Sport Imitates Life

The Detroit Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins twice this weekend at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena to take a two games to none lead in the best four-of-seven Stanley Cup finals. After the game, NBC’s on-ice analyst Pierre Maguire said Pittsburgh wasn’t in trouble yet, as he thought no team was in trouble during a playoff series until they’d lost a game at home.

Maguire then threw it back to the booth, where play-by-play man Mike Emerick immediately said (without malice) that the team winning the first two games as home as a 31-1 record in Cup Finals.

My Penguins are in trouble.

Maguire’s assurance that all was well failed to take into consideration that Detroit gets the seventh game at home, if it goes that far, so Pittsburgh can win all its home games and still lose the Cup. It also now has to beat a team that had a superior record over an 82-game season four times out of five to win.

Pierre’s magnificent assurance in his beliefs in the face of indisputable facts reminds me of the arguments about evolution. On the one hand, Mr. Creationist has his beliefs, acquired because someone told him that was true. Mr. Evolutionist has an airplane hangar full of evidence.

You be the judge.

Let’s go Pens.

Famous Last Words

Illinois Senator Roland Burris to Rob Blagojevich, brother of then-Governor Rod Blagojevich, in a phone conversation taped by federal investigators, November 13, 2008:

"I will personally do something. And it'll be done before the 15th of December. And tell Rod to keep me in mind for that seat, would ya?"

In the context of the conversation, "do something" can safely be inferred to mean "write a check."

Burriss denied under oath on January 5 that he had any discussions about the Senate seat with Blagojevich or any of his representatives.

Oops.

Memorial Day 2009

Yesterday’s game between the Orioles and the Blue jays was stopped in the middle of the fifth inning for a Memorial Day moment of silence. Not even I object to the sentiment; the execution left something to be desired.

While everyone stood with hats off, a syrupy Josh Grobin tune was played over the PA system; flowing American flags were shown on the scoreboard. The point of a moment of silence is the silence. Does everything we do now require accompaniment?

I think the issue is PVGD: Post Vietnam Gratitude Disorder. There are a lot of people still around who remember how shamefully the returning Vietnam veterans were treated. These exhibitions of hyper-sentiment are a way to try to make up for that, exacerbated by the fact that, since the draft ended, most Americans do not serve. Those who had “other priorities” show they’re just as patriotic by wearing their gratitude on their sleeves. Just don’t ask them to pay increased taxes to better care for the returning wounded, or for improved survivor’s benefits, or putting proper armor on the Humvees.

A Win-Win Scenario

It’s hard to see understand the controversy over closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Those who want to play the fear card—which includes 90 senators—act like the Obama Administration is going to drop these guys off in Miami with bus tickets for the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. How placing a couple of hundred alleged terrorists into solitary confinement can endanger a nation of three hundred million seems to be a more relevant question than what Obama plans to do with them. (Shackle them and move them under heavy guard seems a reasonable answer to the latter.)

Here’s an idea that should please everyone: build a facility in Texas. I’m sure Crawford’s economy could use a lift, now that all the media and protesters are gone. It’s too bad Bush is gone, too, but his gated community in Dallas is close enough for him to feel a sense of accomplishment for creating this “all locked up with no place to go” scenario. (Funny how his “just folks” attachment to the ranch disappeared about the time it was no longer politically profitable.)

Here’s where we satisfy the Senate: If Rick Perry has his way, Texas will no longer be part of the United States by the time we get the detainees moved, so they won’t be coming to the United States after all.

I don’t know why they just don’t come to me to settle these things.

Be Careful What You Ask For

For years Democrats in Congress refused to deny George W. Bush the finding to do anything he anted. For the last two years of his administration they had the votes; prior to that they have parliamentary procedure to stop any programs they truly objected to, of which they claimed there were many.

Now they have a Democratic president who wants to do something most of them have been claiming they want to do—close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist holding facility—and they’re denying him the funds to do it.

What it comes down to is fear. Which are they more afraid of? Is it the chance one of these 241 alleged terrorists will be too much for the American prison system to handle? That these terrorists, who will be dispersed all over the country to dilute the effects of their less than one-in-a-million status here, will somehow be able to defeat out best efforts to neutralize them? Are these terrorists from Krypton, with superhuman powers that would make them invincible to our military?

Or is their fear of Republicans greater? That one of these guys will do something—run a red light, shoplift a CD—and the Republicans will scream, “See?! We told you it wasn’t safe!”

What scares me most is Harry Reid. Nothing new; I’ve been after Reid’s ass for years. (Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Oh, and here.)The Senate majority leader was rolled on a daily basis when he was the minority leader. Now he has 59 votes, and they still roll him. Here are Reid’s comments on why the Guantanamo detainees can’t be placed into the federal prison system:

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …

REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

This is someone who could hire James Harrison as his press secretary. Harry’s not just incompetent; he’s senile.

Yes, I Am Immature

I have a calendar on my desk at work. Each day has its own little brain teaser puzzle. Some I solve, some I try to solve and fail, and some I don't even bother with. Here's today's:

Put the same three-letter word in each of the blanks below to make three new words.

_____HOLE

_____STONE

_____BOARD

I've spent most of the morning trying to think of what "assstone" and "assboard" mean.

Know Your Audience

Alaska governor Sarah Palin is writing her memoirs. HarperCollins, the book’s publisher, announced it is slated for release in the spring of 2010, and denied rumors it would be released only in audio format.

False Security

[Agency name redacted] is in the process of issuing new identification badges to all employees and contractors. New photographs, new fingerprints (in case they changed from last time),and the usual descriptive information. Date of Birth. Eye color. Hair color.

(Interesting side note: Two documents are required to prove your identity. Among the acceptable options are a U.S. state-issued drivers license and your current [agency name redacted] badge. No one seems to have recognized I used the former to obtain the latter in first place, so it’s not really two forms of ID, is it?)

My current hair color can safely be described as “mongrel.” When the pleasant young woman taking my information asked, I said, “Take your pick.” She gave me a closer look and laughed. When I was asked to proofread the data for accuracy, I saw “Gray” in the “Hair Color” line.

Bitch.

The Terrapin and the Panther

The Sole Heir will attend the University of Maryland in the fall. The decision was not lightly made.

It started a year and a half ago, with a core list of eight schools. Maryland was required to be one, by parental fiat: a reasonably priced fallback position. Applications were sent to Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins, American University, and Maryland.

The results were inconsistent. Confusing, even. Pitt got the ball rolling, waiving out of state tuition before she even applied, then granting a full tuition scholarship by Thanksgiving weekend. Boston College accepted her, but provided no aid. Johns Hopkins put her on the wait list. The Ivies passed. American provided a large scholarship, but its base tuition is so high the remaining costs were still roughly equal to full freight at Maryland.

That left Pitt and Maryland, schools with virtually identical rankings. Late in March, Maryland ponied up with a Banneker-Key scholarship, the school’s highest honor, for full tuition. A Maryland Scholar grant from the state knocked off another three grand, so long as she went to school in Maryland.

No word from Pitt. March became April; the deadline for students to accept offers was May 1. Middle of April TSH called Pitt to see when letters would go out and got the runaround. Same thing the next week. Hedging her bets, she continued her research and became comfortable with the idea of attending Maryland. When people asked, I told them I was 99.44% sure she’d go to Maryland.

Pitt finally made their offer last Friday, April 24: free. They would pay her tuition, standard room and board, all mandatory fees, a small stipend for books, and a couple of thousand bucks to study abroad, should she choose to. (Which she almost certainly will.)

I was torn. I’d become a Maryland advocate, in no small part because the campus is twenty minutes from my house. Generous as Maryland’s offer was, Pitt’s was much better. Family meeting time, and I had no choice but to argue in favor of Pitt.

The Sole Heir, her mother, and I went around on the relative merits for an hour and a half. Death Row inmates should have a lawyer as well-prepared and eloquent as TSH was that day. She acknowledged the benefits of Pitt, and the money it would cost her down the road to go to Maryland. (She plans to go to medical school. Every dollar spent on undergraduate school is a dollar that will have to be borrowed later.) Then she laid out the benefits of Maryland. She had me wavering by the time I left. A short phone call on Saturday to mention something else she’d thought of pushed me a little farther. There wasn’t a lot of doubt by the time we all got together Sunday afternoon.

Words cannot express how proud I am. For all the work she did to earn such bountiful offers from two good schools, yes, but mostly for the manner in which she handled herself through the discussion and decision-making process. She made the right decision, using logic and facts, understanding there are other things to consider than money, and that emotional attachments play a role in such a decision. (At one point on Sunday, she said, “I’m a Maryland girl. I like it here.”)

I hope Maryland appreciates what they’re getting here. I know I do.

Well Said

I was in the process of getting revved up about the Bush Administration's torture policies and the Obama Administration's lukewarm response when I read Paul Krugman's blog post on the topic. He says it much better, and more concisely, than I could.

Maybe now I can let it go for a while.

Happy Birthday, Charlie

Everyone deserves a mentor at some point in their life. With luck, it’s your father, and I was very lucky in my selection of both parents, either of whom is always ready to help out with the immediate problem, and to guide me in a direction to make similar situations less likely, or more easily handled, in the future.

I was doubly fortunate on the mentor front when Charlie Schlueter became my trumpet teacher at New England Conservatory. Yes, Charlie Schlueter made me a better trumpet player, and a much better musician. Not good enough to make a living at it, but he didn’t get a lot to work with. Turning me into an orchestral musician was like trying to make bricks without straw.

