Can You Hear Me Now?

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.

Spill Baby Spill

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.