Class Warfare. Again.

Republicans have their kickers in knots because noted Socialist Warren Buffet has advocated raising taxes on the super-rich. “Class warfare!” is the rallying cry from Fox News and its ilk. (Is there any way for “ilk” to sound complimentary? Certainly not when used in conjunction with “Fox News” or “Tea Party” or “child molester.” Not saying Fox news and the Tea Party are child molesters. I just tried to think of the worst thing I could call someone, since “Fascist” lost all meaning when Obama was declared one by Lyndon Larouche’s acolytes.)

Apparently the Right believes class warfare can only happen by pitting one class against the rich. This is not true, though that is traditionally how it has been done, primarily because the poor do not have anything anyone else wants. Ah, but this is the Twenty-First Century, where Brave New World is as passé as “See Dick run” and Ayn Rand has replaced Thomas Jefferson as the paragon of rational political thought. Conservatives have found one thing the poor have that’s worth taking.

Money.

Taking money from people who don’t have any is not just hard to do, it’s hard to advocate. We’re not quite ready for the Al Swearengen approach of “hit them over the head, take their money, and throw their bodies in the creek,” though we’re headed down that slippery slope. No, for this we have to resort to a tried and true conservative meme: these people are screwing you, and we’re your only friend.

Conservatives have a revered tradition with this approach. For years blacks were the enemy, taking white jobs, sleeping with white women, and looking better with shaved heads than any white man. Immigrants had their day, but vilifying them has lost its sheen since the economy became so bad even Mexicans don’t want to come here anymore. Now it’s the poor’s turn, except no one can say “let’s take money from the poor” without invoking Dickensian images even from those who think a Dickensian is someone whose work pants aren’t Levis or Wranglers.

“How can we take money from the poor and get the middle class to think it’s a good idea?” Oh, how this must have tortured many a conservative soul late into many sleepless nights. Then some 60-watt bulb noticed that almost half of all Americans don’t pay income tax, and boom! Inspiration.

All real Americans hate freeloaders, and in tough times everyone (except the rich) are expected to contribute. Never mind that most of those non-taxpaying goldbricks are seniors living on Social Security who don’t draw enough benefits to pay tax. Most of the others either make so little money the standard deductions wipe out their Gross Adjusted Income, or programs like the Earned Income Credit or Child Tax Credit bring them under the line. (Note: Republicans repeatedly vote for these programs, and have expressed no interest in undoing them.)

While the poor don’t always pay income tax, they do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. (If they’re lucky enough to have jobs.) These are regressive taxes, especially Social Security, thanks to the cap, which means there are poor people in this country who pay no income tax, yet still pay a higher percentage of their wages in overall taxes than do the rich.

Conservatives have no sense of irony. They fail to realize a flaw that is implicit in their argument: we now live in a country where almost half the people don’t make enough money to pay income tax.

Does that bother anyone but me? Of course, I’m one of those who still thinks the banks and financial institutions were responsible for the current mess, and refuses to blame the public workers and unions because it was their unreasonable salary demands and lack of work ethic that caused mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps to lose their (perceived) value and become exposed for the Ponzi schemes they always were, thus precipitating the Great Recession of 2008. Silly me.

Top Ten Things That Were True the Last Time I Didn’t Have to Wear Glasses

10. The Pirates played in Forbes Field.

9. The Steelers had never made the playoffs.

8. The only penguins in Pittsburgh were in the zoo.

7. John Boehner had human-colored skin.

6. The Beatles had never been to America.

5. Elvis was thin.

4. We only had “advisors” in Vietnam.

3. Mitch McConnell had a chin.

2. There was no such thing as Gatorade.

1. The United States could only put one man in space at a time. (Now we can’t put any.)

A Matched Set

The cataract in my right eye was removed on Wednesday, with The Sole Heir once again in attendance. (No photo this time; just hold the previous one up to a mirror.) This nurse anesthetist was a little more heavy-handed than his predecessor, so I slept through most of this one, including snoring, much to the amusement of the doctor and TSH.

The first thing I noticed when I finished my three-hour afternoon nap was that my glasses, without which I had been lost for almost fifty years, were no longer of use to me. I couldn’t see anything through them. Yesterday’s follow-up exam showed my right eye better than my left—as expected—with my overall vision when using both eyes at 20.25. I only need glasses to read. (I’ve hung nothing off my ears or nose to type this.)

Having good vision after a lifetime of Magoo Syndrome requires some changes. I bought a cheap pair of readers and keep pushing them up my nose when I look up from making a note, only to realize I can’t read the screen through them; I have to look over.  I ran a couple of errands yesterday with the vague feeling I was forgetting something, and was regularly surprised when I’d reach up to scratch my face and could do so unimpeded.

The best was last night. As I went to turn out the bathroom light on my way to bed I passed the dresser where I have always kept my glasses for easy retrieval first thing in the morning. Without thinking, my hand went up to remove my glasses. I laughed out loud.

To me, seeing well meant I had my glasses on. That was the only way it could happen. I was never vain about glasses. I’m not sure whether I look better with or without them, partly because my self-image is so closely associated with “with.” To me, it’s not how I look; it’s how I see.

It’s a liberating feeling. The Beloved Spouse found a crack in her glasses a couple of weeks ago, and had to resort to a pair of loaners while her progressive lenses were re-ground. Had I broken my glasses a month ago, I would not have been able to drive to Hour Eyes for a replacement. I break the readers, I just get my dead ass off the chair and go to Giant or CVS or Target and buy another pair.

What I notice most are things that never occurred to me when I thought about it before having the bionics implanted. An ability to shift focus without having to move my head to look through the proper area of the progressive lens. My peripheral vision is no wider, but there’s no blurry edge where my eye scans beyond the edge of my glasses. My vision is clear all day. No smudges or dust gets on the lens.

In a small way I almost feel disloyal. I’ve not been able to leave the house without glasses for as long as I can remember. Now they’re not only not helpful, they’re counterproductive. I couldn’t wear them if I wanted to, as my “corrected” vision is much worse than it ever was uncorrected.

I’ll get over it. Outdoor activities will be easier . I’m going to get myself to a batting cage in a couple of weeks to see how that goes, and might consider looking for a 55-and-over softball league next spring. Looking out the window, it’s startling to see the backyard in three dimensions, how far the limbs of the pine tree reach away from its trunk.

My most sincere thanks to Dr. John Grundy and everyone connected with his practice and with the Snowden River Surgery Center, where the procedures took place. As life-altering experiences go, only the birth of the Sole Heir and meeting The Beloved Spouse surpass the work these folks have done.

Another Example of American Exceptionalism

Ezra Klein's blog refers to a new report from Building America’s Future, “Falling Apart and Falling Behind,” which details the sorry state of America's transportation infrastructure. Here is a salient point for those who still think America is the world leader in everything.