So what’s the big deal? You pay him to make you a professional trumpeter, and you don’t make it. Where’s the mentoring? Be not hasty, Grasshopper. The mentoring is in how he taught me to be a trumpet player. Understanding there’s more to playing trumpet than sitting behind the mouthpiece. Not just what to think, but a method for deciding what to think about, and how to approach it. Breaking a problem down to its component parts to separate out what’s relevant, what isn’t, and to prioritize the parts that need to be worked on. Giving yourself permission to fail, and how it’s not the same as permission to quit.

Not a day goes by I don’t do something I learned from Charlie Schlueter. Today is his seventieth birthday.

Happy birthday, Charlie, and many more.

Just Following Orders

The Obama Administration released the much anticipated/dreaded Bush Administration torture memos yesterday. They were as bad as anyone’s worst fears.

Jay Bybee’s responses to the CIA’s request for guidance weren’t just legalistic fairy dust. They amounted to a manual on how to torture. Bybee—now a federal court judge, which should make anyone’s blood run cold—permitted eleven days of sleep deprivation. Waterboarding could last twenty to forty seconds. (Summaries, as well as the memos themselves, are here.)

The Obama Administration, which deserves commendation for releasing the memos, then made a shameful bow to the intelligence community by declaring no one who used the opinions supplied by Bybee as a justification for torturing a prisoner would be prosecuted, and the government would provide legal assistance in proceedings brought by other parties. The door was left open as to whether anyone higher up might some day face prosecution.

This whole business appalls me on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll work my way up from the bottom. Are CIA personnel so badly trained, so morally deficient, that they don’t know depriving a man of sleep for eleven days is torture? Simulating drowning for twenty minutes? Slamming his head into a wall? A good, practical, definition of torture is, “How would you feel if this was being done to one of your guys?” Well? The CIA interrogators weren’t asking for guidance; they wanted permission, and Bybee gave it to them.

Did Bybee get an erection while he wrote the memos? Did he write much of them with only one hand? Did he sit back with a cognac on cold nights and wonder what it would be like to actually be there, instead of just imagining? We don’t know as I can find no media outlet that asked himt. Not that I’d expect a comment, or that he’d even answer the phone. I can’t even find a reference to a “No comment,” or, “Judge Bybee’s office did not return calls.”

The Bush Administration was little more than a junta, often operating outside the rule of law under the auspices of jefe Cheney. Some career-advancing toady without scruples could always be found to write an opinion to justify whatever they wanted. Warrantless searches. No habeas corpus. Long-standing treaties and accords ignored. As I noted before, they treated the United States like Tony Soprano treated David Scatino’s sporting goods store.

And now the Obama Administration has officially endorsed the supposedly discredited “I was only following orders” defense. Not only will Obama, acting in our name, allow a free pass to torturers, we’re going to pick up their legal bills on the assumption they acted in good faith. No further investigation required. I wonder what the response would be if they had learned some seersucker-wearing cracker DA wrote an opinion for some Mississippi redneck sheriff that said it was okay to take them Nigras out back and teach them some manners.

Of course, you probably don’t care. A recent poll showed only 38% of Americans want criminal investigations of the torture allegations; 35% want nothing done at all. Bush and Obama anger me. The poll is saddening and disappointing. We should all be ashamed for what was done in our names, whether we approved of it or not. Our lack of that shame only makes it more deserved.

More Wacky Texans

Texas Governor Rick Perry says the day could come when Texans want to secede from the Union. ""I believe the federal government has become oppressive. It's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion in the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state."

Texans at the April 15 Tea Bag rally showed an interesting perception of reality. Thirty-eight-year-old Melva Fried said the forced ouster of General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner was the last straw for her -- a symbol the federal government was moving toward socialism. "When a president can fire the head of a company, that's too much," she said, holding a sign that read "Stop Rewarding Failure." She did not explain how firing Wagoner for his failure was rewarding him.

Kudos to Governor Perry for wanting the onerous heel of the federal boot to be removed from their necks. Texans are more than capable of taking care of Texas on their own, thank you very much. Except for last week, when Perry called for FEMA to help with some pesky wildfires. Or last month, when he called for troops to patrol the Mexican border. Oh, and there was that time last winter when asked for an eighteen month extension of federal aid for debris removal from Hurricane Ike.

It has to be frustrating for such an independent, strong willed man to have to go to the Great White Father on bended knee. I feel his pain, and have an idea for its cure. Secede. Really. Go ahead. And take Mississippi with you. Louisiana and Alabama. Arkanses, for sure. Georgia. Florida. Pretty much toe whole Confederacy, if you like. (Northern Virginia will probably take a page from history and secede from Virginia itself, just like West Virginia did in 1861.) Y’all have been nothing but trouble for a hundred and fifty years and your contributions to American culture have been pretty much limited to grits and Larry the Cable Guy. We promise there will be no war to keep you this time.

Wrapping Up the Frozen Four

Some personal observations on last weekend’s Frozen Four hockey tournament:

- It’s hard to describe the enthusiasm of the crowds. Each school had a corner of the rink for its fans, and each brought their pep band to keep things revved up. It didn’t matter who scored, half the building erupted, the other half groaned.

- Bemidji State’s pep band had a previous commitment, so they borrowed George Mason’s band. This was great for multiple reasons. GMU was the Cinderella entry in the 2006 basketball Final Four, as Bemidji State was for this year’s hockey tournament. Both teams’ colors are green and gold. It was worth the price of admission to watch the band and student sections shout cheers at each other, cheers the band would just have learned that week. Both groups obviously has a ball. The conductor’s green tux was sweet, too.

- No matter how many times I see it, I still stay to watch hockey players shake the opponents’ hands after beating the snot out of each other for two-and-a half hours.

- Each team formed a semi-circle to face their fans’ corner of the ice and saluted them with their sticks at the end of each game. Very classy.

- In the play that defined the weekend for both The Sole Heir and me, a Vermont player dove head first, with his stick fully extended, to keep the puck from sliding into the empty net as time expired. The outcome was not in doubt, but he’d be damned if he was going to lose by two goals. Seeing a 5-4 score in the record book tells future generations it went down to the bitter end; 6-4 just doesn’t look the same. Helluva play.

- Not only did we get some national TV time in a crowd shot, The Official Main Squeeze of The Sole Heir got a picture of it on his cell phone and sent it to her while we were still in the building.

In summary:
Tickets: $360
Tee shirts and souvenirs: $108
Food: $75.
Having my kid think of me when the tickets came available to her: Priceless. This was as good as the 2007 US Open. In some ways better, since it was her idea.

The Frozen Four

We’re back from The Frozen Four, and, once again, I wish was as smart every day as I was when I told the Sole Heir to score those tickets. (Especially since I passed on buying them myself a year ago.) Personal observations will follow. Today I need to review the games themselves, as they still haven’t worked their way out of my system.

Thursday’s opening game was worth the trip. How were we to know it would be the least exciting game of the three? Miami of Ohio used its superior size to hammer Bemidji State through an even first period, then wore them down. Miami doubled Bemidji’s shots on goal in the second and third periods and won going away, 4-1, on an empty net goal.

Thursday’s nightcap was widely considered to be the championship. Boston University was the overall Number One seed, and Vermont was solid; Miami and Bemidji were fourth seeds who snuck in with hot weekends in their regional tournaments. BU had lost twice to Vermont during the season, but jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead. Vermont countered with three quick, unanswered second period goals, but BU tied the game late in the period. Vermont took a 4-3 lead midway into the third, but BU scored twice within 1:13 for a 5-4 victory.

Saturday’s game was supposed to be a formality, but, in the only planning mishap of the weekend, no one told Miami. They came out unintimidated by BU’s reputation and didn’t back down after falling behind a goal after one period, tying the game with a second period goal.

Tightly played through the first ten minutes, Miami began to assert itself about midway through the third period, to the extent The Sole Heir and I noted to each other that Boston had “better think of something or they’re in trouble.” Miami scored with about seven minutes to go, then with just over four left to make it 3-1 and Boston really was in trouble.

BU called timeout and pulled the goalie with 3:30 to play, which is a lo-o-o-o-ong time to leave the net open. The way Miami was playing defense, I would have bet on another 4-1 final. This is why I don’t bet. BU scored with 1:00 left, then again with 13 seconds to play to send the game into overtime. The noise after the tying goal was so great the sound backwashed in and out of my ears until it sounded like a siren.

Overtime in a hockey playoff is the most exciting, nerve-wracking thing in sports. First, it’s true sudden death. Each team has equal opportunity at the puck (unlike football), and the goal will likely come out of nowhere to end the game in an instant. Second, teams are always far more interested in scoring the winning goal than they are worried about giving it up.

Miami came out like the last minute of regulation never happened: confident and aggressive. Both sides had good scoring chances as the game went up and down the ice, until A BU player took a shot from near the top of the left face-off circle. A Miami player tried to block it, but his timing was a split second off. The puck deflected off his leg and floated end-over-end over the goalie’s shoulder and into the net. Game over.

A truly great game, regardless of the sport or level of play. The kind of game where, if you weren’t a hockey fan going in, you would be coming out.

Those Wacky Texans

At first I thought it was an Onion parody: Texas Legislator Wants Asians to Americanize Names. But no, it’s true. At a hearing for pending legislation on voter identification, Rep. Betty Brown suggested to a witness that Asians should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

Brown has since apologized to Asians, but the jury has decided. Betty Brown, you are today’s winner of today’s Michele Bachmann Clueless Bitch Award.

