LumgoweeLand

RIP Joe Paterno 1926-2012

2012-01-22T16:36:00.001-05:00

Early this morning, surrounded by family and friends, Joe Paterno quietly lost his battle with lung cancer. His passing has unleashed a great deal of unrest on the Internet, as critics and supporters battle it out for the narrative of his life and work, and what legacy he will leave. I have been giving his life some thought, and I’m trying to work them out as well.

On the one hand, you have JoePa, the legendary coach and philanthropist who was the public face of Penn State for nearly half a century. The library at State College which bears his name was built with funds donated by the man himself. He graduated thousands of young men and sent them out to be productive members of society, when big-time college football chewed up boys and spit out broken men. His excellence on the field relied not on tricks or fads, but good, old-fashioned hard work and mastery of fundamentals. He won 409 games for the Nittany Lions, by far the most in Division I football. He also had two National Championships in his 62 year coaching career at Penn State.

On the other hand, you had the stubborn old man who coached for much too long. At the end, it looked as if he completely lost touch with the program he so carefully crafted. He didn’t look like the stoic lion of Happy Valley. He looked like a doddering old man wondering what all the fuss was about.

When faced with allegations that former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was sodomizing a boy in the showers, Paterno did the minimum required by University statute: he reported it to a University official, and left it at that. Never mind that this wasn’t the first time Sadusky was rumored to show a preference for little boys. The first allegations were aired in 1998, which means he had 13 years to allegedly prey on other young boys. Paterno didn’t rape anyone, but by not going directly to police, he sheltered a potential child rapist for over a decade.

Does this unpleasant business at the end of his career and life negate all the good that Paterno did prior to November 2011? No. Absolutely not. However, the whole sordid affair pointed to another side of Paterno: that of Penn State’s Julius Caesar. His program was off-limits, and any attempt to impose University rules on Penn State football players had to go through JoePa first. If true, that’s an intolerable loss of institutional control, and the NCAA has the right to sanction the program. It speaks to what happens when a legend entrenches himself too long in one place. He calls the shots, and the President and Board meekly follow. It’s easier to appease one man than deal with a flood of angry alumni who would withhold their donations.

In the end, Paterno showed that he had a conscience. In his last interview, weakened by chemo and ravaged by cancer, he lamented that he didn’t do more. This complicated man who did one thing better than any man alive (win football games), admitted his greatest failing. Fellow legend, Alabama head coach Bear Bryant, lived just a month after coaching his last victory. JoePa made it 2 1/2 months. Let’s celebrate the football accomplishments and philanthropic activities of Joe Paterno on the occasion of his death.

Then let us set them aside as we turn to the victims of the abuse.

Goodbye 2011, Hello Armageddon!

2011-12-31T23:50:00.001-05:00

We’re mere minutes away from 2012, and I suppose I should say a few words about 2011.

It was a pretty rotten year.

Lots of famous people died. The economy is still lurching around like a drunken ex-boxer during last call. Movies and popular music were pretty stinky. We were subjected to a Groundhog’s Day farce of never-ending Republican debates between candidates who would have been laughed off the stage circa 1980. And we still haven’t found a candidate who would be better against Obama than Mitt Romney. (Look Republifriends, he’s Mormon. You’ll get over it.)

We did finally pull out of Iraq right there at the end. However, it looks as though the fragile truce between Sunni and Shiite is breaking down. Iran is also rattling sabers at us during our retreat. What a better capper to our escapade in Mesopotamia than a full-blown Iraqi Civil War and an Iranian-caused oil shock! That’ll right the economic ship, won’t it?

With natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the Sendai Tsunami behind us, what awaits mankind in 2012? Why the End of the World™, Mayan Style! While scholars insist that they just ran out of room at 2012 on the Mayan calendar, doomsayers are predicting Last Days to hit just after Black Friday 2012 (poetically ironic, no?). Never missing a beat, I predict several End of the World sales to take place – No Refunds, All Sales Final!

Putting the Snark Gun back in my holster, The New Year is a fresh start. It’s another chance, a time to reassess where you are and where you want to be. We aren’t given too many revolutions on this Merry-Go-Round. When the ball drops in Times Square, you have 365 (+1 for Leap Year) more days to not completely mess things up again.

And even if you do, you just have to wait it out. There’s always 2013.

I hope…

Happy New Year!

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

2011-12-17T20:25:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday, pneumonia did what fundamentalists, dictators, shady politicians, and blowhards couldn’t: win a battle with Christopher Hitchens. He was receiving treatment in Houston for stage 4 esophageal cancer, the disease which claimed his father. Succumbing to pneumonia in the face of the more lethal cancer seems a fitting final act for the ultimate contrarian. Hitch flipped off the Big C, and went quietly into the night.

In his 62 years, Christopher Hitchens packed a whole lot of living. As a writer, reporter, bon vivant and professional debater, he left the world a whole lot more interesting. Few escaped his analysis, and even fewer escaped his exquisite rapier wit and relentless rhetorical assault when provoked. He wrote memorable take down pieces on Jerry Falwell, the Clintons, Mother Teresa, opponents of the Iraq War, and of course, religion in general.

It’s his position as one of the “Big 4” of modern atheism that drew the most interest, or disdain, depending on which side of the God issue you fall. Along with Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Hitchens was a relentless prosecutor of all things religious. While the other three couched their comments and debates in a scholarly reason, Hitchens preferred getting into the trenches and brawling with anyone and everyone who challenged him. In fact, he seems to thrive on the debate form and treated right-wing radio hosts as equally as Biblical scholars.

It’s this pugnacious approach to life that garnered Hitchens a considerable following, and an almost equal enemies list. He did modulate his opinions when presented evidence to the contrary, though. A few years back, he agreed to be waterboarded to see what the experience was like. He lasted mere seconds. He then retracted his previous statements on the practice, and proclaimed it as torture. While he didn’t play the part of the neutral reporter, he did search for the truth.

Originally a Trotskyite, Hitchens alarmed the left when he came out in full support of the Iraq War. After 9/11, he turned his attention to Fundamentalist Islam, declaring it “Islamofascism”. He also spoke favorably about the plight of the Kurds, specifically in Northern Iraq during the conflict.

During the last year of his life, Hitchens didn’t back down on his views. He did however turn in several amazing essays in Vanity Fair on his battle with cancer and how it affected him. He used his remarkable facility with the language to explain his complex feelings of seeing his own mortality, and measuring success in a few more months, a few more days.

I admire Christopher Hitchens’ writings. I think he was brave in defending some unpopular views with fire, deftness and wit. Those praying for a death bed conversion were sorely disappointed. As with George Carlin, I won’t pray for Christopher Hitchens, as it wouldn’t have meant much to him. Instead, I just want to thank him for his brilliant work, and hope he is resting in peace.

Wherever that may be.

Night of the Zombie Shoppers

2011-11-26T17:23:00.001-05:00

3:15pm: Arrive in Evansville at my sister’s house. Both sisters greet me. They ask if I wanted to go see a movie with them, then do some midnight shopping. Not thinking about previous years, and happy to see them, I agree. “What movie are we seeing?” I ask. “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I!” My anus tightens.

9:55pm: I am one of three males in the theater, all coerced. The movie begins, and my sense of foreboding increases.

12:01am: The movie lets out. I will save my judgment of the Twilight franchise for another post. Suffice it to say, it was not targeted at me and I’m not offended by that.

12:05am: After deciding a plan of action, it is determined that we attack the more sparsely populated West side of town, as the East side is overrun by what looks like frightened shoppers trying to lay in goods for the coming Apocalypse. There’s a palpable sense of desperation about it all.

12:20am: Arrive at Kohl’s on Evansville’s West side. Surprisingly, there is parking. We enter store and begin the rugby scrum that is shopping in a store with twice as many people in it than the Fire Marshall intended.

12:45am: My sisters decide on their purchases, and we get in line. It’s a line that stretches all the way around the store. There is remarkably little tension, as the West side of my hometown is populated by taciturn, German farming types who take things in stride.

1:45am: We pay for our goods, and head off to Target, North side. Again, most of the craziness is taking place on the East side, so we are avoiding the first wave.

1:55am: Arrive at Target. It’s not as crowded, as the first wave roared through a couple of hours ago. There are remnants of the carnage that took place, though. Store guards were dismantling a rather complex barrier/herding system. The workers all had eyes that spoke of defeat at the hands of the voracious mob. Shopping is unimpeded, and we wrap up quickly.

2:30am: After two successful runs, we decide to attack Eastland Mall in the heart of Ground Zero. Running on adrenaline and caffeine, we make our way across town.

2:50am: Arrive at Eastland Mall, and park on the extreme Northside of the parking lot for easy escape. Our targets are Old Navy and Bath & Body Works. We get in, get out, and minimize casualties.

3:40am: I start to get a little buzzy, and sit outside the store for a bit to rest. We head off to Bath & Body Works so my niece can pick up a couple of things.

3:50am: We arrive at the store in the middle of a phalanx of people. Though there are 8 check outs, it will take an hour to get out of there. My older sister and I adjourn to the Food Court to collapse at a table.

5:00am: We leave the Mall and head back. I don’t feel victorious or even elated. I just want to get some sleep.

5:20am: Finally get into bed after facing a grim horde of zombies shuffling along like nonagenarians.

11:00am: Inform sisters that if they want to do this again next year, they can GO BY THEMSELVES!

My Annual BCS Rant

2011-11-20T20:39:00.001-05:00

Every year since 1999, I’ve been looking on with disgust as a cartel of big colleges have conspired to take a lion’s share of the profits from college football television by way of the Bowl Championship Series. The NCAA awards 87 championships yearly. The ONLY sport that doesn’t have a sanctioned NCAA tournament or playoff is Division I Men’s Football.

Why? Money.

Specifically, the bowls. Bowls originally were concocted as a way to promote a certain area or industry. Thus, you had the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California as a way to promote Southern California tourism. The Orange Bowl promoted Florida Citrus in Miami. The Sugar Bowl promoted the sugar industry in New Orleans, and so on. They were exhibitions, and the winning team got bragging rights for a year and a free trip.

Then television got involved…

With television came big TV contracts to the best bowls. Big ratings meant big dollars, so the market took over and the best teams were gobbled up by the richest bowls. While it produced some very entertaining games, the “National Champion” was mostly a mythical appellation given to the team at the top of the polls at the end of the season. This created a lot of controversy, and a few times there were two “National Champions”.

In 1998, the BCS took over and granted a rotating bowl the #1 versus #2 team matchup. The winner was the BCS, and therefore the National Champion. While the outcome was more compelling, arriving at the #1 and #2 teams still relied on polls. Many classicists (myself included) felt the teams should settle in on the field, like EVERY OTHER NCAA SPORT.

Well, now it looks like the BCS is damned by their own success. For the first time in its short history, three teams from the same conference are ranked 1, 2, & 3. LSU is at the top, followed by Alabama and Arkansas. The SEC is almost certain to have one, if not both slots filled in the championship game in New Orleans. If I were a fan from the Big 10, Big East, Pac 12, ACC or Mountain West, I would be livid. We got to this point because several teams were upset in the past week. Even if LSU loses the SEC Championship against Georgia, they would still probably be going to the Championship. Why? Strength of schedule. They have defeated 3 teams in the Top 25, and their BCS standings (which are made of voodoo) would still rank them 1 or 2.

So, unless Arkansas upsets LSU in Death Valley next Friday, or Alabama gets blown out by Auburn in the Iron Bowl next Saturday, the SEC will be assured another BCS Championship. This isn’t good for the game. One conference dominating so thoroughly points out the deficiencies of the system. If LSU and Alabama were forced to win four straight games at the end of the year against motivated opponents, the odds of them getting upset go way up. This hasn’t been a problem for men’s basketball. March Madness has become a sports lover’s paradise each winter. The #1 team doesn’t always win, and it’s fun watching an underdog take the measure of an elite program.

There are signs the coalition is cracking. Earlier, there was a report that the BCS is considering cutting loose the bowls and just concentrating on the championship game. This is a warning shot across the bow of the bowls that they’re on there own to get the best teams, while the NCAA takes the big money in the championship game.

Greed created the BCS. Will greed destroy it, too?

JoePa’s Humiliating Exit

2011-11-09T20:43:00.001-05:00

By now everyone’s heard the news. In 2002, a Graduate Assistant to Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno witnessed former Defensive Coordinator, Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a ten-year-old boy in the shower room. The GA reported what he saw to Paterno, who reported it to the Office of the Athletic Director.

And that’s all.

He didn’t follow up. He didn’t investigate the incident himself. He didn’t go straight to the police. He fulfilled his legal obligation, but not his ethical obligation. As a result, an alleged pedophile had nine more years to prey on boys while using a Penn State legend as cover. There’s a lively debate going on in cyberspace about JoePa’s role in all this. Defenders say he had nothing to do with the allegations, and shouldn’t be tarred by association with Sandusky. Everyone else seems to think he needs to fired immediately.

At a press conference today, Paterno announced he is stepping down at the end of this season. He may not get the chance to finish the season, as the Penn State Board is meeting Friday to decide his fate. At 84, Paterno has more wins than anyone else in Major College Football history. With 46 seasons at the helm of the Nittany Lions, he is the Dean of football coaches. Unfortunately, his half-century of work will forever be tainted by the worst scandal in NCAA football history.

A little overly dramatic, perhaps? All the other scandals involved money: illegal benefits to recruits and players, point-shaving, etc. This involved the rape and sexual abuse of boys as young as 8. Sandusky ran a program that purported to help young boys in need. It appears he used his stature to single out vulnerable boys for his own sexual satisfaction. This occurred over the span of 15 years. Who knows how many boys have been affected. You’re telling me Paterno never heard any rumors about his friend and former player? Really?

More ominously, Sandusky retired in 1999 at the age of 58, still prime coaching age. Why would a coach suddenly retire at the height of his powers? Was he forced out? Was Paterno aware of the reasons? There are going to be many more uncomfortable questions on the way during the trial. Paterno’s proximity to Sandusky might drag him into the most unpleasant court situations in memory.

In 2005, the Penn State tried to get Paterno to retire. He resisted. Penn State Football was his life. At 78, he was already 13 years past normal retirement. Now at 84, JoePa is looking like something no one ever contemplated: a doddering old man who has lost touch with his program and the people around him. To his credit, his announcement was contrite and empathetic to the victims and their families. I have no doubt in my mind that he is sincere.

However, had he gone to police in 2002, many tragedies could have been avoided.

Qaddafi Redux

2011-11-05T11:18:00.001-04:00

After disappearing during the Siege of Tripoli, Muammar Qaddafi was pulled from a sewer hole in his hometown of Sirte, tortured and killed. This ended his reign of brutality, and completed the revolution started by NLA rebels to take back the North African country. Instead of fleeing the country and living his last days in a friendly country like Saudi Arabia (like Idi Amin), he chose to stay and fight. Perhaps he was nurturing the delusion that he could weather this storm and return on top. However, like Saddam Hussein, the Ceausescus in Romania and Mussolini in Italy, he was publically executed. His body was paraded and defiled: the ultimate humiliation.

The death of the charismatic leader marks a sea change in the power in the Middle East. The power is now clearly flowing from despots and dictators to the people. The Arab Spring continues unabated. This is momentous, because it flies squarely in the face of the two main threads of conventional wisdom about the Middle East.

The first narrative was written by American and European hegemony and power struggles in the 20th Century. Since most of the area was nomadic, foreign powers sought to draw artificial borders and install nomadic families friendly to the plunder of their natural resources. (See: House of Saud) While effective in delivering oil to an energy-starved world, it exacerbated tribal animosities and encouraged the behavior of hardline despots who kept the peace – even if it meant brutalizing their people. This fomented the rise of radical Islam, and is partly responsible for the wave of terrorism we’ve been experiencing for the past 70 years. (Western support of the Jewish state also contributes.)

This led to the second narrative, written by Islamic militants, who rebelled against the despots. The fall of the Shah of Iran led to the Iran Hostage situation, and it’s been downhill from there. Their position was the West’s unwavering support for Israel and oil-friendly dictators was responsible for the misery of the people in the region. While they have a point, their solution was to recreate the Caliphate. The notion that you could convert 2 billion Christians to Islam is laughable. Their energies seem wasted on a delusion, rather than helping the people.

Enter the third narrative: the people, fed up with the previous two narratives, decide to take matters into their own hands. Based in the civil disobedience of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the Arab Spring began toppling dictators all across the region. The people grant the power to be governed, and this is a grand reaffirmation of it. Qaddafi is the final domino in Northern Africa to fall.

The movement looks far from over, as Bashir al-Assad appears to be the next target in Syria. Iran is vulnerable, as the educated youth there are bridling against the mullahs who have replaced the Shah in shackling the people. With the U.S. pulling out of Iraq, and the end game of Afghanistan in view, the last vestiges of the old narratives are falling away. In Riyadh, the House of Saud looks on in alarm.

Qaddafi’s great dream was to unite the Arab World (with him as leader, of course). How ironic that his death could signal his dream coming true, though not the way he envisioned it. Instead of an Iron Ruler leading the people of the Arab world, the people have decided to take back their own destinies. Beholden to no man, it looks like the Middle East is ready to join the rest of the world in the 21st Century.

The Trouble With Mitt

2011-10-30T21:50:00.001-04:00

Let’s say you are an independent voter who is disappointed in President Obama. Naturally, you turn to the GOP to find someone to vote for. Without mentioning any names, your choices are:

--A Representative who hasn’t written any meaningful legislation in her time in Congress. Moreover, she’s prone to uttering more bizarre gaffes than Sarah Palin on 3 Demerol and a double Scotch.

--A former pizza executive with NO political experience and a former board member of the Federal Reserve. His 9-9-9 tax plan has been readily accepted by the Tea Party, more for it’s German connotations than anything. (Nein! Nein! Nein!) He also has a bad habit of speaking his mind, even when the voices in his head are whispering some truly weird things.

--A disgraced former Speaker of the House who is best known for losing a shutdown battle with President Clinton. Also, he tends to divorce wives who are in their sick beds recovering from cancer.

--A successful businessman and former Governor of one of the bluest states in the nation. He’s signed into law health care reform that Obama modeled his Health Care package on, and he appears to be socially liberal. Oh, and he’s a dedicated father and respected elder in his church.

We have a winner, no? No matter what kind of conservatism you preach, Mitt Romney has the bases covered. He also has a huge advantage in fundraising and organization. So why is he neck-and-neck with Herman Cain in the polls right now?

Two words: Tea Party. They don’t trust Mitt, because he has shown a regular habit of crossing over to appeal to moderate voters. In any other reality, this would be a good thing. But to the “take no prisoners” Tea Party, compromise is capitulation. The GOP has become so polarized, that the only candidate that has a ghost of a chance to attract swing voters and defeat Obama is the least palatable.

It appears that the base is stress testing any other candidate to see if they have legs. First it was Michelle Bachmann, who won the Iowa Straw Poll. Well, win is a loaded word. She bought the Iowa Straw Poll. She bribed people to vote for her by busing them in and giving them a concert afterwards from country superstar Randy Travis. She got a bounce from that, which she squandered over the Summer.

Now it’s Herman Cain’s turn. The former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza is riding high on his form of that old GOP favorite: the Flat Tax. On it’s face, his 9-9-9 Plan sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, some clever folks did the math, and unless it was supplemented with a Carbon Tax or VAT (Value-Added Tax) similar to Europe, it wouldn’t come close to raising enough revenue. Add to that Cain’s annoying habit of changing positions mid-interview, and we’ve got a lightweight that makes Obama’s pre-election résumé look like Henry Clay’s.

There is now talk that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will be getting his tires kicked. While Gingrich is a smart man, he’s got some personal baggage that might make the Evangelicals in the party wince. His marriage record is nothing to write home about. He also doesn’t seem to resonate with the Tea Party, since he is a Washington insider.

While all these show horses are paraded out in front of the Republican base, there sits Mitt Romney, patiently waiting his turn. Mitt’s got some baggage as well to deal with. He’s an elder in the Mormon Church – a church Evangelicals don’t recognize. He created Romneycare, which is the precursor to Obamacare. He has a tendency to flip-flop on issues, such as a woman’s right to choose. He’s also the wealthiest man running, and seems somewhat disconnected to the plight of the jobless. As a corporate specialist who made his money buying up, then selling off parts of a business for great profit, he’s not necessarily a job creator.

It will be interesting to see how the GOP primaries play out. Will Romney use his advantages to cruise to victory, or will he have to fight a bloody battle in state after state? Will there be insurrection and backroom dealing at the convention in Tampa? With an incumbent President with an impressive war chest and no primary challenge on the horizon, whoever wins the GOP nomination will need to mend any rifts in the party quickly—or be steamrolled. The Tea Party won’t make it easy. Will Mitt have it takes to lead the party to the White House?

I don’t know. But it certainly will be interesting to watch!

The Beautiful Futility of Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-16T21:38:00.001-04:00

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. --Mahatma Gandhi

The Occupy Wall Street movement started slowly, with barely any press coverage. Then it grew steadily, receiving mocking comments from the likes of Fox News and conservatives. Then it spread to other cities and even around the world. Authorities don’t really know what to do about this peaceful demonstration drawing attention to the capricious greed that helped blow up the world economy back in 2008. Like the Tea Party, OWS appears to have legs. It isn’t going away. Unlike the Tea Party, it doesn’t have the backing of shadowy figures like the Koch Brothers. It’s a more organic uprising that’s more articulate than the sputtering inchoate rage demonstrated by the Tea Party.

To all those telling “those dirty, damn hippies” to be happy with what they’ve got, let me remind you that the right of assembly is encoded into the Bill of Rights. Dissent is patriotic. In fact, if the government fails to serve the people, then they have the right to dissolve it and start from scratch. It is a Jeffersonian ideal to keep power from concentrating into the hands of a few plutocrats – which is what OWS is fighting against. The Founding Fathers are on the side of those protesting in Zuccoti Park.

So why do I think this natural, astroturf-free movement is futile? Well, they’re demonstrating in the wrong place. They should be concentrating on Washington, D.C. and all the fifty state capitols. That’s where the power lies, and that’s where the action happens. They are only a mild inconvenience to the Gordon Geckos in their smoked-glass offices, lighting cigars with $100 bills. Congress has been remarkably quiet about all this, since they don’t want the sweet, sweet money gusher they get from lobbyists to dry up. They don’t want to face another round of term limits talk, or Constitutional Amendments stripping personhood from corporations. They don’t want to explain why they’ve been talking jobs, and have been passing bills limiting a woman’s right to choose.

The system is broken, and nothing will happen without pressure from a groundswell of concerned citizens. In a sense, we’ve always had term limits. It’s called “throw the bums out”. It can be amazingly effective. If they do the old-fashioned work of grassroots political organizing, they can change the culture in Washington. Our democracy doesn’t ask a lot of its citizens. We are expected to vote. We are expected to serve on jury duty, if called. And, that’s pretty much it. Getting involved in the machinations of politics means climbing out of our carefully crafted bubbles and doing the hard work of getting the message out. The OWS folks have taken an incredible first step.

Can they organize into a counterbalance to the Tea Party? That remains to be seen.

You Know What Grinds My Gears?

2011-09-18T16:05:00.001-04:00

* People who don’t use turn signals – This used to be mostly a Southern phenomenon, but I see cars with plates from up North do it as well. Look, it’s communication with the cars behind you. Turning the signal on as you are making the turn, or God forbid, after you made the turn does no one any good. Turn signals: use them early and often.

* People who brake through a right turn – Is there some sort of state law I don’t know about that mandates you come to a complete stop before making a right turn? We’ve been through this before, folks. You brake before the turn. Once you’ve slowed the vehicle down to a controllable speed, enter the turn and release the brake. You take advantage of centripetal force, pushing the car around the corner. Thus, you save gas, as well as the poor bastard who was speeding behind you. If you didn’t understand any of that, please turn in your license and report to the remedial driving course “Me Drive Gooder One Day”.

* Lazy dog owners in apartment complexes – Where I live, we have a leash law and a curb law. In other words, keep your hyperactive fuzz rockets on a leash, and pick up their poop. You probably aren’t surprised at how many fetuses, on their own for the first time, can’t seem to grasp these facts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been menaced by a four-legged tough guy who has claimed the entire building as his territory. Also, there’s a large courtyard in front of my apartment. And you guessed it, it’s covered in poop. The front office makes withering threats about fines and evictions for persistent violators, but it seems they like the monthly rent of these bad pet owners more than the health and safety of its tenants without pets. Also, what’s up with these little girls with dogs as big as horses? Safety? You live in a one-bedroom apartment in the middle of a sea of them. Unless you saddle them up and ride them, the safety factor is pretty much lost.

* Left lane FAST; Right lane SLOW – What’s the point of four-lane roads if Ma & Pa Kettle are going to hang out in the passing lane doing 25? Yes, I appreciate you risking your life during the Spanish-American War, Pops. But get that land barge over into the right lane and let us Johnny Rockets whiz past! Some of us would like to get where we’re going before mandatory retirement kicks in.

* Stupid Grocery Store Tricks – A grocery chain in my area is advertising $5 off when you buy 10 items seemingly chosen at random. Sounds good, right? Well what if those specific items are ones you rarely buy? I wound up buying 8 energy drinks for a buck just to get the two products I was really interested in. While I saved money on the items I wanted, and actually came out ahead, I’m stuck with 8 energy drinks that I’ll choke down over the course of a month. Extreme couponing my ass. At least with coupons you maintain a small measure of dignity. I didn’t used to have to race around with a cart full of dodgy items just to get a deal on paper towels or razor blades.

Hate expelled. Back to regular programming…

Ten Years After

2011-09-11T16:39:00.001-04:00

Unless you are drowning yourself in an orgy of NFL Football, you can’t escape the fact that today marks the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the War of 1812. Memorials have been going on all day around the country, and especially in the three areas that were directly affected: the Pentagon, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and Ground Zero in New York.

9/11 is one of those defining moments in history that everyone vividly remembers, like the assassination of President Kennedy. I was working at the radio station, when I heard news of the first plane striking the World Trade Center. At the time, no one was sure if it was an accident, since planes striking buildings in New York isn’t unusual. We all crowded into the newsroom just in time to see the second plane strike. At that point, it became clear that this was an organized attack. Later, we got news that a plane had struck the Pentagon, and another crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

What was happening? Were there more planes coming? It was the one time in my life I didn’t know what was going on, and I felt really scared that World War III was starting. Later, as the news trickled in, the terrorist plot slowly unfolded. al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden struck directly at the heart of America, hoping that it would crumble under the weight of its own decadence. Like all fanatics challenging America in its history, he severely underestimated the resolve and power of the sleeping giant. Very soon thereafter, we bombed Afghanistan and drove al-Qaeda from their safe haven into the mountains on the border of Pakistan. The world snapped into action, tracking down high-profile member after high-profile member of al-Qaeda, until the ultimate prize was caught last Spring.

After ten years on the run, a Navy Seal squadron made a night time raid on a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden. Our shadowy tormentor for nearly a decade had been living like a recluse in a self-made prison just 40 miles from the Pakistani capitol. With the head and spiritual leader of al-Qaeda dead, the organization is on the run, and a shadow of its former self.

But it isn’t dead yet. In fact, even if every main member of al-Qaeda goes the way of bin Laden, the legacy of 9/11 will continue to haunt us. An argument could be made that bin Laden accomplished what he set out to do against America. He wanted to change our lives forever, and he did. As a side-effect of his terror, America embraced torture and atrocities like Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, where several suspects still languish in indefinite incarceration. By not extending Constitutional protections to even the worst offenders, we abandon the principles that our country was founded on.

In adopting heavy-handed measures like the Patriot Act, we cede some of our freedoms for the illusion of perfect security. While it used to be unthinkable that we would allow government agencies to spy on its own people, we roll over under the aegis of “national security”. It is as if we had forgotten that what made our country great was not our military might, but our unwavering commitment to the rule of law. Our dedication to Constitutional principles has created the longest lasting democracy in human history. What frightened the likes of bin Laden wasn’t our military, which wound up killing him and many of his lieutenants, but our dedication to freedom. We don’t need Sharia Law to maintain a civil society. We don’t need to drape our women to shield men from their own sexuality. We choose. We decide. We live life as we see fit. Unshackled and free, the United States demonstrates its power for all to see: culturally, financially, scientifically, etc.

So, yes, we should mourn the lives lost on that fateful day. However, we should also take a moment to reflect on the consequences: two wars in faraway lands, thousands of casualties, and restrictions on our liberties. We shouldn’t expect that another 9/11 won’t happen.

But rather, how would we react if one did?

Embracing the Derp

2011-08-30T20:48:00.001-04:00

Michelle Bachmann (l) & Rick Perry (r) passing an important litmus test

Watching the GOP race for the Presidential nomination has been very instructive about how 2012 will play out. Crazy is in, and moderation refers to the 32 oz. Big Gulp instead of the 64 oz. Big Gulp. In the Iowa Straw Poll, Michelle Bachmann won in a squeaker over perennial contrarian and sometimes libertarian Ron Paul. The fact that Bachmann bribed her voters with a concert from Country superstar Randy Travis is immaterial, since bribery is not only legal at the informal pre-vote, but expected. Who knew Iowa rivaled Central America for such light-hearted corruption?

The vote may not have counted, but it did affect the race. Former Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty, dropped out of the race altogether after a disappointing finish. Another big story was the entrance of Texas Governor Rick Perry into the fray. Despite announcing in South Carolina while all the fun was taking place in Iowa, Perry is now polling as the frontrunner. One of the interesting side effects of the influence of the Tea Party in the GOP race is the marginalization of more moderate candidates like Mitt Romney and former Utah Governor (and Obama’s Ambassador to China) John Huntsman. The old conventional wisdom is to run to the right in the primaries, then dive to the middle during the election. What if the run to the right takes you so far right that it’s literally a marathon to get back to the center? What if your backers don’t want you to move even a millimeter to the left during the election? We are about to find out.

