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.

One Trick Pony

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

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

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

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

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...

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
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