The United States, the report notes, now has the worst air-traffic congestion on the planet, with one-quarter of flights arriving more than 15 minutes late. One reason is that U.S. air-traffic control still relies on 1950s-era ground radar technology, even as the rest of the world has been shifting to satellite tracking (the FAA has begun the transition to a satellite-based system, though it’s moving slowly and future funding is a big question). According to recent World Economic Forum rankings, even Malaysia and Panama now boast better air infrastructure.

American exceptionalism used to refer to this country's willingness to do everything better. Now too many people think it means everything here is best just because it's American. 

As anyone who has been paying attention already knows, this is a recipe for disaster.

Still on Silent Running

Last night I tried to explain to a friend why I haven't been posting here much lately, except for fuzzy bunny cataract stories. (Eye Two gets done a week from today, after which I will likely be totally and irreversibly insufferable.)

The explanation I offered to my friend was, alas, unsuitably erudite for this forum. Fortunately for me (and you), John Scalzi has covered this exact topic in his excellent blog, Whatever.

The Doctor Will Soon Be In

As if all this new seeing wasn’t good enough, another enjoyable aspect of cataract surgery was having The Sole Heir with me throughout. She’s a pre-med student, and Dr. Grundy and his staff were good enough to let her don scrubs and follow me all the way in and back.

I found out afterward she’d watched my vital signs on the electronic monitors and received a running commentary of what was happening from Brian, the nurse anesthetist, as they watched on the monitor. She said later she was less nervous than she would have been sitting alone in the waiting room. I know I was less nervous during the pre-surgical down time, as talking with her was a lot more entertaining than wondering what happens if the doctor sneezes at an inopportune moment.

The staff fell all over themselves making her (and me) feel comfortable, and I think she learned a lot about what’s involved in minor surgery. She had a knee scoped a few years ago, but I’m sure the focus is different when you can step back and watch instead of being the guest of honor.

She drove me home and we ate lunch and watched baseball and she was at least as much of a Nazi as The Beloved Spouse about enforcing the doctor’s “don’t do anything today” edict. Most people think of surgery as cutting something apart, but it should also tie things together.

Eyesight to the Blind

I knew the eyesight in my left eye was bad. Had been for years. My right eye carried the load as best it could. I rarely noticed my left eye wasn’t stepping up until something would come between them—say, a beverage cup—and half the world became as out of focus as the Tea Party’s deficit plans.

I knew the top letter on eye chart was E because I’d seen it before; looking at it with just my left eye, I couldn’t tell which way it pointed. I learned last month the left lens in my eyeglasses was clear, as there is only so much difference in prescription your brain can handle before it goes permanently off-center and your sense of balance is destroyed so badly you can only walk in circles that gradually veer to the right. (All right. I made that last part up. It’s still bad.)

Last Wednesday I had surgery to remove a cataract in my left eye, which was, apparently, 90% occluded.

Holy shit.

I’ve spent most of the past week going around looking at stuff. Taking my glasses off, covering my right eye, which is now the weaker of the two. I can watch television, see clocks from across the room, almost drive. I’d guess my vision is about 20/40 without correction now.

There’s a whole world out there to my left I’d been missing. Seeing all those overtaking vehicles over there makes me wonder how I got to be this old. My left arm does not suffer from an undiagnosed necrotic disease that sometimes makes it difficult to tell where it ends. Things that are closer to me actually look closer, as in three-dimensional. Who knew?

The whole procedure took about five minutes. I was awake and on the most excellent drugs so I was not at all disturbed by the fact a relative stranger was slicing a hole in my eye, sucking out the lens, and sticking a hunk of plastic in there. Fine, whatever. Put a picture window into my brain while you’re up there. It’s all good with me.

Now I can hardly wait until August 17, when Dr. Grundy will fix the right eye. That won’t be as pronounced a difference, but it will be nice to have a matched set for the first time since—oh, I don’t know—ever. Then I can get glasses to even up that whole nearsighted/farsighted thing, and I’ll be one  sighted motherfucker.

Better eyesight isn’t all cold beer and juicy steaks. I don’t know who lets that fat, unkempt asshole into my bathroom every morning, but it can stop any time now.

The Return of the Fox Follies

I watch as little baseball on Fox as possible. Listening to Joe Buck slip ever deeper into his mind-numbing monotone as Tim McCarver’s brainless banalities suck the life from everything within a fifty-foot radius like some black hole for lucid comment is too painful. They’ve become so bad I sometimes wonder if MLB keeps the Fox contract just to drive people to the MLB.tv and Extra Innings packages, where you can watch just about any game you want.

Last night’s All-Star game was my first tentative step in Fox’s den of baseball iniquity, and the Mid-Summer Classic found them in mid-season form. I came late, not settling into the Official Recliner of The Home Office until the top of the fourth inning, as Boston’s Adrian Gonzalez stepped in to hit. Buck droned on about how the left-handed Gonzalez shortens his stroke with two strikes and hits the ball to left. In the next breath he commented about how Gonzalez, a career .290 hitter, is hitting over .330 this year, and how it showed how much easier it was to hit with the protection of the Boston lineup around him.

Baseball analysts have studied the concept of one hitter protecting another for years. To my knowledge they have found no evidence it’s true. What Buck left out of his expert commentary was the fact that Gonzalez has moved from the worst hitter’s park in baseball (Petco Field in San Diego) into one of the best (Fenway), and that Fenway’s unique configuration makes him virtually impossible to pitch to, given the close left field wall and Gonzalez’s already described penchant for hitting the ball to left field.

That might have been enough to get me to turn off a regular season game, or at least to mute the sound on a World Series game. Given the constant line-up changes in the All-Star Game, I took my chances and left it on last night, in the masochistic hope that McCarver, the Einstein of Inanity, would say something that met his usual standard of insipidness. The Memphis Moron did not disappoint.

After a passed ball by Baltimore catcher Matt Weiters, McCarver, a former catcher himself (clearly from the days before catchers wore helmets behind the plate) excused Weiters with this: “You have to remember, catchers are more used to hitting pitchers than catching them.”

I think I know what he meant, but that’s not real close to what he said. Maybe it bothers me more than it should because I’m still in shock over the worst in-game interview in history, between Mark Grace and Justin Timberlake. (Decorum and my blood pressure prohibit exploring that topic in more detail.)

At least I won’t have to watch a Fox game until well into the playoffs. It’s a sad day for a man who grew up listening to the likes of Bob Prince and Jack Buck when Chip Caray and Joe Simpson are the announcers of choice. To paraphrase the late, great, Lewis Grizzard, Skip Caray is dead, and I don’t feel so good, either.