Congratulations< betty. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’m sure Michele will do some stupid tea-bagging thing soon the wrest it away from you.

The Insidious Effects of Gay Marriage

I have been known to blame just about anything bad on the spread of gay marriage: the weather, the economy, losses by favorite sports teams, my inability to get published. You name it. The Show Tunes Correspondent has found a complete compendium of everything we can expect from the legalization of gay marriage here.

One Cool Kid

Last Monday I was sitting at home, minding my own business, eating dinner while watching an episode of The Wire with the Beloved Spousal Equivalent, when the Sole Heir called. The conversation, once it was established I wasn’t recording the Orioles game—which is where she called from—went something like this:

The Sole Heir: Do you want a pair of tickets to the Frozen Four this weekend? I think I can get us a couple.

Me: Well, duh. Sure.

The Sole Heir: Okay, I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow.

And so it came to pass that my daughter, who called the BSE and me just last weekend for advice on prom dresses—okay, she really called the BSE; I was dismissed pretty quickly—hooked dear old Dad up with tickets to the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey National Championships. Two semi-finals on Thursday, and the championship on Saturday.

She’s done a lot of cool stuff, some of which has been reported here. (More of that to come as the deadline for college acceptance approaches on May 1.) None of it has made me happier than her thinking of her Old Man for something like this.

Last night’s doubleheader was as fun as we thought it would be. More on that after Saturday’s game.

Fair is Fair

Iraqi Shiites celebrated the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to American troops yesterday by burning effigies of George W. Bush.

Is it any wonder the rest of the world looks at these guys like a dim-witteduncle? George W. Bush s responsible for a lot of things Iraqis can be justifiably angry about, but getting rid of Saddam Hussein isn’t one of them, certainly not from a Shiite perspective. If there’s one day a year they should be grateful for Dubya, this was it.

Not a Problem, an Opportunity

The State of Maryland has its shorts in a knot over an unintended side effect of the Supreme Court’s declaration that DC’s handgun ban was unconstitutional. Now that people can buy and own guns in the District of Columbia, there is only one licensed gun dealer. Since federal law prohibits buying a gun in a state in which the buyer is not a resident, Congress responded by passing a law that allowed DC residents to buy their guns in Maryland or Virginia.

Virginia has no problem with this. Most illegal DC handguns probably came from Virginia via straw man purchases in the first place. The new law just allows them to stop feigning indignation every time someone points it out.

Maryland is upset. The state claims it lacks the resources to do all the background checks, especially since the new ones will require searches of DC records, which are as well organized as straws in a windstorm. Times are tough in Maryland, too, and the state lacks the revenue to maintain services for its own residents. Adding the DC burden is going to be a real problem.

On the other hand, why should Virginia gun dealers get all the extra business, and Virginia all the extra sales tax revenues? There is a simple solution: charge a fee for each records search needed to buy a gun. You pay for title searches on your house. All states finance their departments of motor vehicles through license and registration fees. Why should this specific service be exempt? The only people with a need to have background checks done are gun buyers. Why should all Maryland residents, many of whom do not own guns, have to pay for those who do, especially if they are from out of state?

Staff an office adequate to the task, and charge the gun dealer for each records check. The dealer may then pass the cost along to his customers, or not, as he wishes. It’s the free enterprise system at work.

You're Welcome

Wells Fargo Bank has reported a surge in profits for the first quarter of 2009. I am a Wells Fargo mortgagee who has never missed a payment, so I am taking full credit for this good news. I realize the stage coach division has been down recently; I’m just trying to pick up the slack any way I can.

The Sobotka Corollary to the Yankee Principle

The New York Yankees have been, and continue to be, adamantly against revenue sharing in baseball. They have by far the largest revenue base, and the largest payroll. What the Yankees, in their New York hubris, fail to grasp is they need the other teams to be competitive. Eventually even New Yorkers would look elsewhere for entertainment if the American League evolved into a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters and Washington Generals.

The same is true of the economy as a whole. Capitalism has been very, very good to America. The churn of companies rising and falling is accepted as part of the cost of doing business. Regulation of business is viewed as a necessary evil by most, pure evil by others. Entrepreneurial spirit is valued above all else, unless the government can be talked into underwriting some expenses.

What is too often forgotten on Wall Street and K Street is that not everyone can be a tycoon. I’m not talking about those who try, but fail: you pays your money, you takes your chances. I’m talking about the people who, for whatever reason, choose not to play. People who are content to put in their forty hours, go home, and play with their kids. Pay for their home and retire without having to worry if the price of dog food will starve them.

A pure capitalist sees these people as having no value. They’re weak, and exist only as overhead to slow the engine the entrepreneur is trying to drive. This is why ardent laissez-faire capitalists are ultimately mistaken. Deluded, even.

Not everyone can be a titan of industry, even if they wanted to. Someone has to actually build the cars. Unload the ships. Mine the coal. Even as our economy becomes more service based, we still need people to work retail sales, repair appliances, and cut hair. Cops and fireman and teachers aren’t nice to have; they’re critical.

To a capitalist, these people are overhead, a drag on the bottom line. Yet automakers sell a hell of a lot more cars to these folks than they do to business owners. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal aren’t going into the mines any time soon, and it’s a safe bet Rick Wagoner couldn’t hook up a transaxle if his life depended on it. The entrepreneurs provide vision and, we hope, leadership, but it’s still the people fixing potholes and washing windows who actually get these things done.

I’m not so naïve to believe this is going to change anytime soon; money talks. But until there’s some fundamental recognition of the value of the non-capitalist in a capitalist society, we’re going to end up where we are now every thirty to eighty years, no matter how smart the Masters of the Universe like to think they are. I’m not advocating class warfare, though it may sound like it to some. I’m not even pushing for common courtesy. It’s just common sense.

(Explanation of the title: Season Two of The Wire dealt with the loss of stevedore jobs on the Baltimore Harbor. The union leader was named Frank Sobotka.)

Surprise Surprise Surprise

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has decided at the eleventh hour to accept the federal stimulus package. I’m shocked—shocked!—by this reversal of his principled position.

Only a true cynic would think even for an instant that Sanford saw this as win-win for himself. First he got to polish his conservative bona fides by trashing the stimulus as a socialistic corruption of the traditions that made this country great. Then he could point to South Carolina’s 11% unemployment rate and say he had to take the money against his will and better judgment because his people are hurtin’ bad.

He might as well announce the creation of his exploratory committee for a 2012 presidential run now and get it over with.

Not an Anti-Semantic Comment

From the Washington Post, Friday, April 3:

Pope Benedict XVI marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II with a memorial Mass on Thursday and new prayers for the Polish pontiff's beatification.

Prayers are always appreciated. Whether you believe in them or not, it’s the thought that counts. It’s nice for Benedict to pray for JP’s soul, but for beatification, which leads to sainthood? It’s not God Who makes that Decision: men do. In this case, a man appointed by Benedict, Archbishop Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Sainthood is nice, too, but it’s not a God-given appellation. (Neither is pope, but that’s a different heretical post.) It’s something the Catholic Church came up with on its own, for its own reasons. I think of it as the Hall of Fame for Catholics, but that’s probably the heretic in me talking.

Canonizing someone does not make that person a saint; officially, they were always a saint. Canonization is only the earthly recognition of this fact. This means God has already done his Part; it’s just a matter of getting we slow catchers-on to get with the program. Benedict has already waived the traditional five-year waiting period for canonization. Now he’s publicly praying and advocating for it, even though John Paul II is already either a saint, or he isn’t. Nothing Benedict, or any Catholic official, can do will change that. They’re just deciding about the human, earthly acceptance of it. (Which could be wrong, whichever way it comes down. Humans, unlike deities, are not infallible.)

Benedict isn’t really praying; he’s lobbying. He has his own bully pulpit as jefe Catolica, and he’s getting out The Word to those who will make the actual decision—and work for him—how he wants it to come out. Which is fine. Spare us all the mysticism. It’s not like a huge golden hand came through the ceiling and tapped Benedict alone of all the cardinals to make him pope; he won an election. Took several ballots, too. This means men chose him, independent of divine inspiration. God may be a lot of things, but not many would argue He’s indecisive.

Life on Planet Republica

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) wrote today in today’s Washington Post:

[Obama’s budget] shows very clearly where the president and the Democratic majority want to take our country: sharply to the left

With all due respect, Senator Gregg, have you seen the 2008 election results? Did you watch the campaign? That’s exactly what they said they would do, and that’s why they’re the majority today. That’s what most people want.

Reaganite Republicans have grown so fossilized in their thinking that accepting reality is now considered to be a leftist principle. The prime precepts of their alternative budget are to cut taxes, freeze most spending for five years, halt stimulus and slash federal health programs for the poor and elderly. This is basically saying the fiscal policies that exacerbated the current situation can fix it if we just do them to a greater degree. Yes, the bursting of the housing bubble brought this on, but the uneven expansion of the Bush era, a lack of reliable spending on infrastructure maintenance, and weakening of the social safety net have made the current recession much deeper than it needs to be. All they left out was a loosening on bank and financial regulations. That should fix things right up.

These guys honest to God don’t get it. For weeks I thought liberal-leaning commentators were overexuberant when predicting the Republicans were on their to becoming a rump party. If they keep this up, I’m not so sure.

The Problem With Lawyers...

…is that 98% of them ruin it for everyone.

From today’s Washington Post:
An appeals court affirmed Timothy McVeigh's lawyer cannot claim a charitable tax deduction for donating prosecution materials from the Oklahoma City bombing case.

