think this is an aberrant error for Congress, they've had plenty of practice with the Alternative Minimum Tax. When it was first passed, no one thought it important to tether the trigger for the tax to inflation. So every year, more and more people are threatened with having to pay it. But instead of simply indexing the AMT to inflation and forgetting about it, Congress passes a temporary fix for it every single year, for the express purpose of claiming they succeeded in not raising taxes on a certain group of voters. At what point will the public demand our representatives actually solve problems instead of simply running on them?

Last week, new Republican senatorial candidate and folk hero Rand Paul made a complete ass of himself on the Rachel Maddow show when he aired his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, (outlawing discrimination on the basis of race) because it "interferes" with the rights of private business to conduct said business however they please. You see, Rand Paul is a libertarian. (Well, a pseudo-libertarian. A libertarian who believes the federal government should supplement 50% of the income of his private practice really isn't a libertarian.) And while libertarianism sounds fascinating in academic debates, it, like every other purist political ideology, crashes and burns spectacularly upon contact with reality. Paul sincerely believes that no business should be forced to provide goods or services to any individual, for any reason. The "free market" provides choices, and the person being denied service could always choose to patronize another business that chose not to discriminate. Of course, by that logic, a hospital emergency room staffed with misogynists could refuse to treat a woman having a heart attack, simply because they are a private hospital and don't have to treat anyone they don't want to. The lady having the heart attack could then choose to have the ambulance rush her to a different hospital not staffed morons, hopefully before she dies of said heart attack, which would render her incapable of exercising her free market choice. It's stupid, and Paul knows it. He just doesn't care. It's his ideology. Reality be damned. It's too early to know if Rand Paul and his tea party supporters will pay a political price in Kentucky for their lunacy. The smart money says they don't. But it promises to be an interesting campaign.

Last November, a supervising nun at Saint Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, signed off on an abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old pregnant patient. Last week, news of her excommunication came to light. I don't care about the excommunication, one's relationship with a particular organization has nothing to do with the well-being of one's soul. What raised my ire was the reason given for the excommunication by the medical ethics director of the Diocese of Phoenix. When asked what actions the nun should have taken instead, the director replied, "...there are some situations in which the mother may in fact die along with her child..." Excuse me? The "right thing to do" would have been to allow the mother AND the fetus to die? That sounds so ridiculous it can't possibly be true, right? But according to Lisa Sowle Cahill, professor of Catholic theology at Boston College, "...The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die..." Wow. I do not have the vocabulary necessary to express how ludicrous that statement is. I have always been baffled at the juxtaposition between the pro-life movement's reverence for the unborn and their lack of concern for the "post-born," but now I'm just angry. Life is precious. Even if it exists outside the womb. If this is what the Catholic church is offering, I don't want any part of it.

Finally, American researchers have developed what they are calling synthetic life. Doctor Craig Venter has taken an existing cell "blank" and implanted it with a completely synthetic, "home-made" strand of DNA. Yeah. In the words of Bartok the bat, this can only end in tears. Oh sure, at first this might be used to replicate vaccines much more quickly and cure diseases on a cellular level. But how long until someone holds up in a secret basement lab somewhere designing an army of perfect, superhuman embryos to implant in unsuspecting women in a plan to take over the world 20 years later? We are going straight to hell in a handbasket. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.

No Strenuous Activity For You... Two Weeks!

2010-05-20T21:23:00.004-04:00

Surgery is over, and on doctor's orders I am attempting to remain as immobile as possible. It's really not that difficult.

So, as I was watching the Montreal Canadiens drub the Philadelphia Flyers, I came across this very interesting debt reduction exercise via one of my favorite blogs. It is a calculator created by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in which you can select from a variety of different spending cuts and revenue increases to reduce the Federal debt to a manageable 60% of GDP by 2018 (from a projected 85% of GDP). Too many people think they can magically eliminate the debt by simply regurgitating tired political mantras. This exercise is a fair example of how complicated debt reduction actually is, and how many difficult choices will need to be made. I recommend everyone give this a try and let me know how you did.

By The Time I Get To Arizona

2010-05-19T00:41:00.003-04:00

Two more days until surgery. I think the waiting is worse than the actual operation.

I guess when you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll, right? Hot on the heels of demanding any suspected non-Americans show them their papers, the state of Arizona passed two more of the most ridiculous laws to come across a governor’s desk in the 21st century. In the span of a week, the legislature approved a bill banning teachers with “heavy accents” from teaching English, and another attempting to eliminate ethnic studies courses - required or elective - from the curriculum of all publicly-funded schools.

As usual, proponents of these laws have attempted to cast their distain for people of other than white, anglo-saxon decent, as just looking out for the well-being of the kids. They don’t want teachers with heavy accents teaching English because proper pronunciation and enunciation are essential to the language and skills - and therefore future success - of the children. Outlawing ethnic studies programs is a way to ensure that all children learn the same version of American history and all the important people and events that have taken place. Those “reasons” may or may not have redeeming value. I would argue that they do not. Let’s be honest, how many teachers sporting a heavy Southern drawl or quirky Minnesota jaunt are going to be excluded from the the English classroom? And how many U.S. history courses without an emphasis in ethnic studies include details of significant contributions from non-European Americans? I don’t think I’m walking too far out on a limb by answering few to none. All these new laws are designed to marginalize brown people in Arizona, legal or not, and make them understand that they are expected to conform to a very specific idea of how the older, whiter majority in that state believes they should look, sound and think . And the fact that so many people in Arizona - and around the country - support these initiatives, and are attempting to duplicate them elsewhere says something very disconcerting about the direction in which too many would like to take us.