Beat ‘em, Bucs.

Another Inconvenient Truth

A little-quoted writing from Thomas Jefferson that seems to have slipped beneath the notice of those who claim to speak for what the Founding Fathers intended, especially along the lines of religious freedom:

"Whereas the preamble [of Virginia's Act for Establishing Religious Freedom] declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words `Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, `a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

(Lifted from Peter Rozovsky’s award-winning blog, Detectives Beyond Borders.)

So let’s knock off this “Christian nation” shit, okay?

A Family Resemblance

Exxon has to be not just the worst oil company in the world, but the lousiest corporate citizen. It’s not enough they pay no taxes and despoil the environment (their two most egregious examples being the Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the current disgrace on the Yellowstone River), it turns out that at least some of their “independent dealers” are just as much miserable low-lifes as the mother company.

The Beloved Spouse and I are firmly convinced the finest fast-food sandwich made is the Blimpie Best. Unfortunately, there are no Blimpies along our normal routes of traverse. Today I decided to take advantage of having extended my July Fourth weekend to make a sojourn north of town to an Exxon station that has a Blimpies sign attached to it.

I drove to North Laurel Exxon at 15151 Sweitzer Lane and went inside, where I found no evidence of any Blimpies products. I asked the man behind the counter who I could see about a sandwich. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Who do I see about a sandwich?

He: We don’t sell those anymore. Look in the case. we make some already.

Me: Maybe you ought to take down the sign.

He: Yes, we should probably do that.

I realize you cannot hear his tone from this description, but I have serious doubts about his sincerity, or his intentions to do so.

I went elsewhere for our sandwiches. (Another Blimpies, farther away; it was worth it.) I also notified Mr. Blimpie in Arizona, and have called the Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Complaint Hotline. I don’t get past there much, but when I do, I’m going to check the sign. When I se it has come down, I’m going to walk in and ask if they caught any hell from either Blimpie or the state, then I’m going to point to myself and say, “I did that, motherfucker.”

Don’t screw with my sandwiches.

Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?

The following letter appeared on the web site of the Gratiot (MI) County Herald on May 12, 2011 (Thanks to the Low Brass Correspondent for pointing it out to me):

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public School

This is as well as I have seen the argument for education done, though I hesitated to post it, because I know some asshole is going to miss the point and say it’s a plea to make prisons harsher.
I will be happy to engage in that argument.

Adventures in Headline Writing

From the Associated Press:

Acrobat, mom, reenact fatal Puerto Rico wire walk.

I’m assuming it was originally fatal for someone else.

Oops

Sure was embarrassing to have the President talk over “God Save the Queen” at the state dinner the other night. While it’s easy to say it’s an honest mistake, there are a lot of people in this country who’d consider declaring war if someone stepped on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sensitivity to other nations’ customs and patriotic symbols should one of the easier parts of his job. True, it wasn’t his fault the orchestra started playing when he was still talking, but he’s supposed to know—as anyone else would be expected to—that when the national anthem starts, that’s your cue to shut the fuck up. (Then again, when has any politician observed a cue to STFU?)

Embarrassing and (inadvertently) disrespectful, but at least he didn’t throw up on her, as did George H.W. Bush with the Prime Minister of Japan. Thinking of Forty-One barfing on the guy puts me in mind of what would have happened had the most recent Bush president had committed the same gaffe as Obama.

“Hey,” he’d say, “it wasn’t my fault the band started playing ‘My Country Tis of Thee’ right in the middle of my toast.”

A Good night at Castle Schadenfreude

I watched the Pirates lose 4-2 to the Natinals tonight, but it wasn’t a total waste of time. Washington Capitals coach Bruce “Porky Pig” Boudreau was observed in the crowd behind home plate. I wondered what he was doing there, then realized he has time on his hands, now that the Caps have been swept four games to none by Tampa, eliminating them from the Stanley Cup playoffs in the second round.

At first I could find no connection between the Porkster and the Nats, but a after a little thought it was obvious:neither team has ever won a Stanley Cup.

Porky was not observed after the seventh inning, but that was not unexpected. It’s spring, and he thinks it only natural to pack it in while teams are still playing.

(Editor’s Note: “Natinals” is not a typo. A couple of years ago the team actually took the field for a game with two players wearing uniforms with the team name spelled that way. Washington DC, the Sports Capital of the Apocalypse.)

Can Someone Explain This to Me?

Suppose a man—let’s call him a Republican so as not to defame anyone—has spent much of his life doing his level best to see to it that people who need help don’t get it. Wants to cut the WIC program and Head Start, argues tirelessly against Medicare, Medicaid, and health insurance of any kind. Anyone willing to work doesn’t need unemployment benefits for more then thirteen weeks.

Now he gets laid off. He’s a hard worker, he’ll be back in harness again soon, which is good, because those COBRA payments are killers when you’re not working. Good thing the family can do without insurance for a few weeks while he finds a new job.

Then he finds out that pain in his kid’s gut is a tumor, and I look at this prick and I smile.

I wish the kid no ill will. It’s not his fault his father is a selfish, insensitive douche bag. This hypothetical tumor isn’t fatal. Hell, I don’t want it to be painful.

Just expensive.

I like the idea of Dad laying awake a few nights wondering how he’s going to pay for this. Can he pay the kid’s bills and still afford a house for him to live in? At what point will they cut him off, making what should be a scary inconvenience into a life-threatening drama?

To most people, this makes me a bastard, far worse than the fictional father described above. He’s willing to deny children a healthy diet, decent medical care to entire families, and a safety net over uncertain times to literally millions of people. All I want is for him to walk a mile in their shoes and have a few of the countless sleepless nights he’d inflict on others.

Yet I’d bet most people would say that makes me the lesser person of the two of us, and I just don’t see it.

Say Hey!

Willie Mays is eighty years old.

Holy shit.

A Win for the Good Guys

I meant to write this last week before the Osama bin Laden news overwhelmed the Internet, but I have a life, too, so it slipped. (Editor’s Note: No bin Laden comments will be forthcoming, either about his death, what comes next, or the celebrations that erupted when the news broke. These have already been overdone by people who weren’t right about 9/11/01 or any analysis or predictions since. He’s dead, it’s a victory, move on. It’s not like Sunday was VE or VJ Day; not much is going to change.)

Sometimes it seems there’s no good news. Allegedly responsible representatives are threatening a default by the federal government. (Most of these are people who would throw you out of your house for missing even a single mortgage payment. Et tu, assholes?) The economy refuses to pick up and there are rumblings that we may have to get used to a new definition of “full employment” that has twice as many people off work as the old.