The three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a tax court ruling that threw out the deduction claimed by Stephen Jones for material he collected as lead defense counsel in McVeigh's trial for the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people.

Easter is Just Around the Corner

The death of a child is never a laughing matter. The circumstances of those involved may lead to some head shaking, though.

From today’s Washington Post:

Accepting a plea bargain that her attorney described as unprecedented in American jurisprudence, a 22-year-old Maryland woman yesterday agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants in the death of her son under the condition that charges against her be dropped if the child rises from the dead.

Maryland State’s Attorneys are taking no chances they’ll be duped:

"This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection," Margaret Burns, the spokeswoman, said after the hearing. "It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

You really ought to read the entire article for a more complete grasp of the lunacy involved.

A Matter of Character

Buried among the basketball jargon at every NCAA tournament is a word that, while it may apply to an individual player, is rarely displayed how the announcers describe it: character.

Making free throws late in a close game is not a sign of character. Grabbing a key rebound is not an indicator of character, nor is making the game winning jumper as time runs out. Any of the above may be indicative of exceptional eye-hand coordination, physical strength, vertical leap, timing, concentration, or just wanting to win more than the next guy. None of these skills relates to character.

I don’t watch sports as much as I used to, but I’m still a fan. I follow several sports closely, and consider myself a knowledgeable layman. My abortive career as a musician taught me to respect talent and accomplishment, so I admire the skills and physical gifts of many athletes. Still, one of my pet peeves is the frequency with which Americans confuse physical talents with inner character.

Roger Clemens won a lot of critical games and struck out a lot of men with the bases loaded. Roger Clemens is an asshole. Barry Bonds won a lot of games with home runs, and almost single-handedly carried the Giants to the seventh game of the World Series in 2002. There is no bigger asshole in the world than Barry Bonds. Manny Ramirez has been among the best clutch hitters in baseball for much of his career. Man-Ram quits on his teams about once a season. For years, the only thing that kept Gary Sheffield from being the biggest asshole in baseball was Barry Bonds.

Character can be revealed on the playing field, but not in the ways most announcers describe. Making the last shot isn’t a sign of character; a willingness to take the last shot, and to accept the consequences if it doesn’t go in, is. Getting the last three outs in the ninth inning isn’t a sign of character; wanting the ball, knowing the goat’s horns are one bad pitch away, is. Anyone can handle the interview where you’re asked to describe your game-winning act over the replay. It takes character to stand up and describe how you missed that shot, threw a wild pitch, or committed a crucial error.

A lot of athletes have, and show, great character. I would be pleased to shake the hands of Cal Ripken, Greg Maddux, Hines Ward, Martin Brodeur, and others. True, they are in my field of vision because of their athletic accomplishments, but it’s the little morsels of what I know about their characters that would make them worth meeting as people to talk to, instead of just autographs to possess or sell.

God Hates Me

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS is notorious for picketing military and police funerals to protest the acceptance of homosexuals and other blasphemous behavior in America. In their own words, they protest at funerals “To warn the people who are still living that unless they repent, they will likewise perish….[A funeral is] the perfect time to warn them of things to come. Is it mean, hateful, uncompassionate, etc.? I'm sure it is, according to your standards. However, according to my standards, it would be infinitely more mean, hateful, uncompassionate, etc., to keep my mouth shut and not warn you that you, too, will soon have to face God.” (From the FAQ page at www.godhatesfags.com.)

Next month they’ll picket Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD because Whitman was a homosexual. Honest to God. Later that day they’ll head up the road to the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore to protest President Obama, who they call the Anti-Christ. (I used some strong language when describing his predecessor, but “Anti-Christ” is a bit much, even for me.)

A couple of us are considering taking half a day off for a field trip. The Orioles play Texas that night, so we could make it a double header in Baltimore. If we really felt ambitious, we could hit all three.

I have no desire to be overly confrontational. There is one question I’d like to ask while they’re standing there, self-admittedly preaching hate. Is this is what Jesus would do?

Then I’ll go back across the street and wave my “Veterans for the Anti-Christ” sign. What the hell. As a fag enabler (their term), I’m doomed already.

The Church of Baseball

Apparently Michigan’s economic crisis has ended, because folks there now have time to argue about the starting time of the Tigers’ home opener. Detroit’s first home game is April 10, which is Good Friday. All thirty teams play that day, but only the Tigers have a game that starts during Holy Hours. (1:05 pm)

Time is our most finite and egalitarian resource; everyone gets exactly the same amount every day. Tough decisions have to be made. If personally attending the first of eighty-one Tigers home games is more important to you than observing an arbitrarily decided upon religious observance, dress warm. That’s why it’s a day game. Early April evenings in Detroit can get goddamned cold. (Pun intended.)

If the religious observance is more important in your pantheon of values, don’t go to the game. Either way, don’t expect the world to change its rotation because there’s something about the current format you don’t like.

Fortunately, modern technology has provided a reasonable solution: DVR the game, and watch it after Holy Hours have ended. (Would that make them Unholy Hours?) It’s just for such elegant compromises that God has allowed man to evolve to the point where such things can be invented.

Me? I’d go to the game, with nuclear-powered underwear. As the lovely Annie Savoy pointed out in the classic movie Bull Durham, there ere 108 beads on a rosary, and 108 stitches on a baseball. Coincidence?

I don’t think so.

A Stupid Question

GM, Ford, and Chrysler owe a combined $43.1 billion to their retiree health plan funds. I wonder how far behind they are in their executive compensation payments.

See? I told you it was a stupid question.

A Question of Priorities

Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Ronney has been named the United States' new ambassador to Ireland. As a life-long Steelers fan, I'm troubled. Pittsburgh has not won two of the last three Super Bowls. Rooney shouldn't be deviding his attention like this.

Oink

It’s hard to know how worked up to get about Congressional earmarks. Forget what Republicans say about fruit flies and bullet trains; much earmarked spending is beneficial and necessary. It’s also true it makes up a small proportion of federal spending, less than two percent in the recently passed omnibus spending bill.

Still, these are tough times; if they’re such an insignificant percentage of the total bill, we can probably get along without them. A symbolic gesture in the direction of fiscal responsibility would be appreciated, since we don’t have the money to pay for any of this stuff right now. Even in good times, worthwhile spending should be able to pass the muster of public scrutiny; After all, it’s our money.

While Republicans get most of the headlines for their constant railing against tax-and-spend Democrats, they are hardly blameless, as six of the top ten Senate earmarkers are Republicans. (David Vitter is on the list. I couldn’t tell how much of his $249 million is for Bourbon Street hooker.) In the interests of fairness, it should be pointed out that Democratic senators have their names on earmarks costing 20% more. (Comparisons are easy, since this is last year’s bill, when both parties had 49 senators. The two independents—Lieberman and Jeffers—were relative misers, spending on average only 28% as much as their peers.)

So it can be stipulated that both parties are at fault here. Democrats earmark more per capita; Republicans have a much higher hypocrisy quotient, because they constantly bitch about earmarks while still bringing home the bacon, to mix metaphors. (Since I’m establishing a precedent and trying to be fair, seven senators attached their names to no earmarks at all: Republicans Coburn, DeMint, McCain, and Stevens; Democrats Feingold, McCaskill, and Obama. Remember, this bill came from last year’s Congress.)

In a perfect world (one run by me), there would be no earmarks. Every dollar spent would be subject to scrutiny, to be defended by its proponents. This might mean Congress would have to work four days a week, but this is a perfect world we’re talking about here. We all know neither of these are going to happen. I propose a compromise: cap the dollar amounts for every member of Congress. The average cost per senator in this bill is $200 million; the median is about $75 million. In the spirit of saving money, let’s say that senators can put their names on earmarks totaling no more than $50 million. Representatives would be capped at about $12 million each, because of their greater numbers and generally smaller districts.

This won’t solve the problem, but it would be a start.

The Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home

I normally have far more regard for Midwestern sensibility than I do for the ADD-addled decision-making processes used on the coasts. I’m going to have to reevaluate that, if Jay Emler gets his way.

Mr. Emler is the chairman of the Kansas Ways and Means Committee. The article I read doesn’t say if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, which is fine by me; I can’t be accused of bias by either side. His plan for Kansas’ share of the economic stimulus money is to bank it for a rainy day. Honest to God.

"When [the stimulus] runs out, we're going to be in a world of hurt . . . so I'd rather see this go into a fund that we would not be able to access except for emergencies," Emler said. "While this is a 'stimulus' package, that's not how I run my personal life. I don't know a whole lot of people who go out and spend if they realize that in two years they're not going to have money."

It doesn’t say what Mr. Emler considers to be an emergency. I guess if he was in debt and his roof blew off he’d just sit in the rain until times got better. The money helps no one if Kansas sits on it. It’s a stimulus, and it only stimulates if it’s in use. Saving it for a rainier day is the surest way to ensure you’ll need it later.

The almost willful inability of some presumably intelligent people to grasp the simplest concepts is astounding, if those concepts run counter to their pre-conceived notions. Forget conservative and liberal. There is no more dangerous philosophy than believing you already know everything you need to know to successfully confront a previously unseen situation.

Not as Sub-Prime as You Think

Republicans like to say the Community Reinvestment Act caused all the trouble in the sub-prime mortgage market, as “those people” had to be given mortgages they were never going to be able to pay off. That’s bullshit, but it’s still the kind of thing they like to repeat ad nauseum under their current sole political philosophy, which can be summed up as, “Tell big enough lies often enough and maybe people will believe you.”