Michelle Bachmann is the early darling of the right. She is reliably conservative, and she seems to have a knack for rallying grassroots efforts and clever PR to sell her brand. It’s troubling that she hasn’t passed any meaningful laws in the House, but it doesn’t seem to matter to her supporters. She also has the habit of saying outrageous things while campaigning. Her most recent gaffes included saying she was from Waterloo, Iowa just like her hero John Wayne. The problem is, John Wayne was born in Winterset. John Wayne Gacy, the executed serial killer, spent time in Waterloo. When that fact was pointed out, she demurred. She also wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday on August 16th. August 16th was the day Elvis died in 1977…on the toilet…with enough drugs in him to flatten a rhino. Not exactly the mental image one wants to portray when running for the White House.

Rick Perry has his own recent history of “interesting” behavior. In 2009, Perry intimated that Texas entered the Union in 1845, and could leave any time it wanted. This was interpreted as calling for the secession of Texas from the Union. Apparently Governor Perry slept through U.S. History class, because Texas already tried that a while back, and it didn’t turn out so good. In response to the exceptional wildfires and drought plaguing his state, he called for three days of prayer for rain in Texas. By late July, about 3/4 of the state was in severe drought. Prayer was literally the least Perry could have done. More recently, he’s questioned the Theory of Evolution and Global Warming. This prompted John Huntsman to decry the anti-science radical wing of the Republican Party. Not believing in Evolution is like not believing in gravity. It is the best studied part of science and biology, with a mountain of research and data. As far as not believing in Global Warming, there’s this little thing called a thermometer. They’ve got them all over the planet. Averaging the temperature over the past 160 years, they find the average temperature going up the last 30 years. Our globe is getting warmer, thus Global Warming.

In both candidates there is a disturbing trend of stubborn ignorance. Not believing in facts because of the political implications doesn’t make you a tough warrior. It makes you an idiot. There are defensible conservative positions to hold like on the economy, yet the Tea Partiers want to take a once noble and principled party and drive it over a cliff. Republican party insiders are publically applauding candidates like Bachmann and Perry, while secretly searching for a miracle candidate to come out of nowhere to lead the GOP to victory in 2012. After seeing the first round play out in Iowa, I have two words for the Republicans.

Good luck.

Exit the Warrior

2011-08-27T22:42:00.001-04:00

Last week, Steve Jobs delivered his resignation letter as CEO of the company he co-founded, Apple. It’s typical Jobs:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.
Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve

(Source)

Direct, to the point, and forever optimistic about Apple, Jobs bid farewell to the day-to-day operations of (for a time) the biggest company in the world. He’s not totally stepping away, as he’s now the Chairman of the Board. However, it’s largely viewed as an emeritus position. He’s now the official figurehead of the company, even though his spirit still permeates everything that goes on at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. Just as Bill Gates became “Chief Software Architect” at Microsoft at the end of his tenure, it’s largely viewed as a graceful transition away from the venture he envisioned with Steve Wozniak in his garage back in the 1970s.

Ostensibly, Jobs is doing this to concentrate on his deteriorating health after receiving a liver transplant in 2009. He’s been battling a rare form of pancreatic cancer since 2004. While pancreatic cancer survivors have about a 3% survival rate after 2 years, Jobs has lasted 7.

It’s premature to write his obituary, since he’s still with us. However, a recent photo released by the site TMZ.com (seen above) shows a frail, skeletal Jobs. While one always wishes the best to those ailing with cancer, this isn’t looking too good. I can only wish him the best, and hope he isn’t suffering too much. Death by inches is a cruel fate to one as vibrant as Jobs.

The natural question is: can Apple survive life after Jobs? Tim Cook has been named CEO of Apple, and he has been Jobs’ right hand man. A genius at logistics, Cook helped lock up vendors for the iPhone and the iPad, and is seeing through the product currently in the pipeline. What will Apple do for the next round of new gear?

The genius of Steve Jobs was threefold. First, he was a visionary who saw the future of computing and stayed ahead of the wave. Second, he integrated several seemingly unrelated technologies into a cohesive lifestyle with flair and an eye for design. Apple products not only worked, they were elegantly engineered, and looked incredible. Third, he was a master of public relations. Portable music players existed before the iPod, but Jobs made you WANT the iPod. Smartphones existed before the iPhone, but Jobs created the buzz that made them the most successful smartphone ever. No one at Apple can match him as a force majeure in technology. Perhaps no one on the planet can match him.

Apple’s true future will be told when Jobs is no longer around. Microsoft could cruise along on inertia without Gates. They are a software company with 90% market share. Apple is largely a hardware company with dozens of competitors across several product lines. Fall behind in music players and Creative or Sony steps up to challenge. Botch the next iPhone and Nokia or Motorola gets an advantage. Jobs has navigated Apple through very choppy waters while juggling a bowling ball, a ping pong ball, and an egg.

Apple’s concerns can wait. Right now, we should thank one of the lions of the Silicon Valley Golden Age for his contributions to our daily lives. You don’t have to be an Apple user to appreciate how Steve Jobs put his design fingerprints all over the previously sterile, clunky world of personal computing. Beige boxes? Why? Here’s a Bondi Blue iMac that looks like a television from the 1950s. Cassette Walkman? How about every song ever recorded at our fingertips in glorious digital clarity? Oh, and it’s the size of a pack of gum, too!

Godspeed, Steve Jobs. You are truly an American success story.

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-07-30T15:30:00.001-04:00

Pity John Boehner. An old-school politician, Boehner is trying to work a deal with a clever President of the opposite party, a Senate controlled by Democrats, and his own party, which is dominated by Tea Party types that believe compromise is worse than death.

In what usually amounts to a routine vote to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, raising the debt ceiling is now high political drama, with the country’s credit rating at stake. Instead of just going ahead and passing the darn thing, the Republicans in the House want to get everything they want and promised their rabid constituents, consequences be damned. They don’t want to raise one penny in taxes, even though most Americans are prepared for just that. They want large cuts in social spending and entitlements, and when they cause a wave of outrage, they want to blame Obama for the whole mess.

Obama and the Democrats are not blameless in this either. They don’t want any cuts in entitlements, even though that issue must be addressed soon. They only want to raise taxes on the wealthy, but the math doesn’t add up. Everyone will have to face a tax hike if we are serious about addressing the debt problem.

And that’s the key word – serious. Republicans are mute about the debt when one of them is in the White House. Over the past thirty years, Republican Presidents were in office when a majority of the debt was rung up. Bill Clinton submitted a balanced budget, and left the country with a surplus. George W. Bush promptly gave it all away, and 5 trillion more. The GOP also seems to have amnesia about when they tried to shut down the government under Clinton. The public blamed them, and they had to back down. Who is one of Obama’s chief advisors during all this? That’s right, Bill Clinton. He’s got the blueprint for triangulation down, and he’s handing it to Obama.

A cynic might say that the U.S. government is set up to fail. An optimist might say it gives ample opportunity to step up and make a grand compromise that saves the country while irritating the extremes of both sides. The problem is only one party has enough moderates to make compromise work. The GOP is so thoroughly pulled to the right, that moderates have been driven from the party. I wonder if Nixon or Eisenhower would recognize today’s Republican party. Even Barry Goldwater clashed with the right of his party at the end of his career over gay rights.

A good sign is they are still trying. They are working through the weekend, with Tuesday as a deadline. That’s when the government theoretically runs out of money. The right-wing and Tea Partiers are betting that nothing much will happen on Tuesday if a deal isn’t reached. They may be correct. However, we are drifting into unchartered territory if we do default. The effects might not be immediate. But they will manifest themselves, and they might not be very pleasant. Like, say a New Depression that makes the other one seem like a brief economic blip.

Timed around election season…

My Semi-Annual Driving Rant

2011-07-17T22:04:00.001-04:00

This past week, I’ve been thinking about that report that said that 1 in 4 drivers in America couldn’t pass a driver’s test if you administered one to them today. Twenty-five percent of the drivers you see out on the roads are incompetent. That means you could sit at a stoplight and count the cars passing. Every fourth driver is a cellphone-talking, makeup-applying, Big Mac-eating, radio-fumbling, child-chastising terror. And yet we renew their licenses and encourage them to drive more, not less. Some of my favorites were on display this past week.

Ma & Pa Kettle – You know the type. They have license plates from rural counties. They tend to be older. They don’t often make it to the “big city”. Four lane roads confuse them. They constantly drive like they are looking for an address…in the left lane…during rush hour. They magically seem to always wind up in front of you. You could be driving at 4:00am, and there they are – putting along at 25 mph. I’ve often turned onto roads I had no intention of traveling on just to get away from them. Protip: get one of them thar fancy GPS Units with the Gomer Pyle voice option. “Well Goooollllllllly! I reckon y’all best fix to prepare to begin to start thinking about making a right turn on Limestone, cuz it’s coming up right quick-like!”

The Functionally Illiterate – We all see these pinheads. My favorites are the ones who don’t read traffic signs like “No Turn on Red”. As a frequent pedestrian around the university where I work, it’s always a treat to dodge a Mustang trying to whip around the corner when the light has been red for a full ten seconds. I love it when they get caught. “But Officer, I didn’t SEE the No Turn on Red sign!” Never mind it’s posted twice on both sides of the light. Never mind there were pedestrians IN THE FRIGGING CROSSWALK. This is also the group that hasn’t learned the fine art of going to the next exit and turning around if they miss their turn. Nope. They slam on their brakes and back up on the highway. Or, they make right hand turns from left hand lanes. If there ever was a universal dick move in a car, this is it.

The Distracted Driver – Recently, nearly every exit on I-75 around Lexington was shut down due to heavy rains, accidents and rubbernecking. I never understood rubbernecking. Unless there are heads rolling around the Interstate, it’s just a fender-bender. You’ve seen dozens of them. You’ll see dozens more before you’re through. Heck, you may even be IN a few of them. Also, smartphones have become a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is nice to look something up right there, rather than wait until you get to a computer. On the other, do you really need to be updating your Facebook status at 75 mph? I love it when I’m at a red light. The light turns green and nothing happens for several seconds. The driver at the front has their head down, and when I give them a courtesy tap on the horn to remind them, I get flipped off. Oh right, I’M the bad guy here. I don’t want a gun for my car. I want a giant pinball plunger mounted to the front of my car. That way, when Twitchy McShinyObject in front of me dawdles a tad too long, I just propel their vehicle several city blocks ahead – and hope I don’t TILT.

Driving always makes me nervous because of all the pinheads. If you are a courteous, thoughtful driver who doesn’t want to die in a car, thank you. You are part of the 75% of drivers who could pass a test. Let’s keep an eye on one another, and mercilessly mock the nimrods who use the roads as their own personal Hot Wheels track.

Una nación bajo Dios

2011-07-04T20:54:00.001-04:00

Los Estados Unidos tiene un problema con la inmigración ilegal. De acuerdo con un informe en el New York Times, 11.2 millones de inmigrantes ilegales que viven en los Estados Unidos. Se estima que representan el cinco por ciento de la fuerza laboral en Estados Unidos.

The United States has a problem with illegal immigration. According to a report in the New York Times, 11.2 million illegal immigrants are living in the U.S. They make up an estimated 5% of the U.S. workforce.

Muchos estados han respondido promulgando leyes duras contra la inmigración ilegal. Georgia y Arizona han aprobado leyes notable restringir los derechos de los inmigrantes ilegales. Una consecuencia inesperada de Georgia ha sido la incapacidad de los agricultores para encontrar suficientes trabajadores para la cosecha de los cultivos. Como resultado, los cultivos se están pudriendo en los campos, le cuesta al estado millones de dólares.

Many states have responded by passing tough laws against illegal immigration. Georgia and Arizona have passed notable laws restricting the rights of illegal immigrants. An unintended consequence in Georgia has been the inability of farmers to hire sufficient workers to bring in the crops. As a result, millions of dollars of crops are rotting in the fields.

Tal vez ha llegado el momento de bajar el tono de la retórica sobre la inmigración ilegal, y tener un debate honesto sobre la política de inmigración. En el año 2050, los hispanos serán la minoría más grande en los Estados Unidos. Se están convirtiendo rápidamente en una fuerza política, y su voz se escuchará. Con las tasas de natalidad nativa cercana a cero, la inmigración mantendrá a Estados Unidos cada vez mayor. Esto nos ayudará a evitar los accidentes de nacimiento que Japón y Europa están experimentando.’

Perhaps it’s time to tone down the rhetoric over illegal immigration, and have an honest debate. By the year 2050, Hispanics will make up the largest minority in the United States. They are fast becoming a political force, and their voices will be heard. With native birth rates near zero, immigration will keep America growing. This will help us avoid the “birth crashes” that Japan and Europe are experiencing.

Tiene que haber un término medio entre las fronteras no reguladas y la regulación extrema y unenforcable. Debemos tener una vía hacia la ciudadanía para aquellos que ya están aquí. Al mismo tiempo, tenemos que trabajar con nuestros vecinos del sur para aumentar las oportunidades en sus países. También hay que abordar los crecientes visas de trabajo para ayudar a los agricultores cubrir los puestos de trabajo que los estadounidenses no parecen querer.

There has to be a middle ground between unregulated borders and extreme and unenforceable regulations. We have to create a pathway to citizenship for those who are already here. At the same time, we have to work with our neighbors to the South to increase opportunities in their countries. We also have to increase worker visas so farmers can fill the jobs Americans don’t seem to want.

Nos guste o no, los inmigrantes ilegales ocupan un papel vital en nuestra economía. Podemos abordar estas cuestiones como los adultos, o podemos seguir jugando a la política con ellos, como en Arizona y Georgia. Si optamos por esta última, podemos esperar que las consecuencias no intencionales de los melocotones más podridos y las cebollas en un campo en Georgia.

Like it or not, illegal immigrants occupy a vital role in our economy. We can address these issues like adults, or we can continue to play politics with them like in Arizona and Georgia. If we choose the latter, we can expect more unintended consequences than rotten peaches and onions in a field in Georgia.

Happy 4th of July!

(Apologies for the crappy Spanish. It’s been twenty years since I practiced la lengua. Three cheers for Google Translate!)

Another Domino Falls

2011-06-28T21:07:00.001-04:00

Late last Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law permitting same-sex marriage in the Empire State. It takes effect 30 days after signing, which means same-sex couples can begin marrying starting July 24th. With this passage, New York joins Iowa, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont as states that allow same-sex marriage. It’s the largest state thus far to let gays marry, and it’s symbolism is sure to encourage activists in other states.

In what’s turning into a long, hard slog for same-sex marriage activists, they are losing battles, but winning wars. They have been defeated in local elections and referendums, but have slowly gained 10% of the U.S. states into allowing same-sex marriage. At what point does the critical mass get large enough to force a wholesale re-examination of marriage in America? California is currently locked in a legal battle over Prop 8. If they lose, not only do gays get to marry in California, it would call the entire referendum process into question.

I have advocated for gay marriage before, and been called into question for it. The fact of the matter for me is the question of privacy and dignity. Does any elected body have the right to tell two non-related citizens in good standing whether or not they can marry? Here’s an example:

Say there are three couples:

1. XY (male/female)

2. XX (female/female)

3. YY (male/male)

All three are essentially identical, save for their genders. They all make about the same money. They all are citizens in good standing. They all contribute back to society in similar ways. So why is the first couple the only ones that can legally marry? What is different, save for their heterogeneity, from the other two couples? According to the 14th Amendment, absolutely nothing.

It’s odd, isn’t it, that gay marriage didn’t start getting traction until conservatives and libertarians started pointing out the inconvenient Constitutional facts about excluding gays from a legal agreement? Setting aside the “ick” factor, giving all the citizens the same rights is the very principle this country was founded on. If Prop 8 is overturned in California, about 24% of the U.S. population would have same-sex marriage legal. Other states have granted civil unions, which confer many of the same rights as marriage. However, they are seen as not equal to outright marriage.

Opponents carry the same old battleflags into the fray. It isn’t moral in the eyes of the Creator. It would lead to a “slippery slope” that leads to bestiality and polygamy. THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Unfortunately for them, the younger generations are more accepting of things like same-sex marriage. I read a study that said gay couples were as good at raising adopted kids as straight couples. And with heterosexuals’ batting average on divorce hovering around 50%, they really don’t have a moral leg to stand on.

I think we’re coming to a reckoning on same-sex marriage. Eventually, the Supreme Court will have to weigh in on whether states have a right to discriminate against citizens for arbitrary reasons. Either the 14th Amendment means equal protection under the law, or it doesn’t. I have a feeling that with more and more gay people coming out and declaring they aren’t three-headed monsters, public opinion will turn toward acceptance and apathy.

And apathy is probably the best response in the end. Bill and Ted got married? Uh…great. (yawn)

Running Away From Obama

2011-06-12T20:20:00.001-04:00

Normally, by this time in the Presidential Election cycle, several opposing candidates will have declared their intention to run against a first term President seeking re-election. The odd thing about this time around isn’t who has declared, but who has dropped out.

Mike Huckabee won’t run, leaving social conservatives without a clear choice. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana also won’t throw his hat in the ring, leaving fiscal conservatives without a clear choice. Of those possible contenders, only Sarah Palin has big enough name recognition to mount a serious national challenge. Unfortunately, Sarah’s negative poll numbers means she would get clobbered by Obama.

Newt Gingrich’s campaign is imploding before our very eyes, as he took a long cruise with his wife without apparently telling his staffers. Several quit in protest. Newt is now trying to salvage a campaign in flames before we even make it to the 4th of July. So who’s left for the GOP to run against a popular, charismatic President who fundraises like a bandit?

Businessman Herman Cain has been enjoying good polling and contacts with the base. His rags-to-riches story is one that compares favorably to Obama. He’s reliably conservative, both socially and fiscally. He also has some negatives. He’s never held elective office. He ran for the Senate in 2004, but lost. He remains a long shot.

Mitt Romney once again throws his hat into the ring. A successful businessman and Governor of a blue state (Massachusetts), Romney knows how to balance a budget and work with Democrats. Unfortunately, that’s precisely the candidate today’s “Take No Prisoners” GOP absolutely hates. He’s also a Mormon, which many social conservatives consider heretical. Romney also wants the gig really, REALLY badly. That kind of ambition smells like desperation. The base want reassurances that he won’t flip-flop in the face of mounting pressure. That’s not something he can promise. As it has been pointed out before, “Obamacare” bears a striking resemblance to the health care reforms Romney pioneered during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts. Awkward…

Former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota looks to be the current frontrunner for the nomination. Who? Exactly. The problem with Pawlenty is no one is really sure what he stands for. As a Northerner, he faces extra scrutiny from the GOP’s power base in the South and Sun Belt. Now being a Northerner without a clear platform doesn’t disqualify a candidate (see: Obama, Barack). However, if you don’t have charisma or the ability to fire up the base, you’re done for (see: Dukakis, Michael).

So who will emerge as the candidate that has the power to take down the man who killed Osama bin Laden? We won’t really know until election season kicks up in earnest after the first of the year. We may not even know until the Summer of 2012 when the GOP finally decides during the convention. Whoever they choose, they will have their hands full against a sitting President with a truckload of campaign money.

Can Soccer Finally Break Through?

2011-05-31T21:00:00.001-04:00

Last weekend marked the end of the Champions League tournament in Europe. In an exciting match, Barcelona defeated Manchester United 3-1 to claim their 2nd title in three years. It’s like the Superbowl, World Series, and March Madness all rolled up into one. Billions of soccer fans tuned in. I did too, since I now have Fox Sports Soccer channel on HD cable.

I began watching soccer in earnest in January when I discovered this hidden gem in my channel lineup. FSC mainly covers European Soccer Leagues: the English Premiere League, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue One. America’s Major League Soccer gets coverage, too. However, since it’s just now gaining a foothold in America, coverage is scant. We get two games a week during play, and that’s usually late West Coast games.

When I started, it was mostly as a sociological experiment. I wasn’t really impressed with the athleticism. Growing up on American sports, I prefer the physicality of American Football and Ice Hockey; the grace and teamwork of basketball; the history and strategy of baseball. I watched to see what the worldwide fuss was all about. Soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world, with billions of rabid fans. What would drive them mad about a bunch of blokes kicking a ball around?

I played some soccer in my younger days. Because of my unfortunate build (short & stocky), I was relegated to fullback. Being on defense convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for this game. Now, I can see the strategy and athleticism required. Soccer players run pretty much non-stop for 90+ minutes. It takes a marathoner’s fitness, and a ballet dancer’s grace to move a ball around using only your feet, legs and head.

Last year’s World Cup revived interest in soccer here in the States. MLS is expanding, with “expansion” franchises in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver. I say expanding, though all three team names are classics from the old NASL days of the 70s and 80s. They’ve even imported big names in their waning days: Thierry Henry in New York, and David Beckham in Los Angeles. The perennial question arises again: can soccer finally break through here in the USA?

Maybe. This time stands a better shot thanks to changing demographics. Hispanics are set to take over as the dominant minority in the next couple of decades, and they are mad for soccer. The league is expanding at a more cautious rate than last time, and fan interest is steady, if still a bit unimpressive. But with 300 million people, and a season strategically placed in between basketball and football, soccer might capture the Summer crowds that used to pile into baseball parks.

Another problem is talent. The MLS has a lack of homegrown talent to inspire more young athletes to choose soccer over more established sports. Our best players tend to play in foreign leagues. Landon Donovan is our most popular American player, and he’s not getting any younger. Our surprise showing at last year’s World Cup makes one optimistic for improvement. Our M.O. is that we lack style and polish, but are extremely fit. Finding a Messi, Rooney or Ronaldo here in America would signal a turning point.

Football and basketball still reign supreme here in America. But with the growth of MLS, maybe soccer will join the ranks of most popular American pastimes.

Another One Bites the Dust

2011-05-30T23:14:00.003-04:00

Earlier today, Coach Jim Tressel of Ohio State turned in his resignation after myriad allegations of NCAA rules violations surfaced. Thus ends a decade of excellence on the football field, and shady dealings off of it. Those in the know always suspected The Ohio State University turned a blind eye to rule violations. Several Buckeye players have been arrested over the years, yet mysteriously were allowed to play in big games.

The latest allegations involved used car dealers and players driving around campus in cars they got in exchange for items like championship rings and whatnot. The sad thing isn’t the corruption, it’s how petty it all seems. Many OSU grads go on to lucrative careers in the NFL. You can afford all the cars you want when you sign a multi-million dollar contract. Driving around in a used Dodge Charger appears childish and thuggish.

But the charges that got Tressel appeared earlier. An attorney alerted Tressel via email that 5 of his players were apparently selling belongings to a local tattoo artist who allegedly traffics marijuana. Why would they do that, huh? Anyway, instead of forwarding the information to OSU’s NCAA Compliance Officer, he sat on it. When the allegations were exposed, he had already signed the Affidavit of Compliance that the NCAA requires all programs. In essence, he said he knew of no evidence of wrongdoing—even though it was sitting there in his inbox.

It isn’t the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up. This past March, OSU President, G. Gordon Gee and Athletics Director, Gene Smith stood behind Tressel and gave him a vote of confidence. Now both look like fools. Staring down the barrel of major rules violations, Gee and Smith have to steel themselves for the worst the NCAA has to offer. I don’t see them giving OSU the “Death Penalty”, but they’re looking at loss of scholarships, post-season bans, and maybe vacating all the victories in Tressel’s tenure, including the National Championship. Of course, they’ll have to give back all the money that came with the bowl victories, too. “Lack of Institutional Control” is one of the more serious charges the NCAA can level at a school that turns the other way when rules are violated under their noses.

A cynic might say that OSU got their money’s worth out of Tressel. After all, he did the one thing his predecessor, John Cooper, had trouble doing. He beat Michigan. Ever since the great rivalry days of Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler, the Ohio State/ Michigan game has been the bowl before the bowl that both teams looked forward to. There’s a great story about Ohio State’s bus leaving Ann Arbor after a loss. When the driver informed Coach Hayes that they had to stop for gas, Hayes refused. He wasn’t going to give Michigan any of his money even if he had to “push the bus to Toledo”. Tressel regularly beat Michigan and even threw in a BCS Championship over Miami, to boot.

Later, as Michigan began to wane, the target became the SEC. SEC teams regularly beat OSU, and Tressel wanted to beat them to show that Ohio State could play with the best teams in the country. It’s somewhat fitting that his last game as coach with the Buckeyes was a win over Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. Time will tell if that win stands up, or if Ohio State will have to vacate that win pending the outcome of the investigation.

The “win at all costs” mentality isn’t unique to college football, nor even America. We just saw Barcelona defeat Manchester United in the Champions League Soccer final. Both teams were outstanding, and both have humongous payrolls. They have to. Their fans demand it. A heavy price will be paid if they don’t deliver championships. The same is true for NCAA football. If Ohio State faces sanctions, they will lose scholarships. They won’t be able to recruit the best athletes to compete with the best teams in the country. Post season bans mean less revenue coming in, and less merchandise sold. Heaven forbid if this means they start losing to Michigan again. The fans would revolt and call for the head of Tressel’s successor.

I don’t have any answers. Tomorrow means the release of the new Sports Illustrated. That issue will feature a big investigative story about Tressel and Ohio State athletics. It doesn’t look pretty for the folks in Columbus. Perhaps this is what it will take to clean up their Athletics Department.

Or maybe they’re just waiting for the storm to pass. Then it’s business as usual in The Horseshoe.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It

2011-05-21T20:37:00.001-04:00

Darn, right in the middle of the hockey playoffs, too!

Well, here it is slightly after 6pm local time on the 21st of May, 2011. No earthquakes have hit. No dead have risen from their graves like evangelical cicadas. No King of Kings™ riding down from the heavens in a golden chariot to whisk the righteous off this wicked, wicked Earth. In fact, at 6pm I was sitting on my patio, drinking a scotch and soda while enjoying the first warm day in a while.

Harold Camping of Oakland had predicted (with remarkable specificity, I might add) that the Rapture would take place at 6pm on May 21st. This is the same pastor that predicted the world would end back on September 6th, 1994. He joins a long line of Nostra-doofuses that have used deranged math, advice from the voices in their heads, or some other messed up divination to predict the end of the world. I wonder how Mr. Camping will explain it to his followers, some of whom gave everything away in preparation of being swept off the planet. My guess is it will be with a shrug, and a proclamation that we had “spared”. Either that, or Jesus missed his connector flight on Rigel 7.

What is it about these “End of Day-ers”? Are they bored? Are they tired of the world they view as inherently wicked? Do they really want, as Eddie Izzard puts it, the “Etch-A-Sketch End of the World”? Mr. Camping bases his calculations on careful study of the Bible. His techniques are impressive, if a little obsessive. According to his Wikipedia page, he puts the date of Jesus’ birth at April 1st, 33 A.D. My, my…Jesus was born on April Fools Day. Somewhat fitting for this discussion, no?

The problem of course, is The Bible is largely an oral account written well after the events took place. Over the next two eons, it has been translated several times into several different languages. In essence, The Bible is the longest game of “Telephone” ever played. The message that goes in one end is garbled beyond recognition by the time the 21st Century rolls around. And have you ever taken an oral account of history from an old-timer? Let’s just say that unless it’s accompanied by other physical evidence, the validity of certain dates could be, well, suspect. The point I’m getting at is using The Bible for precise time measurement is like asking Aunt Effie when her grandpa got back from WWI.

Also, nowhere in my Bible does it say “Oh, BTW, I’m coming back on 5/21/11. kthxbye, –JC1” What a concept…Jesus tweeting the Rapture. How utterly narcissistic to think that you’ll be alive to witness the return of the Messiah. If you are a believer, isn’t the private audience with him when you die enough? Do you need to score front row tickets for his comeback tour to make your spiritual life fulfilling?

Harold Camping also predicted that the Earth would be destroyed on October 21st, 2011. So no Trick or Treat this year, kiddies! Really, part of me is a little irritated as this attention-whoring from someone looking to raise funds for his radio broadcasts. Minister to the sick and dispirited, and leave the crackpot prophecies to the pros—like Pat Robertson.

At least he has some entertainment value.

Stupid Old Rich Guy Tricks

2011-05-18T21:27:00.001-04:00

A double-shot of celebrity scandals hit the papers last week, each shocking in their own right. Perhaps more interesting is the reaction to both.

First, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund was pulled off a plane at JFK and arrested for the sexual assault of a maid. It’s stunning, because he was considered the favorite for the French Socialist Party nomination to run against Nicholas Sarkozy next year. Early polling showed he stood a better than average chance of winning. From Presidential hopeful to sexual criminal? It’s too much for even the open-minded French to take.

Defenders of DSK say it was a setup by Sarkozy to get him out of the race. They weave conspiracy theories more elaborate than anything in a John LeCarré novel. Why was there only one maid? Don’t they work in “Maid Brigades”? In America, DSK is innocent until proven guilty. However, it’s not looking too good for him. The judge considered him a flight risk and denied bail. If convicted, he could spend 10 years in Riker’s Island.

Apparently, DSK has a history of harassing and being aggressive with women. And as head of the IMF, he wields incredible power. Power, if unchecked, tends to go to the head of the one in power. It might lead one to believe he can help himself to the hired help without consequence. Henry Kissinger famously said “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Speaking of hired help, let’s not forget the west coast. Former California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger publicly admitted he fathered a child out of wedlock with domestic help 10 years ago. He said he took responsibility for the child financially, but he didn’t take responsibility publically for it until last week. This was apparently a surprise to his wife, Maria Shriver. She promptly moved out. It looks like this was the last straw. In 2003, when Schwartzenegger was running for Governor, she defended him from other charges of randy misconduct and stood by her man. It’s thought that a liberal woman with ties to the Kennedy Family earned the Governator independent and women voters for his election. Now she looks like a fool, since he’s betrayed her in such a public manner.

I’m not sure I can say I’m surprised at all this, since Arnold has projected such a macho playboy image for so long. It might have been too much to expect that marriage would tame him. He’s already tied to the next in the Terminator movie saga. With the perverse way Hollywood PR works, all this might actually be good for his immediate future.