There has been a lot of talk, mostly on Fox News and conservative talk radio, about the continuing BP oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina.” A few points on the absurdity of that statement. First, why is it that every time this President does something his conservative critics consider to be a gaffe, they always seem to find the perfect Bush screw-up to describe the situation? Second, these same critics have spend the past four years trying to convince us that Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina was perfectly adequate, and that the blame for the chaos and death in New Orleans and surrounding areas were really the fault of the Governor and Mayor Nagin. If this spill is “Obama’s Katrina,” does that not mean, by their own definition, that this administration is therefore doing a “heck of a job,” and that the fault for the economic and environmental damage should really be placed with Governor Jindal? And finally, exactly what is it that the conservative critics expect the government to do, beyond what they are already doing? The coast guard was on the scene the day of the explosion. Both NASA and NOAA have been providing a steady stream of information to British Petroleum to assist them in directing their clean-up effort. The Navy is providing equipment and deep water operating experience to a company with obviously no idea of how to tackle a deep water spill. Did the Minerals Management Service perform its function of properly permitting, regulating and overseeing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? Of course not. What do you expect from an oil regulator gutted by two oil executives for eight years? About the only thing the government hasn’t done is nationalized BP, plugged the leak and performed the clean-up themselves at taxpayer expense. The critics certainly aren’t advocating a government bailout and operation of British Petroleum, are they?

As the returns for Tuesday’s primary races come in, one thing is abundantly clear. Voters (those that bother to vote in primaries anyway) are angry. Angry with the establishment, be they Republican or Democrat. Irrationally angry. But angry nonetheless. And they’re willing to direct that anger at whoever is in power by attempting to replace them with the most polar opposite candidate they can vote for. It’s reflexive. And stupid. And reminiscent of a four-year-old’s temper tantrum. But that is what it is.

People are mad. And when people get mad, or frightened, or panicked, any semblance of rationality goes out the window. I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve heard this week with voters angry with congressmen and/or senators who voted for the financial rescue package. In the very next sentence they admit that either a) the steps to preserve the banking system had to be take to avoid complete economic collapse, or b) they have no idea what should have been done to prevent the impending economic Armageddon. Then, seemingly forgetting what they said three seconds before, demand the removal of the guy whose actions they just said were necessary. Then there’s the guy who claims he is voting against his senator because she voted for healthcare reform. Attempting to explain his anger he claims that the healthcare bill didn’t go far enough in reforming the system, but he opposes the individual mandate, but he thinks healthcare should be less expensive, and he really wants some kind of reform, just not this package, so he’s voting her out. Translated into English, he opposes the healthcare reform package because it didn’t include enough, but was too expensive, even though he opposes the primary cost control measure of the legislation, and hopes some other more perfect version of the bill will happen along and magically pass through Congress without any horse trading and fix the system, even though overhaul is the first in 45 years to be signed into law. I don’t even want to talk about the clowns decrying a “government takeover of healthcare” while fiercely clinging to their Medicare and Social Security. Oh, and then there’s the National Rifle Association. Since the election of Barack Obama people have been acquiring firearms and ammunition at a ridiculous rate. Why? The NRA has convinced them that the President is coming to get them and take away their guns. Is there any evident whatsoever to back up such an assertion? Of course not. In fact, laws governing gun ownership have actually become less restrictive during the tenure of this administration. Yet when asked in an interview with NPR why he continues to insist the government will crack down on gun ownership, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the spokesman for the NRA said, “I just have a feeling that there are storm clouds on the horizon.” That’s right. He has a feeling.

These people are idiots. Logic and reason mean nothing to them. The facts don’t matter, only their feelings. Somebody has offended their sensibilities and as a result they’re lashing out. It doesn’t matter that TARP prevented 2008 from reverting to 1939. The system didn’t actually fail, and things aren’t too bad right now, so obviously it was a waste of money and whoever voted for it should be fired. That is, of course, the equivalent of showing up at the five-alarm fire after the fire department has already put it out and saying heck, I don’t see any flames, guess we really didn’t need the fire department after all, what a waste of money! But that doesn’t matter. They’re mad dammit! And they’re not going to take it anymore! It’s irrelevant that the administration has made no attempt to, and given no indication it wants to curb gun ownership. They’re suspicious of that Obama guy, and have “bad feelings” about everything he has - or hasn’t done. They’re mad dammit! Monkeys in pants could do a better job than those fools in power now! Well, looks like some of those pants-wearing monkeys are going to get a chance to prove it. I’m stocking up on bananas.

Indiana Republican Congressman and evangelical Mark Souder held a press conference Tuesday afternoon to announce his resignation and admit he has been having an affair with a staffer not his wife. Surprise! Yet another family values conservative exercising his “values” with someone other than his family. I can’t help but wonder how the rise of gay marriage and the absence of school prayer damaged Souder’s traditional marriage and forced him to copulate with another woman. I would have to assume those things had little to effect, but I’m obviously not an expert on family values like he is.

Speaking of family values, disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford spent the past week in Florida, trying to rekindle his relationship with his Argentinean “soul mate.” The tryst cost Florida taxpayers $1,200 in security for the Governor and his lady-friend. While its kind of an inconsiderate thing to saddle out-of-state taxpayers with the cost of romancing your lover, you have to admire the man’s persistence. Lesser men, publicly humiliated by the media and divorced by a wealthy, politically powerful wife, might have given up on scoring the mistress. But not Sanford. This guy is the very model of stick-to-it-ive-ness. Perhaps if he had focused a little more of that attention his state and a little less on his illicit love affairs, he would still have both a marriage and a reputation.

Finally, from the desk of solutions-to-problems-that-aren’t-actually-problems, Lysol is advertising a new, touch-less soap pump. Their tag line? “Never touch a germy soap pump again!” Now, call me crazy, but it seems as though this product is aimed specifically at people who apply soap to their hands after they have already washed them. Why else would it matter whether or not there were germs on the soap pump? Isn’t that what the soap is for? To cleanse my hands after I have lathered with said soap from said soap pump? Come on guys. You’re not even trying anymore! I know times are tough, but really. You have to do better than that.

There's A Hole In The Bucket...

2010-05-12T02:42:00.007-04:00

...dear Liza a hole.