I hate to pile on in their hour of darkness—and it doesn’t get much darker than your party chairman feeling he has to apologize to Rush Limbaugh—but it occurred to me over the weekend that I have a sub-prime mortgage. It’s true. Me, Mister Middle-Aged White Guy, didn’t have 20% down when I bought my house three years ago. I was able to come up with 10%, and my credit score was over 700; a fifteen-year second trust loan had to be taken out, at a considerably higher interest rate.

Well, the fifteen-year loan was paid off last week, in almost exactly three years. You are not bailing anyone out on my account, including me. I suspect I am not alone here. There are as many reasons for people to need sub-prime loans as there are sub-prime loans. Some of them should never have been made; that’s on the lenders. The government never told them they had to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back.

Sub-prime mortgages became a crisis because banks were lined up to issue non-documented loans to people who never should have been considered. Pitching a $400,000 mortgage to a chambermaid making $14,000 a year hardly qualifies as sound business practice. Nor does buying securities consisting of bundles of such loans without performing the due diligence necessary to make sure those were performing loans.

I’m old enough to remember when the lenders kept loan defaults from becoming a problem by not lending unless they were damn sure you could pay it back. Lenders stopped doing that, and started believing in their own Ponzi scheme. That’s where the problem was. Not with the overwhelming majority of borrowers.

And sure as hell not with me. So let’s be careful who we tar with the sub-prime brush.

Stimulating Conversation

I’ll keep this simple, in case a Republican reads it.

The American economy is like your house. When credit was loose and largely unsupervised, you bought this house, probably paid a little more than you should have. Times were good and credit was easy, so you bought a BMW for yourself and an Escalade for the wife to chauffer the kids in. Big screen HD television. Nice summer vacation and flew away for a week every Spring Break. Kids all have Wiis and iPods. Mom has a treadmill and Dad has a custom-fitted set of Calloways. The interest on the debts is an irritant, but not a deterrent. Household maintenance, never glamorous, is neglected.

Now it’s winter. The roof leaks. The furnace doesn’t work. The foundation has cracks that affect the plumbing and the toilets don’t flush. The house is rapidly becoming unlivable, due in large part to your neglect.

What do you do?

If you’re a Republican, you rummage through the attic and find your principles of fiscal conservatism. Debt is bad. These things will take care of themselves over time.

If you’re a sapient life form, you swallow hard and realize the only way to get out of the hole your profligate spending has dug for you is through more spending. Not spending on just anything. Fix the roof. Re-seal the foundation. Repair the plumbing. Get a new furnace. Pay the increased medical bills you incurred because your seven-figure house was an unhealthy hovel. Yes, it’s more debt, and you don’t have a good idea how you’ll pay it back yet, but it won’t matter if you can’t get over this current hump.

I may be a social liberal, but I’m a fiscal conservative. I don’t buy anything I don’t have the money for. My only current debt is a mortgage payment. (I’ll have a car payment again someday, but the current Honda is paid for.) I have a big screen HD TV that I saved up for before I bought it. I have well established the bona fides for my distaste for debt. Yet I am also a sapient life form, and I recognize what has to be done here. It goes against my ideology, but I live in a brick-and-mortar world, not some theoretical construct, so I will swallow hard and accept reality, because no problem can be fixed until you recognize it.

Is that simple enough, you Joe the Plumber loving, redneck, willfully ignorant motherfuckers?

He Gets It

I voted for Barack Obama in November. I thought he was more likely than John McCain to get us out the myriad of problems he would assume after the Bush Administration left the country looking like one of Aerosmith’s hotel rooms. I didn’t suffer from the inflated expectations of his true believers, either. He’s a politician, and no politician rises to his level without having a certain quality of ruthless pragmatism in him. No Kool-Aid for me.

With that in mind, I can safely say last night’s address to Congress was probably the best political speech I have ever seen. The tone was dead on: he didn’t minimize the problems, but neither did he wring his hands about them. Bankers took their lumps, but no one got away clean, which is as it should be; we all bear some responsibility for this mess. He didn’t call out Republicans by name, but made it clear he inherited this mess, and we all know who left it for him.

What I liked best was his willingness to make it clear he wasn’t pussyfooting around. Things are going to be expected of people, from politicians to bankers to you and me. Responsibilities are going to have to be met. Pet programs are going to have to be abandoned.

The time for reckoning came long ago; now we finally have someone who appears to be willing to take some heat to do something about it. He also framed the discussion of why his key programs must be met. Our inability to control the costs of health care not only leaves too many people outside the safety net, but it places too great a burden on American business. It’s no longer a feel-good liberal “entitlement” to preach for universal health care; it’s good business sense. Energy independence is a national security issue, like it or not. Placing unpleasant expenses—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—off the budget to artificially hold down the official deficits was the tawdriest type of sleight of hand, demeaning those who perpetrated it as well as those who accepted it. It’s way past time that stopped.

Will he accomplish everything he set out last night? Certainly not. Political realities will combine with unforeseen events to require sights to be reset. That being said, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? For the first time in a long time, this country has a leader who knows where he wants us to go, and it’s a better place than where we are now.

Today's New York Post Headline

Holder Chosen to Miss Obama's Speech, Ensures Black President No Matter What Happens.

Maybe they didn't print it, but they thought of it.

Stuff You Can't Make Up

This proves the joke isn't always on the Polish guy.

Assigning Responsibility

The finger pointing over who is more at fault for the whole Judd Gregg fiasco will go on for several days. Democrats are blaming Gregg for jilting them; Republicans are claiming Gregg’s withdrawal is a response to the Obama Administration’s hyper-partisan actions. The real issue is much simpler.

The question that begs to be asked is, who thought it was a good idea to nominate a senator who voted to eliminate the Commerce Department and has been a harsh critic of the census as Commerce Secretary in the first place? Gregg may have been a little naïve by accepting the appointment, but he shouldn’t be vilified now for seeing the light and doing the right thing. As for the Republicans’ accusations of Democratic hyper-partisanship, the November bloodbath was in large part a referendum on Republican policies, leadership, and practices. Obama has spent more time consulting with the other party in the past three weeks than the Bush Administration did in the four previous years.

The real issue here is that Gregg was improperly vetted, as were Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Tim Geithner. The Obama Administration has done a lot of things well in its early days, and has made some excellent appointments, but its overall personnel record is disturbingly uneven, at best.

It Still Only Tuesday

The Onion had it right. Monday you write off. It’s the first day of the week, it sucks, get over it. At least you just had a weekend.

Wednesday is Hump Day. When it’s done you’re better than halfway there.

By Thursday you can practically smell the weekend.

The eagle flies on Friday.

On Tuesday the next weekend is too far away to be more than an abstract concept, but the previous weekend is a fading memory.

Damn.

Can You Spare Some Change?

Barack Obama campaigned for president on the slogan, “Change You Can Believe In.” No one suspected he was referring to people who believed in tax fraud.

Timothy Geithner was named Treasury Secretary despite his failure to pay $43,000 in taxes. The World Bank even gave him the money and said, “This is for your taxes.” Now he’s tasked with solving the baking crisis, allegedly because he’s the only person who fully understands it. How good do you feel about that?

Tom Daschle’s first speed bump on the road to being Secretary of Health and Human Services came when word got out he owed $140,000 in back taxes. Tom didn’t think a free car and driver counted as income. His former peers in the Senate rallied to his defense, said it was an honest mistake: the tax code is complicated on such matters. Tom was only about to be tasked with guiding universal health care through the rapids and eddies of becoming law.

Hilda Solis’s nomination to be Secretary of Labor has been delayed because her husband’s business has outstanding tax liens totaling $6400. A small sum for a business, to be sure, but some have been outstanding for sixteen years. Hubby claims this is the first he’s heard about them. Mail delivery must be pretty bad in their neck of the woods.

Nancy Killefer, nominated to essentially be head of quality control for the government, bailed when her tax lapses came to light, though they were the most easily understandable of the lot, failing to file Social Security tax for domestic help. Not excusable for someone looking for the job she was about to hold, but no great benefit to herself.

These episodes tell us several things, all of which will be explored in more detail as time goes on and I get more pissed off.

1. The Obama Administration’s promises of running a more competent government shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Someone hasn’t been doing their homework if all of the above were nominated for important and sensitive posts despite tax situations that might be considered felonies for you or me.
2. The change we can believe in will not extend so far as to disrupt the society of privilege. Americans claim to be a classless society because we have no official royalty or nobles, yet wealth and power decide who does, or does not, obey the law or ethical standards. Miss payments on a billion dollars of commercial real estate and the banks will come to you with refinancing plans. Miss payments on a $200,000 home mortgage and your ass is in the street.

All of the above make it a good bet the stimulus bill under consideration in Congress won’t be enough. The Democrats ladled in too much pork and too many pet projects that should have been discussed on their own merits. Republicans demanded too many tax cuts, which don’t stimulate as well as spending, can’t be targeted (since we can’t control what people spend the money on), and won’t help the people who need it most: the unemployed don’t pay much in taxes because they’re not making any goddamn money.

Bailing out the banks kept them afloat, and might have kept the rest of us from going under with them; that’s what we keep hearing. If you’re looking for positive results from the first $350 billion we took from our children to give to the banks, keep looking; John Thain’s office might be a good place to start.

This is about the sixth time I’ve begun this topic. I never posted because I never found a satisfying way to end it. I still haven’t.