In the midst of all this misery, comes a beacon of light from, of all places, Mississippi, where the Anti-Christian Spawn of Hell Westboro Baptist Church was finally foiled in an attempt to ruin a military funeral. Beating the snot out of one of their number while everyone in the vicinity saw nothing was nice; the local government’s response in blocking their vehicles into their motel parking lot was priceless. We must be careful not to encourage too much of government’s behavior, as its potential for abuse is too great. Here it was just right.

As for the unwitnessed beat down, you want to push the law and the Constitution to the breaking point, you invite others to do the same. I only hope I would have the courage to flatten some tires if offered the same opportunity. There are things that go so far beyond decency that decency in return is nothing more than enabling behavior. Maybe the next step should be harassing their church services, especially funerals. See how well that shoe fits.

Perseverance in the 21st Century

Slate’s Jurisprudence page is the only part of the online magazine I keep on my site aggregator, and that’s so I can read dahlia Lithwick’s columns. Only NPR’s Nina Totenberg can breath life into descriptions of legal arguments as well as Ms. Lithwick, who consistently treads the fine line between objectivity and showing her political inclinations. (The Beloved Spouse has called her my intellectual mistress, and we refer to her by her first name around the house.) I stand second to no man in my admiration of her gifts and insight. (Her husband excluded, hopefully.)

She sure blew it today, though.

The question is not whether the Defense of Marriage Act deserves adequate and enthusiastic representation in court. of course it does, no matter how reprehensible I may find it. Flawed as it is, ardent advocacy is the best hope we have for our judicial system, be it for individuals, corporations, or laws like DOMA. (It would be nice if judges refrained from some of the advocacy, having supposedly left that behind when they ascended to the bench, but that’s a different post.)
The issue here is who’s at fault for King & Spalding’s refusal to provide that advocacy after agreeing to do so, after scathing attacks by a gay rights group. Ms. Lithwick blames the gay rights folks for going too far and placing King & Spalding in a position where keeping on with the DOMA case would cost them clients and money.

The gay rights group may have gone too far; that’s a different argument, too. The villains here are still King & Spalding, who folded under pressure. It’s not hard to see what kind of advocacy anyone could expect from them. They’ll support you so long as your fees bring in more money than they lose on those who disagree. Then you’re on your own. Quite the idealistic image for law students to aspire to.

I don’t suppose you’ll see many pictures of Thurgood Marshall or Morris Dees in those offices. You know, lawyers who’d take on a client and stand up for him, whether the firm agreed with his position or not.

I doubt the ACLU will be hiring these guys for anything in the near future. Kudos to Paul Clement for resigning.

My Fantasy

No, it doesn’t involve Elle MacPherson.

My middle-aged adult male fantasy is to win the lottery.

Not for the money.

Well, yeah, for the money, but because the money would allow me to act on this fantasy. (It still doesn’t involve Elle MacPherson.)

I want to win enough money so I can write a check for a million dollars. (Picture Dr. Evil saying it. “One millllion dollars.”) Make it out to the Democratic National Committee. Get DNC Chairman Tim Kaine on the phone. (Damn right he’ll take that call.) I’ll ask for a meeting with him, Bob Menendez (Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman), and Chris Van Hollen (House Campaign Committee Chairman). They can name the time and place. They’re busy men, and I’ll be retired by then. (You think I’d work with a million dollars to throw around? Really?)

So the four of us are in the room and I take out the check. Show it to them. Certified check, the bank vouches for it. Lay it on the table between us and tell them they can leave with it, spend it how they want, on one condition:

Tell me why the fuck they deserve it. How they’re Democrats, not Republican Lite. And who they plan on running for president. If I don’t like the answers, the I’ll tear the check up and give the money to the likeliest primary challenger to Barack Obama, aka The Mole.

See Glenn Greenwald’s piece in Salon for detailed reasons.

Okay, Elle can come if she wants.

But They Probably Know Dick Cheney’s Undisclosed Location

Fox News has a hard-earned reputation for faulty research and negligible fact checking. Now it appears their virtually invisible standards have moved into the sports department.

During Saturday’s Yankees-Tigers game, Tim McCarver—who needs no help from researchers to say something stupid—noted that Derek Jeter was close to becoming only the seventh player to get 3,000 hits for the same team. That didn’t sound right to me, so I did one Google search (3,000 hits same team) and took the first hit that came up.

Here’s the actual list:

Paul Waner,  Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, Stan Musial, Carl Yastrzemski, Cal Ripken, Jr., George Brett, Robin Yount, Tony Gwynn, Al Kaline.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s ten.

(Note three Pirates on the list. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when Pittsburgh did baseball right.)

America in Microcosm

The economic and political problems confronting this country are well summed up in this tale of two friends.

The State of the Nation

Thanks to the Beloved Spouse for providing this link on income distribution, taxes, and trends in America. The comment section is available for any Tea partiers and "cut taxes but not any spending that will make a difference" conservatives.

I'm not counting on much of a response from those quarters.

Energy Policy

Daylight Saving Time started over the weekend for most of the United States. For years it began the first weekend of April and ended at the end of October. Then the half-asses in Washington decided we needed an energy conservation policy, so they extended it a couple of weeks on either end, like that makes the sun shine longer each day. All it really accomplished is setting my wake-up time back into what looks like the middle of the night. It also sums up Congress’s efforts to create a sustainable energy policy, just in case you thought they were too busy bickering to get any serious business done.

They Made Me Do It

I have a policy of not contributing to out-of-state political campaigns. I have a state to be politically active in, and I don’t much like others coming in from outside and telling us how to run things. If things are going to be screwed up in Maryland, they should be our screw-ups.

I’m going to make an exception for Wisconsin. Don’t misunderstand me. The ultimate blame for what’s going on there rests with the voters. They elected these bastards; a large part of me says they can live with them.

The problem is, Wisconsin’s Republicans are the tip of the spear. They get away with this here, their peers will be emboldened in Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, and probably Pennsylvania. Down this road lies the status of a second-rate nation, one that can’t—or won’t—care for those who can’t take care of themselves and is incapable of educating its population to do more than what they’re told.

Imagine a Japan-esque disaster in this country with Mike brown in charge of FEMA. We have continued to elect politicians who campaign on the platform that government is the problem, then make every effort to ensure government will be the problem once they’re in power. We then express astonishment and dismay when they do what anyone who looked closely at their record should have known they’d do.

The Republican response to “tax and spend” Democrats is to dismantle government, except for the pieces that directly benefit them. A line has to be drawn somewhere to show liberals aren’t, in the words of Peter Moskos, “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Wisconsin is as good a place as any to start.

The check goes in the mail today to help to recall the Republican senators and governor. Enough is enough.