So what do these two sordid tales have in common? They both involve powerful men using their position to demand (allegedly in DSK’s case) or charm their way into the pants of women in subservient positions (in the Sperminator’s case). As long as there has been rich men, there have been bawdy tales of trysts in the linen closet, a quickie in the servant’s quarters, or fun with cigars. It was seen almost as a right of the privileged class to exploit the hired help in this manner. It has precious little to do with sex, and a lot to do with power. Certain “alpha” males seem to need to be able to dominate those weaker than them, if nothing else just to prove that they still have it.

It will be interesting to see how these two cases play out. In Arnold’s case, it probably will all work out in the end. He’s out of office, and looks to be primed to get back into being an action hero (oh, irony…). In DSK’s case, things look a bit stickier. Even if he’s exonerated in this case, the stench of this scandal has probably ruined his career. A promising political future has been snuffed out. If he wasn’t set up, it was a failure of his own creation.

In either case, it’s depressing to me that both men acted cavalierly, yet not abnormally. The weird ones are the powerful men who don’t cheat on their spouses, who don’t use their positions as a cheesy come on to the girl in the mailroom. Some of our greatest Presidents were later found out to have carried on affairs: FDR, Eisenhower, JFK (especially JFK!). Perhaps it’s a trait of powerful men that impels them to conquer women.

Thank goodness Michelle Obama has eyes like a hawk!

Mission (finally) Accomplished

2011-05-02T20:05:00.001-04:00

After nearly ten years on the run, a team of Navy Seals infiltrated a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden after a brief firefight. No Americans were hurt, and his body was buried at sea within 24 hours. With that, it looks like the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda. The head of the snake has been cut off, and there is no one left in the organization with the charisma and organization skills of bin Laden. The world may have turned a corner in the War on Terrorism.

Even before the violent endgame, it looked like bin Laden’s influence was waning in the Arab World. Ironically, the mostly non-violent uprisings that brought down Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen have proven that violent overthrow was not the only option available to oppressed Muslims across the diaspora. The way of al-Qaeda was not the answer that finally brought results. It was the desire of the downtrodden to take control of their own destiny and live a more democratic and egalitarian way of life. In fact, the news of bin Laden’s murder in the Arab World has been surprisingly muted. There are no mass calls for jihad against America. All the energy seems to be focused on overthrowing their own dictator, be he Assad in Syria, Qaddafi in Libya, or Saleh in Yemen.

News analysts have been falling all over themselves trying to determine what these new turn of events mean in the big picture. The State Department isn’t taking any chances, and has warned everyone to be on guard against retribution from angry jihadists. Those on the Left feel this is a prime opportunity to pull out of Afghanistan, since of one the main reasons for being there was just offed by U.S. Commandoes. The Right, now wanting to give Obama credit for anything, are struggling to downplay the importance of the event. And anyway, Bush did most of the hard prep work for Obama in the previous 7 1/2 years, right?

I think both sides are being a little disingenuous about all this. Bin Laden is dead, but the Taliban live on, and they are still quite adamant about imposing their will on Afghanistan again. We should stay until it’s clear that the Afghans can defend themselves. As for the Right, well, if Bush knew where bin Laden was (he didn’t), why didn’t he get him during the last two-thirds of his Presidency?

From what I can gather, the U.S. caught a break (maybe from the ISI) and tracked bin Laden’s trusted courier. They located him not in a cave in Afghanistan, or even in Waziristan, but in a 3,000 square foot mansion in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan. Ironically, or perhaps not, it’s in a wealthy enclave favored by retired Pakistani military officers. Surely someone should have noticed a 6’7” Saudi attached to a dialysis machine while he was watering the petunias?

“Howdy neighbor!”

“DEATH TO AMERI…I mean, Good Morning to you, too!”

All this makes it uncomfortably clear that one of our staunch allies in the War on Terror has been playing both sides of the fence. I cannot imagine Pakistan didn’t know that the World’s Public Enemy Number One was a mere 40 minutes by taxi from the capitol. India had been trying to warn us, and we didn’t listen. I guess we needed Pakistan to help us prosecute the War in Afghanistan. If Pakistan is capable of sheltering bin Laden, who else are they hiding? Shouldn’t we be asking them?

Back on the homefront, spontaneous celebrations broke out over the news of bin Laden’s demise. In front of the White House and at Ground Zero in New York, jubilant crowds chanted USA! USA! and expressed joy at justice delayed, but justice indeed. Personally, I found all the merrymaking a bit distasteful. I was taught that you shouldn’t celebrate the death of any individual, regardless of how vile they were. We lose a bit of our humanity when we do so, I think. But I do understand the sentiment. Thousands have died over a psychotic delusion that the Caliphate will be restored over the objection of billions of Christians and non-Muslims. It is at this moment we should be on guard not to overreact and persecute Muslims in our midst just for the religion they happen to have in common with fanatics like bin Laden. The difference between the West and bin Laden’s ilk is we tolerate those who believe something different from us.

With one of the goals of the War on Terror now fulfilled, perhaps we can start thinking about rolling back some of the hyper-paranoid precautions we took after 9/11: The Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture, etc. The world will always have terrorism. But with the sands shifting under the feet of the jihadists thanks to the Arab Spring, maybe we stand a better chance of building a safer world through exchange of goods and eventually ideas.

Seeing potential future bin Ladens siderailed thanks to jobs and economic security seems like a better investment than endless war.

The GOP’s Trump Card

2011-04-29T21:46:00.001-04:00

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In a recent poll from the respected Rasmussen Reports, a surprise candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination came to the fore. Donald Trump led the poll with 19%, followed by seasoned politicians Mitt Romney at 17%, and Mike Huckabee with 15%. For political analysts, this was puzzling. For hard-bitten cynics (like me), this wasn’t really a surprise.

Trump has the highest recognition factor of any of the potential challengers to Obama in 2012. Having your own reality series on TV doesn’t hurt the “Q” Factor, along with Trump’s seemingly bottomless lust for publicity – good or bad. Trump desires publicity like mosquitoes desire blood. The Donald has a book coming out, and what better way to keep your name in the headlines than jump into the Presidential sweepstakes with both feet.

The biggest surprise to me is how many otherwise rational and steely-eyed political commentators are taking Trump seriously. David Brooks of the N.Y. Times warns us not to take Trump too lightly. Trump’s straightforward manner appeals to a lot of people. Unfortunately, a closer look at Trump reveals some troubling things that would torpedo otherwise serious candidates.

For one thing, it’s not clear he’s a Republican. In the past, he’s advocated for abortion rights and increasing taxes on the rich. He’s been divorced a couple of times, and declared bankruptcy on a number of occasions. While the pose he takes on Celebrity Apprentice is of the tough but fair boss, his real life business dealings have been shadier than a Brazilian rainforest.

Unlike fellow billionaire Ross Perot, Trump doesn’t seem to bring any fresh ideas to the table. The Donald prefers to spout shallow tough guy speak and parrot talking points from dubious areas. His taking credit for forcing Obama to release his long form birth certificate would be laughable, if everyone else didn’t take it so seriously. It’s not hard to take a principled Right-wing counter to Obama, but tying your wagon to the Birthers doesn’t bespeak well of Trump’s political acumen.

Setting aside Trump’s reasons for playing footsie with the political press for a moment, what does his early success say about the Republican Party? Is this the best they can come up with? I realize that many things could change between now and 18 months from now, but no clear contender is stepping forward to challenge Obama. At this rate, Obama’s biggest challenge might come from his own party. A firebrand liberal like Dennis Kuncinich could be more of a thorn in Obama’s side than any current Republican. Is the Grand Old Party so bereft of charismatic politicians that can reach across party lines?

The short answer is no. The Tea Party, Birthers and other fringe elements have pulled the party so far right, that no Republican looks ready to charm the independents needed to win the White House. While the President is taking his lumps over the economy, Congressional Republicans look even worse. This game of chicken they’re playing with the National Debt Ceiling threatens America’s credit rating and standing in the world.

The anarchist in me secretly wishes that Trump would get the nomination. Sometimes you need to destroy something before you can rebuild it. Trump just might be the destructive medicine needed to bring principled Republicans back to take control of their party from the Tea Partiers and deluded ultra right. Is there anyone who honestly thinks Obama wouldn’t beat Trump like a Narc at a biker rally? Well, yes. There is one person.

His name is Donald John Trump, Sr.

End Game for Birthers

2011-04-27T20:48:00.001-04:00

Sensing that he’s gotten all the mileage he can out of the Birther movement, President Obama gave in to their request to release the long form of his birth certificate. The Certificate of Live Birth verifies that Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. His father was Kenyan, and his mother was from Kansas. Hawaiian officials (some Republicans) have authenticated the birth certificate as real. Period. Full stop.

He wasn’t born in Kenya or Indonesia or Mars. He was born on U.S. soil. Regardless of his parents’ nationality, the 14th Amendment bestows U.S. citizenship upon him. He’s as American as any of the deranged Birthers who have dogged him over this non-issue. So now what?

Predictably, some of the more fringe dwellers of the movement have stubbornly refused to accept the truth as the truth. They call it a forgery. They spin ever more wild conspiracy theories to try and justify their madness. Their latest tactic is to call for Obama’s school records—as if that would prove anything.

Part of me is sad that Obama called their bluff and gave them what they wanted. He could have demurred for another year, just in time for the next Presidential election cycle. It would have been fun to see whomever the GOP nominates as their candidate explain why they think our current President is a Communistic, Socialistic, Kenyan Muslim infiltrator. Knowing full well they need independent voters to get elected, the Republicans would have to do a fast tap dance to hint at the sane and lucid among us that they don’t really believe Obama is anything but a real American. In fact, Republican Congressional leaders have been doing just that recently to try and defuse this latest powderkeg of batshit crazy.

So why do the Birthers persist? Is their cognitive dissonance so great that they can’t admit that a legitimately qualified black law professor from Hawaii is their Commander-in-Chief? Hell, I accepted that George W. Bush was my President from 2001-2009, even though I still think Al Gore won the election in 2000. I think it’s because if they admitted that Obama was legitimate, they would no longer have cover for the real reason they don’t like him: he’s black. What else could it possibly be? Bill Clinton’s citizenship was never questioned. Jimmy Carter was never looked as anything but an American. Obama is a tall, cool, black dude. He’s a threat to their preconceived notions about black people. He’s also one of the greatest success stories in U.S. history.

By calling their bluff, President Obama raised the stakes on the Birther movement. Keep doubling down on the crazy, and risk torpedoing their candidate’s chances by association. Give up, and admit they were wrong and wasting everyone’s time with a barely lucid fantasy about annulling an election via a technicality. Obama has them backed into a corner with no graceful exit. It’s a shrewd political move.

By next year, we’ll see whatever nucleus of the Birther movement try an regroup for an impotent poke at Obama as he runs for reelection. But it just won’t be the same. The magic is gone, and the jig is up.

R.I.P Birther Movement – 2008-2011

Contrarian Almanac: Tax Cut Edition

2011-04-18T20:47:00.003-04:00

Thanks to a quirk in the calendar, Tax Day 2011 was moved to Monday, April 18th instead of the traditional 15th. At the time of this post, you’ve got about 3 1/2 hours left to get your taxes in before they are late. Thinking about all this, I turned back to Washington and the budget mess. No one likes to pay taxes, but it’s our tax money everyone is fighting over. The Democrats, fearing a slide back into recession, want to keep spending levels as close to last year’s rate as possible. The Republicans, stung by the sudden emergence of the Tea Party faction in their own party, are struggling to make superficial cuts to demonstrate that they are serious about getting spending under control. Both sides are dug in, and neither side will budge.

Naturally, there’s always a middle ground, but it may as well be an empty playground covered in broken glass and King Cobras. No one is brave enough to venture into the fray and fix the mess. This is a shame, because while everyone is focused on spending cuts, the real problem lies on the other side of the ledger sheet: revenue.

The fastest way to eliminate the deficit is to cut spending and raise taxes. This is also the most painful route, as the last 30 years of Reaganomics have taught us that taxes may only go down despite our profligate spending habits. It wasn’t always this way. As late as the early 1980s, the top tax rate was 50%. Our debt was manageable, and capital spending sustained the American economic machine. So why was the economy strong despite soaking the rich at such a high rate? The answer was generous tax cuts for capital investment. If the the rich took their profits and reinvested them in their companies, they could write that amount off their taxes. The economy got a regular infusion of cash that washed over many businesses, and jobs were created by all the extra investment. High taxes led to economic growth and jobs, which spit in the face of Supply-Side Economics, the Laffer Curve and other conservative fairy tales.

President Obama was very canny to throw in a tax hike on the rich in his address on the ongoing budget negotiations. No one likes paying taxes, the rich least of all. However, there are many more people who aren’t rich and do vote. By that one proposal, Obama drew a bright line between him and any GOP Presidential contender in 2012. Class warfare? You bet. While 90% seems a little high, I could see taxes going up quite a bit on the richest 2% before they even blinked. But even that is not enough to close the gap. If we’re serious about the deficit (and it only seems to matter when a Democrat is in the White House, have you noticed?) then we all should shoulder some of the burden. The Bush Tax Cuts are set to expire in December. Obama should let them all expire.

Another cost saving would be one of the GOP’s favorite target: Obamacare. If they are left alone, they could represent billions in savings over the next ten years, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. Like him or hate him, Obama may have hit a home run with his most hated legislative success. It’s under attack from all sides, but if it stands it may be the most important bill Congress has passed in the past 50 years.

We’ve got until the end of this month to see if Congress and the President can hammer out a budget deal. Either side could do more long term damage if they aren’t careful. It looks like both sides are coming to terms with the reality of the situation. Sacred cows are reluctantly being offered up as trade: entitlement reform from the left; and defense spending cuts on the right. Will they have the stones to tackle tax increases for the first time in nearly twenty years?

Stay tuned…

The Death of Country Music

2011-04-02T20:54:00.001-04:00

Sometime last week, I was working on an electronics project. To keep myself company, I turned on Palladia, the MTV HD network. Since the company that owns MTV also owns the rights to the old TNN, they were playing a block of Country music. Being too engrossed in my work to change the channel, I left it on and sat through performances by Brad Paisley and Darius Rucker.

Paisley, the Telecaster slinging hotshot from West Virginia, shares something in common with John Mayer—he’s a great guitarist playing boring music. Rucker, former lead singer with the much-maligned Hootie and the Blowfish, has taken his conversion to twang with all the fervor of an Islamic Fundamentalist in the West Bank. Both played extremely polished, well-written songs of love and lament. Both reminded me why I hate Modern Country music with a passion.

Just to be clear, I love old-time Country music. Willie Nelson, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and all three Hank Williams (I, II, III) play visceral, heartfelt music with the energy of Rock and the spirit of Gospel. None of them get played a whole lot on Modern Country stations. Most of the old spirit of country music has found a home on AAA stations as “Alt Country”. Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, James McMurtry and Steve Earle keep the flame going while reaching a whole new generation.

Modern Country is just the equivalent of Top 40 stations with steel guitars and the occasional fiddle. It’s warmed-over Pop Music that’s soulless and corporate as any Rock from the 70s. But that’s not what really alarmed me. What really alarmed me was the music wasn’t aspirational or inspirational. It was the “As long as I have my dog, my girl, my truck and my beer, I’ll be just fine!” kind of writing that tells listeners to conform. It’s a Red State hot toddy intended to keep the exploited from bettering themselves or maximizing their talents and abilities. Have you noticed that really vital Rock songs have a restlessness about them? Hell, half of Springsteen’s song are about getting out of his small town for the big city and “making it”. Country protest songs are the “Us vs. Them” kind of puerile taunting. America, love it or leave it—unless you don’t have the means to get anywhere.

Country music used to have a strong feminist streak. Tammy Wynette sang about her D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Dolly Parton sang about small town girl making good. Loretta Lynn talked about birth control. What now? Now it’s just glorification of fantasy violence against the man who done ya wrong. I’m not saying that Country music is the most misogynistic form of music (that would be Rap), I’m just saying that Country women used to be a powerful force of female empowerment. Now it’s just “be happy with your life of quiet desperation, ladies.”

Okay, enough bashing. I’ll just leave it that this kind of Country doesn’t appeal to me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and put on some Lyle Lovett while sipping Chardonnay…

Beware the Rants of March

2011-03-20T18:31:00.001-04:00

No explanation needed. Just some free-floating rants about everything and nothing:

-- Dear State of Kentucky, why not just issue ALL your licensed drivers with handicap hang tags? It seems like every couple of cars I see out driving have them, and the drivers don’t appear to have anything visibly wrong with them. Except they CAN’T FREAKING DRIVE! Oh yeah, being fat is not a handicap. Get out of your Ford Abomination SUV that get 5 gallons to the mile, and walk the two blocks to get your cigarettes, bourbon, Hot Pockets with extra gravy and Diet Coke (You’re not fooling anyone, Jethro!)

-- America can’t seem to learn its lesson: you elected Republicans to the House under the pretense that they would reign in spending and create jobs. So what do they do? They go after Planned Parenthood and NPR. After taking a few Presidential vetoes up the Ol’ Dirt Road, will they return to fixing the budget? Or will they continue to feed red meat to their increasingly deranged base? What do you think?

-- I continue to be a supporter of President Obama for no other reason than there doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative. I appreciate his caution on certain issues. However, leaders are called leaders because they are expected to lead. Letting France throw out the first pitch in Libya may have been prudent, but it signals to the Libyan resistance that they aren’t a priority for the World’s Last Superpower™. Should the rebellion succeed, who do you think will get the credit and those sweet oil contracts and business opportunities? One hint: they’ll be speaking French.

-- To all you nimrods who keep bringing up karma for Pearl Harbor as the reason for the 9.0 Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, shut the hell up. You know why it happened? It’s because Japan lies on three major tectonic plates. And anyway, I’m sure any Japanese would say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more than enough payback for Pearl Harbor. When you shoot your mouth off about ignorant nonsense like that, you reinforce some ugly stereotypes about Americans. When (not if) the next great earthquake nails the San Andreas Fault in California, or the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Washington State, whose karma will WE paying off? I’m sure somewhere on a dank reservation a Native American will be quietly chuckling to himself…

-- I’m not really a college basketball fan, but March Madness brings up a point about collegiate sporting championships—they go on too long. The championship game is set for April 4th. That’s not March, you know. In football, most teams finish their regular season by the last week in November/ 1st week in December. There’s nearly a three week layoff until the first bowls are played. Now I’m not saying to do away with any games, but how about continue through with a week layoff. That way, fan interest doesn’t wane or get distracted. I think they’re trying to build interest or excitement. In the age of digital distractions, that may be a loser of an idea.

-- I make it through the entire Winter without getting sick, and now that it’s officially Spring, what happens? Right, I’m sick. I’m over the worst of it, but it’s 73 degrees, and I’m inside typing bitterly on a keyboard instead of out hiking or grilling out. Also, having a head cold kills your sense of taste. I’m eating home made pizza right now, but I’m not tasting a thing. The heat is soothing my throat a bit, though. We can put a man on the moon. We can fit more computing power into a wristwatch than UNIVAC had in a city block, but we can’t cure the common cold. Makes me wonder what exactly our priorities are. Oh, right—giving tax cut to the rich so they can “create” jobs. They would never just sit on their wealth while the rest of us scrape by. No siree, not going to happen!

Until next semi-regular bile delivery…

Worse Than Godzilla

2011-03-12T21:09:00.001-05:00

Legend has it that during an atomic bomb test in the Pacific in the 1960s, a fissure opened up on the ocean floor allowing a slumbering behemoth to rise up and lay waste to an unsuspecting Japan. Godzilla took out Tokyo Tower so many times that they should have made it out of Lego blocks for easy repair. Unfortunately, Friday afternoon around 2:45pm JST another menace from the deep struck Japan—and this time it wasn’t a movie. An earthquake clocking in around 8.9 on the Richter scale sent a tsunami racing toward the town of Sendai in Northern Honshu. Onlookers were aghast as a 20 foot wall of water slammed into the coast, overwhelming everything in it’s path. Since Tokyo Bay faces southwest, and it’s shielded from the Pacific by Chiba Prefecture, Tokyo was spared the tsunami. It did deal with the earthquake, which sent frightened residents onto the streets.

The good news is Japan is a 1st world country, with thousands of years of experience with earthquakes and tsunamis. They have top-notch infrastructure, and are generally very well organized. Unlike the Sumatra tsunami of 2004, the earthquake was localized to a very small portion of the fault. Had it occurred all along the fault line, the eastern coast of Japan would be underwater, as well as Alaska and the West Coast of America. Hawaii reported 4-6 ft waves, and California had some smaller waves associated with the quake. Thanks to careful planning and legendary Japanese discipline, only 300 deaths have been reported, with some 1,700 missing. That’s a lot better than the 250,000 dead or missing during the Sumatran tsunami.

The bad news is Japan isn’t out of the woods yet. Aftershocks as large as 7.2 have been felt. There may be many more to come. Add to that the fact that the Fukushima nuclear power plant lost cooling, and an explosion was recorded in reactor number one. They seem to have gotten it under control, but they had to flood the reactor with sea water to do it. This might be Japan’s Katrina moment, as a first world country is under the gun to show that it knows how to deal with a crisis. Katrina was bad, but is was focused on a relatively small portion of the Gulf Coast. America’s large land mass absorbed Katrina and took the punch out of it. Now imagine a wall of water 20 feet high and 1,000 miles wide racing toward Washington, Oregon and California. It’s not out of the question, as the Cascadia fault is located just off the West Coast. Would there be only a few hundred casualties here? I think there would be that many who ventured to the beach to watch a natural disaster unfold. YouTube has done our culture a disservice in this regard. Imagine Los Angeles during rush hour having to deal with an 8.9 earthquake and a tsunami. I know…it blows my mind, too.

Growing up in Evansville, Indiana, I was reminded every year during the earthquake drill that my hometown sat directly on the New Madrid fault. In 1812, an earthquake struck centered near the town of New Madrid, Missouri. The town was destroyed, and the Mississippi River was reported to have run backwards for a while because of it. Church bells in Boston were reported to ring due to the tremors reverberating all around the country. The shocking part was the quake is estimated to have been around a 7.2 on the Richter scale. If an 8.9 hits the New Madrid, Memphis, St. Louis, and Evansville would be totally destroyed. Lexington, Kentucky, where I live now, is in the secondary zone of the New Madrid. We would be 40% destroyed. Despite the advances in geologic science, there still isn’t a reliable detection method for earthquakes. Seismically active areas around the world are at the mercy of Earth’s tectonic plates.

Being stuck halfway around the world, there’s precious little I can do for the survivors in Japan. So I made a donation to the International Red Cross, and crossed my fingers. Godzilla was eventually lured back to sleep in his underwater lair. I hope the same for this new beast attacking Japan.

Bi-Winning & Celebrity Self Destruction

2011-03-06T21:25:00.001-05:00

Celebrity meltdowns are nothing new. They’ve been going on for as long as we’ve had celebrities. From Zsa Zsa Gabor smacking a traffic cop, to Britney Spears shaving her head to foil a drug test, to Michael Jackson, well being Michael Jackson, celebrities have proven to be strangely volatile. Enter into the fray Charlie Sheen, who seems determined to prove to the world that going off the deep end can be an exhilarating ride. He fired his publicist, then went on every talk show and interview venue he could find. He’s locked in a battle with the production company that produces the highly successful sitcom Two and a Half Men. Is he calmly telling his side of the story and bolstering his image with the viewing public? Hell, no. He’s rambling like a Skid Row junkie poet on a speedball so potent that John Belushi came back from the dead just long enough to fatally OD on the contact high.

When asked if he was bipolar, he said that he was “bi-winning”—whatever the hell that means. He also turned loose the most bizarre quote since the heyday of Hunter S. Thompson: “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available. If you tried it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.” There’s a desperate lyrical quality to his mad utterances. It’s like the beat poets of the 50s crossed with the bragging rappers of the 00s. “I probably took more than anybody could survive. ... I was bangin' seven-gram rocks and finishing them because that's how I roll, because I have one speed, one gear. ... I'm different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. Dying's for fools, dying's for amateurs." It’s not too far of a stretch to read that in a Kerouac book, or hear it at a poetry slam.

That’s the real tragedy here: Sheen is a talented actor. He’s also bright and gifted with words. I have no idea what’s going on in his life, but he’s clearly not rowing the boat in a straight line. If it is some form of mental illness, one hopes he’ll have a moment of clarity and seek professional help. It’s clear that Sheen has removed all governors on his life and is flying solo. Celebrity media, with its morbid curiosity, is hovering around the edges waiting for him to flame out. Until then, it’s breathlessly reporting on every Charles Manson-style rant that falls from his lips.

Another celebrity escaped the death spiral Sheen seems to have entered. Robert Downey Jr. was in and out of rehab until he finally hit rock bottom. Lucky for him, he bounced. He got control of his life back, and is now one of Hollywood’s more bankable stars. He was perfect to play the hard-living playboy Tony Stark in the Iron Man films. His insight on the dark side gave the character real depth. I wonder if Downey is thinking that he was where Sheen is now. One misstep while partying, and he could wind up like River Phoenix. In fact, most insiders are betting on Sheen not surviving the year.

I get the feeling that I’m contributing to the problem. By writing about Sheen, I’m adding to the circus surrounding him. If it’s attention that fuels his mad rage, then we show just turn our backs on him until he gets some help. Until then, it looks like there’s still some distance for him to fall.

Desperate, But Not Serious

2011-02-27T20:45:00.001-05:00

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is on one side of a contentious debate over the budget playing out this week on Capitol Hill. On the other side is President Obama, who unveiled his rather timid spending plan earlier to lob the ball back into the Republicans court. At stake is a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. The previous one runs out at the end of the week. Neither side seems particularly serious about the task at hand, and are seeking exit strategies should the government shut down.

This happened before some 15 year ago. Then, flush from their victories over President Clinton’s overreach on Health Care Reform, Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” cronies shut down the government over spending. Predictably, the public blamed the Republicans for closed National Parks, no passport service, no government grant checks flowing, etc. Americans talk a big game about small government, but the truth is they love the services government provides. When those services stopped, unbearable pressure was put on the GOP to cave. And cave they did.

The circumstances are a little different this time. Instead of the Great Triangulator in the White House, we have Cool Hand Luke. Obama has preferred to sit back and watch as the process unfolds. That’s a little too cool for my tastes. If he says nothing, the Republicans can frame the debate and ingrain social cuts they favor into the American psyche. On the other side, Speaker Boehner’s hands are tied by 83 fanatical Tea Party members who believe they have a mandate to slash and burn the budget, damn those who get hurt in the process. Any compromise struck by the House leadership will almost certainly be met with mutiny.

While a debate over the budget is long overdue, neither side is serious because they are picking around the edges instead of attacking the main problems in the budget: Defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those four items consume some 2/3rds of the 3 trillion+ budget. You could eliminate all discretionary spending and not even dent the deficit. But both sides have taken those 4 items off the table. Why? Because they are Holy Cows for both sides. Tea Party members are bullish on spending, unless it’s on Defense. The left would rather cut off a limb than risk a jihad from AARP over Social Security. And neither party wants to take away necessary health benefits from the poor, aged and needy.

But any other debate over spending is just spitting in the wind if we don’t consider everything on the table. Most Americans are in favor of increasing certain discretionary spending: education, infrastructure, better regulation, etc. If we don’t want to cut anything, then we have to turn to another dicey subject: taxes. I think Obama goofed by not letting the Bush-era tax cut sunset last December like he promised. There are other tweaks that could increase revenue, but tax reform stands as much chance of passing as fans singing the Libyan National Anthem in the Georgia Dome before a football game.

For the first time in a long time, I have no inkling how this will play out. If the government shuts down, I see the Republicans being blamed. Democrats are seen as the defenders of the government, and when the checks stop coming, the GOP takes the fall. Obama isn’t off the hook, though. He will be expected to show leadership on getting a resolution, even if it means stepping out of character and taking his foes to tasks in public. The “Bully Pulpit” belongs to only the President, and you get no credit for not using it—just ask Jimmy Carter. The Republicans will have to figure out if it’s worth an almost certain defeat in the next election cycle to continue pushing a far right agenda that the voters are starting to show buyer’s remorse over. Look at Wisconsin. When you have Egyptians buying protesters pizza, you know a revolution is on tap.

The sad thing is, we have plenty of money. We’re still the number one economy by a long shot, and still the longest serving democracy. We could solve this by showing a little toughness and sharing the sacrifice. Are we FDR’s America: downtrodden, but on the way back up? Or are we Hoover’s America: spoiled, selfish, fickle and heading for another fall?

The next week could let us know.

What Have We Learned From Egypt?

2011-02-13T18:05:00.001-05:00

As the rest of the word watched with rapt attention, Egyptian protesters ousted a long-serving dictator and demanded democracy. What started in Tunisia has spread to Cairo. Other activists and protesters in the Muslim diaspora are now energized. Algeria appears to be the next target, as Northern Africa is the hotbed of the freedom movement. I wonder if Qaddafi is sleeping with one eye open in his Libyan palace, as the countries around him fall like dominoes?

History is not a constant drumbeat. It is typified by long periods of seeming inaction, followed by spasms of activity. Look at the fall of the Iron Curtain. It took nearly fifty years for Communism’s hollow shell to collapse upon itself. It would be hard to point to one event that precipitated the fall. It’s just that the people were tired of having nothing to eat. Economic unrest usually precedes radical change. Other countries in the Middle East are now revving into action, and it will be interesting to see which country is next. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and even Iran are likely targets for protests and similar changes witnessed in Cairo. As the supposed bastion of freedom and democracy, shouldn’t America be delighted at the sudden uprising of oppressed peoples?