Okay, so the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is still leaking. More than 3 million gallons have leached into the water so far, with no end in sight. Over the weekend the steel dome British Petroleum planned to lower over the leaking pipe filled with a mixture of sludge and methane ice crystals, clogging the line to the surface and rendering the dome useless. BP now plans to try another, smaller dome to cap the pipe, and if that doesn’t work, fill it with a mixture of cement and shredded rubber. In other words, they have little to no idea what they are doing. Over the past decade the oil industry managed to convince a lot of people that deep water exploration and drilling were “perfectly safe,” that the chances of an accident were slim to none. Unfortunately, as everyone should have known then and certainly knows now, nothing is perfectly safe. BP assumed they could simply adapt shallow water clean-up techniques to deep water - that there was no real difference between the two. That proved to be a faulty assumption. It wasn’t the first, and certainly won’t be that last faulty assumption made throughout this process. Fossil fuels will remain as essential part of this country’s energy mix for at least the foreseeable future. But let’s not continue to pretend there is no risk and are no consequences associated with their retrieval. There are millions of people living on the Gulf coast who understand different.

Following heavy rains last week, Nashville, Tennessee found itself partially submerged by a swollen Cumberland River. There were complaints and questions regarding the fact that the Nashville flooding did not receive the level of media attention - positive or negative - that was given to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Seems to me that the relative lack of attention is a direct result of the vast improvement in disaster response over the past four years. If the Tennessee flooding was an unmitigated disaster, we would have heard of nothing else for the past ten days.

The big news of the day (Monday) was the nomination of Solicitor General Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court. By most accounts the former dean of Harvard Law School is a brilliant legal mind, a student of the law, and a consensus builder, able to sway others to her way of thinking. She lacks judicial experience, something her opponents played up even before she was nominated. But the idea that a Supreme Court justice needs to have judicial experience is relatively new. Prior to the 1980’s it was fairly common for justices to have little or no judicial experience. In fact, former Chief Justice Renquist spent no time on the bench prior to his selection to the court. Of course, little things like facts and precedents matter little in the modern ideological grandstanding exhibition that passes for confirmation hearings these days.

Frankly, I’m a little tired of the whole charade surrounding Supreme Court nominations. The process is so formulaic it’s boring. The President makes the announcement, his party praises the nomination, the opposition claims they’ll keep an open mind. Then the Senate convenes a hearing, both sides insist there will be no “litmus test” the nominee must pass in order to be confirmed, one side claims the nominee in a capable, intelligent moderate who respects the Constitution and will apply the law accordingly, while the other side insists the nominee is so far outside the “judicial mainstream” he/she couldn’t see that mainstream with binoculars and should never be allowed near the bench. Abortion always makes headlines, and Republicans always make a fuss about “activist judges.” Any justice nominated by a Republican president will be cast as “outside the judicial mainstream” by Democrats, and any justice nominated by a Democratic president will be cast as a “judicial activist” intent on shredding the fabric of America. It’s pathetic and it’s beneath us, and I wish we could just get on with it. There’s no need for a twelve week confirmation process, every single Senator knows right now how they intend to vote. The dog and pony show is unnecessary and insulting to the intelligence of people who actually give a crap about the Supreme Court.

In a situation straight out of Brewster’s Millions, Great Britain held an election last Thursday and voted for... none of the above? David Cameron’s Conservative Party captured more seats in Parliament than either current Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party or third party challenger Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. But since no party won a clear majority of seats, there is quite possible that Cameron will not receive the keys to 10 Downing Street, and not impossible that Clegg could wind up Prime Minister. Being the party in power prior to the election, Labour has the first opportunity to try to form a coalition government. Both they and the Conservatives have reached out to the Liberal Democrats in hopes of reaching some sort of consensus. The primary sticking point is Clegg’s demand for electoral reform of the sort that might prevent this type stalemate from recurring in the future. UPDATE: As of Tuesday afternoon, Cameron and the Conservatives have reached a deal with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats involving a referendum on electoral reform, an “emergency budget,” and the seating of David Cameron as Prime Minister with Clegg as his deputy. Pundits expect this coalition to last anywhere from six months to a year before another election is called. Should be an interesting year in the UK.

In response to global investors’ panic and riots in the streets of Athens last week, the European Union committed to a trillion dollar financial bail-out package over the weekend for any country in the Euro Zone in danger of impending financial collapse. Currently that list is limited to Greece, but Spain, Portugal and Italy have also been put on notice. In order to be eligible for their portion of the money, Greece will still have to go through with the wildly unpopular austerity measures passed by their parliament. It is obvious that Greek citizens either do not understand the situation they are in, or they don’t care. My money is on the latter. This is a country in which almost half of those required to pay taxes, choose not to. The government employs far too many people, with far too generous benefits and far too little fiscal responsibility. Yet the Greek people seem to think that the rest of Europe should pay their debts while refusing to change their irresponsible behavior. They are acting like children, and therefore probably deserve to be treated as such.

Oh, and before someone starts bitching about how the Greek debt crisis is merely a precursor to what we will face here in Obama’s socialist America, a few important notes of distinction. The U.S. economy is the largest in the world, 42 times the size of the Greek economy. We have substantial margin for error. Most of the people in America required to pay taxes, actually pay them. A novel concept apparently. When the rest of the world panics, they don’t run to Greece for security. Frightened investors always flock to U.S. stocks, currency and Treasury bonds. That provides us with access to quick capital at reasonably low rates. And because we maintain control over our own currency, we have the ability to print, extract or devalue our currency if necessary to increase the value of our exports and extricate ourselves from the kind of debt trap Greece worked itself into. It wouldn’t be pretty, but we could do it. Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, all far higher up the “socialism” scale than we are with their national healthcare and free higher education. None of them are in danger of economic collapse. Neither are we.

And now for lighter fare.

Seattle Seahawks perennial Pro Bowl left tackle Walter Jones announced his retirement last week. If you’ve never heard of him, it’s probably because while the offensive linemen are the most important players on the field, they receive the least amount of glory. But for the past 10 years, Jones was easily the best player on a team with four straight division championships and a Super Bowl appearance, and has been widely regarded as the best offensive lineman in all of football. One staggering statistic of how good Jones was at the most difficult position in the game is this - in his 12 years in the league, Jones was flagged for only nine holding penalties. Nine penalties over the the course of 188 games. That’s the basketball equivalent Shaquille O’Neal committing only nine fouls in about two-and-a-half seasons! He should be a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame as soon as he is eligible. Others at his position have made it in on far lighter credentials.