Circling the Drain

I have reached the age where thinking about the end game of life is more than an abstract concept. My health is fine, and I fully expect to be around at least another twenty-five years, but what were casual thoughts in my thirties are now concrete obstacles that must either be dealt with or maneuvered around. I’m hoping to get to retirement before the current political climate makes the working economy unendurable, with the idea that Social Security and Medicare will remain relatively intact for a while longer, as the ability of Republicans and the Tea Party to play groups against each other there is minimal. No  one wants old people living under bridges, scrounging meals from Dumpsters. I hope.

What is most discouraging is that I see no way not to leave my daughter and grandchildren a worse country than I inherited. I have no delusions, there; the country I inherited had plenty of issues. I was born before meaningful civil rights legislation, during the Cold War (though, thankfully, no wars of the shooting variety), not too long after Joe McCarthy’s self-serving inquisition. It was also a time when working people could join the middle class and not have to live from paycheck to paycheck and could reasonably expect their children to go to college and improve themselves, attitudes that only increased in the Sixties.

What will I leave? A country where “every man for himself” has more significant meaning than any time since the Oklahoma land rush. No fiscal responsibility in government or the population that elects it. Fiscal responsibility? Hell, there’s no fiscal sanity. Political “leaders’ tell us we have to cut the deficit by trimming only programs that make up about 12% of the government; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are off-limits. Tax increases, even for those who have most benefitted by the frenzy of tax reduction in upper income strata, is unmentionable in civil discourse.

So cuts to “discretionary” spending it must be. You know what constitutes “discretionary” spending? Food safety inspections. Occupational safety. Prescription drug testing. Highways and infrastructure. Education. People in Pennsylvania can light their tap water with a match due to gases released from a coal-mining technique known as fracking, and the governor is working to make the regulations less stringent.

The salient purposes of government are to protect the population, to provide what individuals cannot provide for themselves, and to level the playing field at least enough to prevent the advantaged running roughshod over those with less power. Not here. Not anymore. Now it’s to pad the lives of those who can best afford to take advantage of the system. Corporations have more rights than people.

I hope my time doesn’t come for a while yet. There are things I want to do, and people I want to spend time with. But when it does come, I’m not going to miss this shit one bit. I’ll just feel badly I wasn’t able to think of anything productive to do about it.

Still Pretending He’s the Cavalry

From today’s Wonkbook summary, by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein:

With the stopgap funding bill safely through Congress and the federal government given a two-week reprieve, the White House has decided to get in the game more directly: They've invited congressional leaders to sit down with Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff William Daley, and budget director Jack Lew to hammer out a deal.

You could imagine a great beer commercial coming out of this: The wonks and legislators are deadlocked until someone brings in an ice-cold case of Miller Lite. Suddenly, it's all backslapping and "of course revenue should be on the table" and "you're right that government needs to spend less" and "sorry about that whole Planned Parenthood thing." And I haven't even mentioned the disco ball.

But can you imagine a great budget deal coming out of this? This is the same play the White House ran to resolve the tax debate: they waited till the last minute, when inaction was about to force unwelcome consequences, and then they gathered the players in a room with Tim Geithner and Jack Lew and had Joe Biden act as shuttle envoy to Mitch McConnell. Despite the skepticism of people like, well, me, it worked. Maybe it'll work again. But the downside here, much like the downside there, is that the White House has taken ownership over the process, and they will get much of the credit or much of th blame for whether it works and what it produces.

This is the same thing President Comfortable Shoes has done since Day One: wait until a situation hits crisis mode, then come in late, thus taking credit for what results. Health insurance reform, financial overhaul, taxes, and now this.

It’s not leadership’ it’s opportunism. Granted, he doesn’t have a lot of political capital to spend right now, having pissed much of it away doing what was described in the previous paragraph. Still, he thinks this is the way to go, consequences to the 99.9% of people who just want to get along with their lives be damned.

March 1

March 1 is a special day at The Home Office. Because of March 1, the grass is greener and the sky is bluer. I am more often happy, and, when I'm not, the unhappiness is not as deep, nor does it last as long.

Thanks to March 1, I find humor in ordinary things. I am more patient, and less likely to assume malicious intent when things don't go my way. My health is better. Honest to God. I am a better friend and a better son and generally a better person to be around.

The Beloved Spouse and The Sole Heir both drew their first breaths on March 1.

Happy birthday, ladies.

Today’s Lesson

The current politico-economic situation of the United States is clearly and accurately described in the following story, provided by the Show Tunes Correspondent.

A CEO, a union worker, and a Tea Party member are sitting around a table  with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, then turns to the Tea Party member and says,"Watch out for that union guy. He wants to take some of your cookie."

Paul Krugman can’t do it any better than that.

The Crux of the Problem

This colorful little graphic shows what is the core of most of the trouble in the United States today.

The gist of what it means is simple. The top 20% of Americans control over 80% of the wealth. Most Americans don’t know this. They think—as the second graph shows—the top 20% controls almost 60% of the wealth, and they’re not real happy about that, as the third graph shows they think the top 20% should control about 30%. I’m not even going to discuss what the bottom 20% get. This is depressing enough. (For a set of graphs that explores this in more detail, see the article in Mother Jones.)

The rich have always controlled a disproportionate amount of the economy. That’s what makes them rich. There was a time when they had the smarts—or class—to keep it to themselves. Flaunting it in everyone else’s faces was considered to be poor form. We’ve all heard stories of families who had money during The Depression keeping their shades drawn much of the time so those less fortunate wouldn’t see the disparity. That could be hubris or sensitivity, depending on the family, but it’s not happening now.

People making $400,000 are distraught because they don’t make $600,000. They see their income figures and think they should be rich—and they are—then look at the guy across the way who makes a couple of million and feel deprived. Few look in the other direction and feel grateful for what they have.

And it’s still not enough. Tax cuts are proposed for the rich, though their rates have plummeted since the Eisenhower years. (See Mother Jones.) Union busting activity is worse than it’s ever been. True, there are armed confrontations, but now the government is actively against the unions. Witness Scott Walker’s power grab in Wisconsin, where he doesn’t just want to be the governor who busted the unions, he wants to be king. How else can you describe a governor who has promoted a bill that will allow him to sell off state property without soliciting bids, to whomever an official appointed by him deems worthy?

Public sector workers are being demonized to out of work private sector workers, when the people who are really hosing them make more in a year than any of them will make in their lives. The true enemy of an employed worker is not an employed government worker; it’s any unemployed worker, who is now competition for the job he needs.

This is bad, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better soon. Both parties share in the blame. Republicans for their ruthlessness, and Democrats for their fecklessness in ceding the battlefield. The real problem now is that, even if the pendulum swings back, it will take years to undo the damage that was done in a couple of elections, and there don’t appear to be enough people on the horizon willing to do much more than talk about it.