We should, unless it threatens our interests. The cold, hard cynical calculation that led to the United States backing an alarming number of these strongmen who are now being overthrown rests with our various interests in these countries. In the past, it was identifying and supporting client states to ensure our oil supply: The House of Saud, The Shah of Iran, even Saddam Hussein served their purpose to keep oil prices low, and the supply flowing. Previously, it was whomever was anti-Communist. American hegemony was the goal to keep U.S. interests top of mind and favored in these oil-rich lands. We also tried to seek out allies to protect Israel from Islamic fundamentalists determined to dismantle the Jewish state. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and yes, Egypt acted as firewalls to keep radicals from launching a guerilla war against Tel Aviv. In exchange for overlooking human rights violations and outright brutality, we got what we wanted out of the deal.

Now, those cozy little alliances are starting to unravel. Deals with dictators in the War on Terror are now in grave jeopardy. What will a mostly Muslim country look like after the fall? Will they look kindly upon American weapons and money going to corrupt kleptocracies who torture enemies of their rule? Will Sharia Law emerge as the structure of choice for these fledgling democracies? We have a real opportunity to help them out. After all, we have a pretty damn good Constitution that lays out the basic right and freedoms of citizens. We are the longest, uninterrupted democracy in history. We can help nudge them toward equal rights for all citizens, including women and minorities. While it did happen some 235 years ago, our country was founded in violence. We won a bloody war with England and gained our independence. The Egyptians took some casualties, but averted a civil war to oust their dictator. President Obama has been very canny about the ongoing unrest in Northern Africa. Commit too soon to the losing side, and risk a backlash. Give a wishy-washy response, and appear weak and indecisive. His barebones statement last week backing the Egyptian people was as generic as it gets, yet it remains to be seen how that will play out for us.

If we’ve learned anything about the Egyptian uprising, it’s that democracy truly is a grass-roots phenomenon. A people will be ruled only through their direct consent. When things appear to be going off track, a sustained, organized protest is very effective in communicating the will of the people. Something similar is going on here in the United States. The Tea Party, whatever their motivation, has thrown a monkey wrench into politics as usual. The Republican leadership in the House is somewhat puzzled about how to address these independent-minded representatives intent on preserving the Constitution. Several Tea Party members crossed party lines and voted against extending certain provisions of the Patriot Act. Good on them. Giving virtually unlimited powers to the Federal government to spy on Americans is not what the Founders intended, in my humble opinion. “Taking back our country”, to use an overheated phrase from the Tea Partiers, doesn’t necessarily mean another civil war. It can be as simple as standing up to the powers that be and saying “no”.

Despite our interests in the region, my heart goes out to those brave men and women in the Middle East who are standing up and saying “no”.

The Enemy of My Enemy

2011-02-06T21:31:00.001-05:00

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” --ancient arabic proverb

As long as mankind has been at war, there have been uneasy strategic alliances between two powers that didn’t entirely trust one another. This was never more true than during the Cold War. America, normally the torchbearer for freedom and democracy, backed brutal dictators that laid waste to their people, but at least weren’t Communists. The Soviet Union also set up satellite states and cultivated Marxist leaders in our backyard, like Castro and Daniel Ortega. The stakes were high, and neither side could afford to lose, lest they be annihilated. In the late 80s, the Soviet Empire crumbled. That left the United States as the lone superpower—now with no counterbalance.

Lucky for us the rise of Islamic militancy came about at just the right time. The war against Communism morphed into the war against terrorism. Our ties in the Middle East, ostensibly set up to safeguard our oil supply, came in handy to quash groups like Hamas and al Qaeda. We backed strongmen like the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, even though most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi. One of the most virulent form of Islamic fundamentalism was born in Saudi Arabia and seeded to places like Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is Saudi. The other fundamentalist strong hold under the nose of our client ruler is Egypt. For nearly thirty years, Hosni Mubarak has kept a tight fist over his country. In exchange for suppressing the burgeoning Muslim Brotherhood movement, he’s been allowed to hold sham elections and consolidate power around his family and a few trusted advisors. Mubarak also has been aligned with Israel, just not so blatantly so it would ruin his standing in the Muslim world.

Well now Egypt faces a turning point in its history. The protestors are not going away, and they won’t accept anything short of Mubarak stepping down. It’s not inconceivable that very soon he will board a plane set for Saudi Arabia (the destination of choice for dethroned African rulers, apparently) and free and fair elections will be held in the Nile River valley. It would be the endgame for the Jasmine Revolution.

So where is America in all of this? Hard to say. Obama needs to signal to the Egyptian people that we would support them no matter what happens without disrupting the delicate lines of diplomacy set up over the past 50 years. Officials like Vice President Biden have been cautiously supporting Mubarak in public, lest the world think we’re trying to overthrow a sovereign government. We can’t let friends in the region like Jordan be our proxy, lest the unrest spread to their regime, as well.

America is doing what I think is probably best: we’re sitting back and waiting…and watching…and planning for any and all contingencies. Egypt gets about a billion dollars a year from us—mostly in military aid. If we were to withhold that aid, like some in Congress would like us to, it would further destabilize an already tense situation. The Egyptian military is key in this, as they are perhaps the only trigger that would decide whether or not Mubarak stays or goes. If he loses their support, he’s finished and he knows it. He’s already announced that he wouldn’t be running for reelection in the Fall. This past week in an interview with ABC, he confessed he was worried that the Muslim Brotherhood would rise up and take over Egypt if he stepped down. Perhaps so. But if they were elected fair and square, isn’t that what democracy is all about?

That’s the real danger here. Years of discontent with American policy in the region has sown the seeds of anger at us and the rise of underground movements—usually tied to Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia Law. If the people are suddenly given a free and fair choice, would they choose a moderate, progressive party, or a fanatical party that mirrors the theocracy in Iran? Democracy reflects the will of the people. If that will is “Death to America”, then so be it. Our work suddenly gets harder.

Maybe that’s our penance for playing the pragmatic game in the region. Loss of influence means another country with deep pockets, say China, can swoop in and get lucrative deals where we once held sway. China has no historic ties to the region, and are ambivalent about the politics. They’ll sign deals with just about anyone. We can’t really afford to blow this. So we watch and wait for the situation in Egypt to clarify.

Hopefully the new leader with welcome us with a handshake, and not a slap to the face.

One Night in Tunisia

2011-01-28T21:29:00.001-05:00

One day in the future, Arab children might remember the name Mohamed Bouazizi the same way American children remember Rosa Parks. Bouazizi is the man who apparently started the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia with a dramatic act of protest. After police confiscated his produce cart, Bouazizi set himself on fire, much like Buddhist monks during the Vietnam War. His reason was different, as he was trying to scrape out a meager living selling produce. Laws about selling produce with or without a license are unclear, and it’s very likely he was targeted because he didn’t have the money to bribe officials to leave him alone. His death by self-immolation ignited a fire that still burns nearly six weeks after. Protestors took to the streets, demonstrating against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his government. President Ali had been in power for 23 years, and though a staunch ally of America in the War on Terrorism, appeared to have worn out his welcome.

What happened next was historic. Ali stepped down and fled the country. The Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, reorganized a hastily formed new coalition. Elections are expected sometime this year. It proved once again that disgruntled citizens didn’t need the military intervention of a superpower to affect change. The just needed to get fed up enough to put their foot down. That would have been remarkable enough, but the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia seems to have inspired other African and Middle Eastern countries to try and copy the Tunisian success.

In Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan, similar protests and demonstrations are taking place. However, the next domino ripe for falling looks like Egypt. After thirty years of democratic (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) rule by Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians are taking to the streets in defiance of the police, and now the military. Pundits predicting a quick putdown of the unrest are astounded at the tenacity of the Egyptian street. It’s as if thirty years of pent up frustrations of living in a democracy-in-name-only has finally reached the breaking point. And unlike Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, bloodshed by the government would only light the fire into an all out civil war. It’s certainly the most trying moment of Mubarak’s long tenure. Overreact and risk intifadah from some folks that only hold a grudge for 6 or 7 eons, or let it fester until the military decides it isn’t worth it and ousts Mubarak themselves.

While Americans are fascinated by the goings on in Africa and the Middle East, our government seems to be playing it rather cool. In fact, it looks like the Obama Administration is cautiously backing Mubarak and the other countries under fire. Why? Aren’t we the shining beacon of freedom? Shouldn’t Obama or Secretary of State Clinton be backing the freedom-loving people rising up to overthrow a dictator? Yes, unless it’s against American interests.

All of the rulers under fire are staunch allies of the United States in the War on Terror. They’ve used some brutal tactics to keep Islamic Fundamentalists in line, but they have been valuable in fighting al-Qaeda and others wishing to do us and our allies harm. Also, the endgame for toppling these particular countries: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, etc., might disrupt our oil supplies and bring Islamic Fundamentalists into power. Look how well that turned out for us in Iran in 1979. It would also allow our economic competitors to gain a foothold in these lucrative areas. You think China wouldn’t love to swap stories about how America beats people up over human rights while propping up oppressive dictators? That’s why Obama is tiptoeing around the events in Cairo and elsewhere on the Arab Street.

Where do I stand on this? While the prospect of several little Irans taking hold across the Muslim diaspora doesn’t really appeal to me. I think the strongmen need to go. Mubarak, Qaddafi and the House of Saud are relics of a bygone day. If we’re truly the greatest democracy on Earth, we have an obligation to let the people determine their own fate with democratically elected representation.

Even if they do wish “Death to America”.

The (Armed) Elephant in the Room

2011-01-14T22:02:00.001-05:00

Last week, Jared Lee Loughner took a cab to a Safeway Market in Tuscon to see Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) at her rally. His purpose wasn’t to ask her questions, but rather gain infamy. He shot Giffords point blank in the head, then fired off several shots from his Glock into the crowd. Six people died, including a 9 year-old girl. Rep. Giffords is in critical condition in a Tuscon hospital. He was wrestled to the ground before he could reload a 31 bullet magazine into his legally obtained weapon.

Almost immediately, both sides of the political spectrum leapt into action. The left, spurned by a drubbing at the polls, blamed right-wing talk radio and the incendiary rhetoric of the Tea Party for this tragedy. Unfortunately, they leapt before they looked, as Loughner was a radical left-wing nihilist and anarchist—hardly the Tea Party type. They persisted in taking Sarah Palin to task for her website’s map targeting democrats with what looked like crosshairs. A spokesman claimed they were “surveyor’s marks”. Right. And monkeys regularly fly out of my butt. As much fun as it is to play gotcha with the former Alaskan governor, she wasn’t really responsible for this madman’s delusions.

The right, after spending the past year stoking the passions of people who really, REALLY like guns, publically expressed sadness for their downed colleague, and reminded us that words are just words. True. However, words invoking “2nd Amendment remedies” (Sharon Angle) and “making my opponent afraid to leave his house” (Allen West, R-FL), just might lead the more simpleminded to think it’s okay to gun down people with whom we disagree. Let’s face it, the right wing is a fully owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association. The odds of gun control legislation making it through the Republican controlled House stand just slightly higher than the GOP admitting that Obama has ever done anything right. In other words, nil.

Even President Obama at the memorial service gave an amazing speech encouraging us to lighten the political discourse in this country. My opponent is my opponent, not my enemy. We are all Americans, and we all need to be on the same page if anything of our pressing problems are to be fixed. Again, taking the act of a madman and making a political statement with it. We shouldn’t return to the turbulent 60s when a popular President was gunned down in Daley Plaza, or the leader of the Civil Rights Movement was shot on the balcony of a Memphis motel, or a promising Presidential candidate was killed outside of a kitchen in L.A.

What everyone seemed to dance around was: why was a clearly psychotic man able to buy a handgun and a high-capacity clip in the first place? Gun nuts are probably puckering their anuses at this point in preparation for what I’m about to say next. Rest assured, I have no philosophical problem with the 2nd Amendment. Like them or not, guns helped settle this country. They were often used for killing buffalo, snakes, Native Americans, Redcoats and the occasional outlaw at the O.K. Corral. I got that. If you were a settler in the wilderness, you never knew when a bear, or an Injun would come out of the brush and attack you. You needed a gun in lieu of police protection. Hunters are some of the most responsible gun owners in the world. The problem is handguns. I read somewhere that more people died from handguns in the past twenty years than in all the wars the United States have fought since 1775. The number was over 620,000! That’s over 30,000 people a year dying from handgun injuries. That’s like losing one city the size of Ithaca, NY every year.

So why aren’t we talking about gun control? It’s estimated that the United States owns some 270 million guns. That’s 85 guns for every 100 residents. We’re also the main conduit for guns into Mexico. The horrific violence committed by the Mexican drug gangs is being perpetrated with American firearms. Like all Amendments, the 2nd isn’t unlimited. Our most cherished Amendment, the 1st, isn’t unlimited. Obscenity isn’t protected. Neither is libel or slander. If we can accept limits on our speech, we can accept limits on our right to carry and conceal weapons. The only violations Jared Loughner committed were murder and attempted murder. His handgun was perfectly legal, as Arizona is one of two states that doesn’t require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Incidentally, the other state is Alaska. Poor Sarah, you just can’t catch a break!

Predictably, Arizona’s response is not fewer guns, but more guns. They’ve introduced legislation to allow government officials to carry guns and provide them with training. Education for poor and children of immigrants: $0; money for gun training: priceless! That’s what you want in a situation like that: crossfire. Soldiers go through extensive training to prevent friendly fire from taking out the good guys. What happens when there are a thousand nervous civilians with itchy trigger fingers packing? Just asking…

When the legislators return to Washington, and the inevitable bill (from a Democrat) comes up to limit the sale of high-capacity magazines and certain semi-automatic weapons, will the GOP do the right thing and give it strong consideration? Or will they cave to the National Rifle Association and vote it down out of reflex. Maybe they should ask the 9 year-old victim who was born on 9/11 what they should do.

Oh, wait…they can’t.

Football OD

2011-01-02T21:57:00.001-05:00

So here it is the second day of January, 2011, and we still have 7 more college bowls to get through, as well as the NFL Playoffs. I feel as though I’ve watched football nonstop from early December until now. While I love football, I think they need to rethink the scheduling of it all. First, do they really need 35 bowl games? Only one really means anything—the BCS Championship pitting Oregon versus Auburn. All the others are glorified exhibition games meant to puff up the egos of 6-6 and 7-5 football programs, and excuses to sell beer and crappy Detroit automobiles.

In the past, bowls were reserved for a select few teams to play on New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s Day. After that, no more college football until next Fall. That made it special, and it seemed more important. The name of the bowls even meant something special: Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Rose. How am I supposed to get excited over the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl? How am I supposed to be excited over watching one mediocre 6-6 team beat another mediocre 6-6 team (BYU 52 – UTEP 24 in the New Mexico Bowl). The BCS Championship will be played on January 10th. That’s nearly two weeks after New Year’s Day. The layover is so long, that the NCAA is allowing a slew of newer and lesser bows to fill the gap until then. My Kentucky Wildcats (6-6) play the Pitt Panthers (7-5) in the BBVA Compass Bowl in Birmingham, AL on January 8th. It’s kind of sad, since our starting quarterback was kicked off the team for a Public Intoxication arrest in December. Pitt had their current coach resign before the season was over, then hired and fired his replacement due to a Domestic Violence charge before he even got control of his new team. If that doesn’t sum up the state of college football in a nutshell, I don’t know what does.

The NCAA needs to raise the bar for bowl games to cull the herd. No one without a winning record should be allowed in. That would snuff out a lot of these bowls. Also, if they aren’t going to institute a playoff, the champion needs to be determined on New Year’s Day. They can have the day unto themselves, and they wouldn’t conflict with the NFL Playoffs. We seem to have hit a point of diminishing returns with college bowls. While the folks in Raisin Country and Northern Illinois might care about the outcome of the uDrove Humanitarian Bowl (N. Illinois 40 – Fresno State 17), the rest of the country could care less.

Turning to the pros, there were a lot of stories hitting at the end of the season. Not the least of which is the possible last hurrah of Brett Favre. Poor Brett…there he sat on his tractor in Southern Mississippi in August, when all of the sudden an SUV with four of his teammates from the Vikings pulled up. They snatched him off the tractor, tossed him on a plane, and flew him to Minnesota. Unlike last year, the magic wasn’t there. His streak of consecutive starts was ended at 297, and Viking fans were treated to the roof collapsing at the Metrodome, and a third-string quarterback named Joe Webb trying to clean up the lost season. I guess karma finally caught up with Brett, and the Football Gods let him know clearly that it was long past time to shuffle off the stage. Favre is expected to retire officially tomorrow. Or will he?…

The NFL is also experiencing a bit of a power imbalance. As I type this, the Seattle Seahawks and the St. Louis Rams are battling to see who wins the NFC West. Why is this unusual? Because if the Seahawks win, they would win the division with a 7-9 record. It would be the first time a team has won a division in a non-strike season with a losing record. The Seahawks would be in, and the New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers would be out with 10-6 records. Even if the Rams win, they would get in with an 8-8 record. The NFL shouldn’t reward mediocrity. It’s time to have a ranked playoff system. The best 6 teams in each conference should make the playoffs regardless of which division they’re in. It would be like the NBA and NHL, and we would see the best teams play.

I love football, and it’s the most popular team sport in America. But the powers that be are threatening to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s time to step back and take a look at the postseason structure before it gets away from them and there’s a backlash. It may already be happening. Try as I might, I just can’t get jacked for the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, or the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl. I did watch the Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl, though…

Lame Duck Flim Flam

2010-12-29T21:10:00.001-05:00

Something amazing happened when the GOP were doing their victory lap after winning back the House in the midterm elections. After handing President Obama a huge political defeat, Congress returned for a lame duck session to clean up any business that was put on the back burner for the election. Lame duck sessions are usually symbolic of the next Congress’ agenda, or a putative attempt to draw attention to a member’s pet agenda. It’s generally understood that if a party wrests control away from another, no issues contrary to the new direction shall be considered. But that’s not what happened.

The GOP, in lockstep discipline for most of the year, began to break down and allow votes on Obama’s campaign promises. The first to fall was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Senator John McCain put up withering opposition, but eight GOP Senators crossed the aisle to pass the repeal. Next came the 9/11 Responders Relief bill. At first, the GOP refused to pass it. Then, after massive outcries from the press (specifically, The Daily Show with John Stewart) and public, they retreated and allowed passage of the bill. Even the agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years has a poison pill embedded. Astute conservative commentators have noted that the extensions amount to a stealth second stimulus. While the U.S. Government would be deprived of nearly 785 billion dollars, that money would still be loose in the economy. Since our economy is based on consumption, that money could help shorten the recession. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.

It would be supremely cynical to say that Obama planned all this. Would he really accept the loss of the House just to get some nagging issues through Congress? I’m not sure Machiavelli or Sun Tsu would use such a pyrrhic tactic. It’s probably opportunism on Obama’s part. With nothing left to lose, he threw some Hail Marys that were caught. Congress even passed an increase in the debt limit—something the Tea Party HATES. They’ll get their chance early next year to do something about that. However, Republicans only control the House. They have to deal with a Democratic Senate and White House. Even if they were to finagle a government shutdown, they face a President who is holding all the cards. One of Obama’s top advisors is none other than the last President who triangulated his way out of a government shutdown—Bill Clinton.

So while the midterm election victory looked great in November, the Republicans wake up on the defensive. If they aggressively pursue their agenda through the House, they face a certain watering down process in the Senate, and a certain veto from the President. If they continue the strategy they used against Obama in the midterms, do nothing and allow nothing the President wants through, the President can simply blame Congressional Republican of obstruction. It’s a charge that’s been working effectively for Democratic Presidents since Harry Truman. The only way Obama could muff this is by not seizing the opportunity to go on the offensive.

We’ll know by the State of the Union Address what President Obama decides to do.

Asked & Told

2010-12-19T21:36:00.001-05:00

In an historic vote yesterday, the Senate passed a bill repealing the 1993 Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy 65-31. This fulfills a campaign promise by President Obama, and ends the controversial policy. Defenders of DADT worried that repealing the rule would cause havoc with morale. However, a study released earlier in the Fall showed that those fears were unfounded. Having no other reason to prevent passage, eight Republicans crossed over and supported the repeal. The President is expected to sign the bill into law early this week.

This marks an interesting turning point in civil rights for GLBT. With this hurdle cleared, their next target is gay marriage. With public support (or ambivalence) turning to favor some sort of civil union for gays and lesbians, it’s only natural that they concentrate their efforts on gaining legal status for their relationships. It’s not unthinkable that within the next five to ten years we’ll see a 1965 Civil Right Act update for GLBT. If that happens, we can truly say that we’ve witnessed one of the most historic eras in our lifetimes. First black President? Done. Gays serving openly in our military? Done. It puts me in mind of my favorite Chinese blessing/curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

It is still somewhat depressing that minorities in general, and African-Americans in particular, are not at the forefront of this second wave of Civil Rights. Along with GLBT issues, there are also issues dealing with immigration. Hispanics and Asians will be a rising force in the next fifty years. However, we’ve yet to identify this generation’s Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King. The rise of the internet, specifically social media, is aiding in mobilizing people and resources quickly and efficiently. While money bombs and flash mobs are helpful, there needs to be a leader or leaders to focus attention nationally.

In a sense, this past midterm elections are the last gasp of the old guard. Along with the general anger and malaise toward Congress, there was also a sense that things were changing. Change is usually painful, and the old guard, specifically white males, were in retrograde. There’s a (half) black man in the White House. A woman is the de facto leader of the Right Wing, and immigration is turning the normally white faces of the Sun Belt brown. All of the Tea Party’s talk about “taking back this country” had an ominous undercurrent about it. Take it back from whom? Anyone who doesn’t look, talk or think like they do? That’s called demographics, and it always wins.

Most media outlets are giving this story short shrift. Perhaps it’s because the vote happened late Saturday, and they’re waiting until Monday to dissect it. I think it would be foolish to overlook the significance of this vote. Even though homosexuals have been serving bravely (and in silence) for the duration of this country’s history, they now no longer have to live a lie in fear of being dishonorably discharged. In a time when a volunteer army needs all the good soldiers it can get, this is very good news indeed. It also restores my faith in my country. Perhaps Winston Churchill put it best:

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”

Amen, brother.

Wikileaks and the Little White Lie

2010-12-11T19:32:00.000-05:00

I suppose enough time has passed since the whistleblower website Wikileaks released the first wave of classified cables from U.S. Diplomatic envoys. While nothing really new has emerged from them, they have caused a great deal of embarrassment for U.S. foreign relations. Some transmissions called Russia a virtual "Mafia state". That's not really a surprise. Many of us never thought that Vladimir Putin's stranglehold, coupled with several decades of barely-masked corruption would result in a transparent, law-respecting democracy. The timing could be a little better though, since we are trying to broker a new strategic arms pact with Moscow. This little faux pas has made the Russian Bear a bit cranky.

Another revelation was that many in the Arab world advocated military action to halt Iran's nuclear program development. Among the strange bedfellows were Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both hate Iran for different reasons. Israel is mad at Tehran for aiding and abetting Islamic extremists in the Holy Land. Sunni Saudi Arabia is the home of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him), and Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. Iran wants partial control of Mecca, since they represent the world of Shiite Islam. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess.

There are many other examples, but the point is not specific U.S. policy in any one of the hot spots around the world. The point is that private thoughts about these issues vary, nay contradict, public pronouncements about them. This is the nature of diplomacy. If you're talking to people you don't like, you don't normally hold them in high esteem. But to tell the truth might destroy any chance at brokering a deal with them. So, you bite your tongue, plaster on a fake smile, and shake their hand as you choke down bile. We know that the Palestinians hate the Jews and vice-versa. But they have to make public gestures of goodwill to keep talks from collapsing. As long as the other side isn't offended in public, business can continue. It's a delicate tightrope walk diplomats take.

The Wikileaks dump has blown all that up. Not only did it show insulting things about our enemies, but also our supposed friends. President Sarkozy of France was raked over the coals as tyrannical and incompetent by a private dispatch. Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was targeted for criticism for not being serious and partying too much to be effective. The Kabuki mask of diplomacy has been torn away, and the truth has been revealed. Is it for the better? That depends on your point of view.

To students of diplomacy, or curious individual who want to know how it all works, it's been a fascinating lesson. You can almost trace back how the State Department deals with a specific problem, and how it uses its tremendous resources to solve them. Yes, they are embarrassing at times, but watching the process unfold gives you a rare glimpse into a secret world. The New York Times thought it so important, that it devotes regular coverage and updates. Secret or not, it is an important story.

To government officials who are trying to protect U.S. interests around the globe, the Wikileaks release has been a nightmare. Years of careful diplomacy were washed away in one shot. They are now spending an awful lot of time apologizing and smoothing over ruffled feathers of governments and leaders who were offended by the frank, and sometimes tactless nature of the cables. Transparency hasn't made things better in this case.

If Wikileaks can be credited with something, it has reopened the debate about transparency in government. Diplomatic cables are usually declassified after a number of years, and made available for study to see how events of yesteryear were handled. Recently, several hours of recording of President Nixon were released. They showed him to be rather more racist than one would like in a head of state. It also reveals the depth of his paranoia, which tragically led to the Watergate break in and his resignation. Forty years on, and there's little chance of these tapes affecting any current diplomatic effort. Most of the main players are dead. The Wikileaks dump has the capability of putting people in harm's way. It may also scuttle sensitive negotiations in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and North Korea. To that end, I wish that there had been some redacting of the documents. However, I think we do need to reopen the debate over what constitutes national security interests, and what's merely embarrassing.

After all, the whole idea is not to protect an Administration, but the people. If we get a greater debate over that, we have Julian Assange and Wikileaks to thank for that.

Shopping By Numbers

2010-11-30T22:53:00.001-05:00

When we were children, shopping was exciting. It was a journey to a brightly lit store full of colorful packages. It was also a battle, as the children tried to see how much processed sugar and starch they could get in the cart without Mommy noticing. Mom always saw more than we thought, of course. But she also gave in on a lot of stuff we had no business shoving into our mouths. Shopping for nutrition was always guesswork, as we were forced to read through densely worded nutrition labels at 4pt type. 0.02 mg of sodium…is that good, or bad? 20 mcg of calcium…not enough? Too much? If there were only a simple way to score foods numerically, so we can make better informed choices.

Well, thanks to the NuVal system, we can get a numerical score of the food we’re buying. The higher the number, the better the food is from a nutritional standpoint. Both major food chains in my town of Lexington, KY (Kroger & Meijer) use the NuVal system. I just noticed them on my last trip to the grocery. Since I’m now an adult, I’m trying to avoid as much processed food and sugar as possible. The NuVal system seems to weigh against sugars and starches as well. The highest scoring foods I bought were no surprise: Spinach at 100, and Broccoli at 100. The lowest scoring food was a 12-pack of Diet Ginger Ale at 15. Interestingly, the non-diet version of the same ginger ale rates a 1. High Fructose Corn Syrup is apparently so bad, that its mere presence lowers the identical formulation’s nutritional score by 14 points. I didn’t go back and look at what bottled water ranked. Water is considered a nutrient, since we need it to process all the other nutrients.

While the website gives general information on how NuVal works, it doesn’t get into the nuts and bolts of how they arrive at the numbers. A bunch of experts got together and developed an algorithm called the Overall Nutritional Quality Index, by which all the foods are scored. Just by deductive reasoning, one can figure out where they are going with this. Fiber = good; Sugar = bad; Protein = good; Salt = bad, and so on. While most of it is common sense, some can be a little debatable. For instance, meats and dairy tends to take a big hit—probably because of saturated fats. Followers of the Atkins diet might have a gripe about that, since high protein, low carbohydrate diets force the body into a state of ketosis, where the body burns fat when dealing with a lack of carbohydrates. Atkins followers generally haven’t shown a greater increase of heart disease or elevated lipids in the blood. The scientists are towing the old line in this regards. No matter, the science is sound on NuVal’s side.

I think more information is a good thing. However, I’d like to see some recommendations on how to use the NuVal system to plan one’s dietary habits. Are higher numbers always better, or can we safely mix some lower numbers in, as long as we do so in moderation? Do different manufactures of the same product get different scores due to some other factor, like salt content? As it stands now, it’s an interesting way to try an buy more nutritional foods. But beyond that, it’s not very helpful. The NuVal system doesn’t score on subjective factors like taste or value. The rest is left up to the shopper.

Any information that gives you an edge in the shopping aisle is welcome in my book!

Black Friday Bebop

2010-11-27T14:01:00.001-05:00

I often wonder what would happen if an alien beamed down to America the day after Thanksgiving and witness the unique sociological phenomenon known as “Black Friday”. He would have to conclude that humans are greedy, impatient animals who would knock over a handicapped person just to save $10 on an off-brand DVD player. The concept of Black Friday started out as a good idea. Back when we weren’t so tied to consumption to drive the economy, the traditional Christmas shopping season started the day after Thanksgiving. Santa even made a traditional appearance at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. As retailers realized that a significant portion of their yearly sales came during the holiday season, more and more of them began to have special events on the day after Thanksgiving to boost fourth quarter sales.

When he economy was flush, this was a fun time. You got to get up early and head out to look for bargains. It was a festive time, with shoppers tipping off others about some secret deals. But as the economy went south, something changed. Stores started opening earlier and earlier to try and boost foot traffic. They began offering more ridiculous sales with heavy strings attached. The herd dynamic changed. It grew more mean, more desperate. The advent of the Internet didn’t help, either. Smart shoppers starting researching sales. The rise of the smartphone is another wrinkle, as shoppers on the floor are starting to upload price info in real time to social networking. What once was a fun, exciting event has become war.

I’ve opted out of Black Friday for a while. I used to get excited as others. In fact, I have my own Black Friday war story. Several years ago, I went with my sister to Target for their Black Friday sale. At that time, the store opened at a respectable 6:00 am. We were third in line. I wanted to get a combo TV/DVD unit to give to my then girlfriend as a going away present for college. We entered the store, I grabbed a cart and headed back toward electronics. There were four units left, and two were spoken for. The third was trying to be lifted by an old lady. My hunter instincts kicked in, and I went over and said “Let me help you with that.” I picked up the unit, put it in my cart, and got the hell out of there. She’s probably still cursing me to this day. I did look back and noticed that an employee helped her with the last unit, so she didn’t go away empty handed. It’s still not one of my prouder moments on the planet. Ever since then, I’ve been rather ambivalent about Black Friday and it’s younger brother: Cyber Monday.