Last week, the Oakland Raiders cut ties with former first overall draft selection JaMarcus Russell. Russell was, to say the least, disappointing. Over the past three years the Raiders paid Russell $39 million, and for all that money reaped a grand total of seven wins. An average of $5.6 million per win. I’m tempted to feel bad for them. It’s not often a team squanders such a massive amount of money on a single player. But I’m only tempted. Russell was selected first overall on the strength of a single game against an inferior opponent, instead of on his body of work at LSU. The Raiders should have seen this coming. There’s a reason that team has been so bad for so long.

Failure of the NHL to come to an agreement with the city of Glendale, Arizona has cleared the way for the Phoenix Coyotes to return to Winnipeg, where they belong. That’s right, I said it. Long live the Winnipeg Jets! Of course, nothing has been finalized yet, but unlike 1996, the NHL seems willing to place higher value on the integrity of the game than the potential size of the market, and there is a billionaire businessman in Winnipeg ready and willing to make it happen. Despite the increase in American viewership during this season’s playoffs, the league’s experiment with the sunbelt has been disappointing at best. Ice hockey teams should play in places where people love hockey. Canadians love hockey. More Canadian teams will be good for hockey. Let me know when I can order my Jets jersey?

The Chicago Blackhawks crushed my dreams of a Vancouver vs. Montreal Stanley Cup final tonight. Damn you Chicago! Damn you! Now I have to rely on the Canadiens - following a grueling seven-game series against the best team in the league - to defeat Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in game seven tomorrow night, then beat the Boston Bruins in seven games, before losing to those cursed Blackhawks in seven in the final. Sigh. It could be a long three weeks.

It feels like I’m forgetting something. Oh that’s right, the failed car bombing in New York City last weekend. (How the heck did that idiot find a parking space in Times Square on a Friday night?) I don’t have much to say about this other than the fact that it seems as though the quality of Al Queda’s operatives has deteriorated significantly. It’s almost as if this moron wanted to be caught. I guess a stupid terrorist is better than a smart one, right?

Finally, co-founder of the Family Research Council and noted anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers took a two week vacation with one Jo-vanni Roman, a male escort Rekers hired from a website called Rentboy.com. Confronted with the story, Rekers claimed that due to his recent surgery, he is unable to lift his luggage and needed someone to carry it for him. The trouble with this explanation - aside from the obvious oddity of a conservative christian activist hiring a male escort for a European vacation - is that in a series of photos taken of the pair at the Miami International Airport, Roman can clearly be seen standing nervously next to Rekers, carefully not handling the cart full of luggage. Anyone who reads this blog regularly understands that I have very little patience for people who make a living condemning certain individuals for the very same behaviors they themselves indulge in. Men like Rekers are among the lowest form of humanity, hypocrites, preaching one thing while doing the opposite. I’m sure his followers will accept whatever explanation he provides for them, regardless of how ridiculous they are, because they can’t afford to have the “liberal media” tear down another “good conservative.” But these clowns are a cancer in our society. It is perfectly acceptable for good people to have honest disagreements. But they should be honest disagreements, not charades.

Holding Pattern

2010-05-04T21:38:00.003-04:00

At about this time last week, oil was the big news. Five thousand barrels of crude were seeping into the Gulf of Mexico every day and things were only getting worse. As of today, five thousand barrels of crude are seeping into the Gulf of Mexico every day and things are only getting worse. I'm going to take that as a sign that I should take the week off. Well, that and the fact that my parents are visiting and I'm prepping for surgery. But those are minor details. Tune in next week for bungled car bombings, flooded cities, a football nugget, MORE OIL, and maybe even... something interesting.

Spill Baby Spill

2010-04-28T01:33:00.003-04:00

I was supposed to go back to Detroit this week. Looks like I’ll be heading to Gary instead. I don’t think that’s an upgrade.

Last week, the Governor of Arizona signed into law the most stringent immigration bill in the nation. Among the changes is a provision requiring state and local police to stop anyone of whom they have a “reasonable suspicion” of being in the United States illegally and ask them for proof of citizenship. If any Arizona resident then feels the police are not demanding proof of citizenship from enough “reasonably suspicious” people, that resident will have the right to sue the police department.

There is nothing I can say about this bill that hasn’t already been said. So, I will revert to reiterating the obvious. This is the most ridiculous piece of legislation to come out of Arizona since the “birther bill” requiring anyone running for president to submit a birth certificate—about three days prior to the passage of this bill. I know it gets hot in the desert, and sometime the heat makes people do stupid things. But it’s not THAT hot. Not yet. Setting aside the material fact that the bill is clearly unconstitutional, (since immigration is the sole jurisdiction of the federal government, per Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution), is there a single honest human being on the face of this earth who could look me in the eye and tell me, with a straight face, that the phrase “reasonable suspicion of being in the United States illegally” is not simply thinly veiled Orwellian newspeak for, “Let’s pull over some brown people and send ‘em back to Mexico.” Seriously. It’s like they’re not even trying anymore. In order to be “suspicious” of whether or not an individual is a U.S. citizen, one would have to have some idea, or standard of what an “American” might look and/or act like. How many white Anglo-Saxon women do you suppose will be pulled over in Phoenix this summer and asked for their birth certificates? And don’t tell me white Anglo-Saxon women don’t enter and/or remain in this country illegally. I attended one of the most internationally diverse universities in the nation, I know for a fact that it happens. It just doesn’t matter to anyone in Arizona. White people are American. Brown people aren’t.

Seeking to score points with angry Republican primary voters in his home state, a now depressingly pathetic Arizona Senator John McCain voiced his support for the law this week, saying that since President Obama had “refused to protect the border,” the people of Arizona had been forced to take action to protect themselves. Last I checked, Obama has been in Washington barely three years, and President only 15 months. McCain has been tottering around the Capitol building for 28 years now, and has so far managed to “protect the border” by…. Yeeeaaah. In her column for the Daily Beast this week disagreeing with the content of the bill, Meghan McCain asked her readers to hate the law, not Arizonans. Ordinarily I would agree with her. The actions of a small group of people do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the larger body. However, in this case, that small group of people, the Arizona legislature, was elected by and to represent a much larger constituency—the Arizona voters, who have been shown to support the paranoid xenophobia of their elected representatives by more than 60%. Makes it difficult to separate Arizonians from this law. There’s something in the water down there. Must be the lawn chemical run-off from all those golf courses.