Unions

A lot of people would have you believe the current financial crises many states find themselves in are the fault of unions. Wisconsin and New Jersey have been the most aggressive in taking action, but anecdotal evidence abounds of men in the street blaming unions for everything from deficits to health care reform.


They forget that states operated under the same union contracts three to five years ago as they do now, and were rolling in money. It’s the financial crisis that put the states’ budgets in jeopardy; the unions are in the process of being scapegoated into picking up much of the tab.


Make no mistake: unions have brought much of this on themselves. They too often devote their energies protecting the least deserving. It can be virtually impossible to fire some people, as union contracts can make every employee’s faults the employer’s responsibility: drugs, alcohol, or sometimes just plain laziness. (It can also be pointed out here that employers signed none of these contracts at gunpoint.)
Unions also have traditionally taken too much of an adversarial position. When common sense argued for creating partnerships with management so that risks and rewards could be more equitably shared, too many unions chose to suck every dime out of a contract. Times changed, and now they find themselves in situations where management careers and fortunes can be made by firing workers, and it’s too late to strike the kinds of deals that could have prevented it.


In the midst of all this bashing, let’s not forget why we have unions in the first place. Do a little research into what working conditions were like a hundred years ago. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire happened exactly one hundred years ago on March 25. One hundred forty-seven garment workers died in a few minutes because the company locked the doors to the sweatshop and they couldn’t get out.


I’m 55 years old and remember a lot of men my grandfather’s age—including my paternal grandfather—who were missing fingers, many of them from industrial accidents. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. We’re all shocked at the safety violations that were ignored in West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine last April, but I’ll bet miners before the time of the Molly Maguires would have thought they’d won the lottery to work in such conditions. Skyscrapers and bridges used to have “expected casualties” built into the plans and budgets. No more. We expect no one will die building something today.


Unions helped to make that so, along with stopping many arbitrary firing practices that could deny a worker the pensions he’d earned just before he was able to collect it.


Of course, most pensions are gone; we have 401 ( k ) plans and companies can’t understand why employees show so little loyalty. Break the unions now, and the chances for unskilled and semi-skilled labor to retain company-provided health insurance drop to nothing. In times of high unemployment and a potentially interchangeable work force, why provide any more benefits than necessary beyond the lowest wage you can get away with?

Unions are easy targets, but they’re straw men. No surer way exists to cripple the melding of the middle and working classes that made this country the force it became in the middle part of the 20th Century than to break them. Let’s not forget, the American Exceptionalism conservatives so loudly proclaim was not ordained by God. It was the by-product of hard work and the coming together of historic forces. We undue them at at our own risk.

The Hobgoblin of Small Minds

Judgment and discretion are essential elements in any activity. Arbitrary limits and “zero tolerance” policies don’t accomplish anything except to give their perpetrators the appearance of toughness. Rarely is any good accomplished. rather, these policies are more often counterproductive.

Case in point: The King’s Speech and its R Rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some language.”

The language in question is the word “fuck,” as it almost always is. Part of the king’s therapy is to break down the reservations that cause his stammer, leading to an outburst of several “fucks” in a row, in two separate scenes. The effect is pitch perfect: the first instance shows Lionel Logue’s methods; the second shows the king’s gradual acceptance of them. That’s as racy or violent as the movie gets.

This is from the MPAA’s web site:

More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context. The Rating Board nevertheless may rate such a motion picture PG-13 if, based on a special vote by a two-thirds majority, the Raters feel that most American parents would believe that a PG-13 rating is appropriate because of the context or manner in which the words are used or because the use of those words in the motion picture is inconspicuous.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Not only should children under the age of 13 not be discouraged from seeing the film, they should bring it into speech therapy classes for kids who stammer. It’s A Beautiful Mind for stammerers. Here, kids. Don’t be intimidated by your speech impediment. Even a king can stammer, and look how he overcame it. It’s not part of you; you can get past it.

The ever-vigilant MPAA doesn’t see it that way. In their zeal to protect these delicate psyches from the undue influence of dirty words, they have ensured that the kids who most need to see it will be barred. Enlightened parents will take these fucking outbursts in context, weigh their value, and take the kid, anyway. The children of less open-minded parents will not get the opportunity to hear such smut. They may be chided over their impediment as a way to toughen them up, which works approximately never.

Thanks to the MPAA, guardians of all that is decent and good, in their zeal to protect impressionable minds from “piss, shit, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.” Violence, cruelty, and dark content pass PG-13 muster (Spartacus, The Dark Knight, X-Men, Quantum of Solace, for examples), as well as the considerations involved in assisted suicide (Million Dollar Baby). They have no problem with unescorted minors in any of those movies.

Don’t cross the fuck threshold, though.

The Onion Rules

I got your fair and balanced right here.

Happy Holidays

Each year goes faster than before,

They’re past before you know it,

So now it’s time for me to rhyme

And prove that I’m no poet.

This year began, as winters do,

With cold and lots of snow,

I’ll not complain, but ‘twere snow rain,

We’d had to learn to row.

The holidays last year did bring

A guest to share our rooms,

‘Twas Kaitlyn, Corky’s grand-daughter,

We hope she’ll be back soon.

Then dormant lay us all till May

When action came exploding

With news and schmooze and trips to Stu’s

All fun, with no foreboding.

We started off in Wilmington,

(That’s in North Carolina)

For Kaitlyn’s mother’s birthday fete,

And few trips have been finah.

Then later in that very month

We flew to Colorado,

Niece Aspen graduated there,

Amid much broo-ha-ha-do.

And in between the two I had

A story writ in print,

An honest-to-Faulkner printed book

With my words dropped right in’t.

(In case you all are wondering,

The plot line dealt with crime,

As this note has made very clear,

I’ll ne’er be paid for rhyme.)

In June I went to Chicago

To celebrate with Stu

His birthday, yes, the Big Five-O

With sightseeing and blues.

The summer’s end saw Corky back

In Flint to see old friends

With Suzie Ovick Diebolt Kna-

pinski her time did spend.

With Eric and with Aaron, too

Some hours she did share,

‘Twas fun, but they were too quick passed,

She sees them both so rare.

With fall came yet another feat,

In Rachel’s sophomore term,

Distinguished scholarship award

Her hard work thus affirmed.

As you can see from in your mail,

Beloved Spouse has been

Creating individual cards,

This poem to put within.

Unique they are, yours and the rest,

None has a perfect twin,

Hand-made and summoned with much thought

The craft she placed herein.

For all these things—and many more—

Our anniversary

Was special, even one day late,

Because we’ve learned to see

How everything must fit its place,

All undue stress be barred,

With friends and family like you,

That’s really not too hard.