Cyber Monday makes a little more sense, in that you can shop online from the safety of your own home. You also have the internet right at your fingertips to do research and price comparisons. You’re taking a bit of a chance, since you have to have the products delivered. However, prices are generally better online since there is lower overhead for the companies. I wonder if brick and mortar stores are happy or sad about the increasing popularity of Cyber Monday. It’s more profit for them, but less foot traffic. Online shopping also results in fewer impulse buys, since online shoppers tend to be more focused. The time is coming soon when a majority of shopping will be done online. The shipping companies are probably most happy about that.

I usually use a blend of online and in store shopping for Christmas. I also don’t start until the first week of December. While others start Christmas shopping during Summer or sooner, I’m just not in the mood. It’s part procrastination, part price strategy. If the shopping season isn’t going well, companies might panic and slash prices to reduce inventory for tax purposes. When that happens, you can get some ridiculous bargains. It’s like playing chicken with the retailers. Will they cut prices before you run out of time? I’ve scored some sweet deals by playing the waiting game. I’ve also been burned.

It’s at this time I’m supposed to say something about the True Spirit of Christmas™ being lost to mindless consumerism. I’m not feeling it. If this is how we show love toward the ones we care about, who am I to complain? I do wish we were a little more altruistic for those who really need our help. Donations are down for non-profits as people turn inward against an uncertain economy. If there ever was a time we needed to be more generous, now is it. Food banks, clothing drives, anti-poverty programs and other charities need volunteers, donations and money. Isn’t that a better use of our money and time?

Besides, why do you need a TV/DVD combo? You’re old and Matlock is on six times a day! (Let it go, John. Let it go…)

Fear & Loathing in the Airport Security Line

2010-11-18T21:17:00.001-05:00

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” --Benjamin Franklin

Earlier this week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) enacted a policy that forces all travelers in airports to submit to either a backscatter x-ray scan, or an enhanced pat down that involves touching of certain private areas of the body. This is in response to last year’s failed attempt by a terrorist who tried to light a bomb hidden in his underwear. The fear is not unfounded, as a Saudi Arabian terrorist successfully detonated a bomb that was hidden in his rectum. He nearly succeeded in killing his target, a Saudi prince. Now, I know terrorism at the airport is serious business, but if terrorists are going to resort to shoving bombs up their ass, a couple of them will get past security. Since the x-ray scanners can only penetrate some 3mm, they would not have detected the Saudi bomber.

These new rules have precipitated a blowback against the TSA. Pilots are refusing to subject themselves to low-level doses of radiation, and there are videos of TSA officials patting down 3-year-old girls, 79-year-old grandmothers, and old war veterans with prosthetic legs. My dear Americans, if any of these types of people are carrying bombs onto planes, the terrorists have already won. It’s our continuing obsession to never let 9/11 happen again that drives this fantasy of airtight security at airports. Let me make a bold prediction: there will be another successful terrorist attack on American soil that kills many people. There are simply too many people who wish to make an example of us, and too many holes in a free society to stop all of them. The question, as framed by Ben Franklin is: how much freedom are we willing to barter away for the illusion of security?

After Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was caught unsuccessfully trying to light a bomb in his shoes, we were forced to take off our shoes at the security line. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb in his underwear, we now have to submit to being electronically strip searched by a low-level dose of x-rays, or go through a pat down that makes what Turkish prisoners go through seem like a warm handshake from an old friend. What’s next? An unsuccessful terrorist tries to smuggle a bomb onboard in his sinuses, so we have to take a punch in the schnozz before we can board the plane?

Perhaps it’s time for us to grow up and get over 9/11. Now, don’t get me wrong. We should never forget 9/11. (Not that we could anyway with folks like Rudolf Giuliani still around!) We should become like Europe and Israel, and accept the fact that some crazy may blow himself up in the name of whatever. Some 3,000 people died during 9/11. Some 50,000 die each year on American roads. A little perspective please? In Israel, the people are so inured to the reality of terrorism, that they refuse to live their lives in fear. And Israel gets hit a lot by suicide bombers. I’m not saying it will ever get that bad here. A curious side-effect of American freedom is it has a tendency to moderate irrational hatreds. After all, it’s hard to hate a country that pays you a living wage and lets you express yourself without an overbearing police state monitoring your every move (yet).

That’s the danger here. Conservatives like to crow about American Exceptionalism, but what is it? I think it’s the ingrained sense that at its core, Americans cherish our rights of free expression. We go where we want, when we want. Whenever we suspect the government is prying too deeply into our private lives, we lash out and change it. This may be another flashpoint in the struggle between freedom and security. I’ve been rather hard on the Tea Party for their nonsensical and contradictory approach to well, just about everything. But they do serve a useful purpose. They’ve liberated the Republican party to go back to their Western Libertarian roots and decry government intrusion in our lives. And they’re right on this one. The Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches or seizures either applies to airports, or it has lost it’s meaning in a modern society. The government’s overreach is threatening the very thing that keeps democracy vibrant. The late George Carlin once said that “a freedom isn’t a freedom if the government can take it away.” Can we really describe ourselves as free if we waive our rights just to get on an airplane? The restrictions might make people drive more to avoid the headaches of air travel. Air travel is several times more safe than car travel. Might that not lead to more highway deaths? And what if the TSA wants to put monitors in our cars? Do you rally want the government to know where you going at any given time?

Sorry to get Orwellian, but the slippery slope is greased by little, seemingly meaningless concessions of our freedom. A determined conspiracy to commit terrorism on U.S. soil can succeed. The 9/11 attackers proved that. However, they failed in their overall mission. America didn’t collapse. We didn’t go running to the nearest mosque and batch converted into Islam. We did what all survivors do: we went on with our lives. America is not a Fabrege Egg. We are much stronger and malleable than even we would like to admit. The vibrancy of our beautiful little mutt of a nation is still the envy of the world—even the Muslim world. But it won’t be if we keep ceding little chunks of our liberty to enjoy a delusion of absolute safety.

The change in power in the House of Representatives is an opportunity to take back some of that freedom we lost after 9/11. I just hope GOP leaders can stop plotting against Obama long enough to do something about it.

Lessons from the Midterms: A House Divided

2010-11-07T20:23:00.001-05:00

I suppose I’ve waited long enough to chime in about the midterm elections. As expected, the voters vented their rage on the Democratic majority and swept the Republicans back into control of the House of Representatives. The Democrats lost seats in the Senate, but they barely retained control. In a way this was natural, as power tends to shift back and forth. However, in a way this was unprecedented, as we are in the beginnings of a slow recovery from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The rest of the world, and lovers of logic and reason like me, wondered aloud why the American people would restore power back to a party that created this big mess in the first place. It’s like giving the keys back to a drunk driver after he’s been towed out of the ditch, so he can drive home. Does anybody really think the same thing won’t happen? Another line of reason suggests that Americans were hurting, and they wanted to take it out on those in power. Since the Democrats had a majority in both houses, it was only logical that they would beat up on incumbents. Throw in the Tea Party movement, and the anger had frothed up to overflowing. Is it a repudiation of Obama and his policies? Well, yes and no. It’s more about getting Obama riled up to show he’s moving more forcefully to fix the economy.

Another school of thought is that American like a divided government. The reasoning, I suppose, is that it’s another check and balance on one party going too far in pursuing its agenda at the expense of the country. That would make sense, but this is Washington we’re taking about. Nothing really makes sense there. Even the most extreme politician suddenly finds out that if there is no compromise, there is no deal. If the Republicans do succeed in writing bills to repeal Obama’s Healthcare Plan, they still face a Democratic Senate, and the President's certain veto. Without a 2/3 majority in both houses (which they don’t have), the veto sticks. They are left to yell and beat their breasts and point fingers, and nothing gets done.

The biggest danger for the GOP is trying to shut down the government in order to get their way. In 1994, Newt Gingrich tried that tactic, and was outmaneuvered by Bill Clinton. Clinton won reelection, and very little of the Contract with America was carried out. If the new, more extreme Tea Party backed members of Congress start saber rattling, the GOP leadership may have to herd cats—cats that are carrying land mines strapped to their backs! In a way, this revival of the GOP in the House may just be what President Obama needed. Now he has something to run against. Now he has an opposing view of governing that he can draw a contrast to. Now he has someone else to blame.

The Democrats are not blameless in their defeat. Had they stood up and tried to enact their legislative agenda instead of trying to reach out to an intransigent GOP, they may have had the moral high ground. Instead, they looked ineffective and impotent against a disciplined opponent. Harry Reid eked out a victory in Nevada, but only because the person he was running against was one of the most extreme of the Tea Party candidates in Sharon Angle. Perhaps the notoriously flighty Democrats will get some steel in their backbones and come back a more united party.

The biggest loser of the midterms appears to be President Obama. Nearly every Republican candidate threw rocks at his leadership and his presidency. It seems to have worked. Our Scapegoat-in-Chief took it on the chin again and again this election cycle. However, he may be using Muhammad Ali’s “Rope a Dope” strategy of playing hurt and covering up on the ropes. Ali lured an increasingly confident opponent in to him, then turned the tables on him. After all, if the economy recovers in the next two years, the President-- not Congress, will get the credit. It’s always worked that way. The President gets too much of the credit, and too much of the blame. If the timing works out, Obama might use this setback as something to build a second term on.

Maybe I’ve gotten a little too cynical about politics, but I just can’t seem to work myself up about these returns. In the short term, these results might signal the White Man’s Last Gasp—the old guard desperately trying to turn back a more pluralistic America where whites will be in the minority for the first time. In the long run, this might be the point at which we turn the corner and usher in a new generation to political power. I don’t know which side of the fence this will fall.

But the next two years might give us a clearer picture.

The Problems with Punditry

2010-10-23T14:51:00.001-04:00

Last week, NPR news analyst and reporter Juan Williams was fired by NPR for comments he made on Fox News, where he is also a commentator. I have to be somewhat careful how I tread here, since I am employed by an NPR affiliate. Suffice it to say, the details can be found on NPR’s website.

That’s not precisely what this blog post is about. It’s about the blurring of lines between objective reporting of the news, and commentating on the news. It used to be mutually exclusive. A reporter presented the facts, and it was up to us to decide what it meant. News analysts tried to interpret the news, and maybe they leaned left or right. In the old days on TV, an editorial opinion was accompanied by a huge banner on screen that said EDITORIAL, and there was also a disclaimer a mile long that came before and after. It was the broadcast equivalent of handling nuclear waste. Rightly so, because abuse of the mass media can be just as toxic. It’s been used to get us into wars and conflicts that weren’t necessarily in the best interest of humanity. (See Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, etc.)

However, with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, there were many more hours to fill, so networks began to rely more and more on opinion-based shows. They found that people generally preferred the shoutfests that these spawned, because they were usually more entertaining than the dreary slog of bad news. With ratings came money, and the money spawned even more opinion shows. There’s often more shows talking about the day’s headlines than actual reportage.

In the old days, there was more emphasis on producing documentaries. Edward R. Murrow’s crew at CBS were legendary about digging deep into a story and sometimes changing hearts and minds on a particular subject. With all the competition from 24-hour news sources and the Internet, documentaries have been left to filmmakers. It’s cheaper just to gather a panel of pundits and shout out the day’s news, rather than taking the time to master a topic. With all the vacancies to be filled on these panels, news channels like Fox have been recruiting reporters to be on their shows. Juan Williams wasn’t the only NPR reporter to be tapped by Fox. Mara Liasson also appears on Fox programs. She has been more successful in maintaining her objectivity while on Fox, but it may be just a matter of time until she falls into the trap of crossing the line into personal opinion.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. Americans have a seemingly bottomless appetite for controversy and opinion in news. A better firewall between editorializing and reportage needs to be reinforced. The wall between news and profits needs to be increased as well. That may be a pipedream, as the traditional nightly news from the big three networks bleed viewers to the echo chambers of cable TV and the Internet. A new paradigm for news and commentary is forming.

I just wish I knew what the hell it will look like.

Sabotaging the BCS

2010-10-17T20:47:00.001-04:00

I’m going to take a little break from political blogging for a moment to talk about one of my other passions: football. Specifically, I”m going to focus on NCAA Football, since we’re now in the middle of another Fall campaign. The first BCS poll will be released tonight, and among the Oregons and Oklahomas near the top are two outliers: TCU and Boise State. Why are they outliers? Because neither belong to a conference that gets an automatic bid to the BCS Championship in January. To get into the championship, they would have to go undefeated and every other big conference team would have two losses. This perversion of “amateur” athletics has been going on for some time now. In no other NCAA sport at any level does this travesty occur. Why? Because every other NCAA sport at every level has a playoff. Men’s FBS football (formerly known as Division 1-A) relied on polls to determine the national champion. This sometimes caused controversy, as the coaches poll would occasionally disagree with the writers poll. Instead of going to a playoff system, the NCAA adopted this Byzantine system of combining human polls with computers to determine the two best teams. Why would they do this? Simple. Money. By preserving the bowl system, more teams get to play in the postseason. Colleges can then take their essentially meaningless win back to boosters and alumni and hit them up for more money. Also, football-starved fans (myself included) get to see NCAA football through December and into January. More eyeballs mean more TV revenue, and the cycle repeats.

Instead of having a 16-team playoff, where number 16 has a legitimate shot at knocking off number one, the NCAA tries to craft the best game that they think advertisers would want to sponsor. As a result, only a handful of popular teams from football factory colleges: USC, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, etc. have a real shot at hoisting the crystal football at the end of the year as the best in the land. All the other colleges are left out of the running, and the money. It’s quite a sweet racket. However, last year the BCS system was in danger. Two upstarts crashed the party and got into the BCS mix: TCU and Boise State. They both were undefeated, and had Alabama or Texas lost late in their seasons, both had a legitimate claim to the championship game. Because no big school one wanted to play either Texas Christian or Boise State, organizers rigged it so both played each other in the Fiesta Bowl. It was a gutless move. The BCS nabobs were hoping Boise State and TCU would have a letdown the following year and quietly fade away.

But that hasn’t happened. Both Boise State and TCU are in the running again. With Alabama and Ohio State losing, the door cracks a little more open for both to crash the party again. If all the top contenders have two losses, then there’s a real possibility that both could play again in Arizona in January. Only this time not in the Fiesta Bowl, but rather the BCS Championship. This is the outcome I’m hoping for. A lot has to happen between now and then: Oklahoma, Oregon, Auburn and LSU have to lose. TCU and Boise State have to win out. But if the stars align, the BCS computer might have no choice but to name off the the two Cinderella teams for the championship. Why is this a good thing?

Because the major conferences would adopt a playoff system so fast it would make your head spin. Actually, the perfect setup would be either Boise State or TCU playing and beating a traditional powerhouse. It would be the ultimate tweak against the money-hungry power brokers who’ve been manipulating the system for a long time. The anarchist in me loves this plan, but the sports fan also loves it. While a playoff would still favor the top teams, football is a different animal than basketball. Could a #16 team beat a #1 in basketball? Maybe. Could Michigan State beat Oklahoma on a neutral field? That’s a far more dicey bet if you’re Oklahoma.

I guess I just want them to settle it on the field and not in a computer printout. Also, the opportunity for increased revenues and ratings should warrant consideration. March Madness generates incredible enthusiasm and ratings for men’s basketball. There nothing to indicate that it would be different for football. You could even keep the bowl games intact. You might even incorporate them into the playoff.

While I’m a graduate of Indiana State University and employed by the University of Kentucky, I’m rooting for Boise State and TCU. Nothing would make my heart swell with more pride than watching one of these Davids hoisting the trophy over a defeated and bloated football factory Goliath.

Down with the BCS!

My 200th Post (and boy are my arms tired!)

2010-09-30T22:04:00.001-04:00

Well, it’s taken another year and a half, but I’ve reached my 200th post. I know many bloggers hit 200 posts before Noon on a good day, but I blog in essay form. It’s a conscious effort to slow down and think about what I’m writing before spewing my nonsense on the Interwebs. Also, call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think a paragraph or a tweet counts as a blog post. That’s more like a synapse misfire. Just as we develop filters in normal conversation to keep from letting every stray thought see the light of day, we should take a little effort in editing and refining our thoughts before vomiting them lawn-sprinkler style all over the digital realm.

So what have I learned in the past 100 posts? Well, I’ve learned that Americans are as fickle as ever. One minute we are reaffirming our unique place in the world by rejecting 400 years of subjugation by electing a (half)black man to the White House. Then, we spend the next year tearing him down because he didn’t fix everything yesterday like he promised. We are now poised to return the same group of chuckleheads that got us in this economic mess back to power in Congress for Bush 2.0. Oh, lucky us…

I’ve learned that inchoate anger is an effective political tool, and all you need to do is find a group of similar neanderthals to holler nonsensical and contradictory slogans to rile up the electorate. We don’t have solutions, we just want to vent our anger at anyone and everyone. Tea Party energy could have been used to nominate sensible and intelligent leaders to work on our most difficult problems. Instead, it was used to nominate whack jobs that make Attila the Hun look like Fred Rogers. Tea Partiers have pushed an already polarized and conservative Republican Party even further to the right. When there was once a vibrant and workable moderate wing of the GOP, now it’s all right-wingers who think compromise equals treason. The left doesn’t know how to combat this, so they will be steamrolled in November.

I’ve also learned that we aren’t serious about fixing our most pressing problems. While an earlier generation might have tackled these problems head on and come together to solve Global Warming, Peak Oil, the Population Explosion, World Hunger, and the lack of fresh water, we are content to kick the can down the road. As an optimist, I always wondered why there were so many science fiction book about a future dystopia. Now I know. The world won’t end with a bang, but rather with a shrug. Idiocracy? Nah, not my problem…

All is not bleak. The generation coming in behind me has shown encouraging signs of being more tuned in with each other and the world. The technology boom has created a democratizing effect, allowing average citizens to express themselves online. (Like I’m doing right now!) There are a million eyes on the Internet, and scoundrels are finding they can’t hide anymore. In a peculiar way, this internet citizenship is a good thing. Never before has so much news and information been at our fingertips. At no time in history has knowledge been so easy to get. The question remains whether we will use this resource for self-enlightenment, or as a diversion to anesthetize ourselves from our daily drudgeries.

I hope that I’ll be blogging for some time to come, as it hasn’t gotten boring or tedious just yet. This crazy world hasn’t discouraged me, and I actually look forward to the next 100 posts and beyond.

Unless the Tea Party wins…then I hope there’s internet access in my rubber room at the Hoo Hoo Hotel!

Fall Rants Part Deux

2010-09-29T21:20:00.002-04:00

While I purged a great deal of hate with my last post, there’s still some residual rage smoldering like a burnt-out meth lab. So here’s part 2 of my Fall Rant:

* Bike riders: I know American society is almost hostile toward you. And I know that we need to do a better job of designing and retrofitting our cities to make life a little easier for those on two wheels. But for Schwinn’s sake, could you not ride your rockets on busy sidewalks? I was walking around campus today, and even though the campus is ringed by bike lanes, I had to dodge two-wheeled douchebags weaving in and out of busy pedestrian traffic. Were you aware that you have as much right to ride in the street as the cars? If you want us to be more accommodating and understanding of the troubles you go through to get from here to there, show a little consideration back to us two-legged taxis traversing our fair city. And by the way, when you ride your bike on busy four-lane roads with speed limits of 45 mph or more, we drivers don’t see you as saviors of the planet. We see you as psychotic and suicidal.

* Pedestrians: I know when you’re walking with friends, it’s only natural to want to walk side-by-side to talk to them as you’re walking. But on a crowded sidewalk, if you see someone coming at your moving game of “Red Rover”, give way. I’ve had to slide into the street to avoid a gaggle of giggling coeds talking about…NOTHING. I’d rather not die because you can’t be bothered to show some good manners and yield. Oh, and to the blonde with the Alpha Omega Pi symbols plastered across your butt: I can give the stink-eye as well as you can. Don’t make me break out the dictionary on yo’ ass…

* Tea Baggers: Alright, let’s take your demands at face value. Let’s say we cut taxes and shrink government. How much of Medicare, the Military and Social Security do we cut to offset the avalanche of red ink your proposals? Oh, you don’t want to touch those “third-rail” issues. Well, why not? They comprise 2/3 of the Federal Budget. And how do we stay competitive with China breathing down our necks? If the government doesn’t promote better education, energy policy and spend on infrastructure, how can we grow? I’m shocked that no one has called you on your delusions. Earth to Wingnuts: There never was a “Good Old Days” to go back to. Point to any decade in the past 100 years, and I can point out something intolerable. The 1980s? The Cold War was roaring and we lived under the Damocles Sword of nuclear annihilation. The 1960s? Civil rights struggles and the Vietnam War nearly tore this country in two. The 1940s? We were within a hair’s breath of losing World War II and having half the world collapse under totalitarian dictatorships. There are no easy answers. You want to vent your anger? Vent it at the corporations and the ultra-rich who are stoking the culture wars for their own gain. Vent it at the whores in Congress who are serving lobbyists and big business over the greater good. And for crying out loud, have your mommies change your poopy diapers!

* To the so-called “Silent Majority”: Get off your hands and do something! We’ve got the most vocal, and the most crazy part of both extremes making trouble, and you just sit their in a daze with your Diet Pepsi and your remote in your hands. When more people vote for the American Idol finalist than vote in the general election, Democracy is on life-support. And unlike Terri Schiavo, Congress has no interest in forcing a feeding tube down its throat. This country doesn’t ask much of you, just go out and vote. If more than 75% of eligible voters voted, it would send a shockwave through the halls of state and federal government. The lobbyists and big business can’t buy us all off. When whack jobs like Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Rand Paul have real shots at getting elected to the Senate, the end is near. Overrun the polling places with superior numbers. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote. And read the newspaper and listen to NPR for once.

Whew! That feels much better. I think I’ll go write some poetry now!

First Rant of the Fall

2010-09-27T21:16:00.001-04:00

It’s been a while since I’ve had my semi-regular rant about driving, but things tend to build up. There’s more than just driving this time around. Humanity seems determined to drive me crazy with a thousand paper cuts to the psyche. This will be a little free-floating, but bear with me. Let’s begin, shall we?

* Working on a major college campus has its advantages: central location, lovely coeds, etc. It also has its drawbacks, like 22,000 18-22 year olds who act like a crosswalk is merely a suggestion. Short of closing all the major thoroughfares bisecting campus, it’s going to take a few of these precious snowflakes tasting Chevy bumper to get them to be alert around cars. I’ve seen more near-misses in the past couple of weeks than I’m really comfortable with. Look folks, it’s really quite simple. Every time you step off the pavement and into the street, HURRY! You don’t have to run, just complete the crossing as quickly and efficiently as possible. After all, that’s what jaywalking is all about, isn’t it? If you aren’t saving any time jaywalking, why not head to the crosswalk. That way, when you get hit by a psychotic hillbilly hopped up on meth, the law will be on your side.

* There really needs to be a separate officer on duty at each DMV to tell the painfully old person trying to renew their license for the 20th time that maybe you should consider hanging up the keys for good. I got into the fast lane on Tates Creek Road coming home today, only to get behind an old-timer going 30 mph. The speed limit was 45. I checked (hell, I had plenty of time) and this person was not on the phone. One glance into the side mirror showed a old, rich, white dude staring introspectively into the middle distance. It was as if he was listening to his favorite radio station that existed solely in his mind. I had half a mind to through the car into neutral, and hop out running along side of him yelling SLOW DOWN, WHADDYA CRAZY? ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL EVERYONE AROUND YOU? Then make the Road Runner “BEEP BEEP” noise and tear off into the distance.

* One of the best things about the season change is the leaves turning and that little nip in the air. One of the worst things of the season is the wild temperature shifts as the Earth decides whether to boil you or freeze you. Last Thursday it was 95 degrees. Today, it never got above 60. There was also a constant drizzle that made Seattle and London look like Aruba. I’m so glad I checked the weather report. I nearly went out in shorts and sandals. Unfortunately, many college students don’t check the weather before heading out in a tube top, hot pants and flip-flops. Poor guy…

* One of the few sensible things Congress has enacted is the “No-Call” List. I used to get many telemarketing calls a night. Now I only get the occasional one from a sad sack call center in Mumbai, I mean “Dallas”. One of the loopholes in the No Call legislation is an exemption for companies that have a previous business relationship with you. I absentmindedly answered the phone before screening it this weekend and had the joy of a native Hindi speaker trying to navigate the linguistic minefield that is American English.

HADJI: Hello, is Mr. L(unintelligible, but nice try) there?

ME: No, he’s not. May I take a message?

HADJI: (uncomfortably long pause) Oh…no…just tell him that this was a courtesy call.

ME: Will do. Say, how are things in Hyderabad?

HADJI: It is the rainy season…NO! I mean, I’m not in Hyderabad, I’m in Dallas! How about them Lakers beating those Cowpokes with a home run in the final frame? Pretty good, yes?

ME: You follow hockey?

HADJI: (hangs up)

I win.

* Dear Kroger, while I like getting coupons, sending them to me EVERY OTHER DAY is getting to be a bit much. Now you’re sending me electronic coupons via the web and email. For some reason you seem to think I have a dog. I haven’t had a dog since the 1970s. Also, you seem to value your house brand cheese quite highly. While it’s good cheese, I don’t think I’ll be buying six slabs of it just to save fifty cents. If I ate that much cheese, I would need a coupon for your house brand anti-constipation medicine, as I would be blocked up like the Johnstown Dam. Let’s just cool it on the coupon gang bang, and take a breather for a while. Love and kisses, Me.

It seems like every season change brings about a psychotic episode in the denizens of my fair city. Usually it calms down in a couple of weeks. It’s times like this that I’m happy vodka was invented. Until next time, Peace.

9/11: Nine Years Later

2010-09-11T17:25:00.001-04:00

As we remember one of the most traumatic events in recent American history, we turn the spotlight back on lower Manhattan and what it symbolizes. The memories of 9/11 may have mellowed a bit with time, yet the ramifications of the terror attack are real and omnipresent in our lives. It’s hard to believe that just now we are withdrawing troops from Iraq and focusing our war efforts on the “Graveyard of Empires” in Afghanistan. President Bush and the Neocons used this tragedy to gin up support for attacking Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, even though there wasn’t any evidence that Saddam had anything to do with the 19 mostly Saudi terrorists that plotted and carried out the attack. You know the rest of the story.

So now, what do we do with the site of the tragedy? There are those who consider the former World Trade Center site as hallowed ground. They would have us turn the entire area into a memorial for the victims of the attack. It’s an understandable impulse. However, what good would it do to make Ground Zero a giant mausoleum for the 3,000+ poor souls that died? New York is still a vibrant, living, working city. To devote an entire city block to a museum to the attack seems pornographic. Profiting from tragedy is nothing new for humanity, and this would just be another case.

There are others who wish to put up a tasteful memorial to the victims, yet use the other land for offices and commerce. I tend to lean in this direction. After all, what better way to show the terrorists that America is infinitely stronger than assumed than to absorb this blow and move on about our business. While we shouldn’t forget what happened there, we shouldn’t wallow in misery and self-pity about it, either.

Then there’s the business about the “Ground Zero Mosque”. As it turns out, it’s not really a mosque but rather an Islamic Community Center. Predictably, an attention whore Evangelical has taken advantage of the hype to try and set up a “Ground Zero Church” at a nearby hotel. I have no problem with either wanting to locate anywhere they can buy or lease property. I do have a problem with the association with 9/11 and Ground Zero. The Cordoba Project seems to be a legitimate project, since Imam Rauf is a respected cleric. He’s even worked on outreach on behalf of the U.S. Government at the request of President George W. Bush (R-TX). The church is really just a rented auditorium at a hotel. If the creators of this church can secure a lease or building on their own, more power to them. I just wish they wouldn’t wear Ground Zero on their sleeve.

Finally, the one lasting legacy of 9/11 seems to be political. Politicians have used the attack to rally support for themselves. Rudy Giuliani seems to be the worst offender, as he seems incapable of finishing a sentence without mentioning 9/11 even once. Republicans have used the specter of 9/11 to scare voters about terrorists living next door to them, or plotting to blow up more cities. Democrats are also to blame for not standing up for the Bill of Rights when abominations like the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping became facts of life for millions of Americans. I suspect those on the right are secretly gleeful that they found something to replace Communists as boogeymen to frighten Americans to support tax cuts for the rich and increased power to law enforcement.

Like any tragedy, there are those who would take advantage of it for their own personal gain. That will never change. My hope is we will come to our senses and realize that no one owns the copyright to 9/11. It belongs to us all. Before the demagogues can lead us down more ruinous paths, we should take this event and use it to evolve and grow our views about where we stand in the world. We are no longer the 800-pound gorilla, cushioned on both sides by vast oceans. We are a member of the world, and we should take our place in it. Our biggest dangers aren’t being planned in a remote cave in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. They are staring us right in the face.

We should take this day as a day of reflection to turn inward and examine those dangers and find ways to fix them. That would be the biggest gift of 9/11.

A Few Thoughts on the Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-20T21:07:00.001-04:00

Apparently having nothing else to focus on this Summer, the media has been all over the proposed Islamic Community Center near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque”, pundits on the right have been mercilessly pummeling Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for even suggesting placing the center two blocks from the site of the worst terrorist attack on America in its history, perpetrated by Muslims. What an insult to the memory of the 3,000 innocent souls who perished at the hands of fanatics determined to bring down wicked America and convert it into a Muslim state observing Sharia Law! How. dare. you.

When all the wharrgarbl abated, cooler heads stepped forward and reaffirmed a key point that protesters had glossed over: the First Amendment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that there was nothing wrong with them building the center in the currently abandoned Burlington Coat Factory. No laws or building code prevented it. The zoning laws are okay with it, too. President Obama, already under suspicion for his Muslim ties in Kenya, also waded in. It might have more power if he hadn’t backtracked a bit the next day. He said there was nothing wrong with building a mosque, or any other house of worship at that site, but he didn’t say he endorsed the idea of building it. A little too lawyerly to be of any use, I fear.