Letting the Punishment Fit the Crime

The inmates of the Prince George’s County (MD) jail rioted Sunday, disabling the locks on their cell doors and beating up the guards because they were prevented from watching the Super Bowl on television due to a lockdown. This alone makes one wonder how there could be a lockdown when the inmates obviously have the ability to disengage the locks, but that may be something for law enforcement professionals to debate.

Here’s what gets me, from today’s Washington Post article:

Vernon Herron, the county's director of public safety, said he thinks the cell lock problem is limited to the unit where Sunday's disturbance occurred. He said the locks for the 48 cells in that unit, where inmates accused of violent crimes are housed, will be inspected and replaced if necessary.

So they’re going to inspect them now; ongoing inspections of the locks in the Violent Crimes wing haven’t been on the radar previously. Apparently PG County makes damn sure shoplifters and pot smokers have secure locks on their cells; violent offenders can come and go as they please.

Dodging the Bullet

I’ve been negligent about this blog for a couple of weeks. It’s not my fault. (You’re scratching your head, thinking, “He’s apologizing for that? People look forward to King neglecting this blog.”) Every time I start to write something, it has to do with the current politico-economic sodomy we’re currently experiencing and I get so worked up I’ve written six hundred words before I’ve gotten to the point and the adrenaline rush is making the argument harder to hold to hold together and…

Yeah. Like that.

Suffice to say, there are too many people who just don’t get it. Democrats and Republicans. The list of what’s pissing me off can’t be typed before I have to leave for work in nine-and-a-half hours. So consider yourself lucky.

For now.

Puzzle Me This

I got one of those Mensa calendars for as a Christmas gift. You know, the ones where every day has some brain-teasing puzzle. Some of them are fun, some are really hard, some are hard to figure out what the hell they want, and some are just dumb.

The puzzle for January 6 asked what the following five things have in common:

NIFTY
RATIONAL
COLLAR
SKIRTS
DAVIS

Time’s up. They all rhyme with major car rental companies. This Mensa guy writing the puzzles is so smart, why couldn’t he come up with a word that rhymes with “Alamo?”

Pussy.

56

It’s a number most closely associated with Joe DiMaggio, for hitting in 56 consecutive games in 1941. An impressive feat, often cited as The Record That Will Never Be Broken. (Much as Ruth’s 60 and 714 home runs, and Gehrig’s 2,130 consecutive games played were prior to being broken.)

No one has ever made a serious run at DiMaggio’s record; maybe it really will never be broken. Still, it covered a period of approximately two months, during which time DiMaggio hit less than Ted Williams did for that entire season. (.406) You want to talk about a streak, how about 56 years? That’s 20,454 days. Good weather and bad. Good health and bad. Good jobs and bad. Or, sometimes, no job.

That’s how long my parents have been married. Today. And they’ve had to put up with me for almost 53 of those years. Now that’s an impressive streak.

Huh?

Saw a couple of interesting statstics on the news last night.

82% of Americans approve of Barack Obama's job performance.

27% of Americans approve of George W. Bush's job performance.

This means 9% of Americans approve the job performance of both Obama and Bush.

What the hell movie are they watching?

Reading Between the Lines

Still working my way to full speed, but one recent news item demands comment.

Karl Rove, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, has "debunked" the idea that George W. Bush can't--er, I mean doesn't--read, pointing out the hundreds of books the Decider has read over the past few years. Some, like the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, have pointed out how many of the books serve only to either buttress Bush's already formed opinions, or to comfort him as he contemplates his legacy as a president who leaves office only slightly more popular than oral surgery.

They're missing the point. Why is everyone assuming Bush actually read all these books, just because Rove said so? Is it due to the extraordinarily high level of trust Rove has earned from his career of truthfulness?

We have numerous accounts, spanning many years, from people in a position to know, telling us George W. Bush isn't much of a reader. Now that it's image burnishing time, we get an opposite opinion from a man who will lie about the time of day just to keep in practice. Considering how much actual presidential work Bush has subcontracted out to subordinates, isn't it more reasonable to assume some White House functionary actually read most of these books, then wrote executive summaries for Shrub to read, the presidential equivalent of Cliff Notes? Does anyone really think a man who has to move his lips to read could cover as much literary ground as Rove claims for Bush?

Probably the same people who think Saddam Hussein helped the 9/11 terrorists and believe the Community Reinvestment Act created the housing bubble.

What Do They Know?

“They” say a lot of things. You can only get mononucleosis once. Only kids get it. Here’s what I say:

Bullshit.

I’m seventeen days in and finally showing enough energy to for a blog post. I haven’t felt sick for over a week, but I’m weaker than George Bush’s grammar, and it’s getting old.

Walk Softly and Carry a Hockey Stick

Maybe fighting and thugs aren’t quite as dead in hockey as some would have you believe. Witness the following sequence from last Saturday’s game between Minnesota and Nashville, won by The Wild 6-2.

With 6:50 gone in the second period and Minnesota leading 3-0, The Wild’s Stephane Veilleaux and Nashville’s Scott Nichol were each penalized five minutes for fighting. No shock there; the Predators were taking a beating and frustration may have bubbled over.

The ice was cleared and play resumed. At 6:53 (three seconds later), Minnesota’s Derek Boogaard and Nashville’s Wade Belak were each sent off for five minute fighting majors. The next fight didn’t erupt for three more seconds, when Craig Weller and Jordin Tootoo each got five minutes off.

The best part of the whole thing only becomes evident when checking the box score. Boogaard only had three seconds of ice time for the game, which means he came on the ice at 6:50 (when the clock was stopped for the first fight) and was gone at 6:53, when he got his penalty. He didn’t play again, even though 28 minutes remained in a blowout game after he was paroled.

A quick look at Boogaard’s record is interesting. He’s played 22 games this year, averaging a little under four minutes a game, based on his last five games, which are all I could find stats for. He’s managed to accumulate 30 penalty minutes in that brief ice time, which is an improvement over his historical norms, which show him averaging 2.26 minutes per game in the NHL, and 4.3 minutes per game in the minors.

Who says the new look NHL has no place for thugs? Seems pretty obvious Minnesota coach Jacques Lemaire sent Derek over the boards at 6:50 of the second to kick some ass. Dave Schultz, Tie Domi, and Bob Probert must be so proud.

The Pinnacle of Civilization

Black Friday took on a new meaning this year when shoppers at a Long Island Wal-Mart crushed an employee to death in their haste to get shopping. The employee had the unfortunate name of Jdimytai Damour, so he was probably an immigrant, which means he was probably some illegal taking that high-paying seasonal Wal-Mart job from a deserving American, maybe even one of those who stepped over—or on—his body rather than try to help him.

Hell, with a name like that he’s probably from one of them African countries, where they have flies on the kids’ faces and are always whining about baby formula and then trample the their kids trying to get at it. You’ll never see Americans rioting for food like some of them you see on the news. Here we only stampede adults—and less than Real Americans at that—who stand between us and some cheap shit made in China that might just poison our kids, who, at least, have plenty of formula.

We’re no third world country.

The Way it Should Be

The Sole Heir’s Beau is a formidable hockey player. (I have it on good authority he’s even better at lacrosse.) Thanksgiving weekend brought a tournament conveniently located at the local rink, so we took the Parental Units over to see how we spend our free time.

Friday’s game was a 5-0 win, and so much fun we went back on Saturday to watch a 3-3 tie. Mom and Dad left Sunday morning, so The Sole Heir and I went back at 12:30 to see the championship game, with the winner advancing to a tournament in Canada next January.

You couldn’t see a more entertaining game at the Olympics. The Beau scored on a partial breakaway about five minutes in. That lead held up until a scrum cost our team the lead about midway through the second period. The game was a true goalies’ duel, both teams getting multiple scoring chances only to be stoned by the opposing goaltender.

Regulation ended 1-1, but there had to be a winner, as only one team could advance. The five minute overtime ended in a tie, so a shootout was called for. The teams would take turns with just a single skater trying to beat the opposing goalie. The team with the most goals after five attempts—all by different players—would win.

The visitors (from North Carolina) scored on their third shot, and it came down to our last chance. The goalie made most of a save, but the puck trickled through his pads and came to rest no more than six inches over the line. Still tied.

Now it’s the shootout version of sudden death: if they score, we have to match. If they miss and we score, we win. It went about ten rounds. Beau had the goalie set up for the same shot he’d scored on earlier, but the puck hopped on the chippy ice and he fanned on the shot. (Just as well; him shooting the winner would have been too much like a bad movie.) About ten shots in a Montgomery County player finally beat the Carolina goalie clean.

You would have thought they’d won the Stanley Cup the way they came screaming off the bench to bury the shooter, then turn as a group to engulf the goalie who kept them in the game. As hockey tradition dictates, both teams shook hands, then lined up to be called individually to receive their trophies, and run the handshake gauntlet again. Several winning players were detained in their round by losing coaches, who were genuinely happy for them, joking and slapping backs. It was as fine a gesture of sportsmanship as I have ever seen.

I hung with the Beau’s father after the game, waiting for the kids to come out of the locker room. “I think that last goal cost me about six hundred dollars,” he said, commenting on the price of the Canada trip. Huge smile on his face.

If you ever get tired of watching millionaire athletes bitch and moan about every little thing, go find a kids’ game somewhere, preferably at a level where no one has any real expectations of playing professionally. The play just as hard, if not as well, and there are few things in life as pure as the elation that goes with winning something for its own sake.

The way it should be.

The Sole Heir Rides Again

I don’t like to put personal stuff here, unless it might be entertaining to someone other than myself. I usually bend that rule when The Sole Heir does something that demands recognition. This is one of those times.