We all hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves

As much as we’ve this year,

Now Rachel, Corky, and your scribe

Extend our annual cheer.

To each and every one of you

To find some small delight

For every time you rise from bed

May all your days be bright.

The Airing of Grievances

It's December 23, and Festivus is upon us again! Stop admiring your pole (hmm, that didn't come out right), digest the Feast, and build up a good head of resentment for the Feats of Strength. That's right, it's time for the Airing of Grievances.

My grievance list:

Politicians who allow others to do the heavy lifting, negotiate against themselves to accommodate the other side, then claim a momentous accomplishment. You know who you are, Fredo.

Not using the serial comma.

Selfishness without consideration of its consequences to others.

Allowing the top marginal rate to return to pre-2000 levels would not be income redistribution any more than what happened to the tax code from 1980 - 2000 was.

And, so what if it is. All taxes are income redistribution at some level, because some activities that pertain to the common good cannot, by their nature, be self-supporting.

The Designated Hitter.

The 24-hour news cycle, which has made the word "verification" as obsolete as latin.

The sun should be up before I am. Every day.

People who are belligerent about putting the "Christ" back into the pagan solstice festival they usurped back in the Middle Ages.

Glenn Beck.

Keith Olbermann.

Athletes and coaches who can't craft an intelligible English sentence who act like what they do is too complex to explain to an intelligent layman.

Using race as a way to keep the lower classes too busy distrusting each other to pay attention to the people who really are screwing them.

Ah, hell. Politicians in general.

Those of any political description who refuse to look more than one step down the road from any decision, thus allowing the entire nation to be governed by the law of Unintentional Consequences.

The Washington DC area's reaction to snow and cold weather.

Chainsaw Dan Snyder.

Now that you're convinced I'm an embittered, cynical, old bastard (note proper use of serial comma), stay tuned for tomorrow's post. You're not wrong about the Embittered, cynical, old bastard part, but we have our moments, too.

It's Not the Destination, It's the Ride

I work at home most of the time now, thanks to a new assignment. It's a mixed blessing. The commute is great, and frees up over two hours a day for my personal life. The lack of other people around can make it hard to feel connected to the job, and it's easy to forget how long you've been staring at the screen before a headache and the knots in your shoulders remind you. Those little interruptions that can be so frustrating at work serve an under-appreciated purpose.

Among the better benefits of working at home is the ability to listen to whatever music I want. As a reformed musician, I have a large and varied collection of CDs and LPs, divided about evenly between classical and jazz, with some R&B and country thrown in. I don't have as much time as I used to for listening to the classical CDs. They tend to distract me when writing--when I need to apply my right brain elsewhere--but can be helpful in passing the time when working. I decided last week to re-acquaint myself with my classical collection by listening to two or three CDs a day, skipping through the racks so I wouldn't OD on some of my more popular composers.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony hit early on. My Music Literature teacher in college told us Beethoven 5 was often considered to be the most perfect piece of music ever written. The Ninth might be greater, but any change made to the Fifth diminished it.

I was lucky enough to get to perform Beethoven 5 twice during my musical days. It might seem corny to a non-musician, but it truly is an elevating experience, the kind of thing I experienced occasionally when playing in orchestras, and nowhere else. I found myself remembering what that was like while I listened the other day, waiting for what came next, hearing inner parts most listeners experience only as part of the texture but are clear as a bell to someone who has sat close to the instrument playing it. It was the most serene work day I have ever spent.

I spent almost twenty years--college, the Army, graduate school, and free-lance--trying to make a living as a musician. I'm not sorry for a second of it. Even if I set aside all the things I learned about life and myself, the people I met, became (and remain) friends with, the places I've gone, and experiences I've enjoyed that would never have been possible but for my musical life, it would have been worth it for that feeling.

Beethoven has been dead almost 200 years, but his music lives, and is important in people's lives. This is made possible by living musicians who have spent uncountable hours in poorly ventilated practice rooms perfecting their craft as much as their talents will allow, for the privilege of bringing such music into the present day. Most do it for little or no money, not even the hope of it. The reward of the performance is enough.

I was fortunate to enjoy such privileges for much of my adult life, and I do consider it a privilege to have been allowed to do so. I counsel young musicians against trying to make a living at it, as it can be hell on personal relationships and so few can ever make a decent living at it. Only those who reject my advice have a chance. Anyone who accepts it would have come up short sooner or later; they didn't want it badly enough.

As for me, I came up short later, rather than sooner. So it goes. I ended up in a far different place than where I set out for. Every second of that early musical detour was worth it, if only for the feeling I got when I listen to Beethoven 5 on my computer's speakers, knowing that twice in my life, for about 25 minutes each, others were able to hear it live, without any electronic intervention, in part through my participation. That's quite a legacy to be a part of.

A Brief History Lesson

European history is a drag, right? All those small countries and shifting borders and allegiances and unpronounceable names. Impossible to keep anything straight. Fear not. The Home Office, in its never-ending quest to make this a better world for me to live in, can now show you how World War I was exactly like a bar fight, courtesy of The Economist and The Sole Heir.

The Line of the Day

From Call Me Fishmeal, discussing current TSA policies:

If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and 10 years later your neighbors said, “Hey, several times now dudes have tried to steal your shit, but we came over and stopped them each time after your security guy let them through,” would you continue to employ him? Especially if every time you tried to enter your house, he grabbed your nuts and took naked pictures of your wife?

Parts of the post are a little unfair to TSA, but the general tone is apt, and that quote was dead on.

Thanks to the Search Engine Correspondent for pointing this out.

Who Pays?

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles have made their initial recommendations on how to cut the deficit. The legislation that comes of this, if any, will look very much different, but what they presented may serve as a blueprint, especially for those areas where there is not a hard and fast constituency.

The way it looks now, I'll take a beating. They recommend eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction, and my employer-provided health benefits--which my employer has reduced each of the past few years--will become taxable. I don't like it, but I can live with it. This country rode the gravy train for too long, and even though i wasn't one of those who overextended himself and defaulted on a credit card or mortgage, I understand everyone will have to pitch in.

Just so long as everyone does.

I don't mind if my tax obligation increases twice as much as someone who makes half as much. Hell, I don't mind if it increases more than twice as much if that guy's still raising small children, with the million expenses kids accrue. I just want to make sure the guys who make twice what I make--or ten times, or a hundred times--get nicked, too.

Conservatives complain about the "redistribution of wealth" every time a new tax is proposed. What has been done since 1980 with every tax cut? Those, too, have been redistributions of wealth, though in the other direction, taking money away from those who didn't have as much and giving it to those who already had more.

I'll pay my extra share willingly, so long as those above me on the income ladder pay theirs. If not, then I'm going to get belligerent about this. Enough's enough.