First off, let’s stop calling it the “Ground Zero Mosque”. It makes it sound like they’re building a minaret directly on the former World Trade Center site. With the remains of some victims still believed to be buried there, that would be provocatively creepy. It’s actually two blocks away. That’s the same distance that the Jewish Holocaust Museum is from the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. It’s enough on the periphery that you might not even see it from whatever garish atrocity they will eventually erect at Ground Zero as a memorial. There’s a strip club and a sex shop located the same distance as the proposed Cordoba House. Are those referred to as the “Ground Zero Titty Bar” and the “Ground Zero Rubber ‘n Lube”? There are also Christian churches and a mosque just four blocks away. Will they have to move, too? Considering the seedy nature of the immediate environs, an Islamic Fellowship Center would be an improvement.

And what should go into the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory in its place? Another overpriced celebrity eatery or mall? How is that honoring the memory of the victims? And if nothing goes in there, isn’t it morbid that we’re turning that entire neighborhood into a blighted mausoleum? Wouldn’t it be more galling to the fanatics who think they delivered a crushing blow to the American way of life if we rebuilt the area into a thriving part of the city? An Islamic Fellowship Center would be indisputable proof that America is more resilient, tolerant and forgiving than any capital in the former Caliphate.

Conservatives hammer on the idea that moderate Muslims should step up and speak out against the radical part of its religion. Isn’t that what Imam Rauf is trying to do? President Bush identified Rauf as a partner after 9/11 to reassure the Muslim community that America was not going to war with Islam. We were going to war with al-Qaeda. America was founded on religious freedom and tolerance. It the reason those pilgrims piled onto rickety boats and set off for the New World in the first place. The first colonies were founded on different religious principles: Quakers in Pennsylvania; Puritans in Massachusetts; Catholics in Rhode Island, etc. Lost in all the falderal is the fact that 300 Muslims perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Christians, Jews and Athiests were also killed. No one was spared because of their beliefs.

Also, the term mosque is being abused. Yes, there will be a section of the center reserved for Muslim prayer. But that isn’t the main function of the building. Critics seem to forget that there is a mosque in the Pentagon—another site of the 9/11 attack. There’s even a Shinto temple located at Pearl Harbor to honor the Japanese dead. Didn’t they attack us? Why do they get a memorial? Ah, right…the First Amendment. Conservatives rub their hands together in glee when they can use the Constitution to defend their precious beliefs. But when it comes to the Constitution protecting ideas they find abhorrent, they shake their hammy little fists. Too many historians to mention reaffirm that we have an obligation to defend Constitutional principles, even when they protect ideas or beliefs we hate. The First Amendment protects the rights of Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Scientologists, Raelians, and any other faith under the sun.

The Cordoba House isn’t a training ground for terrorists. It’s the first step in winning the hearts and minds of the Islamic Street. After attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims are wary of American intentions in the Middle East. The “Ground Zero Mosque” could be a shining example of why they’re wrong about us, and an affirmation of why America is as great as it is.

Why Conservatives Hate the Gay Marriage Issue

2010-08-14T23:13:00.001-04:00

When Federal Judge Vaughan Walker overturned the controversial Prop 8 in California, he may have set in motion the inevitable move toward legalized gay marriage in all fifty states. Why? Because there just isn’t a convincing Constitutional argument for discriminating against a sub set of American citizens. Conservatives are weighing their options, but the endgame seems to be same-sex marriage gaining the same rights and protections as heterosexual marriage.

This particular issue has conservatives tying themselves in knots. For generations, conservatism took the form of a libertarian view of Constitutional rights and individual liberty. In other words, the Federal Government had to have convincing and overwhelming proof of national danger before they could interfere in the day to day lives of ordinary Americans. They championed States’ Rights, as well as upholding the Second Amendment as fiercely as liberals defended the First Amendment. The Federal Government should stay out of private affairs, unless it could prove national security was at risk. This view of the role of the Federal Government was championed by conservative stalwarts like Barry Goldwater. It had a Western tinge to it, and it appealed to many Americans. It still does.

About forty years ago, a brand of social conservatism began to rise. It coalesced after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973. Led by Evangelicals like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly, social conservatives wanted to maintain a rigid belief system that put God back in the classroom, subjugated gays, and serve as a backlash against the Women’s Rights movement of the 60s and 70s. They feared the moral decay brought on by the 1960s, and they wanted to use the power of politics to return the country to the right and moral road. Agree with them or not, they were a force to be reckoned with. They came to power after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Their power is finally beginning to ebb. Gay Marriage is a sort of last stand for social conservatism. They are pulling out all the stops.

The cognitive dissonance for conservatives takes place where these two disparate views of conservatism intersect. Conservatives believe in upholding the Constitution. But the 14th Amendment states quite clearly that all citizens have equal rights under the law. So two consenting adults should be allowed to get married and enjoy all the legal rights associated with marriage. But what if those two citizens are of the same sex? Despite the ick factor experienced by certain heterosexuals, that shouldn’t matter. The Federal and State governments are clearly in violation of the 14th Amendment by banning same-sex marriage. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is suddenly in the hot seat. He cast the swing vote that abolished sodomy laws in Texas, and by ruling the rest of the United States. That was a true conservative’s decision. The current structure of the High Court shows 4 solid votes for, and 4 solid votes against legalizing same-sex marriage. Kennedy would cast the swing vote, should the case make its way to the Supreme Court. I don’t see how they can avoid it. It’s too important a social issue to pass up.

Should the High Court decide to legalize same-sex marriage, it would be the death knell for social conservatism. They would still have abortion as an issue to pursue, but their influence would be on the wane. They also seem to be focusing on the immigration issue in Arizona, although that too has a 14th Amendment road block in their way. They propose amending the Constitution to do away with the 14th Amendment’s provision allowing children of illegal aliens becoming citizens. Good luck. All it would take would be a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states to ratify that. There’s a reason the Founding Fathers set it up that way. It was to prevent the Constitution becoming the plaything of a simple majority of any one group or movement. Add to that the fact that Hispanics will become a force by mid-century, and social conservatives efforts become all the more futile.

Judge Vaughan Walker was appointed by President George H.W. Bush. He’s a staunch conservative, but an old-fashioned one from the school of Western Libertarian Conservatism. By doing his job and upholding the Constitution, he’s thrown down the gauntlet to other conservatives. He’s challenging them to reflect on what they truly believe in. As a Democrat with Libertarian leanings, I hope they don’t listen just yet. I’d like to enjoy a reasonably enlightened era of sensible Center-Left rule for about 30 years.

After the last 30 years of Reaganism, we sure could use the break.

When the Honeymoon’s Over

2010-08-08T22:23:00.001-04:00

It happens to all Presidents, good and bad. High poll numbers eventually fall back down to Earth. The press, once seemingly on your side, turns on you and blames you for everything. The opposition, once thwarted and humbled, regains its swagger and starts back on the offensive. All this with a couple of months to go until the first midterm election of the Obama Administration. What’s a preternaturally cool politician to do?

Well, if you’re Barack Obama, you come out swinging back at your political opponents. You define the GOP by the failed policies of the Bush Administration, and their unwillingness to work with the Democrats on anything. You tell the American public to expect more of the same from the Neocons and Wall Street Pirates that nearly wrecked the economy and America’s standing in the world. In other words, you roll up your sleeves and engage in a little classic political mudwrestling. It’s been going on since the start of the Republic, and it will continue until the sun consumes the Earth.

But is that the right approach?

Since Obama has been ordained as the “Black Reagan”, perhaps he should take a trick or two from the Gipper’s playbook. First, remember that Americans love optimists. In one of the darkest economic periods of the last thirty years, we sure could use some optimism. While the meltdown of 2008 was frightening and damaging, it could have been much, much worse. Had Obama, and yes Bush as well, not taken swift action to shore up the economy, we would have been in the middle of our second Great Depression. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression. Maybe he could go out and talk about not what went wrong this time, but what went right. The economy turned around in record time, and we can expect growth in the 2 to 3% range in the coming year. Puny growth, yes, but growth nonetheless. Unemployment is still high, and that probably will continue for a while. Point the finger at intransigent Republicans in Congress for shooting down an extension of unemployment benefits. Continue the drumbeat against Wall Street and their billion dollar bonus sprees on the taxpayers’ dime. The deficit is important, but job creation and economic stimulus are even more important.

Second, the President can use a little political Jiu-Jitsu against the GOP in the form of the Tea Party. The Tea Partiers raise some important questions about government. You can use them as a jumping off point to talk about political successes that the Democrats are doing without a single vote from the Republicans. The intended audience is not the Tea Party, but those independents and undecideds that swing every election. It’s also a reminder to the party faithful to get out and vote to keep the lunatics from taking over the asylum. Like it or not, and results be damned, the first two years of the Obama Administration were some of the most productive since FDR. Every President since Truman has tried to get comprehensive health care reform passed. Obama succeeded. He did it when legendary politicians like JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Reagan couldn’t. He is the only President in living memory who is also a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s not clearing brush on his “ranch” in Crawford, Texas. He’s working.

The political reality of the situation dictates that the President loses seats in Congress in midterm elections. I don’t think this time will be different. However, I don’t see the Democrats losing both houses this time around. If the President is smart, he can shore up support for key Democrats in Congress, and use the losses as a rallying cry to the faithful.

He should also move to the next phase of his Presidency where the press no longer give him a free ride, and late-night talk show hosts use him as a punchline. It isn’t a dishonor, it’s just business as usual.

The Constitution Strikes Back

2010-08-04T20:39:00.001-04:00

Today in a landmark decision, Federal Judge Vaughan Walker overturned the controversial Proposition 8 in California. The Proposition, approved by 52% of California voters, made gay marriage illegal in California. The judge cited the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and the right to due process guaranteed by the 4th and 5th Amendments. To put it in a nutshell: even if 100% of the voters voted for banning gay marriage, it doesn’t trump the Constitutional rights of gays to marry.

The other side has already vowed to appeal, so this fight is far from over. However, supporters of Prop 8 might want to be careful what they wish for. If it makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, there’s a pretty good chance the justices would have to admit that Judge Walker is right. There is no reasonable legal or Constitutional argument that one could make for denying the rights enjoyed by heterosexuals to homosexuals. If they so desire, they could declare any state law banning gay marriage unconstitutional, and all 50 states would have to recognize it. That’s a hell of a risk to take.

What about defending the traditional role of marriage? Well, marriage as we know it started as more of a financial arrangement than a romantic one. Kings and Queens married princesses off to prevent wars and gain strategic alliances. Families used marriage to merge fortunes and guarantee property succession. Anyway, if you look at the divorce statistics, heterosexuals have done more to defile marriage than the two old lesbians who’ve been together for 40 years and just want to make their union official.

It’s the 21st Century. Just recently, Mexico City voted to recognize same-sex marriages. In the heart of Catholic Latin America, Argentina also legalized same-sex unions. Have these macho Latin countries gone pink? Not necessarily. What they’ve done is correct an injustice that’s been afflicting mankind for thousands of years: treating those who are different as evil or subversive. They recognize that same-sex marriage isn’t a gay right, it’s a human right. It’s now a civil right in these jurisdictions.

Perhaps now a constituency that disappointed me during the original vote, black church activists, will reconsider and remember what they went through in the 1950s and 60s. It wasn’t until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling that blacks and whites were allowed to marry. Now, we don’t think twice about it. A lot of the same arguments used against miscegenation were used to deny gays the rights to marry. Have we learned nothing? I’m the product of a mixed marriage. My father, a brown man from the Phillipines, married my mother—a lily-white farm girl from Southern Indiana. Looking back, it was a radical act which predated Loving by three years. Although my father was Asian, he was not white. I’m sorry I didn’t ask them when they were alive what it was like going through the racial wars of the 1960s.

I’m heartened by Judge Walker’s ruling today. I see it as the first steps in the long journey to getting the rights of marriage to all citizens. Perhaps in my lifetime we’ll see equal rights for all, regardless of whom they want to kiss.

The Return of Obstinate Myopia

2010-07-25T21:36:00.001-04:00

Recently, NPR did a story on raw milk enthusiasts in Maryland. They have to drive to Pennsylvania in order to buy it, as it’s illegal to sell raw milk in their home state. The milk runners claim it tastes better, and it’s better for you since it’s less processed. I do agree that cheese made with raw milk tastes better than cheese made from pasteurized milk. It’s the reason European cheeses taste better generally than American produced fare. However, their health benefit claims fall a little short.

Milk is an ideal microorganism incubator. Raw milk houses campylobacter, salmonella, listeria, E.coli and staphylococcus, among many others. In fact, it was a typhoid epidemic linked to raw milk that got us pasteurizing milk in the first place. Edsel Ford and Sally Hanks Lincoln are believed to have died from milk-borne disease. The FDA and the CDC even warn against the consumption of raw milk. So why do they persist?

It could be a belief that the more natural a thing is, the better it is for you. Processing foods like corn is bad, so all processing is bad, right? “I’ve been drinking raw milk all my life and it never bothered me. Why, I’ll bet that it strengthened my immune system!” Then the next time Farmer Gump takes a swig of raw moo juice, he dies of salmonella. It’s the same reason we don’t give raw honey to infants. Their immune systems aren’t robust enough to fight off botulism spores that sometimes live in raw honey. Raw almonds contain a risk of salmonella. Sucks being a vegetarian, don’t it?

The raw milk enthusiasts are cousins to the anti-vaccination crowd. Led by former Playboy bunny, Jenny McCarthy, this group believes vaccinations cause autism in children. The substance they point to is thiomersal, a compound that was used as a preservative in vaccinations. A 2006 review of studies on thiomersal showed no link between it and reported cases of autism. As a result, otherwise intelligent people are forgoing vaccinations of their precious little snowflakes. Rather a shame, since California is reporting deaths due to cases of Whooping Cough. Expect an uptick in the number of cases of diseases that were once well-controlled by vaccinations, thanks to a herd belief in something that has scant or no scientific evidence backing it.

A stubborn refusal of facts and data doesn’t stop global warming deniers, either. To be fair, I consider myself a global warming skeptic. I don’t deny the Earth is heating up, I’m just not sure that we humans are entirely the cause of it. The deniers, however, are convinced that it’s all a hoax concocted by some very shady academics trying to keep the sweet, sweet river of research money flowing their way. They point to the leaked emails from the research center at the University of East Anglia as proof of a global conspiracy to hide the truth from God-fearing Murrikans: it’s all a bunch of hooey. Every bit of meteorological data that I’ve seen points to the fact that the Earth is heating up. It doesn’t explain why it’s heating up, but it certainly is heating up. The explanations here are a little more clear cut. No one wants to change the way we live radically. The uncertainty of life without greenhouse gases terrifies the capitalists. How can we make money without oil? If we tax carbon in order to spur innovation into green technologies, that will cut into short-term profits. It points out the flaws in the current way we do things. Change? Here’s a quarter, go nuts…

Which brings me at long last to the Tea Partiers. Ah, how boring politics would be if it weren’t for you frothing, barking, mad, hellions determined to “return this country back to the people”-- as long as those people are rich, white, Protestant men. It’s odd that the Tea Partiers are determined to run like lemmings back to the days of George W. Bush: tax cuts for the rich; no regulations on businesses; no affirmative action for women and minorities, etc. Just say it. You don’t like the fact that a darkie is in the White House. The truth will set you free, and let the rest of us know who you are so we can vote against you and make fun of you on snarky blogs and fake news shows. These people are genuinely angry, yet it is unfocused. If they had any sense, they would storm Wall Street, not the White House. Those are the bastards that took down the economy. Become modern day Robespierres and set up a guillotine in Battery Park. Let them eat (pan)cake. CHOP!

The truth is out there, but it often isn’t black and white. The problems we face are complex, and can’t be solved in an hour like a reality show. The misguided belief that the masses possess a magical common sense that transcends decades of rigorous scientific research will be the death of us. We need to spend less time pointing fingers and playing the blame game, and more time working on our most persistent problems.

But mostly we need to spend more time listening to the Jonas Salks of the world, and less time to the Jenny McCarthys.

Some Closing Thoughts on the World Cup

2010-07-12T21:48:00.001-04:00

As Andrés Iniesta gathered in a crossing pass and calmly slid the ball past the Dutch goalkeeper, he scored the most important goal in Spanish soccer history. “La Roja Furia” (The Red Fury) won Spain’s first and only World Cup. This came in extra time on the heels of a truly ugly soccer match in which 14 yellow cards were handed out, and a red card for the Dutch. It’s as if you went to a bar fight, and a soccer match broke out. The Orange abandoned their usual high-flying attack for a frustrating defensive smash in the style of the Italians. The Spaniards were clearly frustrated, but patient as they picked at the Dutch defense.

In the end, the better team won. This was a historic Cup for many reasons: a first time winner; first championship played on the African continent, and most annoying noisemaker (the vuvuzela). There were other winners and losers though. Here is a rough list in no particular order:

WINNERS:

--South Africa: Despite inflicting the horror that is the vuvuzela on an unsuspecting world, they did manage to pull off a pretty tidy Cup with little reported trouble or unrest. The stadia looked modern and well-equipped, and the fans mostly behaved themselves. The fear that the somewhat racist soccer hooligans would run amok in Capetown was largely unfounded.

--USA Soccer: Despite being ranked 10th in the world, the Red, White and Blue played some of the most exciting soccer in the tournament. Getting behind early, then storming back late, they ran across a burning tightrope blindfolded. Alas, the magic ran out in the knockout round against Ghana, but this Cup might have actually put U.S. soccer back on the map. The world still doesn’t take us seriously, but they’re now watching us.

--European soccer: After some early success from South American teams, and early exits for a couple of its traditional powers, the continent rebounded with an all European final. The Spaniards and the Germans had teams loaded with top talent, and the Dutch also boasted some fine players in their prime. What they lacked in South American flash, they made up with team work and good fundamentals.

--Paul the Octopus: The clairvoyant cephalopod picked eight out of eight winners correctly. In fact, the only time he’s missed in two years was in the Euro Cup 2008 final. How’s this for irony, he chose Germany over Spain. Spain won. He didn’t make that error a second time. If you bet with Paul during the Cup, you would have raked in serious bucks.

LOSERS:

--Conmebol: The South American soccer federation had four teams in the semis. All four lost. Traditional powerhouses Argentina and Brazil were humiliated by European teams. They could take consolation that Uruguayan Diego Forlan won the Gold Boot as the MVP of this Cup. In the end, their flash and firepower were disrupted by solid defense and opportunistic counterattacking.

--France: This may have been the most humiliating tournament for a traditional powerhouse. Between infighting, incompetent coaching and just a lack of heart, Les Bleus just gave up. For a country shamed by past surrenders dating back to the Hundred Years' War, this was especially hurtful. It seems impossible to think that this team was in the finals just four years ago. A questionable qualifying win against Ireland presaged this debacle, as star Thierry Henry took a deliberate handball to keep the Irish out of the Cup. The national team needs a house cleaning and an attitude adjustment.

--Italy: Winners in 2006, La Forza Azzuri didn’t even make it out of the first round. They looked sluggish and disorganized, atypical of the soccer giants. With soccer just this side of Jesus Christ as Italian obsessions, one might wager that they flew into Switzerland and snuck back across the border. The last time the Italians were knocked out early, angry fans gathered at the airport and threw rotten fruit and vegetables at the team.

--Officiating: I don’t want to hear anymore about how bad the refs are in American sports. The refereeing in this tournament was wildly inconsistent, and in the age of HDTV and digital playback, FIFA’s stubborn refusal to adopt instant replay is maddening. Several onside goals were disallowed, and many offside goals were allowed. At least they were consistent in their inconsistency. No one team or continent was favored. Everyone got at least one game changing call. FIFA, you need to clean this up and fast. It was an embarrassment.

SOME MODEST SUGGESTIONS:

1. Suspend the offsides rule in the penalty box, and institute a five second rule similar to basketball. The three second rule in basketball prevents players from camping out in the lane. Likewise, a five second rule would allow a player to go offsides in the penalty box to gather in a pass and shoot. Too many goals were disallowed because of tight bunching in the penalty box. If crafty defenders recognize a straying player, all they had to do was run up to expose them in a trap. With five seconds to be legally offsides, the faster and more gifted scorers could be free to make more creative shots and boost scoring.

2. Get tough on diving. It’s already a yellow card if you fake an injury, but it’s almost never called. As much as I appreciated Dutch Forward Arjen Robben’s skills, he was the most flagrant diver I’ve ever seen. He’s even become an internet meme. Instead of “Rickrolling”, there’s “Robbenrolling”. Players are to be instructed that if they hit the ground, they have five seconds to get up. If they fake an injury, then pop up after five seconds as if nothing happened, they’re immediately red carded and tossed from the game. It wastes time, it’s dishonest, and it’s just not manly. With only three substitutions per game, you’re really going to have to be hurt to risk an expulsion.

3. Modernize the game. American baseball predates the World Cup by about forty years, yet they evolved with the times. What’s with this no accurate clock in the stadium nonsense? If you have an official timekeeper, why is it a secret? And what’s with this extra time guessing. The ref should decide how much time to add for injuries and stoppages well before the 90 minute mark and add it to the clock. Part of the excitement of the game for the fans is watching the clock tick down. Either time it, or don’t. I never know when a game is over until I hear the announcer say “It’s over.” And for Pete’s sake, adopt instant replay. You can limit it to only a few times per half, but with HDTV, you can see quite clearly whether a player is onside or not. Countries riot and people die over blown calls. The whole “preserving the integrity and history of the game” defense is bunk. Bowling has automatic pin setters. Basketball no longer has tips after every score, and tennis players no longer use wood rackets.

For a non-fan like myself, the World Cup was a fun watch. It will be interesting to see if, like so many times in the past, soccer finally takes off as a major sport in the United States. We’re making a bid to host in 2018 or 2022, and I hope we get one. I may even travel to a game or three if they do.

Although we have to work on our chanting. I hope we outlaw the vuvuzela!

Lebron’s LeBad Form

2010-07-09T21:48:00.001-04:00

Normally, I don’t follow pro basketball, since the new wave of hot dogs that can’t hit free throws or defend one on one makes the game a lot of waiting in between dunks. However, something happened last night that I feel damaged the game in ways we have yet to feel. The hottest free agent in the NBA, Lebron James, announced he was signing with the Miami Heat to join his friends Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. He felt this was his best chance to win a championship—one that had eluded him in seven years in Cleveland.

Had he announced it in a discreet press conference, or even a press release, no one would have really blamed him. After all, Cavaliers management had been rather inept in recruiting and building a team around the perennial MVP candidate. Poor coaching cost his team easy victories, and subsequent early exits, from the playoffs. King James was a shining diamond in a manure pile. If he wanted a championship, he had to go. He could have graciously thanked the fans in the Cleveland area, especially his hometown of Akron, for their support during his tenure there. The next day, he could have showed up in Miami to sign his new contract with the Heat ownership and declare his desire to do the hard work to build a winner.

But he didn’t handle it that way. Instead, he got with ESPN and had an hour-long special in which he would announce which team would get his services. This was bad because it was going to guarantee that there would be hurt feelings from the franchises that didn’t get him. When he could have handled it discreetly, he turned the spotlight on himself. By not re-signing with the team that drafted him, his hometown team, he became a pariah. The first Heat game in Cleveland might turn into an ugly affair worthy of a soccer riot. The other teams in the running, Chicago and the Knicks, had to be publically humiliated as well. Apparently neither was worthy of King James’ talent. Even though Chicago had the best young team in place for him to lead, and the Knicks would have allowed him the greatest exposure and endorsement opportunities.

He wanted to go play with his friends. I can’t really blame him. If his camaraderie with Wade and Bosh gels on the court, they could be a force to be reckoned with. But who will be left to help them win? You have three superstars signing max contracts. That will leave little money for role players to fill in the gaps. Good luck finding road-worthy backups with minimum contracts. The Heat will already have salary cap problems. This won’t help. As anyone knows, superstars get you to the big show, secondary players win the game. Larry Bird had Dennis Johnson, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish to take the load off. Magic Johnson had Kareem, James Worthy and Byron Scott to finish. Even the great Michael Jordan knew when to get John Paxson, Scotty Pippen and Horace Grant the ball in crunch time. I don’t really see players of that caliber available at the money Miami will be scraping by with.

There was a rumor after the 2008 Olympics that James, Bosh and Wade made a pact to play together one day in the NBA. They even structured their contracts to expire all at the same time. Most dismissed it as hearsay, since none would own up on the record. We now know that this was the case. So when word that Toronto was finishing up a sign and trade deal to Miami for Bosh, Lebron would soon make his way to South Beach. That’s perfectly fine. If you can work it out, by all means do it. But by keeping this conspiracy secret for so long, all three did the fans dirty (especially in Cleveland). Bosh was leaving Toronto, that wasn’t a surprise. Wade was staying in Miami, and that wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was Lebron James coy flirting with the press and the fans. He turned the hopes and dreams of several franchises into a crass reality show—complete with harsh lights and smarmy, smug puffery. During that abortion of a show Thursday night, they built up the big reveal by saying James was “the greatest free agent in NBA history.” Please. That’s essentially saying that he’s the most coveted mercenary in the bigs. Magic stayed with the Lakers in good times and bad. Larry Bird retired a Celtic. Michael Jordan went through five rough seasons in Chicago before the pieces were in place for a dynasty. By jumping ship in Cleveland, James admitted that he couldn’t win there, and he wasn’t waiting around. There’s precedent there. Shaq dumped Orlando for the bright lights of Hollywood and promptly won a title with the Lakers. The difference was, Shaq was always a mercenary. He never had ties in Orlando. When things got too heated in L.A. between him and Kobe, he left for Miami—where he won another title with Wade. James is a Northeast Ohio boy, and he made a big deal about playing with hometown team. I guess he can share a table with Art Modell, another Clevelander banished from his home by a financial decision that paid off.

If there’s anyone I feel sorry for, it’s the poor Cleveland area sports fans. How many gut punches can one area take? The Drive, The Shot, the Indians choking, their beloved Browns leaving for Baltimore to win a Super Bowl, and now their hometown idol divorcing them for some hot, young thing in a thong. But if Cleveland fans are anything, they’re resilient. Almost immediately, the Cavaliers owner, Dan Gilbert, posted an incendiary open letter to Cavs fans online. He lambasted James for his insensitivity, and vowing that Cleveland would win a championship before James would. It was a ballsy, no-holds-barred shot at their former superstar. One would only hope that it doesn’t ring hollow. After all, they couldn’t win with the league’s MVP. What can they do without his 29 points and 8 rebounds a game? Mr. Gilbert, you get an “A” for guts and an “incomplete” for results until you can deliver.

The reality of pro sports is that it’s a business first and foremost. Free agency has unshackled players for servitude with one team, at the expense of team cohesion and loyalty. After all, why should the fans lay down ever-increasing sums of money to watch spoiled narcissists thump their chest, then jump ship when their contracts are up. I’m not naive, if I were in James’ size 16 shoes, I would do the same.

However, I wouldn’t take up an hour of prime time cable to hold the dreams of sports fans hostage. Bad move, Lebron. Enjoy your karma.

Dispatches From the Generational Wars

2010-07-05T22:18:00.001-04:00

Tooling around the Interwebs this three-day weekend, I ran into a number of articles about generational politics. This stuff is nothing new. The old generation always rags on the following ones—calling them lazy, unmotivated and unwilling to work to achieve. The younger generations always blames the previous ones for being selfish, stodgy and unwilling to admit that they aren’t the hot young things anymore. In other words, “Go to bed, Old Man.”

I’ve always found this amusing, since there’s a nugget of truth in both viewpoints. In the crosshairs this time is Generation Y, or Generation Next, or the Millenials. Recent studies have suggested that Millenials have an unreasonable sense of worth, accomplishment and ability. Being the first generation brought up with the odious “Self-Esteem Movement” of the past thirty years, they’ve been overly praised and cushioned from failure by helicopter parents afraid their precious little snowflakes might face anything that could hurt their feelings. Now the Baby Boomers are shocked, shocked I tell you, that their little angels are falling on their faces when confronted with the harsh reality of life in the 21st Century. You reap what you sew. There’s a uncomfortably large number of twenty-somethings ill-equipped to fend for themselves in the Big Bad World. So, they’re coming back to the safety of the nest until they can figure out what wasn’t given to them: diligence, determination, and a desire to work hard to get ahead.

Who knew that telling your child he could do no wrong would come back and bite you on the butt? It’s especially ill-timed, as we need the Millenials to enter the workforce in droves to help pay for the Baby Boomers who are retiring en masse in the next twenty years. You know, just in time for Social Security and Medicare to go bankrupt. And here’s where the guns are turned on the Baby Boomers. Ah, yes…the Baby Boomers. That generation of eternal children who didn’t want to fight a unnecessary war in Vietnam. Because, you know, they didn’t have any oil there! The ones who embraced Reaganomics in the 80s and told us “Greed Is Good”. As George Carlin said, “They went from Hippies to Yuppies; and they went from Cocaine to Rogaine.”

What about my crew, Generation X? You know, that perpetually overlooked bunch of cynical slackers who fell in love with mall culture and hair metal in the 80s, and ironic detachment and Grunge in the 90s? Well, we are responsible for hipsterism. (Really sorry about that!) We turned 180 degrees away from the Boomers and embraced a different kind of counter-culture. It’s one that is too hip for the room. If more than a handful of people begin to like it, it’s a “sellout”. We love the obscure and the pretentious. We drink PBR, and rave about the latest lo-fi, hip hop, no-wave psychedelic band out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Or Austin, Texas. Or Portland, Oregon. But not Athens, GA—that’s played out! It’s like the French New Wave movement of the 60s—except it’s not nearly as cool. We were the early adopters of things like blogs, where we cynically piss on anything fun…whoa (looks in the mirror).