On Tuesday afternoon, representatives of Goldman Sachs lined up for a tongue-lashing before a Senate committee. In my favorite exchange of the day, when Michigan Senator Carl Levin asked Goldman CFO David Viniar if he felt anything when he read Goldman traders describing several of the company’s security products as crap, Viniar responded, and I quote, “I think that’s very unfortunate to have on e-mail.” That’s right. He’s not sorry he sold gold-painted lead to his clients and ripped them—and the taxpayer off on the other end. He’s sorry somebody was stupid enough to write it down.

In a related story, the government released documents last Friday detailing what was going on at the Securities and Exchange Commission leading up to the financial crisis. Turns out that several top officials, in addition to more than a few underlings, were spending far more time watching porn at work than they spent watching Wall Street. One regulator spent up to eight hours a day visiting triple-X websites, filling the taxpayers’ hard drives with lonely housewives and naughty college co-eds, then transferring them to DVDs to make room for more once the hard drives filled up. If we assume nobody at the SEC was working overtime leading up to the crisis, then it becomes painfully obvious that if this genius was spending eight hours—of an eight-hour workday, surfing for porn, he certainly wasn’t doing any work. And for this recreational privilege he was paid over $200,000 a year. Not a bad racket.

The oil spill that began with the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last week now covers more than 600 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico, and is seeping dangerously close to the Louisiana coastline. Eleven crewmembers are still missing and presumed dead. After initial reports indicated the actual drill segment of the rig might be intact, it has since been confirmed that the rig is leaking crude at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day. Geologists involved in trying to contain the spill have indicated that in addition to blackened beaches and birds, the slick is likely to wipe out the oyster farming industry in that area of the Gulf for years to come. This may be overly simplistic, but when a windmill malfunctions, the worst thing to happen is the rotor fails to spin the turbine. When a solar cell malfunctions, it becomes a useless sliver of silicon. When fossil fuel production malfunctions, all hell breaks loose. At some point, the human and environmental costs of our addiction to fossil fuels must be taken into account in the cost benefit analysis of our energy matrix.

Finally, in a feat of wordsmithery that would make Frank Luntz proud, Spirit Airlines is introducing “pre-reclined seats” on all of its flights. And buy “pre-reclined,” they mean fixed, and upright. No word yet on whether the “upgrade” extends to the pricing, but Spirit could be poised to change the way we think of air travel in this country. Your plane didn’t crash. It merely landed pre-assembly.

One Trick Pony

2010-04-20T23:13:00.001-04:00

Okay. So, last week I made the following statement: “As I am working in Detroit all week, and am already exhausted by the ordeal, this week’s update will be brief – perhaps more so than it deserves to be.” Turns out, that was a lie. While it may have been less comprehensive than it deserved to be, it was anything but brief. I will attempt to make up for that this week.

Nineteen months after the “official” collapse of the U.S. financial system, Democrats in Congress are FINALLY ready to get serious about preventing another one. Later this week Senate Democrats plan to introduce a financial reform bill to accompany the one passed by the House months ago. And, true to form, Senate Republicans have staked out their uniform opposition. Aside from the typical innate aversion to regulation, the chief opposition to the bill as written, according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is the establishment of a $50 billion fund the Treasury and Federal Reserve would have be able to use in order to break up and wind down any large financial institution that would otherwise fail, thereby protecting the rest of the financial system from the crippling danger of systemic risk. McConnell rounded up every television camera he could find and declared this provision of the bill a guarantee of perpetual taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street. Apparently he hadn’t bothered to read the bill he was railing against. It took his own point man on the finance committee, Republican Senator Bob Corker, to inform him that the $50 billion for the rescue fund would come from the institutions themselves, not the taxpayer, to which McConnell replied – and I paraphrase - “I don’t care about the truth, I’m calling it a bailout dammit!” Fresh off of his special election victory, Senator Scott Brown, heartthrob from Massachusetts declared over the weekend that he was told by “industry leaders” that the Senate bill would cost 30,000 jobs in his state alone. When it was confirmed by the Boston Globe that what “industry leaders” actually told Senator Brown was that 30,000 jobs had been lost in the financial industry in Massachusetts during the recession, Brown responded by saying, “I stand by my numbers, and predict the losses will be worse!” And this incident followed another late last week in which, when asked by a Globe reporter what parts of the bill he objected to, Brown answered, “Well, what parts do you object to? You tell me where the problems are and I’ll put a team together and try to get them fixed.” Face, meet palm.

Unlike with the healthcare debate, the Republicans don’t even seem to be trying this time. Their objections can’t even make it out of the gate before it slams shut on their fingers. Hopefully there is at least one Republican in the Senate capable of understanding that we cannot continue to allow the foxes to watch the hen house. During Senate hearings several months ago the heads of the largest financial agencies in the country pretty much begged Congress to take the crack pipe away from them because they are simply incapable of putting it down on their own. Please tell me there is at least one moderate or conservative compassionate enough to send these clowns to rehab.

In a related story, the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud relating to events leading up to the financial meltdown. According to the complaint, a hedge fund manager named John Paulson selected loans he knew were bad, pooled them into a mortgage-backed security, pooled those into a collateralized debt obligation, sold it off to third parties through Goldman Sachs, then purchased insurance (credit default swaps) on the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) which he knew would fail due to the preponderance of bad loans contained within it. Believe it or not, that’s not the fraud. The alleged fraud is that Goldman acted in bad faith by neglecting to tell the third parties that the man who had built the CDO was also betting it would fail. The foxes, guarding the hen house. For a more comprehensive, enraging – yet entertaining explanation of the Wall Street casino, check out “The Big Short,” by Michael Lewis. And stay tuned for more charges. Goldman Sachs wasn’t the only financial institution involved in these types of transactions.