She was accepted into the University of Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago. That received no mention here because, frankly, we knew she’d get in; I’ll be more surprised if a college doesn’t take her. This weekend’s noteworthy feat was the arrival of another letter from Pitt, awarding her a four-year, full tuition scholarship, including a $2,000 study abroad stipend, and $500 for books. She also qualifies for a full Chancellor’s Scholarship, which will cover room and board if she gets it. (Miami of Florida offered maid service. Honest to God.)

This isn’t a done deal on her part; she’s still waiting to hear from a few schools so she can compare offers. Still, having a school as prestigious as Pitt in her back pocket—sans tuition, no less—takes a lot of stress out of waiting for the other replies.

Pitt also included a certificate for the parents, in appreciation of the support required to create a student of this caliber. Thanks, but they can keep it. First, this is a parent’s job; honoring us for not being derelicts should not be required. Second, while a poor home setting can adversely affect scholarship, no home environment can create a student of the skills The Sole Heir, and some of her friends, have developed. Her mother and I each have Masters Degrees; neither of us has been able to provide material assistance to her academically since she was in eighth grade. I can take no more credit for her achievement than I can for her brown eyes. True, she inherited the tools, as I did before passing them on; no credit is due there. The work is hers alone. I only hope her own high standards don’t prevent her from being as proud as she should be over this accomplishment, whether she accepts the deal or not.

Almost as proud as I am of her. Good job, La Binque.

Something Else to be Thankful For

Thanksgiving has passed at The Home Office, as has most of the food. (We’re still good for a couple of days worth of lunch-quality leftovers.) The Parental Units came down from the ancestral home in western Pennsylvania to spend the weekend, and remind us all of a rare thing we can be thankful for: my family actually gets along.

Proof of this can be found in our activities, or lack thereof. Dinner at Famous Dave’s. Some conversation. Watch a movie. More conversation. Thanksgiving Day was football, conversation, and the annual Feast. We then relaxed by bullshitting a while, and watching some football.

We did leave the house a few times. Took Mom to Costco. Went to a high school hockey game that involved The Sole Heir’s beau and enjoyed it so much we went back the next night. (More on that in a later post.) Introduced Mom to Mello Yello. In all, about as relaxing and entertaining a three days as could be had.

The visit was only cut short when a potential storm from the northeast chased them home first thing Sunday morning. (Research indicating the Steelers-Patriots game would not be televised in the Washington metropolitan area had no bearing on this decision.) The storm petered out into a drizzling rain that lasted all day Sunday and traffic was heavier than expected, but they made it home without incident. (Mom did get to snarf another Mello Yello at a rest stop. Now that she’s hooked, I’ll have to teach her the term “jonesing.”)

We get together a handful of times a year, but this Thanksgiving visit has become the most satisfying. The day may come when they don’t feel up to the trip; then we’ll drive. People have teased me about living in the last functional family in America. Sour grapes.

One last thing. The Steeler game was televised in Washington after all; the listings were incorrect. It looked great on that fifty-inch HD screen, Dad. Stick around next time. We have room.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. For those of you who celebrate it, best wishes for a happy and comfortable day with family, friends, or whoever who choose to spend it with.

The rest of you, get back to work.

Dave? Is That You, Dave?

The excellent crime fiction writers blog Working Stiffs ran this post today; the topic is the infallible ability of homeowner big ticket items to fail when you can least afford them to. This was a particularly timely post for me, as we have recently replaced our dishwasher (I mean the mechanical one; the Beloved Spousal Equivalent is secure in her position) and are looking for a toaster.

These events have made me realize appliances are smarter than we give them credit for, but not as smart as they think they are. Take our old dishwasher. We inherited it when we bought the house, and it had obviously been here a while. The BSE complained about it daily, with cause.

Earlier this month we ordered a new one. The old immediately started acting up: drying even less well than before, leaving more streaks. It knew we were talking replacement, which I thought was pretty perceptive for an inanimate object. It just didn't realize its actions were counterproductive. Not its fault; dishwashers rarely have the emotional maturity of, say, a combination washer/dryer. It can now contemplate its improper response in the Prince George’s County landfill.

Last week the toaster started burning toast even worse than usual. I pointed to the new dishwasher and said, "If I dumped a large appliance like that one, don't think I won't run your ass out of here in a heartbeat."

I haven't made toast since then. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, South of the Mason-Dixon Line

This is something that could not ever be made up.

If you get to wondering why there are no bestiality laws that apply, remember where this takes place. Legislators who pass laws are human beings. They have fond memories of their first loves, too.

Time Out

A brief disclaimer: for those of you unaware of this, I voted enthusiastically for Barack Obama for president. View the rest of this post in that context.

I stayed up on election night only long enough to watch John McCain’s concession speech. I haven’t read any of the subsequent Obama statements, didn’t watch 60 Minutes last Sunday. When the lovely Spousal Equivalent asked why not, I explained that I’d been listening to him, and others, tell me what they’re going to do for over a year now. Voting was all I could do about it, and I did. Now I’m calling a time out until he actually does something. Then he can have my attention back.

Frankly, form what I can tell about him, I think Obama might consider that a healthy attitude.

Throw Money at It

That’s the standard Republic Party reply when Democrats come up with a program. “Those tax and spend Democrats just want to throw money at the problem.” Let’s see how well that argument holds up.

Since the Depression, Democrats have preferred government-sponsored job programs for economic stimulus. The Depression was full of them: WPA, TVA, Rural Electrification. Whatever kept people working and off welfare. Build roads, bridges, buildings. Run phone and electrical lines. Keep people busy while preparing the nation for the eventual good times, because having to play catch-up can stifle an economic rebound faster than anything.

This approach has benefits. First and foremost, the money wasn’t just flowing one way. People who are working pay taxes, as opposed to just taking in money like those collecting unemployment insurance and welfare. (Republics shouldn’t have to be reminded of this.) Same thing for the companies who get the contracts to actually do the work.

Even better, the program doesn’t have to work as well as expected in order to reap its rewards. Even if the economy doesn’t recover as much as you’d like, you’ve still fixed the roads and bridges, laid cable and fiber (the 21st Century equivalent of electric and phone lines). These are tangible benefits that will be there, ready and waiting, when things finally do get going again.

The Republic Party, on the other hand, likes to put checks in the mail, in the hope that people will spend them on goods and services. This approach, which owes much to the “trickle down” school of economics, is unreliable at best. Sometimes it’s a downright fallacy, as is so much of trickle down theory.

Let’s take this year’s example, where millions of people got $300 checks. What was the root of the economic problem? Overextension of credit. What did a lot of people do with the money? They paid bills. A worth endeavor, but hardly stimulating to the manufacturing or sales segments of the economy. Even worse, when it didn’t work, all we had to show for it was a bugger deficit.

Getting real work to take place will create a “bubble up” economy by putting the money in the hands of the people who need it most, and will be most likely to recirculate it in the desired manner, namely those who actually need it to make ends meet. Why this remains such a revolutionary concept is the real puzzler.

Putting people to work to accomplish something, or sending checks and hoping for the best. Who’s really throwing money at the problem?

Not the Honeymoon, Still the Engagement

I’d hoped it would be over. I’d dreamed of a time after the election when the pundits (a Latin word for “capable of spewing excrement from multiple orifices”) would have nothing presidential to analyze and we could go back to actually getting the news.

Sometimes I wonder how I hold a job, dumb as I am.

Just because Barack Obama won the election with a comfortable, but not earthshaking, margin doesn’t mean everyone and his brother isn’t lined up to tell him what to do. It’s one thing for Republics and conservatives to do it; they lost, and a certain amount of sniping is to be expected. It’s the Democrats and others who voted for him who are crawling all over each other to let him know what he needs to do first, next, and everything after that.

Didn’t they (and I) just vote for him to lead? Did your vote at least imply that you trust his judgment? (I hope so; mine did.) True, times are tough and he needs to hit the ground running, but he seems to be a pretty sharp guy. Let’s see what he has planned.

Obama’s greatest challenge won’t be Republic Party resistance. It will be from the inevitable disappointment of his Kool-Aid-drinking supporters when they discover how much clay his feet contain. It will be that whole “woman scorned” thing, which I know quite a bit about. Oh, do I know about that.

The “feet of clay” reference was in no way an insult. Everyone has them. Obama will have them worse, if only because each of his supporters has a different idea of what they want him to do, so each will be disappointed in their own way. He can’t please them all, by definition; he’s bound to be disappointed himself from time to time.

So how about everyone just backs the fuck off for a few weeks? We’ll all feel better.

Random Political Thought

Does anyone else wonder how many of the members of the Republic Party now clamoring for Obama to begin a period of post-partisanship were also telling John McCain they’d desert him if he chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate?

October's Movie Reviews

Doug List has posted his monthly compendium of movie reviews over at Thoughts on Film.

Suspension of Disbelief

Baseball’s abnormally good luck with weather during the World Series came to an abrupt end last night, with the first foul weather suspension of a game in World Series history. (Announcers always use such a qualifier, in case some World Series games had been suspended in Super Bowl history, or Chinese history. They’d also be right to say it was the first World Series game suspended in history, period, but that might sound presumptuous. More likely, Tim McCarver didn’t think of it.)

