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.

Bailing Out

H.L. Mencken once defined a Puritan as a person who lived his life in fear that someone, somewhere, was having a good time. A minor modification makes the statement true for all Americans, who spend an inordinate amount of time worrying that someone, somewhere, is getting over. There’s no better explanation for the failure of the economic disaster recovery bill in the House of Representatives.

The bill had flaws, as would anything whipped up in less than a week that was intended to address something as badly broken as our financial markets. It was still generally considered to be the adult thing to do, even if it meant holding one’s nose to vote for it. Reasoned, knowledgeable voices from both sides of the political spectrum agreed something had to be done, and the Paulson-Dodd-Frank plan was less offensive than any alternative likely to appear on such short notice.

Congressmen facing tough re-election campaigns walked away from their leadership’s entreaties in droves, regardless of party affiliation, though the Republican droves were proportionately twice as large as those of the Democrats. Constituents didn’t want to hear how these pinstripe suit, power suspender wearing Wall Street fat cats were going to benefit from the plan, even with the provisions for compensation reduction and taxpayer protection. They wanted an reckoning. Never mind there will be plenty of time after we keep the boat from sinking to apportion blame for who left the portholes open. The People want these guys dead, their wives raped, their children auctioned into slavery, and their pets sold to Chinese restaurants.

This is a not uncommon American reaction. Pick a social program, any social program. All it takes is Fox News to find one person in a thousand gaming the system, and there will he a hue and cry to dismantle the whole operation, no matter how many people It helps, or how good the return on our investment might be. No rational person will argue that anyone who takes unfair advantage of these programs should not be prosecuted and face serious consequences. Our national predisposition for zero tolerance provides a willingness to let nine hundred ninety-nine children to go without proper nutrition or health care because one lowlife on welfare took more than her fair share.

The entertaining irony is that no one enjoys getting over more than Americans. Maybe that’s why so many of us are worry about someone else pulling a fast one; we spend so much time thinking of doing it ourselves. Take this test: the next time someone complains about a welfare cheat or stock manipulator, ask if he claims every dollar on his taxes. Or skipped out on jury duty. Bought a hot television.

Here’s a scenario. You’re in a bar. A man comes into selling watches for twenty cents on the dollar. If you buy the watch and it works, you feel good because you got a deal. You know the watch was stolen, but it’s a victimless crime, right? The rightful owner was insured, no one hurt. Except insurance companies don’t lose money on stuff like that; they pass it along to their policyholders in the form of increased premiums, so you paid more for that watch than you think.

Scenario Two: Same bar, same guy. Except this time the watch is a knockoff and you’re the one getting screwed. Now you’re pissed, though the difference is a simple matter of whose ox got gored.

People often complain about how hard it is to know what’s the right thing to do. Doing the right thing is often hard, but it’s rarely hard to know what it is. Often what’s right isn’t in our selfish short-term interest; we pretend it’s tough so we can find an excuse for a more palatable decision. Nay-voting congressmen and are all over the airwaves today, rationalizing their decision not to do the adult thing, when it’s more clear by the hour it came down to re-election. This is how we define leadership in America.

Our capacity to rationalize ourselves into self-delusion is formidable. The other reason given for defeating the bill was, “It’s Socialism.” We hear that one all the time, too. The mere mention of a government health plan provokes “It’s Socialism” cries that roll across the landscape like thunder. Socialism is the third leg of the unholy trinity that would damn us all to hell if left unchecked, along with gay marriage and abortion. Yet the largest, most successful, and most popular government program ever created, an entitlement virtually all agree must be defended to the last dying breath, is so close to unadulterated socialism it carries the name: Social Security.

And there are those who wonder why there is no consistency in American politics.

Ooh, Shiny

The United States Mint has stopped printing buffalo head gold coins. People are hoarding gold. This is the most intelligence defying act since Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president. Granted, intelligence is defied on an almost daily basis lately, but this is bad. People have been talked into hoarding gold because it is alleged to be the standard of financial systems throughout history; the only thing of true, undeniable value.

Bullshit.

Gold is valuable because it always has been. Since the earliest recorded days of what passed for civilization, gold has been the material by which wealth has been measured. Tombs were encrusted with it. Untold hundreds of thousands have died in its search, either killed in the quest, or by those questing for it.

What is it about gold that has made it so valuable? Great medicinal power? Physical strength? Is it an aphrodisiac? (No; the wealth it implies is the aphrodisiac.) Gold became valuable to ignorant people no more than three steps removed from apes because it is shiny, and easy to make pretty jewelry with. Period. The practical uses of today's gold were undreamed of in those days. They collected it, paid dearly for it, killed and conquered for it. Because it was shiny.

Want more proof? Even today, when (most of us) will readily agree the earth is round and rotates around the sun, it is a rule of thumb for a man to spend three months' salary on an engagement diamond. The true value of this diamond is nil. Industrial diamonds have some utilitarian value, but they're not used for jewelry. Jewelry diamonds are expensive because they're shiny. They would be of more genuine use if they had remained in their previous form; at least you can heat your house with coal.

For all the talk the current crisis has inspired about what is truly valuable, few are talking about the only three things that have inherent value. Not gold, silver, or even platinum. Not uranium, stocks, or bonds. Not derivatives or real estate. In the end, those are no more valuable than tulip bulbs. The three things that have inherent value in this, and, for us, any other world, are edible food, breathable air, and potable water. That's it.

Ask someone in Somalia if he'd rather have an ounce of gold or a bushel of corn. All other measures of wealth are eventually evaluated by how well they can provide the only three we really need. Wall Street masters of the universe will die in minutes if they can't get a breath of air, no matter how much money they made on their stock options.

Much of the current crisis is due to mankind's inability to remember what is truly valuable. If we don't get a handle on our greed, we may have this lesson proven to us sooner, and more unpleasantly, than we'd like.