This afternoon the Supreme Court struck down the federal law prohibiting the depiction of animal torture and cruelty. That’s right, it is once again perfectly legal to produce and distribute videos of dog fighting, cat drowning and women crushing the skulls of mice with their stiletto heels. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts claimed the law was too broadly written, could be applied to legal activities like hunting, and did not deserve judicial protection because there is no “tradition” in this country of curbing depictions of animal cruelty. Uh huh. I’ll give Roberts the benefit of the doubt on the first point, the law may have been too broadly written. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know. But according to the lone dissent of Justice Alito (there’s something you don’t hear every day), the law that was struck down contained exceptions for depictions of legal activities like hunting. What I take exception to is Robert’s claim regarding “tradition.” Prior to 1920 this country had no “tradition” of allowing women to vote. Prior to 1965 this country had no “tradition” of protecting the civil rights of black citizens in the South. Prior to 1977 there was no “tradition” of anyone celebrating my birthday. The absence of a tradition is not some sort of indication of wrongness in the same way that not all traditions deserve to be preserved. The length of time an act has been protected or permitted has no bearing on whether or not said act is right and just.

Finally, (told you this would be short), a 13-year-old Croatian girl slipped into a coma last week, and awoke 24 hours later, speaking fluent German. Conversely, she has been unable to speak a word of Croatian. Her doctors are mystified. How’s that for understatement. The brain is a strange, bizarre, wonderful thing. And it would be nice if we had some idea of how it works.

Frankly Scarlett, I Don't Give A Damn

2010-04-14T00:29:00.002-04:00

As I am working in Detroit all week, and am already exhausted by the ordeal, this week’s update will be brief – perhaps more so than it deserves to be. I want to hit two topics that have been bouncing around the news this week. Both demand more time than I intend to give them. Perhaps we’ll return to them at a later date.

Last week, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell declared April “Confederate History Month.” The declaration in and of itself was nothing new for a Southern governor – until recently it was fairly commonplace in Virginia. What distinguished this proclamation from some previous ones was that it lacked any mention of regret for, or the evils of the primary cause of the Civil War, slavery. When asked why left out any such references, McDonnell answered, “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.” The following day McDonnell apologized for his omission and issued a statement acknowledging the impact of slavery on the splitting of the Union. Then, this past Sunday, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was asked if he thought McDonnell made a mistake with his initial, slavery-free proclamation. Barbour responded, “I don’t think so. …To me, it's a sort of feeling that it's a nit, that it is not significant, that it's not a -- it's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly.”

Unfortunately for Barbour, and for the bewildering segment of the country that feels the way he does, most people in this country understand that the issues of slavery and the civil war amount to something more than diddly. For a group of people professing to revere history, they either know little about it, or simply choose to ignore the relevant portions. With regard to what was “significant for Virginia,” and what didn’t “amount to diddly” in Virginia and Mississippi in 1861, please see the excerpts from the ordinances of secession below;

From Virginia: “The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States.”

From Mississippi: “....Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin...”

From Texas: “...in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....”

And from South Carolina: “...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”

From the words of its own ordinances of secession, the slavery Governor Barbour refers to as not amounting to diddly, was in fact thoroughly integrated into the fabric of the State of Mississippi. Without it, Mississippi claimed it would cease to exist. The right to own human beings as property was the FOUNDATION of the division between North and South, and the primary reason for war. I understand, as has been pointed out to me by a very intelligent friend of mine with a well earned American History degree, that by 1861, the North and South had developed separate cultures, customs and economic systems incompatible with one another. But most – if not all of those differences can be traced back to the opposing attitudes about slavery. The agriculturally based economy of the South was based entirely upon the unlimited supply of free labor with which to work the fields. Said free labor then afforded the masters the time and money they needed to indulge in the lavish dinners and dancing associated with Southern culture. The argument over “State’s Rights” turned on whether or not a state had the right to determine whether or not Africans would be enslaved or free within its borders. The idea that dark-skinned people were inferior to light-skinned people was THE reason Southern states turned their collective backs on the United States of America. In the words of the Vice President of the Confederacy himself: “The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...”

I will be the first to admit, I have little patience for people who choose to “celebrate” the Confederacy. For as the Confederacy defined itself in terms of the superiority of one race over another, it is difficult – if not impossible for me to find any value or redeeming quality in it worth celebrating. The truth is this: Jefferson Davis was a traitor to the United States of America, and the Confederate flag is the symbol of a defeated rebel insurrection and should never be flown by any governmental entity in this country. The Confederacy was a stain on the lofty ideals and aspirations of this nation, and should be remembered as such. Not celebrated like Mother’s Day.

A video surfaced on the Internet last week showing an American Apache helicopter crew firing upon a group of apparently unarmed Iraqi citizens, killing over a dozen of them. Later on it was determined that two of the men killed were employees of the Reuters news service while two of the others were in fact armed, one with a firearm and one with a rocket launcher, neither of which seem to have been aimed at the Apache. War footage is always somewhat disturbing to civilians, but two things in particular seem to have a great deal of people upset. One is the title “Collateral Murder” given to the video by the Wiki Leaks website that posted it. The other is the apparent glee with which the helicopter crew carried out its assault. Oddly, or not, is that the item of most concern to one group, seems to be of less concern to the other.

We do an interesting thing in America. We ask for young men, many not yet old enough to legally purchase alcohol, to volunteer to be shipped off to foreign countries to kill other human beings, then return home and go back to their lives as if nothing ever happened. As you can imagine, this often presents somewhat of a problem. Here at home, we teach young men that human life is valuable, that it is something to be cherished and protected, and that taking a life is a grave action that may cost the forfeiture of one’s own life in return. But “over there,” these same young men are expected to kill or be killed, that the only good enemy is a dead enemy. There is a certain disconnection required between those realities in order to carry out that expected action. One must cease to view the enemy as a human being, instead viewing he or she as nothing more than a target, an obstacle to the completion of the mission. But once this step has been taken, there is not too much distance between there and casual joking about splattering people from a helicopter.