Of course, these are all gross oversimplifications. There are a number of exceptions across the generations. Boomers injected a social conscience into the society at large. They embraced civil rights and the environmental movement. Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, Animal Rights and more were championed by the Boomers. Their objection to Vietnam was an important turning point in the country. No longer were we to just accept going to war for shady reasons. Unless it’s Iraq, because they have oil; and Afghanistan, because, well, they hit me first!

The Millenials do have energy. They seem less prejudiced about things like race or gender. They are more accepting of concepts like gay marriage and they helped fulfill America’s promise by electing a black man to the White House. If society is to change for the better, the Millenials will be driving the bus that gets us there. Heaven help us if the bus gets a flat tire, though. They’ve never had to change one or call AAA in their lives! Yes, they have ADD and ADHD something fierce. But in the age of computers and electronics, that’s not a liability, that’s an asset! They can change quickly along with technology, and they’ll lead the way—if they ever figure out which way that is!

We Gen-Xers may be cynical, but we’re also the clear-eyed critics of the world at large. We don’t cotton to B.S., and we call things for what they are. This might, or might not be a useful service in the age of the Tea Partiers. I think we’ve accepted the fact that, like poor Prince Charles, our Queen Elizabeth (the Boomers) will outlive us. We’ll never get to lead the country. It’s probably better that way. Skeptics make awful leaders. It also gives us cover as we sit on the sideline and piss and moan about everything.

We can’t choose when we’re born, and which generational cohort we belong to. The best we can do is open lines of communication to each other and try to utilize the expertise and energy of each group. We shouldn’t treat the new kids like kids. We should appreciate them for the energy they bring to the country. We also shouldn’t marginalize the older generations. They have wisdom and experience to share to inform future decisions that affect us all. No, we should accept our differences and work to solve our considerable problems, ignoring each generation’s shortcomings.

Except the Gen-Xers. Damn slackers! Quit playing Hacky Sack, take off that Salvation Army Bomber Jacket and get back to work!

Hypercriticism’s Dead End

2010-06-27T21:08:00.001-04:00

It’s been instructive to see President Obama under pressure lately. The one man in Washington known for his cool is facing setback after crisis after tragedy. First off, he’s taking heat for his handling of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that turned into the largest oil spill in American history. It is a tragedy of increasing sadness and desperation as an entire section of our country watches their livelihoods drown in an inky black sea of sludge and tar. Photos from the beach at Pensacola magnified the tragedy and helplessness. Conservative wags are calling this “Obama’s Katrina”. That’s not quite right. Bush saw Katrina coming. He could have had Federal forces in place to help with the clean up. No one saw an exploding oil rig coming, save for the fired whistleblowers who tried to warn BP executives that something was going wrong.

It’s been even more instructive to see America’s response to the oil spill. Instead of seeking a scientific solution, or demanding experts be flown in from all over the globe on BP’s dime, Americans wanted Obama to “get angry”. They wanted someone to kick BP’s ass, not find a solution as quickly as possible. While BP is certainly on the hook for this tragedy, shouldn’t we fix it first and place blame later? No. We want someone to blame, and nothing else matters until our bloodlust is sated. It’s an immature, inchoate response to a very real problem.

There are those who say that the Obama Administration’s lack of oversight caused this tragedy. I disagree. Deregulation has been going on for thirty years, and it spans the terms of four Presidents—all the way back to Reagan. It’s funny that those blaming Obama for Deepwater Horizon don’t seem to be blaming George W. Bush for the economic meltdown that took place on his watch and nearly plunged the world into a second Great Depression. It’s more of a culture of deregulation that endangers us in ways that no one can predict. Part of this can be traced back to the “Starve the Beast” theory the right came up with back in the 80s. Another key ingredient was allowing lobbyists to write the regulations that govern them. Regulations are treated as a business expense, and not necessary safeguards. Obama can hardly be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not using his bully pulpit to fight for more stringent regulations. He had a golden opportunity upon taking office to dictate to Congress exactly what was needed to prevent or mitigate future downturns. That opportunity has been squandered, now that Americans are staring down the barrel of trillion dollar yearly deficits.

Which brings me to the topic of this post: can critics be honest with themselves to accept reality and offer solutions to the troubles that face us? It’s easy to sit back and criticize instead of offering alternatives. Obama himself said that all the alternatives to capping the well in the Gulf have been thought of and tried already. Like it or not, this is new technology pioneered by oil companies like BP. The Federal Government simply doesn’t have any expertise in this area. No one has ever drilled a well in deep water like this before. And certainly no one has thought of all of the doomsday scenarios that accompany this new endeavor. Extreme feelings of helplessness or no, we have to sit back and cross our fingers that BP can cap this well by August.

The next crisis du jour for the President came on the cover of the Rolling Stone, which featured a highly candid interview with General Stanley McChrystal—Commander of our war effort in Afghanistan. It seems the good General has some problems with his civilian bosses and some of the politicians involved. He pulled no punches in his critique of many of the key players in the war on the U.S. side. Apparently, he was channeling the ghost of Douglas McArthur, another brilliant military mind who had trouble with a civilian boss. McArthur’s boss, Harry S. Truman, canned the corn cob pipe smoking egoist. That’s also what happened to General McChrystal. Obama “reassigned” him. Fans of the General lamented the fact that an effective military man who understood the region was being lost. Realists corrected observed that a man who didn’t believe in the administration’s policy and plan shouldn’t be left to try and carry them out. Obama quickly named General David Petraeus, the architect of the surge in Iraq to take over in Afghanistan. Critics on the left and right have lots of things to say about the war in Afghanistan. But neither seems to want to think through the consequences.

One of the awful legacies of the last thirty years is the tendency to see the world in binary: black and white. No gray area is tolerated, nor compromise sought. I’m right, and you’re wrong. There’s a winner, then there’s you. It’s ignorance + ego, with a healthy shot of arrogance on top. The world isn’t a simple place. As long as there are other people, there will be differences. Those standing on the sideline shouting criticisms should be researching better solutions.

Government is run on ideas. If you don’t have any to offer, please sit on your hands and let the grown ups talk.

Adventures in Chicken Sandwiching

2010-06-14T21:00:00.001-04:00

Thanks to a coincidence this weekend, I was able to try out two new chicken sandwich offerings that have been buzzing around cyberspace. I figured, “What the heck”, I had some calories to give this week.

First, I received a coupon for a free Spicy Chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. Essentially, it’s their regular chicken sandwich, only dunked in some magical spices that turn it into a disturbing shade of red. I was quite familiar with the Chick-fil-A sandwich, having enjoyed many at the store in Eastland Mall in Evansville, Indiana as a teenager. It’s the fast food take on the Southern Chicken sandwich: a breaded, deep fried chicken breast fillet served on a bun with pickles. It’s classy, tasty, and definitely not good for you. I don’t eat there that often anymore because my metabolism at age 43 isn’t quite the same as when I was 17.

The Spicy Chicken sandwich looks exactly like the regular one, except the spices (I’m guessing paprika & chipotle) turn the sandwich an angry shade of red. One bite, and you get an immediate heat. It’s complex. You can tell they worked on this quite a while. I’m a pepperhead, so it’s well within my tolerance range. However, someone with a lower tolerance might want to skip this. It definitely makes you sweat! The heat isn’t predominate, though. There are other flavors present to compliment the fire. I taste garlic, onion, mustard and other spices like sage. I could be totally off, but my palate sensed a lot more going on than just flames. All in all, it was a sandwich worthy of the franchise. Goofy ads with misspelling cows or no, Chick-fil-A knows how to do a chicken sandwich. I give it 7.5 out of 10.

On Sunday I happened to be out shopping around lunchtime. The closest place to eat was a KFC, so I decided to try the hottest food that had the Internet buzzing for a couple of months. Yes. I was going to try and tackle the dreaded Double Down sandwich. What was first believed to be a hoax, actually turned out to be true. The mad scientists at KFC took two Original Recipe fillets and sandwiched two slices of Jack cheese and two slices of bacon with them. That’s right, it’s a chicken sandwich with chicken instead of bread! They make one with grilled chicken for those on the Atkins Diet, or wolverines who walk upright and have debit cards. Any way you slice it, this seemed like “stunt food” that those daredevils on TV eat to gross out/enthrall you.

First off, it wasn’t nearly as sloppy as I imagined. They serve it wrapped in wax paper, and the melted cheese acts like glue to hold the contraption together. It also wasn’t as greasy as I thought it might be. Since they are breast fillets, there’s not a lot of fat and cartilage to melt and give you that fried chicken ick you’re used to when eating KFC. I have to admit, all that protein is a bit much. I had to pause in the middle to catch a breather. This is not something you want to be eating while driving! The overwhelming sensation I got was how salty it was. KFC Original Recipe is salty enough. Throw in two slices of processed cheese and two slices of bacon, and you’ve got some serious sodium to cut through. If they cut some of the salt, I can see me eating another one of these. As it stands now, I feel lucky to survive it! Two cups of water later, I’m a new man. The concept is outrageous; the execution leaves something to be desired. I give the vaunted Double Down 5.5 out of 10.

Looking back on it, it was kind of stupid to take on both of these caloric behemoths in one weekend. But the opportunity presented itself, and I decided to experience them for science and reporting to an unsuspecting world.

Right. Now I have a week’s worth of salads to look forward to as a reward! Ah, the things I do for this blog…

Why Americans Just Aren’t Into Soccer

2010-06-13T16:16:00.001-04:00

For the next month, approximately 6.4 billion people will be transfixed on South Africa. It’s the 2010 FIFA World Cup of Soccer, and the world’s top sport is capturing the attention of everyone EXCEPT Americans. Why is that? America has been playing soccer for over a century. In 1950, a group of upstart Americans beat a highly regarded English squad that was favored to win the Cup that year. To put it in perspective, that would be like a high school baseball team beating the Yankees in Yankee Stadium. For a country that purportedly invented the game, it was a humiliation. So why didn’t that win spark a wave of post WWII interest in the game here in the States? There are many reasons, and here are a few I’ve come up with:

1. You can’t touch the ball with your hands—Nothing typifies European defeatism to an American quite like the futility of playing a sport where you are deprived of the use of your hands. Why not tie both hands behind your back? Why not play blindfolded as well? There’s a whiff of inefficiency that perplexes us. Defenders of the game say that encourages the grace and athleticism that characterizes the “beautiful sport”. However, wouldn’t adding your upper appendages increase the athletic possibilities? Just askin’…

2. The games are low-scoring and often end in ties—A somewhat ugly part of the American sport psyche is the view that sports are a zero-sum game. One side has to win, and the other has to lose. A tie satisfies no one, as this short-circuits the process. It isn’t true that there are no ties in American sports. In football, if neither side wins after two overtime periods (called “sudden-death” periods—get it?), the game is ruled a tie. It does happen. However, when it does happen, it screws up the standings because they aren’t built for ties. In baseball, you play until one team wins—regardless of how many extra innings it takes. The longest game in MLB history took place in 1920, when the Brooklyn Dodgers played the Boston Braves for 26 innings. Since a regulation game is nine innings, fans that day saw the equivalent of nearly three games.

In soccer, a tie is not necessarily a bad thing. Each team gets a point in the standings, and there’s something civilized about both sides agreeing that neither team deserved the outright victory. They shake hands, and move on to the next match. Americans HATE this. It’s the same reason we aren’t really into hockey, either. Ties and low-scoring games don’t stir the American imagination. Hockey does have the advantage of allowing fights between players. If you aren’t going to win, at least beat up the other guy for our amusement.

3. There is the air of elitism about soccer—Despite the fact that soccer is one of the most democratic games ever devised (all you need is a ball, a pitch and some friends!), there is suspicion in America that soccer is reserved for the elites. The game in America is mostly played by upper-middle and upper class kids. The term “Soccer Mom” was coined to describe a certain class of well-to-do suburban parent that trucks their kids around in their minivans to practice and matches. Inner-city and rural poor kids don’t play soccer. They tend toward basketball, baseball and football. It’s rather a shame, since soccer is less hassle to set up with equipment. A quick tour around the Third World shows kids making due with just about anything that resembles a ball to play soccer. In America, the big three sports are blue-collar, and have an air of manliness about them. Soccer is seen as effete and foreign, despite its long history here in America. Since women are largely deprived of college and professional sporting opportunities, soccer has become their realm. They are darn good at it, too! Unfortunately, this has also served to feminize the sport in the U.S. Macho male athletes would rather beat the tar out of someone in football, or bat the cover off a baseball than perfect their crossing kicks.

Having said that, all is not lost for soccer in America. With wave after wave of immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America, soccer’s profile should increase with the change in demographics. Major League Soccer is holding its own after several failed attempts to get professional soccer entrenched here in America. Our U.S. World Cup squad is talented and fit. We have some of the best raw athletes in the Cup, but our defense is porous. We also lack the art of the game that has been perfected by the Brazilians, Spanish and Italians. We don’t have the precision of the Germans, or the balls-out attitude of the Argentinians. I think we’ll make it into the semis, but some of the more experienced teams will knock us out. We did give the English a scare with a 1-1 tie, thanks to a gift from English goalkeeper Robert Green—who muffed a save. I think we did send a message to the rest of the world that we’re a rising power. The next couple of cups should see an improvement from Team USA. America, which dominates the world in so many other ways may try and conquer the world’s most popular sport in the coming years.

Even if a majority of Americans never watch it.

Life (And Everything After)

2010-06-10T21:18:00.001-04:00

Summer is fast approaching, and as I get older one question begins to dominate: Where did all the time go? It seems just yesterday that we welcomed in the New Year, and now it’s almost half over. They say as you age, your thought processes start to slow down. This contributes to the feeling of time rocketing out of control. I catch myself more and more often looking up at the clock and saying “Wow, it already this late.” The concept of relaxing after work changes slightly when you settle in and it’s already time for bed!

Remember when you were young? Time seemed infinite. You would never grow up. You measured yourself everyday, and it seemed like you would always be stuck as a little kid. Then, puberty hit. Your teenage years were a whirlwind of confused excitement and angst. You may never again feel as deeply and passionately about things as when you were a teenager. Everything was an emergency, and every setback a calamity.

Then you hit your twenties and start a career. You aren’t sure if it’s the right one, but it’ll do for beer money and rent on a cheap, one-bedroom apartment. No one takes you seriously, because nobody takes twenty-somethings seriously. You are there for eye candy and to do the grunt work. If you play your cards right, you insinuate yourself into the inner circle. You then have the distinct honor of listening to forty and fifty-year-olds tell you how their spouses don’t appreciate them, and their kids can’t stand them. Great. “That’ll never happen to me,” you tell yourself.

Get married—>have children—>settle down—>fall apart—>get divorced. For some, it’s a never-ending cycle. Switch jobs once or twice. Then you turn around and you’re forty. Staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, you look back at what you’ve accomplished. No wonder suicide rates have held steady for so long. Life is tough! No one gives you an instruction manual. You have to figure this all out on your own. Suddenly, all those clichéd things your parents said to you start making sense. Your life experiences add up to hard-won wisdom. You’re financially stable for the first time in your life. Things aren’t so bad after all.

Americans are the hardest working people on Earth. We are the most productive, and we take the least amount of time off. It’s also killing us. Is it worth it to kill yourself by working until your drop dead? I don’t think we get enough play time. Not vacation time, mind you—play time during the day. I say we adopt the European model. They work just like we do. But in the middle of the day, everything shuts down. They take a long lunch, and a siesta. Or, they play with their kids. They live longer than we do, and they have less stress-related maladies.

Some say the Internet is our playtime. It certainly fits the bill as a time waster. We have the collected knowledge of 10,000 years of human endeavor and study. What do we do with it? Vote on which celebrity has-been is the best dancer. Or we bloviate on whatever fool idea stumbles into our mind (guilty!). I’m not sure it’s necessarily good for us. A lot of what we read online makes us mad and raises our blood pressure. The bad news echo chamber starts ringing in our ears as it competes for our attention with evermore hyperbolic screeching designed to keep us on the page long enough to try and sell us, oh, EVERYTHING.

I don’t know how much time I have left on this pretty, blue world. None of us do, really. I just know the constant search for that elusive prey called “happiness” continues in 6.7 billion ways everyday. Here’s wishing you good hunting!

By the way, I apologize for the rambling nature of this post. They all can’t be Thurber, folks!

Memorial Day: Redefining War

2010-05-31T17:55:00.001-04:00

On this Memorial Day we pay tribute to our fallen soldiers in service to our country. They made the ultimate sacrifice in defending liberty and our way of life. For years, it was seen as a duty of every young man and woman to be at the ready to off to war and fight for the United States. We were the good guys, and those who opposed us opposed freedom itself. In the past, it was easy to define the bad guys. They were the oppressive British who fought to keep the colonies under the thumb of King George. They were the Weimar Republic angling to take over Europe, then the world. They were the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese scheming to divide the world under totalitarian rule. It was the Soviet Union, taking over the world one domino at a time. If the U.S. didn’t stand up against these menaces, the world would fall. The bad guys would win and we’d be speaking German/Japanese/Russian/Martian or whatever wasn’t Good Ol’ Amurrican.

But history has shown that the United States wasn’t always on the right side. We fought many minor battles against Native Americans to steal their land and resources. We fought a calamitous Civil War that still shakes this country some 150 years after its conclusion. We fought Mexico to gain Texas and consolidate the West. The Spanish-American War was largely manufactured by Hearst newspapers and fought by men like Teddy Roosevelt to prove their manliness in battle. For all of TR’s good points, this was an exercise in perverse vanity. Then there was Vietnam. For the first time we weren’t fighting an enemy, but rather an idea. We weren’t directly threatened by this little sliver of a country in Southeast Asia. It was thought that if Vietnam fell, then so would Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and other small countries in a “Domino Effect”. They would all go Communist, and then would take their orders from Beijing or Moscow. Never mind the fact that the Vietnamese hated China and vice-versa. Eons old animosities trumped ideology. We were trying to keep these small countries democratic to keep them off of Moscow’s side. This was the insanity of the Cold War, and it’s what spawned the Non-Aligned Movement in the United Nations. The United States and the Soviet Union saw the world in binary: if you weren't for us, you were against us.

Lost in this miasma was the original purpose of war: to defend against a direct and overwhelming threat against the United States as a last resort. It was a naive sentiment, as war has always been just a tool of foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine was essentially just a response to aggressive imperialist forays into the Western Hemisphere. The Bush Doctrine introduced the notion of a “preemptive war” against a perceived threat against the United States. The noble cause of young men and women soberly going into battle to defeat a clearly defined bad guy has evaporated as the world gets more complex. It’s even difficult to justify the Gulf Wars, except that we were protecting our oil interests. We wouldn’t have to if we had a sane energy policy, and didn’t rely so much on oil from countries that hate us.

So that’s we’re at now. We are winding down a war in Iraq, and ratcheting up a war in Afghanistan. Iraq is on the verge of self-rule. Neocons are crowing that this was a success. Sure. It only cost about a trillion dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers. I would argue that it hasn’t made us one bit safer from terrorists. Iraq really wasn’t a haven for Al-Qaeda, since they hated Saddam for his brutal repression of the Shiite majority. Iraq’s factional fighting is more about tribal warfare than religious fanaticism. There’s also no guarantee that Iraq won’t revert back to dictatorship or worse yet, a theocracy like Iran.

In Afghanistan, the waters are even more murky. We’re fighting the Taliban on their home turf. If we could keep it in one place, we could stand a chance. But we’re also fighting Taliban hiding in the Tribal Frontier region of Pakistan. Pakistan seems unable (or unwilling) to give too much help to the hated U.S. forces. Our man in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Kharzai, seems to be a crook at best, a self-serving thug at worst. What happens if he sells us out to the Taliban when we draw down forces? What if he aligns with Iran, as he has been hinting at? More lives and treasure would be lost for nothing.

So we’re in two elective wars that have no real good endings. Perhaps now we will learn the hard lesson: American military power has its limits in transforming a stubborn world. Over the past 60 years, or so, its a lesson that’s been taught over and over. Maybe now we’ll start to divert money and resources to science and technology that solves our pressing problems, instead of bombing brown people when we start feeling impotent.

President Eisenhower tried to warn us with the “Military-Industrial Complex” speech. Fifty years on, should we at least listen?

Farewell to an Old Friend

2010-05-23T21:05:00.001-04:00

Due to a recent spate of hardware failures at work, and assisting friends with dead computers, I’ve been reloading Windows XP an awful lot lately. As a computer support person, this has become second nature to me. I suddenly realized that we are about a month away from Microsoft’s ending of retail support for the venerable operating system. June 30th, 2010 is set to be the last day anyone can officially buy this once revolutionary OS that still dominates the computing market today. We still won’t be rid of it, as extended support will continue through April 8th, 2014.

Like all relationships, we’ve had our ups and downs. When it was first released back in 2001, it was about as stable as Lindsey Lohan on a three-day bender. But after a couple of Service Packs, some virus, worm and zero-day attack scares, it’s a solid, reliable OS. So solid, in fact, that it prevented us all from upgrading to Vista—or as I like to call it: Windows Millennium 2: Electric Boogaloo. With the advent of Windows 7, Microsoft seems to have finally found a worthy successor to XP. Reviews have been glowing, and there are less reported problems with it. In an Apple-like flash of brilliance, Redmond made 7 familiar with XP, yet not compatible. You can’t have mixed 7 and XP computers on the network talking to one another. So you either have to upgrade the entire network, or leave everything alone and risk falling behind.

Microsoft certainly isn’t helping people reload XP on computers. After installing the OS, you have to download nearly a gigabyte of updates and Service Packs to get it up to speed. This doesn’t happen all at once, either. It’s interrupted by the constant merry-go-round of reboots and restarts. What used to take about an hour, now takes all day. Getting to the point of reloading the programs is like a victory—you’ve beaten the final boss.

Despite all the trouble, XP with proper virus protection is still the Gold Standard. 90% of the world’s computers still run it, and it’s still svelte enough to run on a netbook. It has the most programs available for it, the most hardware available for it, and the most support. You could say it’s been beta tested by millions over the last nine years. Because it’s been the target of hackers for nearly a decade, it’s forced some of the best computer minds to develop counter strategies and evolved defense mechanisms. XP necessitated the development of “sandboxes” for viruses and worms to be redirected to. XP still has many vulnerabilities, but hackers have switched to social engineering for the majority of their attacks.

Windows XP is the family member we all love to hate. It requires constant attention and vigilance, yet it’s still the OS of choice for most of us. I gripe about it, yet I have it on all the computers I own and work on. I do dual-boot XP with Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and netbook, but that’s just preparation for life after Microsoft. I don’t know if Windows 7 will be the last great OS from Redmond, I just know that they can’t hang on forever. While 7 looks promising, I don’t know where we go from here. 7 is like an Italian sports car: sleek, sexy and fast. We also don’t know what can go wrong with it. XP is like your mother’s 1977 Plymouth Volare station wagon: comfortable, roomy, boring. While you would want the first car, which car did you wind up taking to the prom? (Twice, I might add—not that I’m bitter…)

When we do all wind up upgrading to Windows 7, or whatever’s next, I will look back with some nostalgia at Windows XP. Sure it’s a pain in the butt. Sure it requires far too much attention. But in a world where product lifespans are measured in months, a 9-year-old operating system provides a level of comfort and respite from a technological world spinning out of control. We know the quirks; we know the pitfalls. There are no more surprises.

And in the interesting times we now live in, something without surprises is a rare thing, indeed!

The Changers Changing Change

2010-05-20T21:02:00.001-04:00

This past Tuesday night, The Tea Party celebrated its biggest victory to date as Dr. Rand Paul won the Republican Senate nomination in Kentucky. He defeated Secretary of State, Trey Grayson—a career politician and insider in Frankfort politics. Paul didn’t just edge Grayson, he buried him by a convincing margin. Paul joins Marco Rubio in Florida, and Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee in Utah as outsiders that ousted well-known politicians. The anti-incumbent mood in the country is ugly, and there will be more blood shed before it’s all said and done.

So this spells trouble for the Democrats in November, right? Well, not exactly. The problem with bomb throwers is they can’t stop throwing bombs. One day after his historic victory, Dr. Paul went on the Rachel Maddow show and proceeded to stick both feet in his mouth and moonwalk. He let slip that he wouldn’t have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Instead of saying businesses have the right to serve whomever they choose (defensible under the First Amendment’s right of Free Association), he basically said that businesses have the right to be racist if they want. He’s also advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve, a position also held by his father, Texas Representative Ron Paul. While his positions are perfectly consistent as a libertarian, his lack of nuance scares the bejeezus out of moderate and undecided voters. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, the Democratic nominee for Senate, should have a field day during the campaign. He may not even need to produce attack ads, as all he’ll need to do is replay Paul’s comments verbatim and in context.

In Florida, Governor Charlie Christ dropped out of the race for the Senate nomination when it became apparent that Marco Rubio would sail to victory. Instead of ducking and running, he’s decided to run as an independent. Christ’s poll number have increased since then, so it’s a horse race once again. By turning their back on a moderate like Christ, the Republicans might lose a Senate seat. It’s the same in Kentucky, by rejecting a moderate, likable, effective politician like Trey Grayson, Kentucky might send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in nearly twenty years. Point gun at foot; pull trigger.

Over on the other side, the Democrats are also undergoing a bit of incumbent bloodletting. In Pennsylvania, long time Senator Arlen Specter lost the nomination to Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired Navy Admiral. This wasn’t really surprising, as Specter switched parties last year because he couldn’t get reelected as a Republican. While he’s admired and liked, this smacked too much of opportunism and the voters punished him for it. In Arkansas, Senator Blanche Lincoln was forced into a run-off with Lt. Governor Bill Halter. She has to wait until June 8th to find out her fate. Lincoln is a moderate with ties to the financial industry. Halter is a liberal populist running against Washington. This will be interesting.

The problem for the Republicans as I see it is trying to control the monster they unleashed in the Tea Party movement. While leaning right, the Tea Party doesn’t hate Democrats, they hate incumbents. While I disagree with them in almost everything, I am enjoying the show. They are acting as catalysts to blast free the career politicians that have gotten too comfortable. By targeting vulnerable Republicans, the Teabaggers are removing experienced politicians from the Democrats path and putting in more extreme candidates who will have trouble attracting moderates and independents. With Grayson as the nominee, the GOP could probably count Kentucky as a “hold” with Jim Bunning retiring. With Paul as the candidate, Conway has an excellent chance of stealing the seat for the Democrats. What the mainstream media hasn’t been reporting is that there were about a third more Democrats casting votes than Republicans. If they turn out in November, Kentucky could get a little bluer.

The problem for Democrats is a little more fundamental. As the party in power, they have more targets to go after. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is behind in the polls in Nevada, although he may catch up if the Republican frontrunner, Sue Lowden, makes any more statements about how poor people can barter for health services with chickens. Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat in Delaware looks like it’s going to the GOP. Even President Obama’s old Senate seat in Illinois is up for grabs. There will be a sea change in the Senate, but whether or not the Democrats lose it is another matter.

Like 2008, this is turning into one of the most interesting election cycles in recent memory. At stake is not just the House or the Senate, but the direction of the country. Will President Obama have a friendly Congress, or an adversarial one? No one knows. All I know is there’s going to be a change in Washington. I only hope we don’t regret it.

What’s a Grecian Urn?

2010-05-03T21:09:00.001-04:00

Apparently, a lot more than he’s reporting to the taxman!

Sorry to ruin an old Vaudeville joke like that, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I read about the massive tax fraud going on in Greece. According to some estimates, tax fraud cost the Greek government $30 billion a year. That, along with mismanagement and corruption that seems to be endemic in Greece, and it’s not hard to understand why their economy imploded. As it stands, most Greeks seem resigned to the severe austerity measures the government had to implement in order to get bailed out by the EU. The reasons for tax evasion in Greece range from a deep mistrust of government, all the way up to simple immature greed. Coupled with cronyism and an expansive public sector that makes what Obama wants to do seem miserly in comparison, and the money just ran out. The birthplace of Democracy nearly presaged its demise with this crisis.

Greece isn’t alone. Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain also are heading for a bailout. Each are on the hook for around a billion dollars a piece. That has to make economic powerhouse Germany feel really uncomfortable as the de facto bank of Europe. Right wingers will point to the generous social programs (read: socialism) as the disease ravaging European economies. That’s a bit too simplistic. A better answer would be governing bodies that react too slowly to the rapidly changing world of finance and economics are responsible for not dodging the recession. Managing one economy is bad enough, when you have to worry about all the other economies in the European Union, it may seem like herding flaming cats.

There is a lesson to be learned here for the United States. First off, we need comprehensive tax reform. By that, I don’t mean any more tax cuts. The fantasy held by people like Grover Nordquist and Ronald Reagan of “starving the beast” just doesn’t work. Cutting taxes didn’t mean we cut spending. We just borrowed more. People grousing about taxes being too high (Tea Baggers…I’m looking at you) need to ask themselves what they could do without from government at all levels. That’s right, do without. The only way to handle the deficit is to increase intake and cut outlays. You want to tell Grandma that we’re cutting her Social Security and Medicare? She might listen to what you have to say after she buries her cane in your forehead. Social spending and the military comprise the majority of our budget. Want Obama to cut & run in Afghanistan and Iraq? Which defense project that affects thousands of workers do we cut?

By tax reform, I mean a reintroduction of fair and progressive taxation. The top rate needs to go back up. Not all the way to the ridiculous 90% levels of the 50s through the 70s. I see something around 50%. Hey, it used to be patriotic to pay your taxes. Oliver Wendell Holmes said “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, including the chance to insure.” He said that in 1904. Timeless stuff, no? The rest of us shouldn’t get off scot-free, either. We should endure a $1/gallon federal carbon tax to inflate the cost of gas to spur innovation and development of alternate, renewable energy sources. It’s amazing what we industrious Americans can accomplish when you light a fire under our feet. Remember when gas was up over $4/gallon? Remember when there was a loud outcry for electric cars and hybrids? What happened to that? Oh, right. Gas fell below $2/gallon and we forgot all about that. If there are to be tax breaks, give them to alternate energy startups. Cut all subsidies to dirty fuel. Pay a bounty for improvements in nuclear power. Yes, nuclear. All options should be on the table.