How We Got Here

As usual, The Onion nailed it. The greatest strength of a democracy such as ours is the potential to have the government we want. The greatest weakness is that we get the government we deserve.

Let’s leave aside how many people do or don’t vote. Voter levels aren’t really the problem. I’ll all for making it a little harder to register to vote in the first place, as someone too lazy to do even that probably isn’t going to extend himself when it comes time to have his say. Too many sheeple (as the Beloved Spouse calls them) on both sides of the aisle do this.

Disagree? That’s your right, but I dis-disagree back atcha. Consider health care reform, probably the most controversial law passed by the current Congress. The people are about evenly divided. About 47-48% are for it, and 47-48% are against it. (The other 5-6% don’t understand the question.) Here’s where it gets complicated. Individual components of the law are overwhelmingly popular, ebven with those who want to get rid of it.

Should your insurance provider be allowed to drop you because you actually got sick? No one wants that. How about doing away with lifetime caps? People like that, too. Allowing children to remain covered under their parents’ policies up to age 26 if the kids’ employers don’t pick them up? Sounds good to most folks. How about lowering health care costs by standardizing forms and lowering administrative overhead? No one complaining about that.

No one thinks kids should be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. People who are trying to eat healthier want to be able to see the nutritional information on what they’re considering at a restaurant. Despite overwhelming approval of these (and other) aspects of the law, the polling numbers show many of the people who like these things still want to repeal the law that provides them.

There are people today who are paying for, or reluctantly doing without, end-of-life planning, who know it’s a good thing, and yet screamed foul words at their congressman two summers ago because of the “death panels.” These folks didn’t realize the death panels they were so upset about were the same end-of-life care and advice they’re so worried about now. All they knew was that attention whore Sarah Palin told them these were bad. I don’t know what to say about those who became hysterical over the idea of the government running Medicare; Medicare is, and has always been, a government program, and, as the level of vitriol indicated, a highly popular one.

People argue there will be fraud. Of course there will; it can’t be helped. There has never been a large program, in either the public or the private sector, that didn’t have fraud. There’s Social Security fraud, and we know well how people feel about shutting down that government program. (Socialist government program, no less.) The trick is to weed it out as well as we can, while understanding you can’t eliminate it. No one is served if 99 people are hurt just so one guy can’t get over.

American voters aren’t bad people. They are short-sighted and gullible. Looking two steps down the road seems to be beyond most of them. They see Problem A and Glenn Beck proposes Solution B, and no one cares that it will not only not eradicate the problem it was intended to solve, but will also create Condition C, which is almost as bad as A, but just not to me personally.

Think, people. Others can advise you, but only you can do the actual thinking. And it’s way past time we got busy about it.

Truer Words Never Were Writ

I'll have more to say on this later, but it seems appropriate to point to The Onion for the 500th post here. Thanks to both of you for reading.

Election Post Mortem

The election is finally over. Wow, that sure was fun.

The Democrats, always suspect for their political acumen, passed three pieces of legislation more important than anything since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and still got their asses handed to them by the Republicans, whose entire platform was, “If they want it, we’re agin it.” Senate Minority Leader (And I use the word “leader” with trepidation, due to my respect for the English language) Mitch McConnell has publicly stated the Republicans’ sole policy goal is to get Barack Obama out of office. (More on McConnell later.) These were the cornerstones of an historic election reversal of fortune.

The Democrats’ errors were legion. Their presumed leader, the President, invested exactly none of the political capital he’d earned from the 2008 election. The stimulus? Enough (barely) to keep the ox from falling completely into the ditch, but not enough to turn things around. This was no secret, yet he acceded to the advice of political gurus like Rahm Emanuel, who told him a stimulus that was 2/3 of what had been recommended was all he could get votes for. It probably was. That’s not the point. Negotiating against yourself is always a bad idea. Obama should have come out asking for the $1.2 trillion, rolled it back as necessary to get passage (which might still have been more than he got), and showed the Republicans to be the obstructionists they were, wholly unconcerned with the fact that people were suffering. He then compounded the error by saying this was the package he’d always wanted—presumably so he wouldn’t appear to be weak for rolling over too easily—which made it impossible to go back for more when it proved to be inadequate.

He let Max Baucus and Harry Reid do all the heavy lifting on health care, then came in at the last minute to push it over the top, acting like this was the bill he’d wanted all along. Baucus got rolled by his alleged friend Chuck Grassley while Obama stood idly by, refusing to draw any lines. Again, the only interpretation that makes sense is that he didn’t want to appear weak by losing a battle. Instead, he proved he was weak, by exercising no leadership.

Political capital works much the same as financial capital: it has to be put to work to be worth anything. Obama’s unwillingness to invest any of his is akin to putting your life savings in a mattress. Sure, it looks like the same amount of money, but as inflation eats into it the real value grows smaller all the time. Obama became president in a time of spiraling political inflation; his mattress stash is about worthless. His efforts before the election to spin this into a failure of the voters, knowing he had so alienated his base they wouldn’t support him like they had two years ago, bankrupted him.

I said I’d get back to Mitch McConnell. He wins the Hypocrite of the Week award, no mean feat in an election week. On Wednesday, Mitch pointed to the election results and said his job now was to enforce the will of the American people, as expressed at the polls on Tuesday. His interpretation of this will matches exactly with what he has wanted to do since he got the job. (I’m sure this is entirely coincidental.) Funny, two years ago Mitch and his Republicans were on the other end of a not dissimilar butt whipping, and he had no such regard for the expressed wishes of his beloved American people.

More on those astute Americans later.

Another Milestone

The Sole Heir™ voted today for the first time. Texted me right after, and she was jazzed. I voted during my lunch break, more out of a sense of duty than enthusiasm. Until I got to the polling place, that is, when I got the same feeling as I have for the last 34 years. It’s just a cool thing, knowing the direction and future of a great nation—and, yes, I do think it’s great, no matter what I bitch about here—is determined wholly by tens of millions of individual decisions, all made in the privacy of a voting booth.

You don’t think so? You think money and big companies run the show? Sure they do, because we allow it. No matter how much money is available, or how distasteful the ads are, no one gets to be a senator, congressman, governor, president, alderman, councilman, delegate, whatever, unless more people vote for him—one at a time—than vote for the opponent.

It’s humbling to think about. I always feel great when I leave the polling place, no matter how I felt about the current situation or the voting choices I had. If you’re reading this on Election Day and haven’t voted yet, get your ass out there. You’ll be glad.

Yes, We're Pussies

Weather.com has posted a severe weather alert for my area. We’re in danger of frost until 9:00 AM. That’s right, frost. Pretty soon they’ll start naming dew.