Americans like to think of our soldiers as somehow superhuman, the ultimate fighting machines in the bodies of perfect gentlemen. The problem is that it is impossible for the two to co-exist simultaneously. One is the polar opposite of the other. One is a survival instinct, the other a product of civilization. When we hear one of our soldiers taunting a fallen opponent to reach for a weapon so he can be shot dead or opening fire upon a group of unidentified civilians at an intersection, we make all kinds of excuses for what we see as disturbing behavior. We blame it on the stress of battle, claiming that unless we were in that situation we cannot possibly know what it’s like and therefore should never judge negatively the actions of our soldiers in combat. They were just following orders, completing the mission. The rules of war cannot be expected to apply in the heat of battle. One bad apple is not a reflection upon the entire fighting force.

There is an obvious problem with this response. It is simply, more often than not, false. The soldiers are doing exactly what we have asked them to do, kill the enemy. We want them to do so reluctantly, as though it pains them to the core each and every time they pull the trigger. But in most cases it doesn’t. It can’t. If it did, they would not be able to function. I’ve sat across the room and watched a military member of my family show his Iraq war videos to a group of friends, laughing each time the laser-guided bomb obliterated the truck or the sniper rifle knocked lifeless bodies into ditches on the side of the road. He is a husband, father and chaplain, and he loves his job. And he is in a completely different place when he performs his duty. He has to be in order to do what his country asks him to do. And he is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. The soldier who hates his job and agonizes over every single kill is the exception.

I have heard many soldiers describe the concept of rules of war as preposterous. They’re right. War is hell. The purpose is to kill more of the enemy than the enemy kills of you, and the idea that we can somehow restrict such primal, animalistic behavior with a set of gentlemen’s rules is stupid. Yet we persist. And we do so because we know that once the war is over, those soldiers must return to a society governed by gentlemen’s rules in which the behavior they exhibit in battle is not tolerated. The rules of war are not for the enemy, they are for us. They are designed to prevent civilized human beings from devolving into savagery. As a society we have a choice to make. We can admit that the concept of rules for war is ridiculous and throw them out, giving our soldiers (and by proxy enemy soldiers) license to act with impunity as they see fit. Or, we can accept the rules as preposterous, yet demand our men and women adhere to them anyway, refusing to excuse “appalling” actions as stress-induced aberrations of a few rogue individuals. Actions are criminal, or they are not. Decide.

The Outlaw Jesse James

2010-04-07T21:54:00.004-04:00

It was 90 degrees in Washington DC this afternoon. So I guess global warming is back on now, right?

Last week President Obama announced the administration would open some previously off-limits coastal areas to off-shore drilling. Predictably, conservatives denounced the increased drilling policy they once referred to as “drill baby drill” as wholly inadequate, while liberals threw a hissy fit at the prospect of another nine years worth of fossil fuels being extracted from a fragile environment. As usual, the truth is somewhere in between.

We are a vibrant nation, with an expanding population and a growing economy, and both of those things require vast amounts of energy. The simple fact is that we do not now, nor will in the near future have sufficient renewable fuel capacity to provide for our needs, or be able to conserve enough energy to prevent aggregate demand from rising. Until such time as those goals can become a reality, we are going to need both fossil and nuclear fuels to fill out our energy portfolio. Personally, I think it’s a little embarrassing that in the year 2010 we are still burning dinosaurs to power the most technologically advanced machinery ever created. Sunlight, wind and water for hydroelectricity are more than abundant on this continent and there is no excuse for this country not to lead the world in deriving energy from sources that cannot be exhausted, cannot be stolen, cannot be imported or exported or claimed as spoils of war. The Arizona desert should be littered with solar power plants, the prairies stocked with windmills - and hopefully we will get to that point sooner rather than later. But until then, it’s coal, gas and nuclear power. At least this president seems interested in using these tools as cleanly and responsibly as possible.

Shortly after announcing the new policy on off-shore drilling, President Obama released a new set of fuel economy standards. By 2016, auto manufacturers’ fleets will have to attain an average of 35.5 miles per gallon, 10 miles per gallon more than the current standard. This announcement lacked the traditional weeping and gnashing of teeth response of the automakers, so it managed to go largely unheralded, but this could be the most important change to the automotive industry since the seat belt mandate. Almost 20 years ago I learned to drive on a collection of vehicles that got, on average, similar or better gas mileage than the four cylinder 2009 Volkswagen we purchased last year. In a world rife with progress, automobile fuel economy has been nothing short of embarrassing.

In an interview with Newsweek Magazine over the weekend, Arizona Senator John McCain (remember him?) claimed that he has, “never thought of himself as a maverick.” Wow. That must be one tough primary race he’s facing. Throughout his entire political career McCain has made a living sticking his finger in the eye of expectations. His 2008 presidential campaign was based on the idea that he was the guy to buck the system, support things his party opposed (like a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and cap and trade), the guy who had the chutzpa to select an unknown, unprepared and untested Alaskan governor as his running mate. But now that things like cooperation and pragmatism and serious ideas are no longer valued by the Republican base, McCain is going to ridiculous lengths to distance himself from... himself. What happened to the John McCain who on principle refused to leave a POW camp unless his fellow soldiers were allowed to leave with him? I think I liked him better.

Don’t look now, but Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, may indeed be the Batman. Now I know what you’re thinking. Can anything good come from New Jersey? Honestly, I don’t know, the jury’s still out. But the city did pass an important milestone as the calendar rolled over from March to April. For the first time since 1966, no one was murdered in the city of Newark during a single calendar month. While that may not impress anyone in Montana or New Mexico, for Newark that is - to paraphrase Vice President Biden - a big f*@king deal. During his election campaign, Booker promised to reduce violent crime levels in one of the most violent cities in America. During his first three years in office, murders declined by 23 percent, shootings by 47 percent and rapes by 40 percent. Add this to the bank robber he and his aides chased down on the way to his inauguration and one might be inclined to check the basement of the mayor’s residence for supercomputers and turbine-powered cars.