The Greeks had deluded themselves that they could cheat the government and live high off the hog. Why not? They live one of the most beautiful countries in the world! However, democracy is by definition “of the people”. If you have dishonest, mistrustful people, you get dishonest, mistrustful government. Who’s responsible for a weak, crooked government? Why, the people are. It’s the same in every democracy. If you don’t like what the government is doing, you have the power to fix it. But you do need to get up from your couch, and log off Facebook and Twitter to do something. Being a responsible citizen may be a pain, but the consequences can be dire. Historians have been predicting the fall of America as a world power for ages now. The “American Century” is drawing to close, they say. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But if it is, America won’t go out with a bang.

It will go out with a shrug. And we don’t even have a sunny Greek island to retreat to!

Living in the Age of Denial

2010-04-30T21:27:00.001-04:00

As I watch in horror as the the oil spill from the damaged platform in the Gulf of Mexico drifts ominously toward the environmentally-sensitive Mississippi Delta region, I’m harkened back to the Republican National Convention of 2008. That’s when Sarah Palin led the chant of “Drill Baby, Drill” as the answer to our energy needs. Well, they certainly drilled, alright. And now we have an ecological tragedy the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. How did we get here? Wasn’t it just two years ago that gas was topping $4/gallon? Wasn’t there an outcry for massive funding for alternative and renewable energy research? What happened? The economy imploded, and gas prices fell back down to Earth. Soon we forgot about wind, solar and geothermal, and settled back into our dull lives of quiet desperation. Essentially, we’ve convinced ourselves that someone in the future will make the hard decisions necessary to wean us off of fossil fuels. As long as I have cheap gas in my tank, I’m not going to worry about it. It’s this fairy tale level of denial that threatens to destroy us on so many fronts.

The Senate hearings about Goldman-Sachs this past week also highlight this denial as well. We watched senators tut-tutting these greedy, rapacious bastards for acting in self-interest, with no regard for the damage being inflicting on the world economy. Who are they kidding? An uncomfortable fact about capitalism is that it’s amoral. It’s not good; not evil—just is. It is the most efficient way to make money that mankind has come up with. Any ethical concerns have to be enforced by the watchdogs we station to oversee the trading. If you fire, or pay off all the watchdogs, you get what we experienced during the collapse. We loved the low interest rates and home equity loans they were peddling. It allowed us to live way, WAY beyond our means until the pyramid imploded. We were using our homes as ATM machines, and taking the payouts to buy frivolous crap we didn’t need. So shame on Wall Street for tricking us. And shame on us for being such greedy rubes.

Speaking of greed, I see the Tea Baggers are still at it. They insist that President Obama is a communistic, socialistic, Nazi ferenger who won’t show us his birth certificate—even though he has. He is cutting our taxes and giving states much needed capital to build infrastructure, while shamelessly covering millions of uninsured Americans. The fiend! How dare he get necessary things accomplished IN AN ELECTION YEAR. But fear not, true Americans. The Republicans are standing arm-in-arm against anything and everything Obama is trying to do. Even when it’s things THEY SUGGEST. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham made thoughtful overtures in trying to get immigration and climate change legislation passed. But don’t worry, the rabid dogs have dragged him back to his rightful place! Republicans don’t need to counter-propose ideas or work with the Obama Administration. They can just sit back and feed off the simmering anger bubbling in the country. Then they can take back Congress and…what? There’s still a Democrat in the White House. He has this funny Constitutional power called a “veto”. Anything a Republican Congress would try to do would be vetoed by Obama. And I’m fairly confident that they wouldn’t have sufficient numbers to override. Bill Clinton proved that when a smart, charismatic President goes up against an opposing Congress, the Prez has all the mojo. Americans rate Congress slightly higher than pond scum. Presidents get center stage. I have a strange feeling that things might not go according to the Republicans script this election season.

One of our refuges, religion, is also going through its fair share of denial. The Catholic Church is still reeling from the scandal that won’t go away. I don’t envy their PR guy. How can you spin the tolerance and tacit approval of raping small children? What Bible verse covers that? I don’t think Jesus would give a wayward priest a mulligan on that one. The Religion of Peace, Islam, took a bit of a hit when a fringe group threatened South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone with death over the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in a recent episode. This, after the nonsensical riots over those Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in unflattering ways. There are numerous depictions of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Siva and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What makes your guy so special? Was he shy that that kid who didn’t want his picture taken at school photo day? Fine. We’ll use a long focal length lens, and touch it up in Photoshop. He.will.look.FABULOUS. Anyway, shame on you for taking philosophy so damn seriously. As long as we have the First Amendment in America, we will haughtily ridicule anything and everything—even your religion. How weak is your faith, that you would be metaphysically wounded by fictional potty-mouthed blob children in Colorado? Don’t you have anything better to do? You know, like overthrowing the despots that rule you and keep you down? Look in your hearts, my friends. You’re jealous of us godless, shameless, money-grubbing Westerners who seem to be making out like bandits while you are barely scraping a few shekels together. Have your Renaissance and Reformation and catch up to the 21st Century.

Finally, the Baby Boomers are the poster children of denial. They were the children of “Free Love”, yet they are shocked when they catch their apple-cheeked 15-year-old daughter sexting her boyfriend. The pics make it out on the web, and Dad finds them while cruising for teenage porn. They marched for Civil Rights (mainly to meet hot black chicks) then refuse to do the same for gay marriage. They were all about legalizing pot when they were teenagers, but now push for mandatory sentencing laws now that they have teenagers. The ultimate denial is assuming that they will have full benefits upon retirement, even though fewer and fewer workers are paying into the system. What? Social Security and Medicare Reform? Better go Tea Baggin’ in Washington! My favorite is this faux concern we all have about the Federal debt. Cut the budget, we exclaim. Okay, what do we cut? The two largest ledger items on our Federal budget are Social Payments and the Military. Together they represent the majority if what we spend. So which parts do you want to cut? Right. None. Until we can grow up and put everything on the table for cuts, we should just shut the hell up.

In a way, I admire the Silent Generation. They lived through the Great Depression—which made what we just went through look like a “mild correction”. They also fought World War II. It was the last time there were clear good guys and bad guys. They worked hard, saved their money and raised families. They gave their children a better life, and quietly faded into the mists of history. The generations that followed weren’t made of such steel. Instead of facing our considerable problems head on, we throw up a force field of denial and go on our merry way. After our Bacchanalian feast, the check is coming.

And everyone’s forgotten their wallet.

My Nuanced View on Immigration

2010-04-27T21:21:00.001-04:00

Last week, Arizona passed one of the most draconian anti-immigration laws in the country. It basically requires law enforcement to stop and demand to see legal papers from anyone who looks like they are an illegal immigrant. Setting aside the Nazi allusion (“Papers, please.”), this law is not intended to corral English nannies with expired visas. It’s quite obviously targeting the state’s estimated 460,000 illegal Mexican immigrants. This is racial profiling at its ugliest. Anyone with brown skin, shabby clothes, or other stereotypical traits attributed to Mexican immigrants are subject to a stop by authorities.

I can’t believe this isn’t a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights prohibiting unreasonable searches. Also, the Constitution forbids the states from conducting their own foreign policy. The courts have upheld that immigration falls under Federal oversight. If the Roberts’ court wants to be taken seriously by conservatives, it will strike down this law the moment it crosses their path.

However, I do understand the impulse to control the 2,000 mile long border with Mexico. Northern Mexico has become a dystopian battlefield, with drug smugglers killing at an alarming rate. An Arizona farmer was killed near the border by the drug gangs. Also, a secure border is the very definition of a sovereign state. Though they’ve been friendly for hundreds of years, a Frenchman can’t just stroll across the border with Switzerland whenever he feels like it. I am also against illegal immigration because I believe in due process and doing things the right way. I’m the son of a legal immigrant. My father, a Filipino national, joined the U.S. Army during World War II to defend his country from the Japanese. After the war, he came to America and became a naturalized citizen. His price of admission: two Purple Hearts, and a leg full of shrapnel from a Japanese hand grenade. Don’t give me your sob story about how there’s no work where you’re from. Get in line.

I fear that Arizona has thrown in the ante of a high stakes game of illegal immigration poker. Since it’s harder to get into Arizona, illegals will just move through New Mexico or California. Some will take to boats and try entering along the Gulf Coast. Another route would be going up to Canada, and entering from the North. Don’t underestimate the determination of someone with nothing to lose. In the old days, illegals would enter through the big border towns like El Paso, San Diego and Tucson. When the U.S. cracked down on that, they took to the dangerous desert regions. Several die each year from dehydration and exposure in the Southwest’s unrelenting summer heat. Others pay a small fortune to human smugglers to come in packed in a wheel well or unventilated trailer. The rigid rules of immigration sometime melt in our compassion for those desperate for a better life. How can we refuse them? It’s how the United States started out. Remember? Boatloads of outcasts were sent from England to colonize this wild new land. Later, millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia help build this country.

It’s hard to imagine the country evolving as fast as it did without the vibrancy of immigrants. Our growth for the next fifty years will depend largely on immigration. If it weren’t for them, we would be in the same boat as Japan—an aging population without new people to keep paying into the system. Europe is also having angst over immigration from largely Muslim lands. They also need the diversity, youth and energy of immigrants to keep their states growing. So what can we do to keep adequate numbers of immigrants flowing without throwing open the borders?

First, we can have a more generous worker program. Businesses have long taken advantage of the cheap labor flowing from the south. Some, like farms, rely on the extra help during harvest season. Fine. Have the workers sign up, and let the businesses foot the bill of the program. Al least we’ll know who’s coming in, and might control the flow a little better. There will always be people coming in illegally. But if they’re guaranteed work for signing up, maybe they’ll think twice and follow the rules. Why stop at the Southwest? Let all fifty states sign into the program. The workers are migrating to where the jobs are naturally as it is. Who says Vermont couldn’t use some extra workers. Remember: illegals are doing jobs nobody else wants to do. They’ll work harder to stay. Let the businesses grade the workers. Higher grade workers can apply for better jobs. America is an alleged meritocracy, it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.

My biggest hunch about the Arizona law is that it’s just another reaction by people resistant to change. By 2050, whites will be in a minority for the first time in the nation’s history. (Okay, second. I’m not counting the Native American population when we first started!) There’s a black man (actually, half-black) in the White House. Gays are slowly drip, drip, dripping their way to legal marriage. This isn’t Fred MacMurray’s 1950s America. The rate of change seems to have sped up, and it caught the old guard off-guard. This is the inevitable backlash, like the Tea Party Movement. But if history teaches us anything, this moment of Old White People angst will fizzle out, and the new generation will accept it and move on.

Immigration is much more complex than just shutting down the border. There’s an odd symbiosis between the United States and Mexico. They give us cheap labor, and we help relieve their social and economic tension. I hope cooler heads will prevail, and we can begin to find real solutions to illegal immigration.

I just know the Arizona law isn’t one of them.

Product Review: ASUS 1201N Netbook

2010-04-18T21:09:00.002-04:00

Since it’s my unstated goal to spend my retirement money on frivolous amusements, I bought myself a netbook for my birthday. I’ve been intrigued by them since they’ve taken off in popularity. Smaller than a laptop, more powerful than a PDA or smartphone, netbooks occupy a sweet spot that no other technology can touch.

After doing research, I realized that I needed a netbook with the Nvidia Ion chip. Based on their GeForce 9400M GPU, it’s state-of-the-art for graphics for small devices. I already have experience with the Ion chipset, as one powers my Microsoft Zune HD. I also needed a slightly larger widescreen than the standard 10-inch design of most netbooks. This would allow me to watch Japanese anime in 1080i HD. The icing on the cake would be a dual-core Intel Atom processor, allowing for 64-bit addressing and more memory. That way I could encode audio or video on the fly, instead of waiting until I got back to my workstation. After all those requirements, only one netbook fit the bill: the ASUS 1201n.

I wanted the silver version, but they were sold out. I settled for the black. It’s shiny. So shiny, in fact, that every smudge is magnified in the light. A duller finish might have been the way to go. The screen is 12.1” widescreen, allowing for 1080i or 1366 x 768 HD resolution. It has a backlit LCD screen, with a shiny coating that tends to reflect glare right into your eyes. It’s a standard clam shell design, and it’s quite thin when shut. It has an included netcam, but I don’t think I’ll find use for that. There’s a built-in touchpad with unibar for right and left-clicking. It takes some effort to press the unibar, and if you have fat fingers (as I do), it’s easy to misfire. I went ahead and invested in a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse, and my fingers are much happier for it.

The first thing you notice when you fire it up is how quiet this netbook is. The Atom chip is very energy efficient, and the cooling fan is whisper quiet. It comes with a 250 GB hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM. It’s loaded with Windows 7 Home Edition, and 2 GB of RAM. While this setup is fine, it’s noticeably slower than a typical laptop. This is due to the slow hard drive and extra overhead demanded by the OS. Since I had a leftover 320 GB hard drive spinning at 7200 RPM, I replaced the drive and loaded Windows XP & Ubuntu Linux on it. A word of caution: the hard drive is not easy to get at. You have to literally disassemble the netbook to get at it. This voids the warranty, and is not good for your blood pressure! I had to work a bit to get everything working again. I also boosted the memory to 4 GB, even though XP can only see 3. With these upgrades, the netbook is nearly as fast as my full-sized HP laptop. It would have been nice for ASUS to allow for upgrades like this to boost productivity.

Since it doesn’t come with an optical drive, you’ll need to buy one if you intend to burn CDs or DVDs. Loading programs is a problem, but if you know what you are doing, you can use USB memory sticks to get the job done. The good news is that it has four USB ports and a card reader built-in, so there are plenty of options. With all the multimedia power, you would expect the battery life to be compromised. You would be right. This unit averages about 3 1/2 hours of runtime. If this is an issue, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Major programs run pretty well. Microsoft Office, Adobe Audition, and Mozilla Firefox work well, if a touch slower than what you might be used to.

Pros: Best multimedia netbook on the market. Roomy screen, decent specs.

Cons: Black unit prone to smudges. Standard setup needs some upgrades for optimum performance.

I like it thus far. Hopefully, it will let me blog more during lunch.

The Other Sure Thing in Life

2010-04-17T22:55:00.003-04:00

Tax Day has come and gone, and thousands of Tea Baggers continue their protest against Big Gummint. To hear them tell it, the greedy, rapacious tentacles of Washington are squeezing the lifeblood of the citizens dry with its insistence that we all pay taxes. How can we revel in the hard won freedom of being an American, when we have to pay for things we don’t all use. We work hard for our money, and it isn’t fair that we have to pay for the lazy layabouts sopping up welfare and food stamps.

And yet no one seems willing to disband the fire departments, the police departments, the military, all public schools, and so many other things that taxpayer money funds. No, this is hurting them personally, and so they want an end to it—the greater good be damned. It seems they have forgotten that we have a Federal Debt of several trillion dollars. It’s a debt that was largely rung up under Republican Presidents (Reagan, Bush I & Bush II). Bush II was fond of saying “It’s your money!” Yes. And it’s our debt, too. We having an aging population that threatens to bankrupt the country unless we fix things NOW. Besides, thanks to the Obama tax cut last year, 47 percent of Americans paid no taxes whatsoever. You heard right—nearly a plurality of Americans paid not a cent in Federal taxes. It’s one of the lowest tax burdens in many decades. So why all the teeth gnashing over taxes?

I think it’s a combination of things. First off, we live in an age where there’s record levels of distrust in government. Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, we get to see every scandal covered in great detail, and we come off with a feeling that sexually insatiable crooks are running around the halls of Congress. I don’t think there’s more corruption now than in previous years. I just think we’re hearing more about the bad stuff. Policies we disagree with are funded with our tax dollars: war, foreign aid, benefits for illegal immigrants, etc. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you lie, there’s a policy that’s pissing you off. This micro view of government misses the nuance and big picture. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are quagmires that threaten to blow holes in our budget. But the reality of the situation is we need to stabilize the Middle East until we can lessen our dependence on oil from that region. We have to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists to threaten the world. Remember, 9/11 was planned from a cave in Tora Bora, Afghanistan.

Another reason for distaste in taxes is the uncertain economic times. Fat cats and technocrats on Wall Street nearly imploded the world economy a couple of years back. In order to save billions of people the horror of living through another Great Depression, we had to bail out key industries: Banking-- because the lack of trust meant no credit; and, large industries like the Big Three auto companies—because they employ thousands of people. It seems perverse and immoral to bail out billionaires who received large bonuses when the companies they ran into the ground tanked. However, we had to do it to unfreeze the credit market for the little guys. While Honda, Toyota and BMW rode out the crisis, the Big Three American companies stood there with their pants around their ankles. Yet their bad planning and lack of vision threatened to add thousands of newly unemployed people to an already strained system. The Obama administration has done a pretty good job managing this unprecedented crisis. Yet the involvement of taxpayer money continues to offend folks of all political stripes.

Finally, there’s the most visceral and easy to understand reason why people hate taxes: greed. It’s our money, and we don’t want to give even a penny of it away to anyone. Never mind that this is a simple price to pay for living in a functioning democracy. For all the moralizing and posturing about God and Jesus, it’s a shame no one remembers their lessons. When was the only time Jesus really got mad in the Bible? When he threw the money changers out of the temple. Funny how no one on Wall Street mentions this. Good luck with that camel and the eye of the needle! Only a petulant child doesn’t want to share. Since we are a government of, by and for the people, we each take responsibility in it. That includes funding it. If we have concerns or problems with the policies funded by taxpayer dollars,there are mechanisms in place to address that. We can lobby our Congresspersons. We can support candidates that represent our views. What we can’t do is withhold our fair share. Rich people are always leading the charge, because they have the biggest burden. It’s a shame they don’t view it as their patriotic duty. One of their pet causes is the Flat Tax. They propose a 19% tax on everyone—regardless of what they make. This sounds good in theory, until you realize that it’s terribly regressive. Poor people would be paying a larger portion of their income that rich people. Also, for it to work we’d have to eliminate all of the deductions. It might not turn out to be the windfall that they envision.

As I watched the Tea Baggers out in force protesting in Washington, I’m reminded of the original Tea Party in Boston in the nascent years of our country. If you recall, they weren’t protesting the taxes themselves. They were protesting taxation without representation. If the colonies were going to pay taxes to the crown, they wanted seats in Parliament. King George was having none of it, and the rest is history. I have a feeling the current denizens of the Tea Party movement share little in common with the Enlightenment Era heroes of our country’s founding. However, they are doing something about the representation part. They are fielding candidates to take on establishment Republicans in primaries. Marco Rubio is leading Governor Charlie Christ in Florida for the Republican Senate nomination. He’s gained key endorsements, and is fundraising well. Here in Kentucky, Dr. Rand Paul (son of Ron) is giving Secretary of State Trey Grayson all he can handle for the Senate nomination. Paul gained the endorsement of outgoing Senator Jim Bunning—whose conservative bona fides give Paul some much-needed fundraising juice going into the May primary. While this is hopeful for the democratic process, it’s threatening to blow up the Republican party. By splitting the vote or running independent candidates in the Fall, there’s a chance the Democrats could sneak in and steal a few more seats. That would have the ironic effect of thwarting the Tea Baggers for another two years at least.

There’s nothing wrong with holding government accountable for spending our tax dollars. But we do have to pay taxes. After all, it one of only two sure things in life.

No More Room Under the Rug

2010-03-31T22:47:00.001-04:00

The Catholic Church has a problem. It’s a problem that won’t go away, and it implicates the man at the top of the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI. That problem is the Catholic Church protecting child molesters, and allowing them to continue their reign of terror without turning them over to the authorities. For decades, centuries perhaps, certain Catholic priests have been preying on small children, usually boys. For years it was a poorly kept secret—leading to dirty jokes about altar boys and trysts in the confessional.

The church kept it all hush-hush, sending offenders for “rehabilitation”, then shuffling them off to another parish where a fresh group of young boys awaited. No civil authorities were notified, no charges filed. Then about ten years ago, victims in America came out en masse and began accusing priests of sexual abuse. The church paid a heavy toll in treasure to settle up.

Well now it’s flared up again. This time there are accusations of covering up abusive priests, and the official in charge of the cover up was then Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope. So now the pontiff himself is facing increasing pressure to answer questions—uncomfortable questions about the Catholic Church’s modus operandi in dealing with pedophile priests.

As a Protestant, I don’t really care about the hierarchy and structure of a 2,000 year old institution that seems medieval by modern standards. However, as a human being, I am outraged at the thought of child sexual predators being shuffled around to keep the church from unwanted bad publicity. Is there no mechanism to expel these monsters and turn them over to the police? Is the church really that hard up for priests that they will recycle pedophiles to keep staffing at 100 percent? Why is it always Catholic priests, anyway? I’m sure there are bad men of the cloth in other religions, but there seems to be an organization about Catholic ones. It’s never one or two victims stepping forward, but a tidal wave.

I understand that tradition and ritual are important to Catholics. But there must be a new Reformation to break down the walls of mistrust. The Pope is the man to do it. Let priests marry. Accept openly gay men as themselves, and let them have partners. The vow of celibacy seems a reasonable expression of one’s faith, but it is unnatural to the point of barbarism. Our sexual drives are the third most powerful impulse after sustenance and shelter. If we suppress that urge, WE ARE NOT BEING HUMAN. I don’t know if that will help with the current problem, but it would give these men an avenue to take care of some very, very basic needs. And that’s another problem: men’s only club. If you’re having trouble finding enough men to staff your churches, why not let the other half of the population shoulder some of the burden. Women priests? Sure. Why not? Some of the edicts preventing these common sense steps are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. I think the expiration date has passed on some of these.

Finally, stop being your own police force. If you find a priest molesting children, that priest must be turned over to the police with all the evidence. Threaten excommunication and eternal damnation to any priest who gets a little too frisky with the altar boys. The scandal has hit America and Europe. How long before we find pedophiles in Africa and South America: your two biggest growth areas? That’s the danger, after all. It isn’t Pope Benedict XVI going to jail, he’s a head of state with diplomatic immunity. It’s that horrified followers will leave the church in droves rather than submit their kids to a possible pederast. Evangelicals are taking a big bite out of traditionally Catholic areas. They don’t seem to be having this sort of trouble. But then again, they let their clergy marry, and allow women to preach.

So what will it be, Pope Palpatine? Reform or die. Will you take the necessary steps to fix this problem for good? Or will you fall into the tar pit? For pity’s sake, do something.

Abandoning the Center

2010-03-27T21:27:00.001-04:00

This past Tuesday, President Obama signed the historic health care reform bill into law. For the first time since LBJ, we have taken a big step in overhauling the way we pay for and receive health care in America. We will cover more than 35 million people who are currently uninsured. We have laid the groundwork for further change to head off a budgetary disaster. So, do the Republicans help tweak the bill to strengthen it and add their own views? No. In a childish display of pique, GOP senators use a little-used rule to force the Senate to stop business at 2pm each day. House leaders vow to repeal the bill, forgetting the little matter of an almost certain Presidential veto if it even got that far. Sadly, the Teabaggers have weighed in as well. There have been reported death threats and acts of vandalism against members of Congress. Humorously, Republicans and Democrats have been targeted. Careful what you wish for, Glenn Beck…

Republicans are vowing to bloody the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections and take back Congress. Even if they were to take back one or both houses of Congress, it wouldn’t be in sufficient numbers to do much of anything. They would need 67 votes in the Senate, and 290 votes in the House to override a veto. Democrats can’t manage that now with superior numbers. The problem with the GOP is we don’t really know what they stand for—other than against anything Obama stands for. It’s hard to win a campaign when the only accomplishment you can point to is they voted against everything Obama wanted. History is written by the winners, and the Republicans are on the losing side an awful lot lately. It’s getting harder and harder to defend a once proud party that has abandoned its sensible moderate bloc.

If GOP members had taken ownership of the inevitable passage of this legislation, they could have influenced the outcome. It’s been pointed out that an awful lot of this new bill comes from recommendations from GOP lawmakers in the past. It isn’t nearly as progressive as many (myself included) would have liked it. It doesn’t even have a Public Option or Single-Payer provision. Yet it took every bit of President Obama’s skill and political capital to get it pushed through—WITHOUT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTE IN EITHER HOUSE OF CONGRESS. It’s one thing to deny a popular opponent a victory in anything. It’s quite another to let history pass you by. A smart politician would work with the Democrats to get some things they want included in the bill. Otherwise, you’re left standing on the outside looking in.

If I ever met Barack Obama, I would shake his hand and apologize to him. Why? Because like many others, I thought he was a smart man, but an iffy politician. He didn’t strike me as a slick charmer like Bill Clinton, nor a talented arm-twister like LBJ. It turns out he’s both, with a healthy dose of JFK cool. He played it cool until he needed to emerge and smack down his antagonists in a televised town hall meeting. He worked feverishly behind the scenes cutting deals with wayward Democrats until he got the magic number in the House. The feather in his cap was landing pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak with a promise of an Executive Order banning Federal funds for abortions. When that happened, I knew passage was assured. Credit goes to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer for quietly and tenaciously working the members until they got the total they needed.

What does the GOP do on the day of the vote? They go out and rile up the Tea Baggers who gathered to protest against the sunny day. They call Bart Stupak a “baby killer” in the House Chamber. Which is akin to calling Ann Coulter a “sexy mama”—it’s 180 degrees from the truth. The response from the right has been a never-ending parade of butthurt and sour grapes. Secretly, they lick their chops over the prospect of taking back Congress. However, they may want to develop a Plan “B”. The economy is improving every day. The stock market has nearly returned to pre-crash levels. The housing market, while still reeling, is finding its feet. If the timing works out, we’ll start adding jobs right around late third quarter. What else is happening around then? Oh yeah, the elections. Obama may have outmaneuvered the GOP once again.

So what can the right do to regain the trust of the independents it will need to take back Congress? Well, they can start by working for the people, not against Obama. They have to realize what Reagan discovered in the 80s: work with the party in power, then claim the victory for yourself. This is Politics 101. It’s time to dust off your dog-eared copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, and get to triangulating. People are hurting, and there are things you can do to make things easier for them. Extend unemployment benefits. Go on a trust-busting spree like Teddy Roosevelt did at the turn of the 20th Century. Let Main Street know that it’s the most important street, not Wall Street. Simplify the tax code. Go after tax cheats viciously. Remind the voters that you are the traditional party of small town America. Otherwise, the Democrats might actually gain seats in Congress.

As I watch the Right flail around, I’m saddened by the fact that they haven’t learned from history. During the Reagan Revolution, it was the Left that lost its bearings and had one disastrous election after another. It wasn’t until they rediscovered the middle with Bill Clinton that they got the Oval Office again. Forget about the center, and you lose. Work for the reasonable and the common sensical, and you win.

I’m not holding my breath for the Republicans.

Atlas Shrugged

2010-03-20T22:19:00.001-04:00

On the eve of the historic vote on Health Care Reform, some 2,000 Tea Party protesters gathered at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to try one last desperate attempt to derail the legislation. Reports are that they yelled racial and homophobic epithets at select members of Congress as they went about their business. Particularly offensive was calling Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) a “faggot” and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) a “nigger”. Rep. Frank, one of the smartest and funniest members of Congress, probably was bemused by the Neanderthals. As an out and proud gay man, no doubt he’s heard worse. Rep. Lewis is an historic figure in the Civil Rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King. He was quoted as saying he’s heard worse, but not in 45 years since “the March in Selma.”

It’s almost not fun to joke about these Darwinian losers anymore. Any vestige of dignity or true and honest opposition to government has vaporized in a fog of ultra Right-wing talking points and an arrogant disregard for the facts. There are defensible positions against government, but we’re not hearing them. Where are the passionate Tea Party members who are also reasonable and articulate? Even Patrick Henry was the first Governor of Virginia and attended King’s College in Aberdeen, Scotland.

What’s lost in the 24-hour news cycle is the fact that we’re very close to making history. If Congress passes this legislation (and they wouldn’t vote if they didn’t have the numbers), then it will be the first major health care reform since Medicare in 1965. It will cover 35 million uninsured Americans, and it might save 1.2 trillion dollars over twenty years according to the Congressional Budget Office. It’s not a perfect bill. It does nothing to reform a health care system where costs are fast outrunning the rate of inflation. But it certainly is preferable to the current unsustainable system, where even a short stay in the hospital can bankrupt an average family.

Who doesn’t want health care for all? Socialism may be a repugnant word for many Americans, but the truth is we live with it each day. The police and fire departments are paid by tax dollars—whether we use the services or not. Libraries, roads, schools—all paid for by tax dollars. Socialism isn’t always a swarthy Russian with a thick beard. It’s the kind face of the kindergarten teacher at your child’s school. It’s the park ranger that clears brush so you don’t die in a forest fire while camping.

But the most disturbing thing about the historic vote tomorrow isn’t the vile protesters calling our Congressmen names. It’s that nobody seems to care. We’ve been constantly cried wolf at by the mainstream news media and the internet. Everything is an emergency and everything demands our attention. How many request have you received to sign a petition or join a social networking group in favor or against something or other? This incessant barrage has divided our focus, and made us block out nearly everything, important or trivial. It’s survival. Why tax our brains about the latest 8.8 earthquake, when we can watch Dancing with the Stars? Why celebrate a truly historic moment with the passage of much-needed legislation, when we can tweet about…oh, nothing in particular?

I don’t know if the vote tomorrow will be good or bad for the country. I just know that we need to address this issue before it consumes the budget in the very near future. To do nothing would be catastrophic, even for the medical/industrial complex. My hope is that we’ll realize that we can do something about the problems we’re facing, and that hope is not lost.

With apologies to FDR: We have nothing to fear but apathy itself.