Baseball has no one but itself and Fox to blame for this week’s problems. (Tonight’s forecast is no better than last night’s.) Fox requested some extra days off in the playoff schedule last year, to spread the games out more and prevent Games Six and Seven from taking place on a weekend, where low general viewing (Saturday night) and pro football (Sunday night) would cut into their audience. Using the schedule in place since the inception of a third tier of playoffs in 1995, this year’s Game Seven would have been played on October 26, last Sunday. In Florida. In a dome. Hardly any weather problems there. (Why the Tampa Bay area thought a domed stadium was advisable for an area where people move to enjoy the weather is an open question.)

Next season doesn’t start until April 5, so baseball is talking to Fox about removing the open dates to keep the Series from running as late as November 5. Even Bud Selig appreciates the potential for embarrassment if Games Six and Seven were to be scheduled for the first week of November in Boston or Chicago or Cleveland or Detroit, none of which are out of the realm of possibility. Starting the season on March 29 apparently hasn’t occurred to them, even though Major League Baseball has complete control over where games are played in the beginning of the season, and none at the end.

Of course, these are guys who still insist on starting all games at 8:30 Eastern time. I appreciate the need to give West Coast viewers a chance to get home, but this start time ensures 75% of the people in the country will miss either the beginning of the game (because they’re not home yet) or the end (because they passed out in the seventh inning).

That explains the disjointed, overly parenthetical nature of this post. I’ve been up until at least midnight every night for three weeks, I’m already exhausted, and it only Tuesday.

Pumpkin Time?

Has it occurred to anyone else that when the clock struck midnight Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Rays looked at eash other and said, "Oh, shit! This is the World Series! We're Tampa. We suck." Because they really haven't done too much right since then.

Orders of Magnitude

There’s been a lot of adolescent name calling in this election, even more juvenile than usual. He-said, she-said, he did it first, he’s on my side of the car, he’s touching me he’s touching me. Stuff like that. Neither side has clean hands, despite what both promised would be a lofty and elevated discussion about the relative merits of each candidacy.

Whether both are equally guilty is a question of magnitude. Let’s examine two frequent Republican complaints: who’s running more negative ads, and why Joe Biden’s verbal gaffes don’t get the same attention as Sarah Palin’s.

Negative ads first. Each side quotes statistics to buttress its point. Obama’s overwhelming fundraising advantage allows him to run so many more ads, both sides are correct, regardless of whether they’re arguing his percentage is lower than McCain’s (as Obama does), or there are so many more of them (as McCain does).

As Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of deception: lies, damned lies, and statistics; call it a wash. What’s more important is the content of the negative ads. It’s one thing to say your opponent’s tax and health care policies won’t help the average Joe, plumber or not; it’s something else to say your opponent is un-American and consorts closely with terrorists. Especially when it’s not true.

Then there are Biden’s gaffes versus Palin’s. We’re not even going to discuss the percentage issue here; Joe Biden talks so much his misstatements could fill the Bible and he’d still be 90% accurate. Once again, it’s the quality of the gaffe that matters. Saying FDR spoke on television after the stock market crash of 1929 is dumb, but it reflect on his judgment. His knowledge of media history, sure, but the point he was making is valid: Roosevelt comforted the nation during the worst parts of the Depression. He did, admittedly, get the specifics wrong. All of them.

Compare that to Governor Palin’s oft-repeated assertion that she has foreign policy expertise because she can see Russia from Alaska. To quote a national columnist (I forget which one, sorry) I can see the moon from my front yard; that doesn’t make me an astronaut. Or an astronomer. I don’t “read everything they put in front of me,” but I can tell you what I do read. Biden’s a bit of a goof whose mouth has only a dial-up connection to his brain when it needs broadband; she’s an idiot.

What’s important are what mathematicians and physicists call orders of magnitude. If I say you’re wearing an ugly sweater and you reply that I’m a wife beating, child molesting bastard, we both insulted each other once. The insults are hardly equivalent.

Behind the Scenes at The Home Office

Watching Game One of the World Series last night, the Spousal Equivalent, weary of my constant carping about Tim McCarver's "expert" analysis, finally asked if there was anything he could say that would satisfy me.

“Sure,” I said.

“What?”

“My heart! My heart!”

Palin's Hidden Agenda

Conventional wisdom implies Sarah Palin’s recent campaign appearances indicate someone positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012 should John McCain come up short this year, which appears likely. There’s an abvious second choice no one seems to be picking up on.

Her campaign rhetoric has become even more shrill and veered rightward lately, opening differing with McCain’s to the point where he has had to specifically distance himself from her comments. Polls showing she has become a drag on his hopes with everyone except hard-core conservatives have not diminished her efforts.

Last week’s appearance on Saturday Night Live was telling. The opening was either edgy or unfunny; I lean toward edgy. Her later appearance on the Weekend Update segment was embarrassing. It’s depressing to think that a candidate for the nation’s second highest office would knowingly stand for something like that.

All of these would come back to haunt her in a future run. She might win some primary battles with her ultra-conservative base, but she is essentially unelectable when even more moderate (or even moderately thinking) Republicans start voting. She’s no more likely to become president than Michele Bachmann.

No, her recent acts, coupled with her pre-political history, argue her vision is set on a more practical goal: Fox News. Look for her to to become either a regular contributor, or get her own show, within a year of the expiration of her term as Alaska governor. If not sooner.

Go ahead. Laugh. Just remember where you heard it first.

Sarah Sixpack

Sarah Palin can’t go a day without some pander to her core constituency, personified by Joe Sixpack. I’m old enough to have been around when this stereotype was created, and young enough to remember it. Joe Sixpack comes home after work, plops himself in the family La-Z-Boy and pounds a six pack of beer sitting in his wife beater while watching a ball game.

Basically, a drunk.

So Sarah is proudly identifying her core voting block as drunks.

This might be the first thing she’s been right about so far.

The Terrible Broadcasting System

I think TBS has it in their contract with Major League Baseball that they must go out of their way to make Fox look good. They missed the first twenty minutes of Saturday’s Game Six between Boston and Tampa Bay due to a technical failure in Atlanta. When they came back, Chip Caray comforted everyone with, “You haven’t missed much.”

What we missed was Coco Crisp leading off with a bunt single, then immediately getting picked off in the top of the first inning, then a long homerun by BJ Upton in the bottom of the inning.

While Caray was noteworthy for playing the house shill in a manner to make any White House press secretary proud, analyst Ron Darling wins the Tim McCarver Obvious Banality Award for stating that “two-out hits can prolong an inning.”

Al Leiter was available, guys. And Skip Caray (Chip’s dad) is retired, not dead. If you want to play in The Show, bring you’re A Game. Don’t use Fox as an example.

Like Putting Handcuffs on a Squid

Quick thoughts on the final debate:

I know why he didn’t do it, but it would have been nice to hear Obama cite examples of how McCain can safely be described as “erratic.” Also to draw a distinction between “negative” ads that point out the flaws in the opponent’s positions and policies and negative ads that call your opponent a terrorist sympathizer.

McCain really and truly doesn’t understand that the average family gets hosed by his health care plan. You’d think a Republican would get it when the US Chamber of Commerce says so; maybe he’s become so much a maverick up is now down to him.

It says a lot about the state of the campaign when Obama declines to point out Sarah Palin’s woeful inadequacy to be vice-president, but McCain spends most of his time on that question trying to convince us Joe Biden is a moron.

McCain-ian logic: I will have no litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. I will nominate only qualified jurists. No one who supports Roe v. Wade is a qualified jurist. QED.

Saying an across-the-board spending freeze will solve the budget problems is like telling someone whose feet hurt to wear the same size shows as you do, because your feet don’t hurt. Even though you’re six inches taller.

Tax cuts are the Republicans’ answer to all budget questions. By their logic, the government would have al the money it would ever need if it just did away with taxes altogether.

When Obama says he wants to spread the wealth around, it’s not like he’s going to take the money from Joe the Plumber and give it to Sam the Teacher. The money will come from John McCain and Hank Paulson and Barbra Streisand, who can all afford it.

Highlights of the evening: Bob Schieffer's repeated attempts to get something worthwhile out of these two.

Lowlights of the evening: McCain’s dismissal of the mother’s health as a ground for abortion.

Runner up: McCain declaring he didn’t want to talk about some broken down old terrorists, then spending two minutes doing exactly that.

Thank God, Allah, Vishnu, Gaia, or whoever else you might pray to that this will all be over in a few weeks.

A Welcome Addition to the Blogsphere

The Hollywood Correspondent has been providing entertaining and thoughtful movie reviews and com printed tabloid-sized mailings several times a year. Several writers contributed to each edition, and the articles ranged from retrospectives of actors’ or directors’ careers to analysis of types of films or films of a certain time period to comics drawn specifically for the magazine.

Final Take eventually became too expensive to maintain, and email became the medium of choice. The content changed as well. Everything was written by him, and the monthly format was more like a series of traditional movie reviews. He’d still riff on things when the spirit moved him, but there would always be a movie or two that served as the cornerstone of the comment. I don’t think a month went that his notes didn’t provoke an exchange of emails, usually resulting in me learning something.

Now he has discovered the blogsphere. Thoughts on Film contains all the monthly newsletters he’s done over the past several years. They’re well written, engaging, and should spur some nice comment threads as he builds a readership. Check him out; pick through the archives. You’ll thank me for telling you.

Misguided

Yesterday Representative Michele Bachman (R-MN) blamed the current financial crisis on the Clinton-era Community Reinvestment Act for pushing “homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.”

It’s difficult to believe even someone as conservative as Rep. Bachman could believe such a baseless canard, let alone say it for public attribution in this, the Year of Their Lord 2008.

Everyone knows the mortgage crisis was caused by the legalization of gay marriage.