One Jesse James, husband of academy award winning actress Sandra Bullock, has admitted to cheating on his wife and checked himself into a sex rehab clinic. I know next to nothing about Jesse James. In fact, I probably wouldn’t know Jesse James from James Brown. But I think I’ve seen this movie before, and frankly, the script is getting a little stale. Wake up naked in some stranger’s house and don’t remember how you got there? Apologize and check yourself into drug rehab. Kill someone while driving drunk? Apologize and check yourself into alcohol rehab. Cheat on your wife? Apologize and check yourself into sex rehab. Regardless of your transgression, there’s a rehab center somewhere, just for you. All you have to do is claim you’re sorry, go to a group home to get “help” for your problem, then re-emerge three months later as if nothing ever happened. It’s so dishonest it’s pathetic. Just once, I would like hear someone admit the following: “Yeah I cheated on my wife/snorted away my daughter’s college fund/drank myself unconscious while operating a motor vehicle. And you know what? I really don’t care. In fact, I liked it. I liked it so much, I’m going to do it again and again and again until my wife divorces me and/or I waste away and die. Why? Because I am a sad, pitiful, poor excuse for a human being, and I like it that way. I’m sorry I got caught, because now everybody knows how pathetic I am. But that certainly won’t stop me from cheating/smoking/drinking again. So lock up your women, and hide your contraband, because I’m coming to your city!” A little honesty never hurt anybody, right?

Finally, there is a new craze sweeping the Internet. It’s called Chatroulette. The premise is fairly simple. You turn on your webcam, log on to the website and every thirty seconds or so you are connected to a different random stranger with whom you can then “chat.” But it turns out that chatting is, well, boring. So, users have evolved a variety of methods to make it interesting. A quick surf through Chatroulette now reveals that many - if not most of the interactions taking place involve at least one party engaged in some form of amateur porn. While every fourth grader in America with access to the internet is well aware of this, it somehow comes as a surprise to most adults. In an interview with a psychologist last week, NPR radio host Robin Young was astonished and disturbed by the sheer number of naked people she saw engaged in graphic sex acts during the seven minutes she was connected to the site. To me this feels a little like Captain Renault declaring he is shocked to discover gambling taking place in Rick’s nightclub as he collects his winnings. Adults seem to have created this innocent-sounding cover story for polite company that the Internet is all about shopping and Facebook and finding the Dairy Queen closest to the yoga studio. But the truth is that not five minutes after the darn thing was invented, some guy was trying to figure out how to send pictures of his ex-girlfriend’s butt to his buddy in Cleveland. Of course Chatroulette is used primarily for porn! So is the Internet! Get over it! It should simply be assumed that it is only a matter of time (and by time I mean 24-hours, tops), before any and every new technology is manipulated to view, distribute or produce pornography. Keep the kiddies off the interweebs, or learn how to use the content filters.

Dark Matter

2010-03-31T00:08:00.001-04:00

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.

Delusions of Grandeur

2010-03-24T01:32:00.005-04:00

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.

And the Emmy Goes To...

2010-03-20T22:34:00.003-04:00

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

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Short Shift

2010-03-17T00:26:00.008-04:00

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:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

In Dodd We Trust

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

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.

Last Rock

2010-03-10T02:23:00.002-05:00

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.

...A Thousand Words

2010-03-03T21:36:00.005-05:00

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.

...But This Porridge Is Just Right

2010-02-23T23:13:00.002-05:00

I don’t have much tonight. Expended most of my energy 48-hours ago wallowing in the sorrow of Black Sunday. Feel free to delight in my misery when you’re finished here.

This afternoon, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner declared that the 11-page healthcare compromise proposal revealed yesterday by the President in preparation for Thursday’s televised summit is too short. That’s right, too short. If this seems incongruous to you, it could be because you remember the very same John Boehner, as little as four weeks ago, roundly complaining that the previous bill was, wait for it, too long. Yes, Boehner spent months complaining that the bill was too complicated for anyone to understand, seeking out television cameras in front of which to wave the original 1,990 page, 20+pound bill and solid wood furniture on which to drop it. Now he claims the fix for that bill is not complex enough and far too easy to understand. Say John, what’s it like to punch yourself in the face?

On his program this afternoon, Rush Limbaugh declared to a caller that healthcare reform is nothing more than “...reparations for people who can’t read (the bill)...” It’s difficult - if not impossible to combat absolutely ridiculous, racism-tainted stupidity without giving it credibility merely by dignifying it with an answer, so I won’t. But the fact that so many people revere this bowling pin as some sort of prophet of truth is nothing short of disturbing.

In a Brooklyn, New York federal court on Monday, suspected would-be terrorist bomber Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support for a terrorist organization. Beginning this June he will be interned at ADX Supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado for the remainder of his natural life. All of this after providing what prosecutors have called “useful, actionable intelligence,” without being tortured or turned over to military custody. I suppose the torture advocates will claim that we could have gotten more information than we did (how they know this I have no idea) had we only strung him upside down by his fingernails for ten hours, and that somehow, life locked in a 6x9 cell 23 hours a day without the possibility of parole in the Colorado desert for the rest of his life is some kind of a sweetheart deal for his cooperation. But with each mounting arrest and admission and conviction, the hysterical shrieking of those critics lacking respect for the law and order foundation and tradition of this nation fade thankfully into the background. As much hay as his naysayers have tried to make of it, his handling of terrorism is the one significant policy point in which on which President Obama’s approval rating has actually INCREASED since taking office.

Finally, last week, disgruntled Texas man Joe Stack, upset with the IRS, (due to the fact he owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes), set fire to his mouse, then loaded up his small plane with fuel and crashed it into the IRS offices in Austin. Pundits who typically insist people should be held responsible for their own actions (usually liberals, poor people and people of color) were quick to blame the government, for creating some nebulous feeling of outrage throughout the country that drove this idiot to do what he did. The interesting thing about the response to the incident however, was the extent some people went to in order to avoid labeling the man’s actions an act of terrorism. Well, in the interest We can clear this up pretty easily. Terrorism is defined as the use of violence or threats to coerce and/or intimidate for political purposes. The four page manifesto left behind by the pilot detail his perceived grievances with the United States government and characterize his actions as him taking the only action he could against the “tyranny” of the IRS. Joe Stack was a terrorist, and flying an airplane into a government building in protest of political policy is an act of terrorism. End of story. If Joe Stack had been Joe Abdullah, would there even have been a debate?